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ferrule2
Reviews
The Batman (2022)
When psycho John Denver sings 'Ave Maria' and your whole family wishes they were somewhere else...
Pros-
-Makes me appreciate Christian Bale Batman movies
-Makes me appreciate Michael Keaton's Batman
Cons-
-Action scenes are dreadful, screechy fireworks shows in the streets and hallways
-Batmobile looks like like a Baja off-roading machine from your neighbor's garage
-Batman is a bad driver
-plays like an especially bad Criminal Minds episode that drones for 3 hours
-Cat(burglar) Woman is wearing a $20 nose covering scarf with barely-there ears
-The Riddlers rants, videos and singing tank an already struggling movie
-Unentertaining.
Death Note (2017)
Badly underrated
The premise is complete fantasy but Willem DaFoe's voice alone should get it another point and a half. My wife and I have watched this several times, the twists and turns are quite interesting, the production values are good and the music is great.
Give it a chance.
Buried (2010)
Too much visual stimulation!
This movie could have been great if only they had carefully limited the light. Ideally, all we would have had is his breath, the sounds he was making, and a big black rectangle to look at for the entire film. As it was, we were close to this, but not quite close enough.
Yet another big blockbuster where storytelling takes second to CGI and action scenes.
Otherwise, I can't think of a better way to spend an hour and a half than watching various angles of the main character's face, the occasional kicking and screaming fit, the intense and wonderful finger cutting scene minutes before death, and a host of angles on a cigarette lighter that would have used the available oxygen in minutes.
Never Forever (2007)
Did someone mention reason and accountability?
I set out to enjoy this movie, hoping for something that would take the best elements of movies such as Unfaithful and The Rabbit Hole and mix them with some independent flair and lesser known, but capable actors.
The problem with this film is that there is one actor who is convincing... Farmiga. What's she manages to convince a pragmatic viewer of is another matter for later in this review. The two male main characters do workmanlike, unremarkable jobs of portraying relatively stereotyped characters, that of the depressed, middle aged man who can't have everything he wanted in life and a naive 20 year old kid who falls in 'love' because he receives the one thing guaranteed to cause a 20 year old to throw caution and logic to the wind. Never mind that it's delivered with more than a nod to the old saw "Love like you're being paid."
Moving on to Farmiga, I think it's helpful to examine the absurdity of the plot. She's obviously almost as clinically depressed as her husband. Any of these ring a bell:
"feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and/or helplessness" "persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" feelings"
I hope so, because those, and five other clinical symptoms are displayed in endless scenes of hand wringing, melodramatic expressions of pain, listlessly staring at walls while in a near fetal position, conversing as if it takes EVERY... LAST... BIT... of energy... Is this really good acting?
The plot is also beyond silly. She does all this for her husband who she 'loves'. She achieves what she has stated is her only desire and he responds with warmth and spark that had been utterly lacking before. Of course, her response to this is to dream of dirty sex in a filthy tenement with a kid who's actual dialogue has mainly consisted of publicly implying, quite crudely, that she's a confused tramp who needs 'what he has', and isn't referring to the procreation aspects of their transactional trysts.
If her mooning about seems like good acting, then I guess the above weirdness seems like a love story destined to break through barriers and walls that most could not. I was not terribly moved by this movie, although it was interesting watching it all play out. Farmiga is better when her talents are focused on helping a better movie play out logically.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Retchingly bad
If you were to watch this movie in a vacuum and were not aware of what has come before with this series and were particularly fond of unconvincing, chronically constipated villains, you might think this movie was OK.
Nearly every element of the worst ST and STNG movies is present:
1. Enterprise is underpowered and barely space-worthy compared to contemporary enemies. Battle scenes roughly as enjoyable as teeth cleanings
2. Incredibly stupid rally racer scene hearkens brings back the good feelings from the rock climbing/rocket boot/row-row-row your boat scene from Star Trek 5
3. Villain makes as little sense as possible, grunts a lot, and wants to destroy all of humanity for no reason (although he is fairly compelling and interesting compared to Nemo from the new, Star Trek 2009, who is also a senseless grunter with an illogical genocidal bent)
4. Data dies, but is replaced by a developmentally disabled version with a speech impediment.
5. Very little to laugh at.
This is, in fact, the worst of the 10 movies to bear the Star Trek title. The newest (2009) version is even less logical but has sexy characters and Spock is offered sex in a turbo-lift to try to alleviate his grief at losing 6 billion fellow vulcans, so it's slightly better.
You should watch this once, if you've seen the other nine. You need to know what happened here and remember it.