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s-aitken88
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Old (2021)
Was the plot written by a child?
Haven't written anything on IMDB for about ten years but this film has pushed me to it. It's insultingly bad, all I see in it is 'a movie from a director who had some successes many years ago, got rich enough to stop caring, then decided he should maybe make another movie just because it's what people expect of him'.
It's hard to write anything without giving it away, because literally nothing happens for the whole film. It's contrived, nothing more than a set of extremely weak efforts at killing people off. Not scary, not thrilling, not suspenseful, just a load of moments that leave you groaning in bored dismay at just how obvious, contrived or downright boring each part is.
The plot doesn't evolve at all until the last ten minutes, and even then it's the most plainly obvious scenario you would expect. It's basically one and a half hours on the opening scene where the main theme of the movie is explained repetitively in various ways as if the audience are idiots, then a finale without any originality at all. It's obvious, and it is boring. The one and only reason this film made it to mass audiences is because the director made a couple of good movies two decades ago.
It was so insultingly bad I just want to find the director and ask him what the hell he was doing.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
Not an actual movie.
This isn't a film, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's an extended final episode for Breaking Bad fans to get one last hit of their favourite series.
As far as actual films go, it just doesn't have anything to make it qualify as a real movie. There's no plot - no start, no end, no quest, no progress - nothing! It just drags on and on, following that one guy around while he 'does stuff'. I couldn't grasp any of it at all. It feels more like 2 hours of build-up to a narrative that never happens.
I suspect it would have been better if I knew something about Breaking Bad, but movies aren't supposed to rely on the audience having watched an entire TV series of background story beforehand. Utterly disappointing.
Srpski film (2010)
Not as extreme as people said it was. Just another generic horror flick.
Sorry but this film really isn't that traumatic at all.
It has scenes which show pretty awful things, but it's so OBVIOUSLY a movie, it's really not difficult to just sit back and watch it without being remotely upset.
This fits firmly into the category of movies that would be chosen by a load of pre-16 girls wanting to watch a horror movie at a sleepover. It's just another attempt at writing a narrative which includes all the intended shock-scenes.
It's true, the content of this film would be utterly horrible if it were real life, but, as I already said, it's so obviously just a film, I simply wasn't moved by any of it at all. Not one bit.
Also, those who say there is some underlying art to it all. No there isn't it. It's not badly filmed and is shot well so the story flows along nicely, but it is NOT art, NOT genius, it is NONE of those things.
Really, it's just another generic horror flick.
Quite disappointed actually. I hoped to be as shocked, traumatised and appalled as the rest of you seem to be...
Morvern Callar (2002)
Dull.
Really didn't enjoy it at all.
I like films with depth, meaning, etc, and thought this would be one of those. But it wasn't. I didn't feel any connection to the character(s), the settings, the ideas. Nothing!
All it shows is a poor girl coping very unrealistically with her boyfriend's suicide. It seemed like the kind of film that would be much better in the form of a book. The imagery and sequences in the movie just didn't give any sense of connection or understanding with any of it at all. Maybe in a book there'd be more chance to explain everything in finer detail. And when I say 'explain', I simply mean describing the settings, the emotions, etc.
The whole film was very cardboard to me.
Sorry!
Update: I've just discovered this film IS based on a book! So... what can I say... Director reads good book, decides desperately to make a film of it, and fails. Like most films that are based on books...
A Map for Saturday (2007)
Accurate but doesn't really highlight the key point of travelling
I'd rate it higher but I think the film doesn't have enough shots to show the really awesome aspects. It's mostly interviews with other travellers talking about their own opinion on travelling, rather than actually showing the real-life shots of the mostly *cultural* experiences that are had on the journey.
By the end of the film, I wasn't left with a burning desire to pack up my things and go back out to do it all again. I think it's because my personal interest in travel is hardly based on the interpersonal relationships at all. But that's the only thing this documentary seems to cover. Travelling is more than just meeting new people in hostels.
However, Brook Silva-Braga I'm sure you'll read this, so I'd just like to say that if I was somewhere in the world and I met you, and we talked, and you told me you were making this movie, I would be hugely impressed - you definitely made the most of your time away. And we'd no-doubt form the classic 'traveller friendship' you described in the movie, hah.
I give the documentary a 6 because it sadly didn't really cover the key aspects of travel that I was expecting to see, and instead just focused on meeting new travellers and how it 'feels' to be one. However for the effort and generally awesome motivation and hard work that will have gone into making and filming it for a full year, I give a 10/10, because, as I said, it is a hugely impressive thing to do, no matter what.
I'm interested to know how it's perceived by people who've never left home before.
Snowpiercer (2013)
1984, Animal Farm, and now Snowpiercer.
Absolutely amazing. A cinematic microcosm of society. For those of you uninterested in topics like '1984' and 'Animal Farm', watch this film for a hazard course in understanding the human condition. From start to end you see a small-scale depiction of society from it's most basic 'proletariat' level, right up to the elite, in perfect order. And we see the evolution of civilisation from simple beginnings to science, education, quality, luxury, then hedonism, wastefulness and eventual demise, in exactly that order.
All of that can be overlooked, however, if you're just the average movie-goer who simply wants a good story with a hero, an adventure and an end goal. In which case I say the film is a good one but nothing special in that respect. Certainly there were parts where I thought, "eh?", until it clicked later that it was all part of the Director's greater cinematic design.
But for the arty film student types, this film is sure to be the topic of many, many essays for years to come.
Clearly every part of the film was deliberate - every shot, every line of script, every item in the background. It was true art. None of that quick-buck profit-incentive Hollywood stuff.
In conclusion I recommend this film to everyone, particularly people who want to learn something or gain some insight from what they watch. For the everyday movie-lover, go into this with an open mind and have a really long think about how you can compare it to the world today.
Top stuff, 10/10