ginocox-206-336968
Joined Jan 2015
Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Ratings258
ginocox-206-336968's rating
Reviews251
ginocox-206-336968's rating
Weekend in Taipei (2024) starts off strongly with adrenalin-fueled race through busy urban traffic and an expertly choreographed and executed fight scene with occasional humorous accents. But after about eighteen minutes in sixth gear, it seems to lose steam and proceeds at a much more modest pace, with a few bursts of energy.
The story was written by Luc Bresson and George Huang, and directed by Huang, whose directorial work has primarily been in television. Production values are uniformly excellent. Luke Evans delivers a credible performance in an action role. Lun-Mei Gwei seems miscast as the love interest. She's beautiful and seems credible as a concerned mother, but acts more like a Bond villain than a Bond girl. She might have excelled in Sasha Luss's role in Anna, or Scarlett Johansson's role in Lucy, but fails to project the warmth, personality, and sensuality that would make her irresistible to both a criminal kingpin and a fiercely independent spy. Wyatt Yang also seems miscast in an underwritten role as the son. He looks solidly Chinese, rather than Eurasian and seems to be annoying baggage until one moment when he makes an improbable connection and breaks character to become an active participant. Sung Kang, who plays Han in the Fast & Furious films, seems limited by the script. He plays a corrupt billionaire criminal mastermind who could have a dozen beautiful women fawning over him, but seems fascinated by an icily indifferent wife and tolerant of her rebellious son, when he's not behaving like an irrational comic-book villain. The filmmakers cast a Korean actor as a Chinese drug lord who is fascinated with Japanese katana .
The film starts off strong, but seems hampered by an unimaginative script written by a highly imaginative and successful screenwriter, and a cast of two-dimensional supporting characters. It's far from Besson's best work, but the opening scenes are well worth the price of admission.
The story was written by Luc Bresson and George Huang, and directed by Huang, whose directorial work has primarily been in television. Production values are uniformly excellent. Luke Evans delivers a credible performance in an action role. Lun-Mei Gwei seems miscast as the love interest. She's beautiful and seems credible as a concerned mother, but acts more like a Bond villain than a Bond girl. She might have excelled in Sasha Luss's role in Anna, or Scarlett Johansson's role in Lucy, but fails to project the warmth, personality, and sensuality that would make her irresistible to both a criminal kingpin and a fiercely independent spy. Wyatt Yang also seems miscast in an underwritten role as the son. He looks solidly Chinese, rather than Eurasian and seems to be annoying baggage until one moment when he makes an improbable connection and breaks character to become an active participant. Sung Kang, who plays Han in the Fast & Furious films, seems limited by the script. He plays a corrupt billionaire criminal mastermind who could have a dozen beautiful women fawning over him, but seems fascinated by an icily indifferent wife and tolerant of her rebellious son, when he's not behaving like an irrational comic-book villain. The filmmakers cast a Korean actor as a Chinese drug lord who is fascinated with Japanese katana .
The film starts off strong, but seems hampered by an unimaginative script written by a highly imaginative and successful screenwriter, and a cast of two-dimensional supporting characters. It's far from Besson's best work, but the opening scenes are well worth the price of admission.
Juror #2 (2024), directed by Clint Eastwood, known for many heroic movie roles, is a movie without a hero. Performances and production values are solid; the settings are realistic; the characters seem authentic with credible backstories.
The script is evocative of 12 Angry Men (1957), and the Russian remake 12 (2007), which managed to improve on the classic in several respects. In a high-profile murder case, eleven jurors are eager to convict, but one is convinced of the defendant's innocence.
Yet, the script seems about two rewrites short of completion. The high-profile case seems a bit like Alice's Restaurant, the biggest crime of the last fifty years for a rural community, but not likely to receive national attention or to set any groundbreaking precedents. None of the characters seems particularly likeable, with the exception of Harold (J. K. Simmons). The axiom in movie tropes that, like Chekhov's gun, whenever a character is an alcoholic, that character must fall off the wagon, is given an unexpected twist which isn't very satisfying. A reversal of fortune doesn't seem realistic. The open-and-shut case has a major flaw that is obvious to even a third-year medical student. The character that grows the most doesn't do so until too late, if the epilogue from Presumed Innocent (1990) is valid.
If the film has no hero, it has no shortage of villains, including the overloaded system, and the complacency of jurors press-ganged into involuntary service without compensation or recognition, eager to return to their usual routines as long as somebody has to pay for the injustices in the world.
The script is evocative of 12 Angry Men (1957), and the Russian remake 12 (2007), which managed to improve on the classic in several respects. In a high-profile murder case, eleven jurors are eager to convict, but one is convinced of the defendant's innocence.
Yet, the script seems about two rewrites short of completion. The high-profile case seems a bit like Alice's Restaurant, the biggest crime of the last fifty years for a rural community, but not likely to receive national attention or to set any groundbreaking precedents. None of the characters seems particularly likeable, with the exception of Harold (J. K. Simmons). The axiom in movie tropes that, like Chekhov's gun, whenever a character is an alcoholic, that character must fall off the wagon, is given an unexpected twist which isn't very satisfying. A reversal of fortune doesn't seem realistic. The open-and-shut case has a major flaw that is obvious to even a third-year medical student. The character that grows the most doesn't do so until too late, if the epilogue from Presumed Innocent (1990) is valid.
If the film has no hero, it has no shortage of villains, including the overloaded system, and the complacency of jurors press-ganged into involuntary service without compensation or recognition, eager to return to their usual routines as long as somebody has to pay for the injustices in the world.
Conclave (2024) offers excellent production values and performances. The settings and rituals are captured with what seems scholarly accuracy. The script offers an authentic tone in Latin, Italian, and English, but it feels like somebody asked AI to merge The Shoes of the Fisherman and an AOC speech into a screenplay without providing sufficient background on dramatic structure, or specifying that the story should be both credible and entertaining.
Ralph Fiennes delivers a credible performance as Thomas Cardinal Lawrence, Dean of the College of Cardinals, but seems more of an observer than a protagonist. The movie tries to be a mystery, and Lawrence does break the rules to unearth a couple of clues; however, more often another character searches him out with information that they realize they should have given him earlier.
The dramatic issue devolves into a political statement about whether the Church should abandon some conservative views to appease liberal elements of society. But rather than intelligently discussing the pros and cons, somebody makes an impassioned speech that only addresses the central question tangentially, but which seems to motivate the cardinals to vote a certain way.
Looking past the carefully and impressively crafted packaging, the film is little more than a political statement in the guise of a mystery, which isn't satisfying as a mystery and presents only one side of the argument with no justification other than an argumentum ad verecundiam logical fallacy.
Ralph Fiennes delivers a credible performance as Thomas Cardinal Lawrence, Dean of the College of Cardinals, but seems more of an observer than a protagonist. The movie tries to be a mystery, and Lawrence does break the rules to unearth a couple of clues; however, more often another character searches him out with information that they realize they should have given him earlier.
The dramatic issue devolves into a political statement about whether the Church should abandon some conservative views to appease liberal elements of society. But rather than intelligently discussing the pros and cons, somebody makes an impassioned speech that only addresses the central question tangentially, but which seems to motivate the cardinals to vote a certain way.
Looking past the carefully and impressively crafted packaging, the film is little more than a political statement in the guise of a mystery, which isn't satisfying as a mystery and presents only one side of the argument with no justification other than an argumentum ad verecundiam logical fallacy.