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Dorian Gray (2009)
No storyline, just sequential scenes
This movie has no storyline, and is little more than a sequence of scenes strung together. I have not read the book, yet it seems that this was a prerequisite for watching the movie. It's absolutely astonishing how they thought this was a coherent rendition of the book. Firth recites his lines in a tone of voice that suggests he's a radio talk-show host, and nearly all of his lines 'feel' odd because you're not drawn into the story at all. While I couldn't care less whether the protagonist is classically pretty or not, his acting (as the acting of his first female love interest) is wooden at best, though this may be in part because of the fact that there is almost no context to the scenes, no doubt making it hard for him to get into his role. Regardless, the arbitrariness with which scenes followed each other, and the way his emotions and cognitions changed without us being given even an inkling why this is the case through the telling of the story, makes this movie a joke.
2012 (2009)
Nice movie about how the rich people survive
While I can't really say I'm enjoying the movie (I find it's a pretty big bore, and the disaster scenes at the beginning were way too unrealistic to be even remotely believable), I have to say it's astonishingly "honest" in how the directors expect that the rich people and the arrogant Americans will survive, while everyone else will get shafted. However, I don't really understand how they figured this would be appealing to audiences outside the United States. The movie has almost nothing to do with the Mayan calendar, though.. There are some vague references and allusions to it, but it's basically about how the rich people of the earth will survive, the Chinese people provide all the manpower and die anyway, and the rest of the world can just die. Sort of like the banking crisis.. The rest of the world supplies the loans and the goods, and the top 5% of US citizens reap the benefits.
House M.D.: The Softer Side (2009)
complete rehash of an earlier episode
.. and again house becomes soft because he isn't in pain, and freaks out because he is a worse doctor for it. yawn. They seem to be milking the relationships for all they're worth, and they're hardly worth much (or very interesting). You basically see a bunch of teenagers trying not to get caught, House being "happy" because "not in pain", making dumb mistakes (because it's in the script), and retreating from using them because of the scary Identity disorder thing. Even if they're portraying a guy who is in pain all the time, and an addict because of it, they're making him more and more boring while doing it. Patient diagnosis is retreating into the background more and more (over the past few episodes), almost becoming the trademark gimmick to excuse the fact that they're making a soap opera out of the series. This disappoints me greatly, as there is a reason I don't watch soaps.
House M.D.: Last Resort (2008)
one of the worst episodes of the series
Good Lord, how desperate are these writers to find ways to draw analogies between patient and staff behavior, so that the people Around House can Improve Themselves? First off, the 'desperate' (and desperate-to-know) Patient (Gee, would this be House? Who is otherwise not fleshed out at all, so we couldn't care less about why it matters so much to him to be diagnosed. Which also makes any comparison with House utterly idiotic. Then, since House is a Police series now, we get the standard try to incapacitate the patient. Which results in the shooting of a hostage, and the scenario in which the writers can nearly kill 13, so that she can learn how she really wants to live. Only, the 'self-destructive' 13 seemed gone a couple of episodes ago already, so why was this necessary?.
Then, continue with a bunch of shots in which basically nothing happens. Chase walking out: purposeless. Foreman's doing so: Worse, especially the 'apology' at the end, as there was no reason for him to apologize whatever.. It's not like he was needed for the diagnosis, which had nothing to do with neurology. Then, ignoring all the shots in which the patient could've easily been overpowered, or how they could've just given House 2 different medications, with the one meant for 13 being harmless, while the patient's dose could've put him out, and so on. (of course, this is not really a police series, it's a series about House wanting to Find Stuff Out). We take the gun away, but don't see the SWAT team act on the information that the guy is now unarmed, so, we give the guy his gun back, and cue countless taunts about people wanting to die, and people being cowards, (with the most convoluted reason for being a coward that I've heard yet) a scene in which the patient suddenly decides to kill 13, and just as suddenly (because she really looks lovely when begging for her life, and maybe because they wanted to show us a scene in which an irrationally behaving woman has to beg a male for the right to continue existing) decides not to kill her anymore. Anyway, possible misogyny references aside, this really was the worst plot yet. Nothing happens at all, we never heard anything about the patient to make us like him, the accusation of House being monomaniacal in his need to know was pointless, because nothing was done with it, and 13's crying makeup suddenly disappeared when she was blown to the ground.
Eroica (2003)
neatly done, but slightly unbelievable
.. if you know how innovative the piece was it seemed a bit odd that the players 'got' the piece basically on their first run. Even if the 3rd and 4th movements sounded different from most other performances i own, it was oddly well-played for a first try.
Other than that, the 'plot' was fairly flimsy, though seemingly historically accurate. As such, i'm not sure why the film was made.. it's far from glitzy enough to appeal to a general public (not to mention it contains "classical" music, yuck!), most of the actors came from TV, though it didn't really matter because the script didn't require a lot of acting
In all, a nice film to watch if you want to gain *some* insight into what the piece is about, but there are courses out there that teach you a whole lot more on the subject.
Blasphemy the Movie (2001)
crude. that's about the only thing i can say about this 'atheist's movie'
I rented this because it said the following on the bottom of the front of the tape: "if you liked Dogma, you're going to love this". I'd like to think that's the biggest bit of blasphemy in or about this movie.
It isn't what I'd call blasphemous as such, as far as movies in this genre go, it just offers you a litany of chewed-out comments and clichés as reasons for why god shouldn't exist, with only one or two valid questions, the rest being moot, and prays (excuse the pun) it will convince you that God cannot exist
I would have hoped that those who felt like they needed to present yet another movie to impress the viewer one shouldn't believe in god, but i'd like to argue it doesn't do that at all, in fact all it really convinced me of is that believers and non-believers are alike in many ways.
There are a lot of people that do not understand how to respect other people's beliefs, and the makers of this film strongly believe that anyone who is a believer *cannot* accept nor recognize that it is actually possible to live by a moral code that is not based on the often contradictory beliefs expressed in the Holy Book, nor can they understand how someone that *does* live by it is able to do just that unquestioningly.
The ending is about the only thing that made me laugh, and that was out of sheer incredulity