Reviews
Borderlands (2024)
A good sci-fi action adventure
This film is well deserving of a higher score that the current 4.4 rating. The acting and sets are first rate, sfx mostly excellent, and the plot is definitely serviceable for this genre. I especially like that it maintains a PG-13 rating, keeping it accessible to a younger audience. The 17 yo Ariana Greenblatt delivers a superb, adorable characterization of the super-smart, super-sassy 13 yo Tiny Tina. I agree that some of the criticisms about illogical sequences but on the whole they're easy to overlook.
I'm a fan of this genre in video games and movies but I've never played the Borderlands videogame. In conclusion, I'd give this movie a recommend to any fan of the genre.
Fa yeung nin wah (2000)
An unfunny film about nothing
Slow and boring, this movie tries to makes us believe that watching the day-to-day interactions of others is worth our time. Well, come to find out, it's not. Other shows, like Seinfeld, work hard to find and mine the humor everyday life. The monotone of this movie gives us nothing. Ordinariness is presented as special and well deserving of our attention, or pity, or both. Yet ordinariness fills every human's life and is neither admirable nor pitiable. And so the plot simmers long and slow. The protagonists live, they try, they fail. Per the Rubaiyat "The moving finger writes, and haven written, moves on." No more no less, left behind. Superheroes, we are not. Maybe that's the message?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
S02E09 MUSICAL trivializes entire series and the actors work
The underpinning of any serious work of science fiction is the believability of the premise based on current knowledge. Premises beyond believability become the province of Fantasy, which invites the consumer's willing suspension of disbelief. In any event this episode trivialized the many ST series by having the Strange New World actors break out in song based on the most boneheaded premise ever presented outside of the holodeck. (I would add that this entire musical "version" of Star Trek should have reasonably been written as an episode inside the holodeck....as many other Star Trek Series have done). DS9 lost me halfway through their run. STEnterprise lost me halfway through. STVoyager almost lost me until it was saved by 7of9. Now Strange New Worlds is about to lose me, too. This musical episode STUNK.
Café Society (2016)
Stale leftovers from Woody Allen
This movie was written *and* directed by Woody Allen, and serves up a heaping helping of years-old schtick from an aging schtick master. Allen uses the same tired tropes he's beaten to death in his previous outings, decades ago, with the only difference being Jesse Eisenberg doing his best at a Woody Allen impersonation. The only respite is the movie's gorgeous Mise-en-scène, providing the audience with sets, costumes and cinematography of a gorgeous, dreamscape of the 30s era. So my advice is to enjoy the eye candy for as long as it staves off the boredom of the annoyingly predictable characters and plot....and then go re-watch Allen's excellent 1972 "Play It Again Sam".
The Suicide Squad (2021)
Colorless Reflection of Original
This sequel is lifeless. Weak dialogue, shallow characters, dimwitted jokes and mechanical plot-pacing. Wife and I bailed of boredom three quarters of the way through the movie. We loved Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy. This movie misses that mark by a mile.
Chaos Walking (2021)
The elephant blocking the movie
I'm a scifi nut and this is *not* a scifi movie. Worse still, the movie has huge blurry thought bubbles the size of elephants overlaid constantly on the screen and worse than that the movie has incessant thought dialog from 2 or 3 or even more people overlaid over each other all at once making for a jumbled mess of audio. If the goal was to give the audience a nerve-wracking headache then mission accomplished. And, if you sit through the above agony, you'll find a story that is nothing more than a hiking-through-the woods western with the fakiest "futuristic" laser rifles I've ever seen. This movie is one gigantic bust. I'd also like to comment that the "thoughts" that the men had about the woman in the movie were pitifully Gollum-like: "My pretty, my precious," indeed.
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
Makes DS9 look like Shakespeare.
I'm going back to watch DS9 for the first time because of this ridiculous series. Why? Just awful acting , stupid, contrived problems and plotlines, and incessant deus ex machina solutions. Did I mention the incessant overreactions and fakey over-sincere over-earnest lovey-dovey "relationships? Just too painful to sit through.
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020)
Fantastic sets.....terrible script....terrible music
I'm not a fan of musicals, but I can give 10 stars if done right, like Frozen. On the plus side, this one does have the best sets I've seen in a long time and Forest Whitaker does a great job with his character. But the dialog and story are very weak and the songs are not inspiring at all. If I had it to do over again I'd skip this movie.
The Special (2020)
Like an episode of Tales from the Dark Side
Vintage TV style horror film. Poor audio, poor sets, poor acting, poor dialog. Too bad because it had a whacky premise that could have been somewhat funny.
Superman: Red Son (2020)
Better than expected
Baby Kal-El lands in the USSR instead of USA.....seemed like a somewhat goofy premise and definitely not part of the normal Superman universe. But by the halfway point, the story got quite interesting and held my interest to the end. My only criticism would be how slowly the dialog was delivered. I had to use 1.5x speed to avoid getting bored. That said, it was a good movie and a good reminder that a golden cage is still a cage.
Swingers (1996)
Watch Chef (2014) instead
Swingers is about as bad a "vanity" film as you could imagine. The production values are awful, the audio is poor and the dialog is sub-sophomoric and repetitive. I watched it because I read a list of "great" low-budget films and since Chef wasn't on the list, I thought Swingers must be *really* special. Nope. So, please, give yourself a treat and watch Chef for a truly superb low budget Favreau film.
8MMM Aboriginal Radio (2015)
Missionaries Mercenaries and Misfits
8MMM is a sitcom about a group of unique individuals working at a radio station broadcasting to Aboriginal people in Australia. By all objective measures it is a low budget show with uninteresting plot lines and dialog. There's Jake, the clean cut station manager trying to do the right thing; Dave, the tough old bird station hand with a thick Australian accent; Lola, the Aboriginal owner with deep knowledge of her native culture and an equally thick Aboriginal accent; and Jesse, the half Aboriginal single mother trying to straddle two worlds. Somehow, the odd assemblage of characters transcends the lackluster sets and amateurish acting. Somehow the characters seem like they might be real people who are living the life they're portraying. Somehow, as a group, they ARE interesting if for no other reason than we like them. And in the process of growing to like them, we learn something about Australia, Australians, and Aboriginal people. Before I knew it, I had watched all 6 episodes of the first season. For a unique view into a unique continent and its people, check it out.
The Historian (2014)
Bad, really bad
I can't understand who are writing these glowing reviews for this movie, or,for that matter, why they are writing them. The script is just awful. By script I mean the story and dialog are awful. And by awful I mean painful AND boring. And, whoever encouraged this guy (Miles Doleac) to screen-write, should be forced to spend 4 years at whatever university this movie is set in. Two things stand out as most painful. First, if not for hackneyed expressions and unrelated drivel there would be no dialog. Second, the soundtrack's music was both bad and inconsistent with the scene action. On the plus side was Leticia Jimenez. Other actors gave average performances, mainly because it was impossible to rise above the dialog and scenes given to them. Hopefully, we'll see Ms Jimenez again, and if we ever see Mr. Doleac again, it should only be in *front* of the camera.
Time Lapse (2014)
Really, really, really......awful
Everything that's important to making a good movie is dreadful in this movie except....the premise.....which I immediately exclaimed to my wife "Hey, this looks like a Twilight Zone episode". The premise is a fun one and in the hands of a skillful director and scriptwriter, it would be a treat (a camera that takes pictures of the future). Unfortunately, the dialog is horribly stilted and unnatural, leading to terribly wooden performances by the actors. The sets were typically low budget, but frightfully uninspired and the cinematography was so mediocre that it must have been done by a photog student. Sadly, I must add that all of the above is not the Worst part about this narcolepsy trigger. The worst part is the pitiful excuse for an ending which gives the audience exactly no payoff for the agony they've just gone through. My wife started to turn it off a half dozen times, but I insisted we soldier through in the hopes of something uplifting or inspirational or fun or funny or anything good. But that just wasn't to be. In short, for each important movie criteria: poor, poor, poor and poor. If you'd like a fun romp with a similar premise, try Primer (2004), IMDb 7 with 55k votes.
Paper Man (2009)
Entire Movie Borders on.......Horrible
This film barely elevates itself out of the dust bin that it crawled out of. Whether Jeff Daniels' horrible, awkward and unfunny groping of Emma Stone or his pushing 10th graders into alcoholic stupors, the disgusting aspects of this film are tough to rise above. The horrible dialog - stilted and sparse - is anything but funny and the comedic moments are completely squandered. What I find most flabbergasting is the complete lack of anything resembling plot closure or character's personal progress at the end of the movie. It just trails off into some kind of oblivion which is exactly where this movie belongs: oblivion. Having said all that, I will justify my 3 star rating by saying that the two leads prove they are worthy of being considered among the best of the best in Hollywood. Honorable mention goes to Lisa Kudrow who provides a yeoman's performance as an unlikable but decent wife.
Don't Blink (2014)
Awful
I, like many others, was sucked into viewing this film because of Mena Suvari (American Beauty) and because of Brian Austin Green (The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Derek Reese). Well, Mena didn't make it through half the movie, and Brian was just totally miscast. Given that the stars were terrible, the awfulness of the rest of the movie was unbearable. The camera work was well below film school 101, and the dialog, sheeze, was absolutely painful. I don't think it is as bad as "Manos: Hands of Fate" but it is close. I recently reviewed "The Scribbler" and found the dialog and acting equally bad to this movie, but at least The Scribbler had an interesting and different storyline. I would also like to close by saying many of the "logical" statements made by the actors in Don't Blink were completely idiotic and made absolutely no sense relative to the facts as presented in the movie itself. That in itself made me want to stop watching....but I did persevere to the bitter end in the hopes of a huge payoff, only to get just the opposite - one of the biggest goofball endings of all time.
The Scribbler (2014)
Poorly Done
I've read the Graphic Novel and watched this movie and both are poorly done despite having great potential. The movie suffers mainly from sparse, unnatural dialog that is also excruciatingly uninteresting plus an almost total lack of a thematic audio track; worse still, much of the dialog is annoyingly echoey. As far as the acting goes, the main character never makes herself believable as a crazy person; Eliza Dushku, as much as I loved her as Faith in Buffy, was totally miscast as a no-nonsense medical professional in this movie; Gina Gershon was entirely underutilized. Overall, I'd like to see this movie picked up by a better production team and made into the great movie it could be. Its main strength was its presentation of the disassociative personality disorder of the main character and her descent into madness and insanity. As it stands right now, I'd recommend the Graphic Novel over the movie mainly because it will take a lot less of your time.
White Reindeer (2013)
Awful!
I can't really add much more criticism than to say "me too" to the 1-star reviews already posted. That said, I'll go on to note that this movie squandered a heluva a good storyline. And, I'm assuming that the storyline is the sole reason for the positive critical reviews on rotten tomatoes. The story involves the tragedies that befall ordinary folk during celebratory seasons, and those stories are a fact of life. Sadly the debilitating depression brought on by the double whammy of a tragedy during Chrismastime isn't represented in this movie in a way that feels interesting or genuine. I kept wanting for something visceral to happen - but nothing ever does. Or at least she could have had realistic or colorful co-workers instead of the cardboard cutouts created here. I remember how the movie "Doubt" took a small thing and through amazing dialog had the audience on the edge of their seats. Well, the dialog is so sparse in uninteresting in this movie you'll be looking for a Serta Sleeper mattress.
Il futuro (2013)
Waste of time
I am an admirer of Rutger Hauer. So when I had a chance to see Il Futuro, I took it. Sadly, there is absolutely nothing here that would make me happy to have seen it. Hauer was made to look particularly bad since that was the role. But even worse was the terrible empty lines he was forced to say - like how to make a sandwich....yuuck. The lead actress Manuela Martelli was only OK as an actress, but, again perhaps the role itself was designed to be emotionless, flat and zombie like. The only even thinly possible thing to say that wasn't awful about the film was the actress' nude body was firm and fit. And know this, there was nothing even remotely erotic about it since the scenes were choreographed to be like Walking Dead episodes. I hate to say it but do Rutger Hauer a favor and don't put this vision of his performance in your head.
Anal Paprika 3: Menage-A-Death (2001)
Just random Juvenile silliness - not a movie - not art
This is not a movie. It is a couple of kids with a handy cam filming each other saying random, silly things. I remember some kids in high school used to say things almost as silly, but not quite. I assume they were on some kind of brain addling drug to think saying "John Stamos" over and over would be hysterically entertaining to anyone. I also assume they've yet to come out of their stupor since, if they did, they would have immediately torched every copy and poured acid on the ashes. The art of this film is on a par with kindergartners' finger painting and it makes the movie "Manos, Hands of Fate" looks like "Inception", by comparison. So, in summary, I cannot say it deserves any stars because, like I say, it is not an actual movie, it's a couple of kindergartners with their parents handy cam (without permission). Truly unbearable unless you're the kids parents.
Gummi T (2012)
Not a good moral
This movie is a kids movie but does not have a good moral. It is a Danish language movie (English dub) and I am writing this from an American perspective, so I'll defer to Europeans for their take on it. But for Americans the moral will not be well thought of. The movie is about bullying and spends almost the entire time (about 80%) showing cruel images of a young boy, Ivan, being abused, which makes for a very uncomfortable 90 minutes. After a long process and very little respite, the movie ends on an abusive note. The moral of the story is that it is better to be abused by a bully than to be a bully. That will not sit well for many people. Also, the implication in the movie was that the adults (school authorities and shopkeepers) were all participants in the cruelty. As for the technical details of the animation, the movie is quite well done, and had the story been even a little bit different, (intervention by school authorities, for example) I would have enjoyed it. As it is, it seems to promote the hopelessness of the victim, and that is a view I'd rather not instill in children.
Dark Space (2013)
NO No no no no no no no
Just to be sure no one is mislead, Off World is a poorly done movie. The story is pretty ordinary: a group of college age people go on a spring break road trip in the distant future. They rent a space ship and it crashes (of course) (apparently somewhere in the woods around Denver) and they must fight aliens and Bobba Fett's in order to survive. The story was serviceable enough, but everything else was terrible. The dialog was horrific: I get more p**y there than most people get in a life time. Yes, that was a line delivered with absolutely no context or feeling...yechhhh. The entire script was nothing but sparse and unnatural sophomoric dialog. The acting was about as emotionless as I've ever see in a movie...all lines delivered like a 6th grader reading a book in front of class. And since it is a scifi movie I should mention that there are NO special effects or costumes worthy of putting into a modern day movie. I could go on, but I have already deep 6'ed this movie and don't want to think about it much more. Save yourself a trip to the trash bin and skip this movie.
Scavengers (2013)
Worse that the previous worse reviews would indicate
I give 1's to very few films...maybe a total of 3 out of a couple of thousand films watched. This movie is well deserving of a 1 and possibly worse. I'm not sure what I could subtract from the already appalling reviews that have accurately described this movie. But let me also warn you that the actors slurred their words (especially the chief villain) and the audio engineering was also horrible. Be forewarned that the sets, costumes, cinematography and special effects were all equally horrible. Finally, let me say the sequencing of the plot (storytelling) was well below amateurish. I watched diligently the first half of the movie (about 45 minutes) and then started fast forwarding through sections, hoping something worthwhile would present itself....to no avail. To the reviewer here who watched it twice looking for something good, you have my respect as a true devotee...and my condolences.
Final Score (2007)
Good snapshot of top tier students
I saw this movie when it was released in 2007. It follows a group of students preparing for their college entrance exams. Now, in 2013, looking back I can still remember the uncertainty and fear in the students followed by the documentary. Although this movie is not entertaining storytelling, it is, in fact, a great documentary of the lives of young people showing the enormous pressure to perform in a society that values conformity and acceptance above all. I am still struck by the pressure to excel felt by these young people as compared to regular students. This is a must see film for those wishing to understand the differences in attitudes between top tier and regular Thai students.
Bindlestiffs (2012)
Just plain awful
If you are thinking about watching this movie you should know: there is no script, every scene is just set up for the actors to ad lib their parts; there are no actors, just 3 young kids who apparently have their parents handy cam to play with; there are no production values, everyone just wears their own everyday clothes and the sets are just things that are lying around the area where the filming takes place; finally, the people making this film are not comedians, they are not interesting and they are not funny - some people are naturally funny, like Chelsea Handler, these people are not. Finally I should mention this movie has no plot; i.e. it just meanders around the idea of 3 boys wanting to have sex, which, by itself, is dull as dishwater. In summary, nothing to see here, nothing new, just move along and give this one a pass.