falbpe Reviews

Dune (2021)

CGI, CGI and more CGI / An exercise in dreariness and brutalist minimalist architecture

[1/10 · 28 October 2021]

I loved the cold industrial desert of Blade Runner 2049. I was mind-blowing with the metaphysical desert of Sicario. I really liked the urban desert of Enemy and the psychological dreariness of Incendies. But I can understand people who don't like those movies. Especially, I can understand why people didn't like Blade Runner 2049. It's long, slow, dark, and existential. Now, I don't like them, but I can understand why people like Marvel Blockbusters. I can understand people who want to have fun. But, what is beyond my understanding, is that someone might like this movie, "Dune Part One". I have to say, Arrival was silly, but at least it was entertaining. The new Dune is the nonsense of Arrival without any fun, not a grain of sand. Everything that works in Blade Runner 2049 doesn't work here. It is overused; the monochrome palette, the darkness, the ominous soundtrack, the minimalist aesthetic. This movie is dull and boring from the first minute to the last. In the year 10191 people don't smile (except Aquaman, that too, I don't understand why he appears in this movie, the same with the girl who is a pop star or something). Blade Runner 2049 seems like a roller coaster of happiness now. I never saw a movie so dead, lifeless. The only thing that mattered to me was that the cinematographic torture ended soon. I'm done with Hollywood. What is the point of this movie? We know that Villeneuve and company are excellent photographers. The shots are technically perfect. And that's all. Everything is lifeless, as if the entire movie were the regurgitation of an AI algorithm. CGI, CGI and more CGI. Minimalist and lifeless CGI. Where is all the fantasy? Where is the imagination? Ok, I won't lie. I was never a fan of "Dune". I never understand the hype. I think the 1984 movie is just ok. I never read the books, but as far as I know, the premise is basic and forced, political at the most flat level, mixed with biblical stories about prophecies and saviors of a lost tribe in the desert. The spice is the oil, Arrakis is a place like Iraq, etc. There is no complexity, there is no depth, you know everything just with the first two lines of the script. But when I think of Dune I imagine something psychedelic and baroque, organic, from the seventies, like Moebius illustrations, not some exercise in dreariness and brutalist minimalist architecture. Lol. The spaceships are like floating bricks, the buildings look like the exact same ziggurats from 2049, the celestial anti-gravity thing doesn't impress anyone anymore. Everything is cloned. Even worms are boring. And the characters, the mother of god, the characters ... They violate the first rule of character creation. The bad guys are always bad and evil, the good guys are always good and polite, even when they are treacherous. Outside of some very small Rebecca and Skarsgård moments, the cast is as flat and robotic as everything in this movie. The guy doesn't seem like a hero or a chosen one. I don't buy this guy. Never. This 2021 movie is so robotic. I don't know what thing is being injected into people, if even Villeneuve makes garbage like this now. It's like a movie made by body snatchers. Sorry, but everyone who rated this politically correct and unimaginative bland inoffensive film 6+ is either a robot or a liar. Not to mention the plot holes. Lol, you need to cover your mouth and nose at random in a Martian desert with 800 km/h winds, but never your eyes. Soldiers fight only with knives, when they have anti-gravity technology and lasers that cut through walls. Etc. What a paradox that the adaptation of an ecological novel wastes 160 millions and countless energy resources without any reason. That's what strikes me the most. What was the purpose of this movie? I don't think they are even making profit. I just hope Part Two, please, never see the light of day, for the sake of this planet.

Songbird (II) (2020)

What a normie thinks... Or, I like this movie for the wrong reasons

[6/10 · 15 March 2021]

I think that the low ratings come from people who feel their irrational fears reflected into the screen. After a year in lockdown, that movie can even be seen as a parody of the current situation (aka Clown World). In the movie the virus is extremely lethal, but couriers and others immune can get out around without consequences (like in the real world the essential workers), while normal people is confined in this houses, living in fear, and reducing their human contact to virtual internet relationships only, and every package that they receive is decontaminated immediately into a special camera (Well, where are the people who make all these products?) The curious thing about this is that in real life many young and healthy people behave in the same way for a virus with a low lethality comparable to the influenza; they've almost been living as if all of us could die from opening a window. But in the housewife and her daughter with health problems we can also relate to people who have had a more rational fear, due to their conditions (anyway, how a virus with a 99% of deaths can be MORE dangerous for anyone, is a little plot hole). We have too a Alexandra Daddario as a singer that sell her songs while shows her body online, a ex veteran from Iraq wars, a sympathetic boss of the almost family courier company, a corrupt agent of the health service, Peter Stormare; very Michael Bay casting. The acting and the pace are good, and the characters likable, and the plot focuses more in personal struggles and how to break the inhuman rules, than on general or scientific topics, so it is not of great relevance focus the review in these aspects. If you are not a Karen or a conspiracy theorist (Oh, look at this asymptomatic without a mask! or, Oh, this is an immoral pandemic exploitation! Mental programming!) everything will be OK, and for sure you will have an interesting cinematic experience, not a great movie, but at least a fun piece of entertainment. Just try don't think too much about WHY they made this movie. Maybe in 2024 this will be over.

A Breath Away (2018)

So predictable

[4/10 · 5 August 2020]

That movie was so predictable. Before 15 minutes I already imagined the end; but the worst thing is that in the meantime nothing really interesting happened. And the acting... They are in the end of the world, and nobody cries or despair; but they seem to be possessed by a cyborg. French films are almost always good, but this one belong to the worsts that I have seen, only surpassed by that of the man in a wheelchair and the black man, or that of the person who wakes up and is paralyzed throughout the film. Soporific and dumb. So many movies about confinements the last two years... Better watch Nosferatu of Herzog if you want to see how is a real plague.

Proxima (2019)

Look at me! I'm a woman astronaut!

[7/10 · 16 June 2020]

We all know that women are extraordinary strong beings, capable of great and difficulty tasks. Even properly mutated, they have destroyed plagues of zombies and saved the planet, more than once, at least in Hollywood. So, my only critic with that movie is... Why she does something so stupid in the end, and in such an unbelievable cinematic way? And, without any consequences? Sadly, that part don't fit with the realistic tone of the rest of the film. Overall, it's a interesting movie about the space, and the great challenges for the body and the soul that awaiting, even in the orbit of the Earth, for the adventurous spirits that left the planet behind. The space tourism and the colonization of another worlds remain today in 2020 just chimeras, against the hard true of the tragic vacuum beyond the Earth, with all its radiation and countless dangers, but that movies give us a glimpse of reality and some of hope for the human race, with all its small achievements. Very good work of Dillon, like the American cowboy, and Green, the incredibly beautiful french astronaut, of course.

Lords of Chaos (2018)

The black metal artists were a bunch of stupid clowns

[1/10 · 15 March 2019]

The message of this movie, like all movies that try to be close to the metal music is that the typical metalhead is a sort of stupid and alienated individual, that only open the mouth to say stupid things and that in the nights run for the street screaming Hail Satan without any sense, and destroying public property. Heavy metal movies are most auto-indulgent comedies, with zero depth and insights, almost like the directors desperately trying to make this musical genre politically correct. Burn churches, specially christian temples, has become a mere joke over the time, nobody have in the world of today any respect for the Christians, and in Lord of Chaos the fires are presented in a amusing a fun way. But the assassination of homosexuals is another matter, and the soundtrack become sad and dramatic for first time in the movie in the moment of maximus gore. None of the characters have any depth, are only mannequins, and only Varg and Euronymous were played with any sort of psychological insight, but their portrayals are just so beyond the true that I wondered if this is only a propaganda film. Yeah, Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth was a good guy, than begged for mercy like a little baby in their last moment, and Varg a insecure fat man, with a stupid bodyguard; and the kill threat of Aarseth to the Count, a mere joke. But the metal media is happy, the metal community has been trapped for the leflist media in the last years, and they need clean some unpolitically correct genres of very bad ideas and romanticism, yeah, the important thing is to have fun and drink a lot, and drink chocolate seem evil and creepy for the standard of today. I really find ten thousand times more obscure and appealing a movie about underground music like Only Lovers Left Alive, than this sort of generic crap. But congratulations Mr. Jonas Åkerlund, the lucky man 13-months session drummer for Bathory, until Quorton fired him, for his little interest in the extreme music, and more commercial approach, you really have succeed in present a bunch a lies and half-trues like a real history in BBC.

Mermaid: The Lake of the Dead (2018)

The dubbed is horrendous

[2/10 · 25 February 2019]

If you see a title about a Rusalka, you expect something mythic and very Russian; and not a Hollywood copycat, with jump scares and a "monster" that not frighten anyone; maybe in the original language the movie don't feel so bad, but the dubbed was not only plain and dull, but very simple translated. What a shame.

Prospect (2018)

If you watched the short, not lost anything skipping this long and boring version

[3/10 · 25 February 2019]

I don't remember for what reason I feeled attracted to watch this movie in first place; maybe the photography and the retro-like elements, and the short was no bad, but ten minutes after I regretted of wasting my Sunday night watching a screen in pale green with a CGI of white snow moving incessantly in front and nothing more. Was painful. I really like silent and slow movies, but this retro-sci-fi fanfiction is no silent, only dull, and all I saw were three or four random scenes without apparent relation; no surprise, no verisimilitude, no plot, no real drama, no evolution. In the vein of the new movies of this era of mechanized standards, and overabundance, the technical aspects were well constructed, the work of the actors good, but the plot and the drama no sense and no existent. Nothing extraordinary, and I wondered, what if we had at least ten good films a year, and not ten thousand mediocre attempts.

Glass (2019)

The worst end of a trilogy

[1/10 · 31 January 2019]

After Split, I did not have much expectations about this movie, but I liked Unbreakable and I really wanted to see again these characters. Wrong, all in this movie is bad, and even the ridiculous Split seem a more watchable movie. The motivations of Glass and the serious woman don't have the minor sense, the final scene, is so poor visually, than I wondered about if Unbreakable was filmed for the same director, nothing I liked in Unbreakable is present here. Serious, only two guards and one police car for the more dangerous criminals in the world? I feel very disappointing, of how they are ruin a excellent idea, two times in a row.

Atomic Blonde (2017)

Atomic fail

[1/10 · 22 August 2017]

Apart from the moment when we see a poster of Stalker (last point in that we still have some little hopes), and the good fight at the end when finally we do not have to heard that crappy and cheesy 80's music (but it is too late); nothing else exist in this empty movie. Maybe one or two good moments of that music, would have worked well; but all the time? The lesbian scenes are also, insipid and unnecessary. But the worst is that in the end, the two final twists of the plot fail, because we never really believe anything Charlize Theron does or says. Besides, at this moment we are just expecting that the film ending in a not so obvious way, and soon. But this does not happen. In short, that movie is only like a beautifully wrapped gift, without nothing inside, innocuous, and with several rather tedious moments. Not to mention the historical inaccuracies (or political agendas). Only another, typical Hollywood film.

Colossal (2016)

A modern fable about childhood traumas, alcohol and abuse

[7/10 · 7 August 2017]

The bad reviews in this movie are not fair. Do not expect to find a Pacific Rim kind of action here. Colossal it is not a film about monsters or robots, not in a direct sense. It is more, a modern fable about childhood traumas, alcohol and abuse. It is not about monsters in Seoul, but about a monster in the Soul. We have a monster, the woman with a selfish behavior, and a robot, but this robot, is really the symbol of a guy without feelings, someone than lost one day the possibility of feel anything. It is a very tragic history, but in the context of a light comedy. The acting of Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis is very good; although their main characters do not act never like true drunken people; in the context of this movie, this seem fine. Because everything is in the end, symbolic. We can read a story of domestic violence, but at the same time, see two children that one day, suffered together a trauma. They return to the children playground where it all began, and here is when the monsters became real. But it is too, a tale about the indifference, and how very serious and disturbing things became normal when you are involved into a negative environment, in this case symbolized by the bar and the alcohol. I do not see flaws in this movie, but maybe try to be too much accessible, for a story with so dark background like this.

The Fourth Kind (2009)

True horror with some conceptual flaws

[8/10 · 2 August 2017]

In this case, of the fourth kind, the cinematic premise that for the viewer will be more credible a fiction that is presented as a documentary than a fiction properly said, seems to fail from the first moment. For the facts are so horrendous and the horror story works so well on its own, that the documentary elements are superfluous; to present the facts as based on actual facts only devalues the story. As for Milla Jovovich, she was probably supposed to look like an actress as bad as those working on this kind of midnight documentary, or really her lack of fright is not fake. But again, any kind of mediocrity could be intentional, to reproduce the docudrama in the most faithful way to its televising reality.

The important thing here is that, in the end, beyond all mistakes, the horror tale and its premises, even the psychological drama, are interesting. For what we see is not a direct representation of horror, but rather a shadow of it. And this shadow never reveals itself at all, letting the imagination of the spectator immerse itself in its own horrors. And here, it will then be this spectator, who must extract the supposed reality of fiction, or rather, the true horror of the feigned reality. In short, a good movie, with some conceptual flaws, which however, do not ruin the story.

Dunkirk (2017)

Outdated war propaganda

[2/10 · 1 August 2017]

The point of a new WWII clon movie always is something misleading. ¿Really we need a WWII movie every month? Now, the music and photography are very good; but soon we realize than the plot and the drama is thin, and the more important part of a movie always should be the dramatic elements. Of the three stories that is about the film, none has the slightest interest; the more weak is the aviator story, and really do not fit with the others. Maybe without this part the movie it would have been better. The problem with historical war films is that they only work when present themselves as allegorical or symbolic; for this reason Apocalypse Now (1979) is a great movie. The reality of the past is something than change with the time; and is really hard to believe today in the cinema like a neutral source of historical contents. And the point of filming a movie with the only sense to encourage the British and American people to enjoy the war against Germany, seem something outdated or very forced. But I have no doubt than Dinkirk will win one or two Oscars: it has the necessary measure of mediocrity.

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

Gore/Retro/Post/Apocalyptic Fantasy Film

[10/10 · 27 July 2017]

Hobo With a Shotgun (2011), gore/retro/post/apocalyptic fantasy film, is another of those endearing films in which after generous doses of violence of the most extreme nature, we learn in the most didactic and realistic way possible, the importance of values indispensable to coexist in society, such as justice, sacrifice, friendship, and perhaps love; without which the social pyramid would become a desolate desert of ignorance, depravity and abuses of the strong over the weak.

The story itself, unfolds in the manner of a Nordic saga, set no longer in the woods and the sea, but in the dirty and miserable streets inhabited by homeless people without dignity, drug addicts armed with knives, and girls and hungry children without dreams nor hopes, who sell their body or their pain for a coin, where the only thing that seems abundant is gushing blood for pure pleasure and drugs. A landscape of pathos, which the vagabond, personified by Rutger Hauer (What led this actor to that infernal city? Was he always a hobo or fell under these conditions due to some unforeseen misfortune, the fall of Wall Street, the Second American Civil War, bad friends, drink, gambling, stealing, betrayal, deception, or even a personal rebellion against the consumer society?), decides to take it in their hands and clean it, entering into action as a Patriarch of the early times, whose only law is the rumble of his shotgun, thus giving up his own absurd hopes (to end his days as a gentle gardener in the suburbs). Thus giving also a sense, finally, to his life of failure and humiliation, through sacrifice and through contempt and deep hatred for the subhumans that suddenly surround him. Like Dante, he too will descend to the real hell wells, in the company of his own Beatrice, whom he discovers in the wilted eyes of a girl tired of existence, in an epic journey towards a bloodthirsty and almost supernatural climax.

When everything ends, when the cliché is left behind, it is only up to the viewer to ask if we are to believe in evil, in the same way as in good. And the good may then be, always according to this film, a shotgun ready to pierce a human waste, in the hands of someone who has nothing left to lose: the skin of an old dispossessed, very angry and furious with the world.

The Eyes of My Mother (2016)

Eyes of desolation

[10/10 · 26 July 2017]

Sometimes, the road to the most absolute desolation, passes through murder, torture and confinement. In The Eyes of My Mother (2016), Nicolas Pesce's first film, violence does not impress by the use of blood but by its coldness, in the camera, in the actors, in the landscape: an icy nature that, however, in itself does not exclude the recognition in the other. The horror and the disturbance, in black and white (the most suitable media to express the light and the darkness of time) crosses the eyes of the spectators and the characters; and this horror tinged with the sadness of fado, the Portuguese songs that seem even more desolate in the immensities of the North American prairies (almost as in those typical Russian songs, where there is always a husband, a son or a mother, lost in the war, or winter, and that never returns), in the end, recreates an appearance of pain, the illusion of a self-contained picture that closes on itself and from which the viewer can not easily escape. Not every spectator, it is true; for as in some mysticisms, not all human beings will gain access to the soul, nor to the necessary state of mind, which requires the contemplation.

Francisca, the orphan, like her parents, seems to have chosen isolation, not because she prefers it, but because it is the only thing she knows. What she has learned from her mother, in this kind of universe of American Gothic, German expressionism and Portuguese melodrama, are not only the skills of a butcher or a surgeon on the battlefield; but also the compassion of all who must work with the flesh. For Francisca's eyes there is no evil; there are only accidents and chances, and there is also no joy in revenge, not even in crime. Just as you have to sew an open wound, they are only things that sometimes, sometimes a lifetime, must be done. And in this fatalism (fado or destiny in Portuguese), which is within the same beings and not outside, it is not the insensitivity towards hurt and pain, neither its frozen glance, but its intense desire not to be alone, which in the end will condemn Francisca to an implacable solitude, and to a new exile: not from the land on the other side of the ocean, like that of her mother, but of all humanity.

Wonder Woman (2017)

Historic revisionism

[1/10 · 19 June 2017]

How a serious critic can rating this, with more that 3/10 stars? First of all, I do not hate the DC and Marvel films per se. I really liked the Gal Gadot two minutes in Batman vs. Superman, but in the 2 hours of the WW, sadly we have the opportunity to see how bad actress she is. All the acting, with the exception of Ewen Bremner and Elena Anaya, is awful and pathetic; the script is full of holes (like the conversation between Dr. Maru and Chris Pine or the mercenary than only want to be an actor or the boat than in a single day sails from the Mediterranean to London), and the historic revisionism is all no sense. Gal Gadot. She do not seem very strong in this film, the other Amazons seem ten times more strong and with more character than her. Now, she say than believe in love but all the movie, she kill dozens and dozens of German soldiers without the minor remorse. OK, are German Nazis (althought in the WWI, the more criminal of all recent wars, the nazi party, they did not even exist yet). Then, we have the nice multicultural British Empire against the Evil Empire of the Pre-Nazis and his evil chemical weapons, but in the real WWI British and Frenchs used chemical weapons too! (in minor scale, but only for his lack of skills in this matter)... OK ... Maybe we think too much... I do not want to waste any more of my time with this movie. Please people,don't pay for this.