georgegates's reviews

One of the first pixels you see in this show is text saying "made by Apple TV", which is surely intentional and sets the bias for a lot of things here.

Because Apple can never be wrong, after all it is God.

I have never seen a show with so little storyline over one hour, and found myself fastforwarding more and more until I gave up entirely somewhere in episode 6.

The show is original and rooted in the pandemic and the answer to the question of what work in big sterile corporations actually means today.

I think there cannot be enough food for thought on this subject. However when it comes to entertainment, this show is not it.

There are literally half an hour of silent footage crammed into the first season of just people walking around the endless maze of hallways. If you take into account scenes of hallways with dialogue it is about one hour. That is not an exaggeration!

The rest of the cinematography and footage falls in line with the endless hallways. This is not for people who like fast plot turns and twisting storylines.

This shows is for the artsy fartsy folks that see comical meaning and a cynical interpretation in every cloud and raindrop.

It feels like LOST writers had a talk with M. Night Shyamalan. You will encounter a lot of similar psychological horror. The show is very scary.

It is character driven. Many of the negative complaints here, seem like lashed out anger and frustration.

But there are valid points:

• 10 episodes in, the show explained little. LOST had 25 ep , 1st season.

• 1ep/week.

• Tight budget, written into the show. Yet there's a 99% chance for 3 seasons if they haven't shot it already. Just by economies of scale I'd say it's around 3x -10x cheaper per episode than LOST (which varied a lot in budget/episode)

• Same PACE as LOST in an era of 6-10 episode per year is hard to accept

Yet if you like LOST, and can accept a scarier version, what competition is there in 2022?

Knowing myself, I don't know if I'll stick around. Even so I don't want to belittle how great this show actually is, if you can look beyond the complaints or happen to watch all seasons in the future all at once.

==What to expect==

I dislike almost all programming on the BBC, with the exception of Horizon (and other rare occasional documentary feats). None of the current US comedy programming is really satisfactory to me either, with the exception of Saturday Night Live. If you feel similar then Cuckoo might just be the show for you.

==Style==

Accent-wise Cuckoo is about 1/3 American and 2/3 British with light accents and is perfectly comprehensible. The show is lightweight and upbeat, with a modern touch and starts out with a single lady and her girlfriend in Thailand, with the setting soon transitioning to the familiar UK (or is it Ireland?). There is no British humor, or any of the typical "Britishness" one comes to expect from most BBC shows.

==Story==

The story in the first episode revolves around the big news which the not-so-single-lady-anymore brought home to her family and the resulting struggle of coping with the new family circumstances. The story doesn't really matter much though, because the script and acting is simply consistently hilarious. I am hooked. (Episode 2 is even funnier, so the pilot wasn't just a "glitch")

After two episodes I still couldn't get into the series, there is no emotional buildup or character development. The rest of the series I fast-forwarded through, dwelling about 5 to 7 minutes on each episode. I stopped in episode 6.

Here's what you get:

-One-dimensional stereotyped characters "we don't care" for

-infinite boring dialogs -bleak film sets devoid of modern visuals and CGI

-animal killings: Nytheria (wolf) and the beheading of a horse early on. This wouldn't bother me if the wolf hadn't been the one likable character on the show -tons of bleak looking medieval stuff

-a storyline excruciatingly following the book series

-nudity could aid the series, in GoT it is misplaced and women are debased (e.g. A knight just beheaded someone and proclaims to his newfound lad whether he would like to lay with a woman now, as he usually does after gorefests - RIGHT in front of the queen). That's the general attitude towards females of the whole series

"Spartacus" is female emancipation compared to this show

-dated. The series might as well have been made three decades ago. There is nothing revolutionary. It is purely fan driven.

-Devoid of fantasy (Normally I would like that, except in GoT this means more endless hard to follow dialogue on the backdrop of beak-looking sets).

The best proof that this show is only watched by fanboys and girls can be seen directly in the IMDb ratings. 98% rate the show a 10/10. Fantasy at its best.

The first thing I noticed was the unique look of the Canon 5D camera. Expectedly there are some really nice cinematographic moments which are only possible with this camera setup.

The story gradually drags you in, and the photogenic actors and performances help a lot. It is not the typical "seen it all" Jennifer-Aniston kinda-romance type story and cliché, but rather a sexy written "bad-boy/good-girl got knocked up in a one night stand" kinda story.

The dialog is sexy and well written.

Most importantly the runtime is manageable.

Anyone who is sick of romance-movies in general, especially the usual, Clichè-spiced stew, should still check this movie out. Definitely above average.

Rating: 6 + 1 star for the camera setup and the cinematography. Looks beautiful. (Although the movie definitely doesn't set a benchmark for next-generation cameras)

The Poster of Nokas and the robbery theme, lured me in. Particularly striking was the wide depth of field portrayed in the poster, generally only achieved by SLR cameras and lenses.

In the case of Nokas, What you see is indeed What you get.

STORY: The story is the realistic re-creation of a robbery that played out in 2004 in a European theater (Norway). Realistic means, real people loosing their nerves, being hysteric and not playing the heroes in world abiding by physical laws.

SCREENPLAY: The screenplay is well done and traces out the robbery from the first and third person POV, following various people including the robbers and the police.

SOUND: The sound design is slightly above average. There is little background music, and nothing that stood out to me.

VERDICT: 10/10 I consider this a masterpiece, for the being the first of its kind employing this technology in a well-executed, realistic robbery-themed movie.

TECHNOLOGY: Technologically the new camera generation means wider picture angles, shallower depth of field, incredible low light performance, and above all a field of view which allows for a First person perspective. (PS: I didn't find any information regarding the actual camera setup the crew used)

For gamers, the POV perspective is the next best thing to 3D, of putting the viewer directly into the action.

First off, this movie is very sound-driven. Another example for this is Ils - which could practically serve as a testbed for 6.1 surround sound systems.

Secondly, Silent house is also visually driven through camera-work that is quite novel, in the realm of cinema. Over the past decade gamers have been spoiled with cinema-esque game productions which soon left traditional cinema in the dust. The reason lies in computer rendered graphics by necessity and virtual cameras, which aren't limited by budget or physical laws. (To get an idea, check this out: http://tinyurl.com/823cv7j

==Visuals==

Silent house assumes a steadycam camera-position that follows the protagonist (a photogenic young female) around, in either third-person or at times-first person perspective. Depth of Field "Jitter" is used from the very beginning to augment and focus the visuals. (To get an idea, watch this short segment, shot with the same camera as "Silent house": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIeUGP1bD04 )

Despite the dilapidated interiors, the movie feels modern. Lightning in combination with the digital camera specifications is perfect and creates good atmosphere. The runtime of roughly 70 minutes appeals to the attention-span of young generations. No scene felt gratuitous or overly long. The concise plot may for some be indeed a dead-giveaway, yet the movie-twist is handled in a jaw-dropping way (again augmented by the visuals and sound)

==Will I like it?==

You should check out the movie-stills and whether they appeal to you. The horror is obviously of the mundane-horror category, i.e. no supernatural involved. This is clear from minute one, as the movie starts with "based on real events". The religious, supernatural BS pretty much ruined "Rec". The supernatural simply isn't to everone's liking.

If you don't get into the movie visually ==within the first 5 minutes==, augmented by the great sound-work, it will definitely not deliver.

Silent house arguably lacks a strong plot and character development, but makes up for it visually and by the sound-design. If you don't like Silent house, chances are you won't like Final fantasy or Transformers either.

==Budget==

I was under the impression to be treated to a high-value production. And I wasn't disappointed. Only afterwards did I learn the budget was somewhat low. Notably budget claims and how it pertains to the finished product are usually more than obscure and nothing which should be given great gravity.

I would reckon that many gamers will like Silent house a lot. After all at the moment it is pretty much taking what we can get (such as 300, Spartacus, Appleseed but also unknowns such as "Serbian movie"), till more cinema productions appealing to younger generations are created.

==Rating== 9/10 (Novelty, Plot, Sound, Runtime) For comparison: Confessions 10/10

First of all i guess you won't expect too much from this movie, well good, because there really isn't much to anticipate from it. The title sounds well and has an even luring attribute, as it tricks one into thinking that this movie deals with the funk and atrocities of the deeds terrorists commit as well as their equally violent and distorted childhoods/life-experience. But this flick actually doesn't deal with that theme at all but rather has a touch as if you are watching some episode from some mediocre action-series, whilst mediocre would even be downplayed, lets say more on a level like the A-Team.

So the level of this movie can be found somewhere between B to C-movie-flick , whereas i would rather grade it closer to C.

So what's it about: A cop, who recently was involved in a shootout in LA, entailing a shot victim (whether or not she survived is unknown) leaves the country to fly to spain in order to look after his sister, who seems to have disappeared. The trigger for that immediate concern of his sister was a credit card withdrawal of about 30k bucks. (It remains unknown throughout the entire movie, what the money was for). The cop follows lead after lead, which directs him into the hands of a beautiful Spanish undercover cop, some lazy bunch of detectives, a weapons dealer and of course a single operating sunnyboy-terrorist (who sees over and over a 5seconds lasting excerpt of his sister and mother going down in a brutal execution). Now it just so happens that the cop's sister was lured into doing heroin, found herself in the hands of the weapons (and all kind of other illegal stuff) dealer, who somehow gave her away to the single-operating-sunnyboy-terrorist and abuses the girls to carry suitcased bombs with them in order to attack all sorts of buildings whose facade are to the distaste of the sunnyboy. In the end the sister, who is now magically cleansed of drug addiction and has a relationship with the terrorist finds her brother, who thwarted a bombing that was only split seconds ago.

Frankly this movie would've been better if they had made a porn movie out of it.

How is the acting? Well the acting performances are so overrated nowadays that is is simply unbelievable. The most common cause that is to blame for a failed movie is the most and second important thing of any movie, that is 1. THE STORYLINE and 2. THE DIRECTOR (and his team). So the performances really weren't responsible to cause a headache whilst watching this movie in the first place.

In the end it is your call whether or not you are intrigued enough to watch this movie. There certainly isn't much in it except the chicks to look out for.

I give it 3/10, due to the fact that this movie failed miserably in portraying terrorist activities in any way, although the title implies otherwise.

as to me it deserves a clear 11 out of 10!! It is possibly amongst the 3 best movies of all time and approches as style and theme in which so many film have terribly failed.

So far there are only two films available from this dircetor, Darren A., and both are amongst the best i've ever sine; well indeed they fill my top 3 list, with PI at the top and Requiem for a Dream right beneath it (actually i dunno which of those is better).

When it comes to film music, it's certainly one of the most important parts, which deceides over the movie's success due to the influence of the viewers perception. Darren seems to be into Techno, Trance music, as this is the prevailing kind of music in his masterpieces, extremely well fitting, and because i'm totally hooked on that stuff it is one of the main reasons for my extemely high ratings.

At last let me mention that this is certainly not for everyone, but one thing's for sure: THIS FILM IS NOT OVERRATED (as stanley's 2001 is) BUT RATHER UNDERRATED. It's an extremely profound film, and you might not understand everything in it, however i was relating to this artwork from the get go.

The movie set's place in the erly 1990's (juged by the applied computer technology), and the story is put wonderfully into one sentence in IMDB's tagline.

NO SPOILERS IN HERE...although quite understating and a bit too short (for what it is and deals with: namely of a really profound background: drug (ab)use and the complete wreckage of three persons lives). Furthermore the movie deals a tad with how society treats the affected ones, throughout either exploiting or disgusted.

As far as the understating goes and supposed you have seen other bader drug movies you'll surely make up your own opinion, of what i'm speaking. The movie's name would have implied a storyline chasing the haunting lives of those junkies all the way long to their demises. (the girl will certainly commit suicide)

At last let me mention the ingenious and perfectly fitting music (if ya in trace, techno music and you'll certainly just be stunned)