I think the script for the film is good. I think Coppola's daughter did a good job. I think Diane Keaton was a lot better in her role this time around than she was in the first two films. Eli Wallach was a great casting choice. He has great charisma and can play a creepy conniving villain that still comes across as likable. For me, the biggest problem was the way Pacino played his role, as well as the way his role was written. It is hard for the audience to fill in t he blanks and figure out how the guy who sat in his living room smoking a cigarette while his brother was being executed became this harmless puppy who acted more as if he's never seen the world of the mafia and wanted to stay out of it than someone who'd spent his entire life in that world and wanted out. That is the main problem. Also, Garcia is over the top in his role, and really should have toned his performance down a bit. I am not sure he understood what kind of movie he was in. Still, it is a good film and I am surprised about all the negative criticisms. Maybe it's because people expected a grand finale to overshadow the first two films, or at least be as memorable, and the film turned out to be weakest in the trilogy. However, even as the arguably weakest entry, it is a good film, period.
Reviews
305 Reviews
The Ruins
(2008)
Moronic script
21 January 2021
Warning: Spoilers
The premise is moronic, the characters are moronic, the writing is moronic. A bunch of stupid young people do stupid things and pretty much get themselves trapped and killed. It's one predictable situation after another, without a single surprise, and it ends with an anticlimax. There is just no payoff here.
A note on the premise: So the premise is that there is some Mayan pyramid on which killer vines grow. They infect you on contact and eat you from within. Now, the locals know about this. And what do they do about it? They don't tell anyone. They don't try to isolate the site. Instead, they just kill anyone who decides to hike there. And they bring their kids along. One of them has to be killed on the spot because it gets in contact with the vines. Oh, and none of them speak Spanish. Makes you wonder how they purchased their clothes, guns and ammo. It's just stupid. And the rest of the film is equally stupid.
A note on the premise: So the premise is that there is some Mayan pyramid on which killer vines grow. They infect you on contact and eat you from within. Now, the locals know about this. And what do they do about it? They don't tell anyone. They don't try to isolate the site. Instead, they just kill anyone who decides to hike there. And they bring their kids along. One of them has to be killed on the spot because it gets in contact with the vines. Oh, and none of them speak Spanish. Makes you wonder how they purchased their clothes, guns and ammo. It's just stupid. And the rest of the film is equally stupid.
The Godfather Part II
(1974)
Almost flawless
18 January 2021
Let me first note that this film is totally superior to the original film, surpassing it in both artistic and technical sense by many miles. The screenplay is flawless, the cast is fantastic, the acting likewise. Beautiful cinematography, great production values. This film is so well made that even someone like myself, who doesn't find mafia to be an interesting subject, thoroughly enjoyed watching it. Oh, and by the way: what a reminder that there was a time when Pacino actually tried to act...
Now, the only reason I didn't give it ten stars is that I did not like the casting of Diane Keaton as Michael's wife. Even in the original film, she seemed totally out of place. But by now I just hated every scene she was in. It just didn't feel right. She never should have been in that role. Also, the fact that she has done a lot of comedy, and in my mind evokes outrageously silly scenes with Woody Allen, really spoils her appearance in a film filled with such family drama.
Gangs of New York
(2002)
Confusing and inappropriate
18 January 2021
Rarely does one stumble upon such a mess of a script in a film of this caliber.
What is this film about? Is it a story about the eponymous gangs of New York? Is it a story of revenge? Is it social commentary on immigration, assimilation, the civil war, and the relations between the rich and the poor in 19th century America? It is a bit of everything, and ultimately it is about nothing. There is even a love story that goes absolutely nowhere, just to confuse the viewer even more. By the time the film reaches its climax, I wasn't emotionally involved one bit. I disliked the antagonist, but I didn't particularly like the protagonist either, so I didn't care who'd win. But then the film throws in scenes of government violence against the people, entirely shifting the tone of the climax and dissipating all existing emotion. I really have no idea what they were thinking. I don't think they knew what their film was about, ultimately. Also, I dislike the marxist overtones in the script. There is this idea that people who resented mass immigration were evil, because they had no legitimate claim to their land. There is also a bizarre focus on black people who were killed in the riots. Were they trying to be BLM long before their martyrs were fabricated by fake news? Finally, there is a level of violence that at times feels gratuitous and totally unnecessary. It simply abuses the audience, while not contributing anything of real substance to the plot. The director should have focused on fixing the confusing script, rather than indulging himself in scenes filled with gore. Ultimately, there is nothing in this film that I like.
Proximity
(II) (2020)
Oh boy!
3 December 2020
What an utter mess of a movie... The plot, the dialogue, the tone, the direction and editing... It's all designed to frustrate, bore, and alienate the audience. From beginning to end I had no idea what was going on, what was at stake, or what the motivations of most characters were. Nothing in this movie makes any sense at all. It's so nonsensical, I can't even begin to describe it. Where does one begin? The film starts as an alien abduction mystery with some nods to the found footage genre. Then it turns into an poorly paced and boring action-adventure, which ends like a music video, refusal to explain anything, and a breaking of the fouth wall as suddenly the main character tells the audience that not even he knows what happened. The end.
King of New York
(1990)
Solid film
2 December 2020
Christopher Walken plays Frank, a drug lord in NY who eliminates his competition and gets into a personal conflict with a team of police officers. It's an interesting film, stylistically very well done, and Walken's personality is well used to depict the character of the drug lord Frank. Some nice action scenes, too. The story is somewhat loose, but the film is first and foremost an experience and not so much a story.
Valkyrie
(2008)
Laughable
19 November 2020
This is tedious anti-German propaganda that has by now become utterly laughable. Hollywood's tropes about WWII Germany are simply insufferable to watch. This is particularly unpleasant considering people who wrote, produced, and directed this film belong to a group that has a vested interest to make Germans look forever like villains in a fictional universe alike that of Batman. This is just insufferable propaganda from beginning to end. It made me laugh, though.
Rage
(1997)
Poor script ruins it all
14 November 2020
The film is technically well made, though some of the editing is not great. The cast is competent, and the only real problem is the script.This film doesn't know what it is or what tone it wants to assume. The motivations of the protagonists remain largely obscure and often defy belief. Just as the characters seem close to having an interesting conversation, the screenwriter seems to run out of ideas and ends it before any thing meaningful is uttered. It all end with a ridiculous shootout, with some poorly placed comedic elements and a baffling finale where nothing makes any sense at all. The film's greatest sin is that we never really learn anything about the protagonists that we didn't assume at the very start. So why did we have to endure all the violence and abuse?
This Is Spinal Tap
(1984)
Entertaining
24 October 2020
Mockumentaries can be a lot of fun, and this was one of the early movies in t he genre. The film mocks the entire culture surrounding rock stars, exposing how vapid these people are. But it doesn't do it in an offensive way, as the protagonists are very likeable. What bothered me a bit was that they went a bit too far with the crazy stuff at times, and played it way too straight. The fictitious band actually went on to build a career, in character, which I find rather bizarre. If the actors won't recognize they are in on the joke, the whole thing becomes overburdened in the end. The director, Rob Reiner, also proved to be a very unlikable individual later in his career, which brings a somewhat bitter aftertaste to the viewing experience. But hey, it's still a very funny movie that everyone should watch.
Jackie Brown
(1997)
Underrated
16 October 2020
This is one of Tarantino's best. This is as close as he ever got to writing rounded characters and drama. Stylistically the film is captivating. The casting is perfect. Pam Grier and Robert Forster make an excellent duo. What the film lacks is a more satisfying resolution, though. Also, it focuses too much on the intricate game the characters play, when it should have focused more on relations between characters. The eponymous Jackie Brown is so likeable and captivating, she should have been given more things to do besides plotting and dealing with the police. Still, it would be too much to expect from Tarantino, I guess. It's not his cup of tea. Still, this is one of his best films, and possibly least offensive and focused on exploitation.
Interstellar
(2014)
Everything went wrong
9 August 2020
I believe this screenplay came about when director Nolan met M Night Shyamalan at a party and jotted down a bunch of ideas for a sci-fi movie that Shyamalan got after drinking half a pint of vodka. The screenplay contains all the weirdness and confusion you find in a bad Shyamalan film. Add some rather boring action, and you get 'Interstellar'. What is this mess of a movie? There is enough material here for an epic sci-fi, a drama, a supernatural thriller, and an action movie. And that's a bit too much. There are too many plot lines and tonal shifts, and it doesn't help that the whole thing is way too confusing for anyone to comprehend what's going on. How many philosophical issues does this film raise, anyhow? Next time, try one. Not twenty. And try and provide some emotional payoff in the end. I can't believe this film got such good reviews. It is amateurish nonsense.
The Hateful Eight
(2015)
Unpolished script
6 August 2020
Tarantino's characters are all crooks and killers, and those who aren't at first, often find out by the end that they are, after all. His characters occupy a world so brutal, the director would scream like a baby to be rescued from it, if he ever entered it. He indulges himself in all kinds of dark desires, and he must tickle the audiences the right way, because they join in for the ride. Mind you, the ride has to be peppered with some dark humour and witty subplots, to keep the audience entertained. In this movie, the wit and the humour are nowhere to be seen, though. Now, there is an intriguing tale reminiscent of Agatha Christie here, and there is the obligatory violence, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't fun to watch. Also, the film plays upon nasty exploitation of racial tensions. It even goes so far as to pretend it gives a damn about anything. But we know Tarantino is too cynical for that, and too disinterested in history to even try and comprehend what the Civil War was about. Everything he does is exploitation. And it can work, but only If it is as seductively fun as Pulp Fiction. This time around, the fun part was lacking.
Taken
(I) (2008)
Fails to make one care
4 August 2020
Warning: Spoilers
This film has two protagonists: the father and his daughter. The daughter is a vapid, unintelligent person who goes on holiday with another girl who makes her look like genius. Within 38 seconds of landing in Paris, these two manage to get a guy from the human trafficking business to share a cab with them, and then proceed to tell him how they live all alone. Can anyone actually care for morons like that? I can't. But it doesn't matter, because the daughter is kidnapped and ceases to play a role in the film. Now it is all about her dad who has to rescue her. Too bad his only character trait, other than being incredibly boring to interact with, is that he used to work for the secret service and can kick ass. So he kicks some ass, you have a bunch of action scenes, which aren't bad, and he saves his daughter. The end. If you want to see meaningless action, this is the film for you. But I couldn't care less about any of the characters. The protagonist is dull, the bad guys are generic and interchangeable, and the daughter is just an irritating brat. There is no real investment. You don't get to hate the bad guys or worry for the fate of the good guys, because the film's tag line is basically "Liam Neeson kicks ass". So there is never a moment when the bad guys stand even the slightest chance. Pity they never even tried to turn this film into something more enjoyable. The writers probably never even read a single book on screenwriting. But who cares, when you have Liam Neeson kicking ass, right? I don't like this film, and I hate lazy and insulting screenwriting. I give this two stars instead of one because at least some of the action isn't bad.
Starcrash
(1978)
Atrocious
1 August 2020
When you make a fantasy epic with space battles and heroes on a quest to save the universe, and you bore your audience to death, you've failed. I don't think there is a single moment of suspense in this movie. Our characters never even seem to recognize they are in danger, and the script provides a deus ex machina way to get them out of trouble before anyone even has time to start worrying about what might happen. At the end of the day, this film is just a series of sequences in which nothing seems to be at stake, and nothing makes any sense anyhow. There is just no way for the audience to be invested in any of this. Atrocious acting, direction, editing, and special effects don't help either. But the script itself is the main reason why this film fails so miserably. It should be used in film class to illustrate how NOT to construct a movie narrative. I would have given it one star, but I gave it two because of John Barry's score, which is the only thing that's good in this production.
Saving Leningrad
(2019)
Fantasy posing as history
16 July 2020
The Germans bombed a barge, it sank, and 800 or so people, mostly civilians, drowned. In the process, a few soldiers opened fire from rifles and downed both German fighters that attacked the barge. Seems like fantasy? Well, that's probably because it is. The barge in question did indeed sink, but not because of German attack. Mind you, the Germans did occasionally bomb vessels crossing the Ladoga lake, but this one was not bombed. It sank because it was overloaded and in somewhat poor shape, and because weather conditions were unfavourable. But instead of making a powerful drama about civilians fleeing starvation inside a besieged city, and drowning in the process, the film makers thought this should be an action movie with Russian supermen who down planes with a single bullet... Twice! It is also a poorly written love story, and yet another story of reconciliation, as NKVD captain becomes friends with the guy he was going to have shot along with his father. You see, recent Russian war films are obsessed with the message of reconciliation between Russians, despite ideological and other divides that existed in 1941. In the end, the film ends up being a manipulative mess that provides no payoff. It is also disrespectful towards the people who died.
The Fourth Man
(2007)
Dull
2 July 2020
It's an unimaginative film that comes across as a student film that is more interested in mastering various techniques than telling a compelling story. Nikola Kojo, who plays the lead role, appears to be sedated throughout the film. The dialogue is badly written, and it appears that the filmmakers saw it as something irritating that they just wanted to get over with, rather than invest a lot of time into. The 'twist' at the end is not original, and it offers no emotional payoff. What saves this poor attempt at a thriller is Marija Karan, not because of her acting skills, but because she looks good in the sex scene. That's the only positive about this cinematic effort, as far as I am concerned. The film uses that obnoxious green filter that so many films have used in the past two decades, and stylistically it seems to try and look like something out of Hollywood. I assume the idea was to try and promote the film abroad. The choice of filming locations suggests that, too. This is hardly a film that feels as if it was taking place in Belgrade. There is even a scene with the subway, and Belgrade's subway is really just a tiny stretch that it's highly unlikely that the protagonist would use it. It's there because the filmmakers thought it looked cool. Unfortunately, the one thing they didn't think of investing time into was the actual screenplay. The end result is a dull film that offers little in terms of suspense or action.
Radovan III
(1983 Video)
Legendary
7 June 2020
A great comedy, built around the idea that people who moved from the rural areas to the big city often ended up living the worst of both worlds. This is a comedy that operates on several levels, but ultimately rests upon the talent of Zoran Radmilovic, who played, and I am sure to a large degree created the character of 'Radovan III'. The play is virtually his show, with the supporting cast being literally reduced to support.
Midway
(2019)
Crap
22 May 2020
What else can you say? Is there even a plot here, or anything approaching a rounded character? The whole film is like a very long cut scene from some computer game. Interchangeable characters fly CG planes and drop CG bombs on CG ships. The fact they wasted 100 million on this atrocity is overshadowed by the fact they made a profit, and will keep making more such films in the future. But this is not really a film. This is anti-cinema, a pile of distractions and thrills devoid of any meaning, drama, or genuine emotion. And that's the idea: the New Man doesn't need to be fully human. He is to be reduced to cattle that is satisfied when it's fed, managed, and entertained with garbage. He is not meant to need or understand art. His needs are meant to be as base as possible.
Piranha
(1978)
Catastrophe
16 May 2020
The script is so incoherent and unimaginative, it's as if they were making it up while they were filming. Also, the film is a mess in terms of tone, which keeps shifting from comedy to horror (and the film does both very badly). Add to this some abysmal dialogue, characters that do things that make zero sense, some painfully repetitive piranha attack scenes, irrelevant exposition, and subplots that serve no purpose whatsoever, and you might start to get the idea just how bad this film is. I can't understand why it was even made, because there is no story to this and no creative spark. This is B-movie trash, without any of the rewards good B-movies provide. So boring and irritating. It's a film that never knows what story it wants to tell, or how. It can't decide what emotion it wants the audience to have during most of the scenes. And that is a huge problem. If the audience is confused about what it is meant to be feeling, there can be no satisfaction from watching a film. The feeling I ended up having throughout the film was boredom and frustration.
Outlaw King
(2018)
Pointless
14 May 2020
I can't see the purpose of this film. It paints a rather unpersuasive and neither well written nor well acted picture of the protagonist, and it ends on one of the greatest anticlimaxes ever committed to the big screen. The audience ends up feeling cheated, because the whole thing leads nowhere. Just as it kind of gets interesting, the film ends, and then simply informs us of the events it can't be bothered to present to us. The hero doesn't seem to win, and the antagonist doesn't seem to lose. There is no proper character arc. What a mess. And the action scenes are rubbish. But not as rubbish as the 'drama'.
The Golden Child
(1986)
Zero for effort
9 May 2020
Not one funny line. Abysmal script. Awfully shot and edited. Useless villains. Virtually non-existing plot. Whoever made this, probably thought they could pull off another Beverly Hills Cop. That film had a very basic plot, and was made to work through excellent performances and an awesome soundtrack. But this time around, Murphy has no funny lines, and he has no one interesting to interact with. The result is a very boring film that's awfully stitched together. And on top of all this, it is tonally confusing. Jumping from lighthearted comedy to scenes of dead children and bowls filled with kids' blood doesn't work at all. Ghostbusters pulled tonal shifts effortlessly, but its writers knew what they were doing. As for the silly Oriental lore... John Carpenter does it better. But the greatest crime remains putting Eddie Murphy in the film and not giving him funny things to say. His charisma still keeps the film watchable, but not enjoyable.
The Thin Red Line
(1998)
Boring drivel
30 April 2020
The discrepancy between how important and amazing this film thinks it is, and how little it's actually worth is unbelievable. It's a cheap book on pseudo-philosphy being read to the audience, with action scenes in-between. Everybody in this film is moaning and talking utter nonsense from beginning to end. If you are used to films using the 'show, don't tell' principle, boy are you in for a nasty surprise. this is 'talk nonsense from beginning to end'. The viewer is likely to start screaming at the screen, begging to be allowed to see a single scene without irritating narration. At the end of the day, it is pretentious and utterly vapid drivel. The only thing that kind of worked in the film was the conflict between the colonel, who desperately needs a swift victory, and the captain, who puts the lives of his men ahead of ambition. If the film had been more modest and more smart, this would have been the crux of the plot. But no such luck. This film has a dozen plots and two dozen characters, and it can't decide what it wants to be. What it ultimately is, is a mess.
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