carpevitababy Reviews

The Watcher (2022– )

Snooze Fest

[2/10 · 17 October 2022]

The consensus for this series seems to be "not bad, not great" - I would argue it is very much in the not great and even terrible category.

Credit where credit is due, the lineup of actors is great here, though their performances do not necessarily live up to what you might expect from their resumes. This is not surprising given the show creators - the writing treatment behind this true story is terrible.

Any story, true or not, can be portrayed with engaging and likeable characters...even when those characters are ones you love to hate. The writing in this show forces the actors into boxes where you find yourself reacting to them with frustration time and time again. If any of my loved ones had just abandoned me as easily as anyone in this had, I would have been shocked, but counted myself lucky in the long run for having my eyes opened.

This is a series that "looks" like it should be spooky or suspenseful or creepy and while it does have a veneer of having money spent on it, it was spent in all the wrong places. Do yourself a favour and skip the final frustration of making it to the end of this train wreck.

Advantageous (2015)

A Debut Masterpiece: The Future is not Female Friendly

[9/10 · 6 June 2021]

Advantageous, a dystopian scifi film about a future that is not only horribly regressive for women but for humanity in the long-term in general, is a slow-burn masterpiece. The cinematography is beautifully and expertly crafted, and the writing and dialogue - which are so natural as to give one the illusion of being a fly on the wall for most of the film - are executed with equal finesse and heart by the main actors and crafters.

Like most innovative and challenging science fiction, Advantageous holds a mirror up to our society and ourselves, asking us some pretty tough questions about who we are. Without giving away any major plot points, the film's central question might go something like this - can we accept a world in which women's livelihoods and self-respect are heavily undermined by the things they have to do just to survive in male-dominated societies?

More specifically, writer and director Jennifer Phang challenged herself to have her film explore answers to such questions as the following:

Does choosing to change one's surface qualities alter one's inner qualities?

Does self-respect alter (for better or worse) after we commit to a surface change?

Does respect for others increase or decrease if they don't follow our example?

Can we accept a world in which these concerns occupy so much of a woman's energies and potential for productivity?

Science fiction films that ask questions of this calibre can run the risk of alienating simple entertainment in the pursuit of a more nuanced work of erudition. But, in having won, 7 awards (including a Sundance Special Jury Prize) and been nominated for 3 others, I feel safe in saying I'm not alone in my enjoyment of Advantageous. It is not only a thoroughly entertaining film by virtue of the talent involved, but one that is uniquely thought-provoking and heartbreaking by virtue of the mirror it holds up.

As a male, I found myself absolutely gutted when the intellectual ponderings of the film were unexpectedly made to resonate on a more visceral, emotional "these goes to 11" level. Advantageous let me empathize with the reality that, in our world, every day, cultural loudspeakers are endlessly screaming at women in every city, neighbourhood and house to change some superficial part of themselves - for the privilege of a chance to carve out a place just to survive in the world.

*SPOILERS BEGIN* No more was my heartbroken than it was by the beautiful love shared between mother and daughter in this film and the devastating loss suffered by both as a result of the mother's consequential act of love. Her decision, though born of equal parts desperation and love, robbed her daughter of what she loved most and vice versa and yet, it is implied that, in this future world, this was the most realistic outcome to ensure a decent future for her daughter. How cruel.

*SPOILERS END*

Women are encouraged to change themselves in the real world every day. Does this film depict the inner emotional reality of many women already? If so, how can we live with that? Even if Advantageous is providing more of a cautionary tale in the end, our own reality is close enough already to warrant us taking the questions it poses very seriously if we place any value on our own humanity.

The Windmill (2016)

Tired 'they must pay for their sins' plodder

[2/10 · 5 November 2016]

Maybe it's been too much now of the loud, hateful rhetoric of the 2018 US election cycle (over in 5 days and none too soon if you believe a lot of psychologists who insists that a not insignificant number of people are actually suffering from 'election stress' and depression). Maybe I've just seen too many limp noodle films that are pretty much inbred copies of one another like this. In any case, I'll admit, the adolescent "minor sin must be accounted for by a ridiculously disproportional meting out of gory justice" raison d'etre of this film (an already sad and tired trope) elicited more contempt than it did entertainment for me. It was one of those films where I'm not sure if I'm more annoyed with myself for being too lazy to just stop watching or the industry/individual responsible for feeling the need to make such crap.

I don't want to waste even more time and effort 'reviewing' this film, so I'll just leave at this; at the end of the day, no matter how a film looked, was acted, written etc, it either leaves you with something worthwhile, no matter how small an aspect of the movie or, sadly, just feels like a minor violation of your time and intelligence. This seemingly had a stranger in a strange land rural euro Gothic feel being set up - an atmospheric that I particularly like. Sadly, it was just veneer and was worn thin 30 minutes into the film, leaving only the same old scourge of god plot mover that, on its own, devoid of other significant redeeming qualities, leaves you with a factory output that could have been any 100 I've see before if I squinted my eyes to blur the details.

The film doesn't deserve this much attention (I'll just sit in wonder at what positive reviewers are taking away from this movie). I recently re-watched Haute Tension and again came away with a healthy respect for the rural-Gothic-euro atmosphere it created and sustained. Same goes for Ils (2006), Frontier(s)(2007), Martyrs (2008) and Horsehead (2014) to name a few. Even in a slasher film, there should be something worthy of the horror besides the gore. This one ain't got it.

Hidden (I) (2015)

Well shot, badly scripted.

[5/10 · 28 September 2015]

I tried to like this movie, I really did. And just when I started to, the character writing got in the way, time and time again. I love me a slow burner. And this was definitely a nice atmospheric piece. However, with nothing BUT time on the characters' hands, you would think the writers would have given them more credit for their situation. But no. Did they move even TRY to protect their food when they discovered they had a rat eating it? Nope. Just let it sit there and get eaten. Even a token attempt to move it into the bedroom or something would have been more flattering/less annoying for the characters. Same goes with the bunker door. All this time and they never thought to double or even triple secure until they were being attacked? And then, they leave ONE pipe in place of the chains? How about wrapping the chains back around the ladder as a backup? I mean, they knew the 'breathers' were going to come...or at least should have acted like they were instead of being the annoyingly blindly optimistic dolts that they were. Oh, and of course, when the bogeyman finally does open the hatch, sure, just stand there underneath it. You weren't expecting them to come down too right? I mean, grrr.

All this may sound trite. But when you get into a film and find yourself being thrown out of it with careless character writing, it gets to me. These characters could have elicited much more empathy if they hadn't been written so blunderingly.

I wonder if the brother writer and director team created a dynamic where criticism was not welcomed. Wouldn't be the first time...

Silent House (2011)

No, this really isn't a good movie. It could have been, had it stuck to its original promise.

[3/10 · 4 September 2012]

I really was expecting to enjoy this film based on first impressions - atmosphere was well established and Elizabeth Olsen was turning in a stellar performance (as she did, to be fair, throughout; she was the film's one saving grace). But somewhere just around a third of the way through the movie, it became obvious that the filmmakers decided to rely on trendy and cliched techniques to get their movie done instead of taking the viewer on an engaging ride with original content. Thus, for this reviewer, the movie fell from having great potential down into the dregs of hundreds of other genre movies like it that somehow get made despite being essentially all the same in terms of relying on formula without content. In this sense, I actually felt resentful towards the production as I feel they deliberately spent effort on content and atmospherics up front only to fool viewers into thinking this was what they could expect. In a nutshell, the film devolves into jump scares, and other cliched genre techniques and an ending which presents as a twist but which one can see coming a mile away and is also a lazy writing exit to the film - *SPOILER*: Wow, you mean it was all in her head? That's right! Queue deep thoughts about PTSD and suppressed sexual trauma. If the film really had anything interesting to say about sexual trauma other than, duh, it does damage, it certainly didn't make any effort to explore it and that is a real disservice to a subject matter which not only deserves attention, but is fertile for creative content. Instead, the producers chose to use as a superficial device only, a notch in their belts better served for marketing purposes where execs can pat themselves on the backs for making a film "about" sexual trauma. With that major fail out of the way, the positive of the film is the lead actress. Elizabeth Olsen is a genuine talent and I hope to see her in many future films. She was the ONLY reason I didn't hit eject mid-film and I can't overstate how much of a pleasure she was to watch.

Uninhabited (2010)

Uninhabited is the name of the film. It also refers to the director's head.

[2/10 · 7 March 2012]

Oh what I could have done with those 93 mins...what I SHOULD have done with that hour and a half. This is the kind of film that throws you into an existential panic over painful introspections on how you spend your time on this planet. In that way, I suppose The Uninhabited WAS an effective horror movie; that I am aware (oh, so painfully aware) that I sacrificed 90 minutes of my life to watch this frustratingly stupid film is truly dreadful indeed.

What makes it so bad? I could say uninspired writing. Or bad acting (one can only assume that the couple's playful displays of affection weren't supposed to look as painfully awkward an unnatural as they did). But the sordid whole was more than the sum of its sordid parts. The truth for me is that watching this movie was like ordering one of those comic book trinkets as a kid - you know upfront that it isn't going to be as good as advertised, but when the package arrives you still find yourself being angry at how cheap the trinket actually turns out to be and feeling stupid for ordering it in the first place. And yet I'm a sucker for the cereal box trinket. And horror movies. So I temper my expectations and end up sometimes being pleasantly surprised (Session 9; High Tension; Ils). Not this time.

Uninhabited is the name of the film. It also refers to the director's head.