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Reviews
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
How this films has 8+ rating on IMDb is a mystery
I'll never understand how this film has a 8+ rating on IMDb. The first two weren't bad, particularly the 2008 one, but this finale really blows. The plot is poorly constructed and edited, at times making it impossible to follow, actors lazily played their parts, eagerly awaiting to say the line, get the check and get out. E.g. the scene where the main villain character dies after spinning her head in a jerky motion and shutting the eyes. You can literally feel the disgust on Gary Oldman's face as he watches this "acting".
Plot-holes are so ridiculous, I don't even know where to start: how does a nuclear bomb explode in a visible distance from a city and nobody gets hurt with a heatwave or radiation? How does a 12 million city has a single bridge of entrance? How does a handful of thugs run a megalopolis for months? Why does the main villain put the Batman, the prime target of her revenge, in a pit instead shooting him in the head? Where is that pit? How does a famished man with no money or other resources manage to magically appear from the said pit in a city surrounded by the the military on the other side of the globe? How... does the Nolan character get to make these "Epics"? I mean, no offense, man, but why don't you go making films like "Memento"?
The Rock (1996)
Easily the worst movie of the year
I mean, I started with titling this review as "The worst movie ever made" but then changed it since I realized there are indeed much worse movies. So, alright, it is probably not the worst, probably not even the bottom, eeh..., 100, but it's still pretty bad. I'll list all the "bads" in the order of, well, badness:
1. The score - horrible, absolutely sordid, I actually had to watch it with subtitles and Pandora on the background 2. Editing - sloppy at best, like that one scene where a certain humvee hits a road pole, head one, and in the next scene the same humvee happily plows through the crowed of bedazzled bystanders. There's many other enjoyable scenes like that when the cutting floor obviously had a party 3. Directing - well, it's not bad in the when it's present 4. Cinematography - they got a lot of grand wide-angle shots but again they spent like $70 mill on it. 5. Nicholas Cage 6. Nicholas Cage is the main character 7. Nicholas Cage survives till the very end 8. Script was just hilarious, I mean, it was probably written for 5th graders 9. Gives you a certain generic feel of distressful creepiness - like, realizing you've been eating a product labeled "made from natural ingredients" which was actually made of ground beef. This movie gives you a similar feeling, it is kind of made by people who claim to be filmmakers who in the end turn out to be snake oil salesmen. Kind of like watching good porn, it's almost admirable in it's naive, almost childish attempts, to look like a legitimate film, even though we all know it's all about the double-up scene towards the end.
Alright, I admit, it's been pretty mean up to the point, so, I'll mention the good now: 1. They got Sean Connery 2. Sean Connery says: "I pershonally shink you're an idiot!" 3. Nicholas Cage almost gets blowen up off the face of the planet.
Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
Bad but in a good way minus score
There are bad movies which are good to watch to "clear the mind" of sorts and then there are just plain bad movies. The is the former. I won't venture into the high-profile review domain of "character development", "meaningful plot" or "organic interaction". It's a solid FPS with some good effects and horrible soundtrack. I mean two hours of non-stop "lift- me-up" war music burns through the brain like a laser. Why not NIN or something in those lines? There's also the "shaky camera" thing. I wasn't particularly annoyed with it but I can see how it gets on some people's nerves. Overall, if better edited with a more appropriate background music, it might have made it in the top 100 of my b-grade movies.
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Excellent film, great mix of apt filmmaking, artistic vision and metaphysics
This is a n excellent film. As we first started watching it, I must admit, I was somewhat skeptical given the title. I thought this would be another "artsy" mambo-jumbo where a self-indulgent indie director who just happened to finish a book by Hugo has taken upon him/herself to educate the masses on their pathetic, meaningless everyday lives (preferably set in suburbia). Boy, was I wrong! And so glad I was. 20 minutes into it, having watched the early life sequence, I was fully submerged. It wasn't just the story - the set, colors, music, camera, scene pacing - all came together beautifully to convey the deep philosophical and artistic vision of the director. This is undoubtedly the "director's film". It is one of those films, which is hard, if not impossible to retell, and once watched, makes the viewer to watch it again, and again, enjoying every single scene. This is a director's film and of a capable one. Bravo!
The only downside (and given the nature of the story a minor one) is weak acting by Leto. I've never been a big fan of this actor, and maybe unjustly so, but his youthful innocence sprayed all over the screen really doesn't fit the story well. This is a minor bump though.
Cookies & Cream (2008)
Easily one of the worst movies ever made
This is easily worst movie ever made. I mean, if you can call it such. We watched it about 1/3 in and eventually turned it off, once all the laughs were out. The acting was the most horrible part of the experience, I mean, this is probably what casting directors feel like. Good material for MST3K though.
OK, so, I don't want to be brutal, especially to an indie director working with a low budget, but for Pete's sake there are some basics of storytelling that even I understand - like scenes should not just pile up on top of each other akin grocery items but rather gently flow to form a cohesive meaning; dialogs need to feel real not plastic and first-date scenes should reveal some deep chemistry between the characters in a way distinctly different from 72 takes of awkwardly sipping the same (constantly full) glass of water.
Inception (2010)
Not original, not brilliant, not worthy
Some reviewers have given this movie a single star where's other have rewarded it 10. There's very few in-between. I think 4 stars is apt. It's really not that bad but certainly not a "movie of the decade". Such a disparity is probably due to the overrated expectations the Hollywood movie industry and IMDb hype has created. I've heard it being compared to the Kubrick's "Space Odyssey 2001". Not surprising some film-lovers overreacted. As much as I liked "Memento", I must say Mr. Nolan ain't no Stanley Kubrick. As for the people who rated the movie as the best thing that has happened to the American cinema since "The Sixth sense", I can only enviably wish their bliss.
The biggest disappointment was probably the plot. Somewhere 45 minutes in the movie I figured the second twist was for the main character to discover it was actually him locked in the "limbo of his own dreams" (a.k.a. Hades in the world of Plato a few thousand years before the idea of our lives being mere reflections of grand "pure forms" landed on Mr. Nolan's forehead) and the rest of the gang was trying to drag him out to the light under a masterful orchestration of his beloved wife. Unfortunately this second twist never happened. The director rather awkwardly tried to pull a Lynch-style finale of letting the viewers to decide whether this entire movie was real or not. This is a hard trick to pull, since all fictional films are not real and we (the audience) are quite well aware of it. Although Mr. Lynch sometimes gets to pull it but he's, well, an actual artist. Anyways, it was about as entertaining for the next 115 minutes as watching a barrel of brandy mature.
I can't resist just one more barb to the lavish display of plot holes - many reviewers have mentioned the utter failure of the storyline to construct anything resembling a solid structure but I really hope to point out a previously overlooked nonsense (my apologies for anyone who has already done so). How is it that one of the most feared "brain hackers" who can mastermind a "cerebral heist" of all times, can't arrange for his kids to move some place safe where he can quietly meet up (or even live) with them? Or forge the documents needed to enter the country? I mean there are literally thousands of people illegally crossing the borders into the land of the free every single day and some of them can barely read English! And somehow this is a major roadblock for the man who has the power to peek into other people's brains and even plant his ideas in there. For Pete's sake! What a nonsense.
P.S.
"Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things"
4th century BCE