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Jättiläinen (2016)
Disappointing
Jättiläinen (The Mine) felt a bit like The Big Short without the humour, fast-paced editing and clever exposition pieces.
There was a lot of good. The actors are great and there's fun scenes, mostly everything involving Jani Volanen.
There's an admirable level of restraint in the movie which is not too typical for a majority of Finnish 'big budget' films (one million euros). The movie was shot with a sense of patience. It looked good, the landscape shots were great. The muted colour palette in addition to the soundtrack compliments the melancholic and desperate feeling the main character Jussi (Joonas Saartamo) brings to the film with his performance.
Overall the movie doesn't want to make the issues of the movie a fun, silly spectacle which the aforementioned The Big Short did with its issue. However in the end everything felt somewhat shallow.
The characters' motivations are explored only with the main character and even his scenes are short, mostly him just being tired with his family. There's a buildup to him having an affair, but it doesn't go anywhere. The main 'villain' has no depth, he's simply greedy and wants profit.
The issue itself was left somewhat obscure. I understand that there was corruption but even the inevitable conclusion, environment pollution, had no impact in the film. There's clips from real life news, few shots of muddy lakes and that's it. The details of the corruption involved was the core of the movie and yet it felt shallow as well.
To wrap it up I'll return to The Big Short. After watching that movie I felt like I could, not need to, read the Wikipedia summary of the housing bubble.
After watching Jättiläinen I felt like I really should read the Wikipedia summary to fully understand what it was all about.
Infinity Pool (2023)
A lot tamer than expected
I was promised a disgusting level of senseless violence, sex scenes and full frontal nudity. It was a lot tamer (and lamer) than expected.
I enjoyed it but it ended up not doing so much with it's interesting premise. The resolution of the cloning is rather predictable and shallow. There's so much more they could have done with the topics of the film.
The soundtrack was fine and the cinematography was too. Acting was solid. The psychedelic scenes were disappointing. They were short and just pretty average. Nowhere near the level of psychedelia of Midsommar or Climax.
Doubt I'll ever see it again. I felt it was still worth the ticket price.
Pearl (2022)
Not for me
The film gets to its point in the first few minutes. The rest is more or less Mia Goth acting quirky and weird for almost two hours.
Some parts were really boring. She does a long monologue and I'm pretty sure the fans of the movie already cream over how impressive it was. It was nice until it wasn't. It felt long for the sole sake of being long.
There were parts which were really good, mostly every scene which had gore in it. However those parts were few and far between the scenes where nothing interesting happens. I mean, if I was a big fan of Mia Goth, sure those would be interesting.
Just not my style of film. Probably never going to see it again.
Partanen (2003)
Puzzling, wistful and fun
Partanen takes a deep dive into the life of a stereotypical Finnish man who has his job as the priority number one in his life. The main character, Partanen, has dedicated his life to his work so much that he hasn't noticed that his wife, son and dog are leaving him, he hasn't cleaned his house or bought food, he has no control or understanding of his employees, he ignores his competitor who does everything better in his life and wants to buy his firm to expand his business.
The film has a wistful tone, but in its heart, Partanen presents its drama in a charming and comedic way. Partanen has outbursts where he lets off steam but quickly goes back to being temperate and reserved. The character is a really good portrayal of a melancholic Finnish workaholic.
There is also the mysterious Moilanen who isn't explained in the movie too much. The source material suggests that Moilanen could be Partanen's repressed emotions. The stressed old man wants to rest, be free, maybe even left alone for a while and without explaining himself to everyone around him.
Peppermint (2018)
For those who say turn off your brain as a compliment
It wasn't necessarily the worst movie ever but there wasn't too much good to say about it either. Just a generic and boring revenge movie which has been made hundreds of times before.
It didn't look special, didn't sound special, no memorable characters or acting, the scenes were pretty basic, the plot was nothing special. Inoffensive yet just boring and tried nothing new.
People usually say "turn your brain off" when watching these kind of movies. It's just laughably bad as a compliment. You want me to watch this as if I've had a lobotomy to enjoy this? No thank you.
For example, Kill Bill is the best revenge movie ever. The movie is so brutal and original in its tribute like presentation it just shuts me up in my seat and I can't help but just stare at the beauty of the movie.
Peppermint just made me bored. It's been 10 minutes I saw it and already forgot pretty much everything that happened.
Nope (2022)
A positive surprise
I loved the heavy opening credits. It was very well shot and there were multiple gorgeous shots. The music and especially the sound that the thing produced was absolutely amazing. The sound desing in general was great! For example, they played music very loud in a house and the shot shifted from inside to the outside far away from the house, where the thing was making its noises. The scene kept me on my toes and I was terrified to hear the yet unseen thing.
A critic once said about the newer It movie that the more they show the clown, the less scary it gets. Here, it's the same thing. The more they show the alien ship, the less scary it got. Until the end.
I'll spoil everything now. In the end, the alien transforms into something straight out of Neon Genesis Evangelion, specifically The Sixth Angel (Ramiel) from Rebuild 1. I loved how they did more with the alien than just "hey it's a saucer that eats flesh". The alien design was so timeless. I could see this movie get appreciated more as time goes by.
The plot was kinda all over the place, the security camera installer guy was fun, but didn't add anything to the plot. The kid who survived the ape attack and built the theme park was rather extra too. Thematically he was important to the plot but I was more interested in the alien than the underlying themes of the movie. Truthfully the whole Gordy segment felt like it was too much. The humour was sometimes on point, but when it wasn't, it sticked out bad. I hoped to see a more serious movie than this.
Nope made me excited to watch Get Out and Us. Nope was very artfully crafted despite the plot and themes being rather uninteresting at times. Jordan Peele clearly appreciates the fine art of film and I was very pleasantly surprised. I'll watch this again to see if I give it 7/10.
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
When the cake is great but the bite is too big and half of it spills on your lap
Easily better than the Justice League was but that required zero effort. In a way this movie makes Batman v Superman a bit worse than it was, since this movie's (and Snyder DCEU's) biggest issue is that there was no need (and no point) to kill Superman so quickly, everyone knew he wouldn't stay dead for long.
The movie is almost four hours and you could've easily cut the parts with Lois and Martha and resurrecting Superman and you'd get a solid-ish movie with a ton of substance to even begin with. Snyder could've skipped the origin stories of Flash and Cyborg completely and just trust the characters. The knightmare scenes were just kinda dumped on the movie (like in BvS).
There's just too much. Even Batman v Superman had way too much going on (cut Doomsday and cut Wonder Woman and maybe focus on the conflict that was in the name of the movie) but that's a review of its own.
The music was good. The visuals were surprisingly good and Steppenwolf looked great. Darkseid and Green Lantern cameos were awesome. Fight scenes were good. Batfleck and especially Flash were great. Snyder clearly understands some of these characters really well and DCEU always had a more comic book feel than Marvel.
Zack Snyder should've done a Batman movie and a Justice League movie before he tried to do a Trinity/Justice League 0 and a Let's Set Up the Justice League Trilogy movie.
Calvin Swanwick was awkwardly forced into this movie and I'm very sure that he was supposed to be just Swanwick in the original plan but Snyder just went all in with the ideas he had. And this comes from a Snyder fan, I love Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead. He should've been a producer and a cinematographer and let someone else work on his vision.
First Man (2018)
Mixed feelings
Yeah. Just like everyone and their grandmother I too loved Whiplash and La La Land so I was pretty excited to finally watch this.
Technically it is a solid movie with great actors, mostly well-shot scenes and the drama is kinda subtly scattered throughout the movie. The movie wants you to see how the mission to the Moon was plagued with misfortunes and death and tragedy and gruesome trial-and-error during the Cold War.
I am not exactly familiar with the real life story behind the mission but the movie is mainly shown from Neil Armstrong's perspective and on the other hand it's great because Ryan "Mancandy" Gosling is probably one of the best modern actors out there. On the other hand the movie's other characters feel extremely thin and somehow out of place. Kyle Chandler and Jason Clarke and Corey Stoll are awesome too, but especially Stoll feels like he just said two things during the movie even though he played Buzz Aldrin.
The movie probably would've been better if they had focused more intensely solely on Armstrong and a briefer period in his life. Simultaneously the movie feels too long and too compressed, it's funny.
My other complaints are the overuse of shaky cam and way too intense close-ups. Some of the scenes were very neatly shot but on the other hand whenever a scene was shot badly it really stuck out.
It's definitely not a bad movie but I was just expecting a way lot more. It might be a 6/10 (a positive) after a rewatch but now it just left very mixed feelings.
Faces of Death (1978)
Gruesome until the end waters it down
I was going to give it 7/10 before the penultimate scene where the narrator wonders about the life after death. Everything up to this point had been a passable "documentary" about the gruesome reality of death which we humans try to forget (by banning movies like this). The realism is brought to an abrupt end with really cheesy seance with bad effects and worse acting.
I was still going to give this 6/10 because most of the scenes worked (despite some of the acted ones being blatantly acted and fake) and the narrator had a great voice and powerful lines (why didn't The Berzerker start playing?).
The end credits however made the abrupt ending even worse. From harsh realism of death to a cheesy rock ballad about life with cheesy scenes slapped with it. They should've delivered a movie where they just give the death scenes, the narration and nothing more. 5/10 because of the ending.
Upgrade (2018)
Overrated and illogical
The movie was nicely shot and there were some good acting but that's pretty much it. The plot is that a rich guy gives his car mechanic a chip (STEM) to control his quadruplegic body because he was crippled and his wife killed in a mysterious incident.
First thing the main character does after getting his body moving is that he tries to find his wife's murderers. The rich guy gets mad at him for doing so and I was pretty amazed that he didn't think he would do it in the first place. After killing a couple of dudes the rich guy tries to shut down the STEM. (this makes no sense when you know the ending)
In the first scenes we are shown that the STEM is able to control the main character. It can draw and fight and do pretty much anything that the script needs to be done. When STEM finds out that the rich guy is trying to shut it off he just lets the main character be human for a while instead of STEM overriding him like it's done before. This is probably just to build up tension instead of providing any logical content to the movie. "Whoa, will he get to the hacker in time, maybe the movie ends in 40 minutes because he didn't get there?"
Fight scenes were really basic and the car chase scene was very boring. During the chase scene, STEM controls an another car remotely. Why didn't the STEM just crash land a drone or a plane on whatever it wanted to be dead? Yeah, I know it said in the end that he had to cover its trail, but if STEM was so omnipotent I think it could've just easily caused a malfunction on whatever it wanted to.
In the penultimate scene the main character says to a villain to not turn around, just to walk in front of him. That's nice.
The ending was beyond awesome. "Hey everything that's happened was a part of STEM's plan all along." Why didn't the damn STEM just break his mind in the first place if it wanted to be a take over, like force the main dude to kill his mom or something? The only reason it didn't was because the script was horrible and Leigh Whannell had to make a movie out of this. Most of the plot holes could've been fixed if the main villain had a STEM chip in his own neck and they'd communicate the mind breaking stuff better, like it would take time or something.
Upgrade tries to be satire and thriller and dark comedy and action but it just ends up being a boring, basic and horribly scripted action flick. I can't decide if it's a 2 or 3 but who cares. Vastly overrated. If you cheated yourself into enjoying Annihilation or Black Mirror: Bandersnatch this could be for you, you poor soul.
Evangelion Shin Gekijôban: Kyu (2012)
Everything I've come to expect from Hideaki Anno put perfectly together
I was rewatching the previous Rebuild's ending from the tube and after almost peeking into the comments I had to put this on. I was pretty nervous to watch this because of the bad reviews. Had Anno finally lost it? Was Evangelion doomed to fail just like all that is good?
Yeah no. Just like the last episodes of the original series this, too, was so painful to watch, in a good way. Visually it is the best Evangelion has ever looked. The soundtrack and the ambient and drone sound effects complimented the complex visuals perfectly.
The first two Rebuilds were great but were pretty much the original series polished into movies. This movie manages to capture exactly the same harrowing feeling within that was when I saw the original series for the first time (from Netflix lol). It demanded attention at every scene. There was no filler dialogue, only the pure terror of reality. Shinji really had to face the worst reality there is. No one can tell you what to do. "Even if your soul disappears, your wishes and curses remain in this world. Your will roams the world as information and gradually changes." I love it.
I did laugh at people who called Winter Soldier a political thriller and now karma laughs at me, but this felt really like some psychedelic scifi horror film. It was so good.
This was really the best of the three so far. I have no more fears for the fourth one. Can't wait!
Hereditary (2018)
Intense yet flawed
Midsommar was a solid movie (7/10). I also enjoy the other modern horror movies that are often mentioned along with this movie (The Vvitch, It Follows, It Comes at Night, The Lighthouse), so I was pretty excited to finally see Hereditary.
The movie starts with the funeral of Annie's mysterious mother and continues into their family's life after that. Every scene looked good and the eerie atmosphere was great as expected.
However at the 30 minute mark or so the movie got pretty annoying.
Charlie, the youngest daughter, wanders off into the woods to see the grandmother surrounded by a circle of flame. The scene ends abruptly when Annie takes her back to home and asks for Peter, Charlie's older brother, to take Charlie into a party with him.
If Peter had been a normal human being he would have probably said that he can't take the 13 year old kid into a party. He just looks apathetic and takes Charlie with him though he clearly didn't want to take her. That's dumb but okay.
In the opening scene it was revealed that Charlie has a nut allergy and of course it's relevant to the plot, why would they tell details like that otherwise. In the party Charlie ends up eating cake that has peanuts (they even show a girl chopping peanuts, jeez) and Peter has to take Charlie into a hospital. Don't know why she doesn't have an EpiPen with her.
When Peter is driving Charlie sticks her head out of the back window, only to get decapitated by a pole because Peter had to dodge a dead deer. I was laughing so hard at this scene, holy smokes. After that Peter just drives home and leaves the headless body in the car to be discovered by his mom and that's supposed to build up the family's tensions even more.
The party and the accident felt so forced that it took me completely off the movie. In the end it's revealed that Peter's grandmother was a witch or Satanist or something and they were preparing Peter to be a vessel for Charlie / King Paimon.
The last 30 minutes were really intense and I wanted to enjoy the movie overall, but the main conflict is built on a premise so ridiculous that I couldn't relax and enjoy the movie. I did laugh a lot, but that wasn't what I was expecting.
The accident was apparently based on a real life accident. It is so distracting and forced, I think it'd been equally silly if Ari Aster had taken any other ridiculous one in a billion accident and made it a major story element.
The parent's actors were great but the kids were a bit shallow. Both of them just had the same expression throughout the movie and felt like they were just trying to react at the silly stuff the script threw at them.
It's not a bad movie but I was expecting a lot more.
Single White Female (1992)
Very good first half, laughably bad last half
Jennifer Jason Leigh does an amazing performance as Hedy and almost manages to carry the movie until the end with almost as good performance from Bridget Fonda. Their nonverbal performance, especially Leigh's, were great and made the movie very interesting right from the start.
However, the script becomes so clichéd and silly that it was quite impossible not to laugh for the last 30-40 minutes or so. All the needlessly prolonged scenes towards the end were silly and complicated, but hey, it was an erotic thriller to begin with.
I don't think I'm going to watch this again, but I could recommend this if you don't mind the 90s thriller cliches.
The Lighthouse (2019)
Madness and the damage done
Robert Pattinson falling into madness was a stunning performance and what's better is that it's the second best performance in the movie. Willem Dafoe captured every scene in which he was, even when he was in the distance staring at Pattinson. As the movie went on Pattinson's dreams and nightmares got even darker and darker and the final scene at the Fresnel Lens (thanks wikipedia) was a perfect ending. Whatever he sees in the light was so beyond his understanding, that in a Lovecraftian fashion, his sanity is torn into shreds.
The movie is full of neat symbolism and there are many ways to interpret the story. Both the relationship and individual meaning of the lighthouse with each of the men was so well put and each scene gave so much more to think about the movie. In one of the nightmares, Dafoe is shown towering over Pattinson with light coming out of his face. The characters interacted in a genuinely crazy manner. The "why'd you spill your beans" scene was so great.
The aspect ratio supported the film's claustrophobic scenes, many of them were so barely lit that most of the time I forgot about the narrow ratio. The soundtrack supported every scene very well and even silence was used in perfect places.
There are also other references to stories and legends like Icarus and Prometheus. After reading Eggers' interviews I must watch this again as soon as possible. Can't wait for the 10-20 rewatches to come.
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
One of the best romantic comedies ever
I absolutely love this movie. From the very beginning the movie introduces its very personal sense of humour. I've seen the movie more than ten times by now and I laugh every time just as much as watching it the first time.
I usually dislike nonlinear storytelling in movies, since mostly the nonlinear story just ends up "spoiling" scenes that would've had more impact when told in linear order. In the beginning the movie tells you that it's not a love story, and 500 Days of Summer's humour justifies the nonlinear story. The movie handles the nonlinearity very well with a plenty of nice scenes where Marc Webb utilizes the possibilities of audiovisual storytelling greatly. With a great soundtrack the personal scenes feel even stronger.
The actors do a great job, no matter how small their part. There isn't a single bad performance in the movie, everyone fits the personal tone of the movie. The movie is also very quotable!
My only two major complaints is that the penultimate scene at the bench is the only scene which doesn't fit the movie too well. Summer's explanation about her sudden change of mind is left pretty shallow. Luckily the very last scene saves this, since it again supports the basic structure of the movie perfectly with the personal humour and the completion of the day-by-day narrative.
The other complaint is that if you don't enjoy the story the movie might feel too much like a series of scenes instead of a solid one movie. I personally enjoy the solution of showing the literal numbered days of Summer, but if someone doesn't enjoy the movie because of this, I undestand them fully.
8/10.
Baby Driver (2017)
A bit too long ending doesn't ruin this awesome movie
Edgar Wright's sense of style is just excellent. I loved the movie from start to the near end. All the scenes are audiovisual candy and the character interaction is so much fun. The cast is great and they dedicated themselves to their characters very well. I burst out laughing several times through the movie. The soundtrack is one of the better ones I've ever heard.
My only complaint is just that the movie really should've ended with Jon Hamm falling into the flames. Jon Hamm endlessly coming back was a bit comical in the wrong sense. I don't think that Baby would be so stupid that he'd turn himself in after killing people and doing several armed robberies. Five year prison sentence was very generous on him "just because he was nice". It'd been perfect if Baby and Debora would've just driven into the sunset and roll credits. It'd fit the personal style of Baby Driver perfectly.
Nevertheless, this was really one of the better movies I've ever seen, I'll give this a very solid 8/10, maybe even 9/10 on rewatch.
The House That Jack Built (2018)
The Hell that Lars Explained
The House that Jack Built starts very abruptly. First incident felt really weird. If Uma Thurman would've looked straight into the camera while talking then it could've felt a bit more natural. Her awkward hostility towards Matt Dillon felt really shallow and artificial. What is going on? Is this a movie? I thought to myself that I am simply thinking too much of what's happening and how it is happening and what is the film trying to tell me.
I tried to relax and immerse myself with the story.
I couldn't. Everything that happens on screen is explained out loud, like it was a middle finger pointed at the viewer trying to think about anything. I am certain that I am not sophisticated enought to understand all the concepts and ideas the movie deals with.
The second incident has some good elements of storytelling but Lars' obsession with a Bob Dylan music video interrupts the scene. Every time Jack tries to leave the house, his OCD is portrayed very nicely, but also explained at the viewer the moment they show it. It was really frustrating.
I tried to figure what is going on. The movie made no sense. What is Lars von Trier trying to tell the audiences?
The only plausible explanation I came up with is that Jack is Lars himself. Not in the literal sense, but all the ideas that Jack tells to the narrator, Verge, sounded so deeply personal and still conflicting with Jack's actions. It was almost like the stuff he did was just a fantasy, and then I thought, that maybe Lars tries to communicate with the audiences about his most personal thoughts on art, cinema, history, human condition, lust, power, etc. He even shows his clips from his own movies.
The House that Jack Built almost redeemed itself towards the end. It wasn't going to be a good movie for me, but still, worth the silly explanations and way too long runtime. The final scenes, where Jack sees the unreachable fields of Elysium and the uncrossable chasm out of Hell.
Everything in the end comes into the final conclusion that no matter what a person is chasing, the chase will devour the chaser, because humans are limited beings. The House must be a metaphor for Lars' career, his life, or his own limitedness (mortality).
Matt Dillon does a great work here. The music was nice. Still it's way too long and the ending is just as silly as the events leading towards the end. The script feels like it was written in one sitting and purposefully left that way, without changing anything.
Doom (2005)
Zero expectations for the rewatch, still disappointed
I saw this movie about 10 years ago and I've been playing the brilliant new DOOM game recently and I thought that the first person scene in the end was OK enough to justify a late night rewatch.
The Rock plays the Rock, like he pretty much always does. I like the idea of making him the villain and Karl Urban the protagonist for the end, but it happens so late in the movie that everything leading up to that single good idea doesn't save this movie. I can't remember anyone else in the main team except for the Rock, Urban and the rookie stoner. Karl Urban does an ok job playing the serious face, but I'll watch Dredd if I want to see a good action movie led by him.
Poor Rosamund Pike. In one point she does her best to do the science explanation mumbo jumbo for the audiences but then she has to scream when a monster appears. Pike looks so awkward in that one scene, but I'll "blame" the script and the director rather than her.
Music was forgettable and after playing the 2016 game it made this even worse, since the game has such an awesome soundtrack. There's so much wasted potential here.
The movie looked bad even 10 years ago and even though the effects of scenes looked prettier back then, the movie utilizes the classic shaky camera too much and there are way too many cuts to make the movie enjoyable. It's too dark, shaky and bland to be enjoyed. Even the first person shooter scene in the end wasn't that special.
Watch the game walkthrough rather than this waste of time.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
I miss the first Iron Man
Back in 2008 Iron Man felt really a fresh breath on the blockbusters. It adopted its source material really faithfully in the vein of big budget action adventure movies. Despite the predictableness, the movies was really funny and it was fun to see the good guy smash the bad guy in the end. Good laugh and a fun to behold. Iron Man 2 was nothing special and Iron Man 3 is a whole review of its own.
The Thor trilogy, however, is really just sad, wasted opportunity.
First Thor was so dull and bland. It was the most obvious setup for the Avengers in phase one and felt nothing more than a paycheck for everyone involved. The Dark World absolutely wasted the great Christopher Ecclestone, I really wish they'd given the opportunity for him to get his thing going on with Chris Hemsworth in their scenes. Instead of this, they decided it'd be better to reduce him to nothing more than a dull joke.
They went all in the dull jokes in Ragnarok. This movie is just the mediocrity of the Dark World combined with Guardians colour palette and jokes, endless amount of unfunny jokes. The plot is yet again the old "something wants to destroy everything, main character must discover the way to prevent this", and the few serious scenes trying to explain this conflict feel awkward among the swarm of clunky dick jokes.
The few scenes where they let Tessa Thompson, Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth just talk to each others like normal people do, the movie feels real and funny. Those scenes are very few, most of the time everything is interrupted with a really awkward joke. Idris Elba was awesome, but Heimdall feels so weird in this movie. He's super serious when everyone else isn't. Anthony Hopkins' line delivery was the funniest part of the film.
There's something wrong with practically every character (except for Loki, I guess). Hela stabs Thor and gouges his eye (the makeup is so ugly), but she mumbles when she has to talk about executor executing people. Ha ha. Skurge is maybe the most worthless character in the whole series. Thor ranges from being a childish idiot to a hero of the day who cheats his brother, who's supposed to be a trickster god or something. Valkyrie being a badass drunk doesn't feel real at all. Surtur looks like a PS3 cutscene. The Warriors Three get treated like they weren't ever there in the previous movies. Jeff Goldblum plays himself in this movie. Hulk's voice sounds like its completely unfinished, I had to check that my speakers were working normally. Korg is probably Taika Waititi's final middle finger to the audiences and the producers.
The bigger these movies get, the smaller these stories go. Some Marvel movies feel like the directors want to make adventure movies, but the producers want to make children's movies. These movies are starting to feel really weird. Everything shown is told to the viewer by the characters. Literally everything.
Thor Ragnarok is probably the Schindler's List for people who paid to see all the Transformers movies.
This was almost as bad, lazy and uninspired as Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I'll add rate this one star higher for the slightly better actors and some nice looking green screens and special effects.
Can't wait for the next reboot in 10-20 years.
Sound from the Deep (2017)
Ambitious but clichéd and clunky
This is a very generous 4/10, I really don't have too many good things to say about this Lovecraftian short film. The landscape shots and special effects looked great and Sofia's actor did good.
I really wanted to like the movie but I can't overlook the clunky acting, nonexistent thrills and bad sound mixing and a cheesy ending. I wished for a more psychological approach instead of this.
When they first hear the sound it gets messed with the soundtrack and overall it sounds a bit bad, it would've been a lot more scary if they'd cut off the background music. A man shouting in a room sounds more like he's in a different room, again, because the soundtrack gets too loud there.
Scenes at the table look very bad, the camera angles were really distracting and the actors seemed bored. Some of the lines (it's gas, what else could make that sound) are terrible.
I didn't like the lead actor at all. He looks like he wasn't really cast and he somehow accidentally got caught in the filming process and he didn't want to say anything. His character felt nothing more than a prop reacting to stuff around him. It really didn't feel like he was going crazy at all, just frowning and saying lines in front of a camera.
Annihilation (2018)
Pseudointellectual nonsense adventure movie gone beyond bad
The premise of the movie is that something called The Shimmer has been expanding for three, I repeat, three years in a national park. The officials have sent expeditions in with no one returning except Natalie Portman's husband Oscar Isaac who remembers nothing about it. The Shimmer is like an instagram filter that's begun to remix the DNA of literally everything that's caught in. Lead scientist covering the event explains that it's "a religious event, an extraterrestial event, a higher dimension - we have many theories, few facts".
I thought this line 15 minutes into the movie was really nice and I had high hopes for this. I can't believe how wrong I was. The further the movie explores the concept, the less sense everything makes. The plot was beyond stupid and if there had been even one single rational person in the movie, this film simply wouldn't exist.
If the Shimmer got treated like they handled an extraterrestial threat in, for example, Arrival, it'd be a completely different movie. In Annihilation they just head straight into the Shimmer with a rifle and a backpack. The Shimmer has grown for three years and when they go in there they find out that their radios don't work in there. I'd think they could've tested that during those years pretty easily but who cares about logic, it's just a stupid adventure movie, let's head towards the danger and wait for everything to work out conveniently.
Acting ranged from passable to horrible, but especially the dialogue felt really forced and shallow. The only two reasons the characters had anything to say was to 1) wonder how everything is so strange and mysterious 2) to explain the messy plot to the viewer.
I love Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Alex Garland and science fiction so I can't understand what went this badly wrong here. It feels like several different people wanted to tell their own story and the end result is such a horrible and silly mess. I'm pretty sure that this movie is going to age like a can of butter that's left outside for the summer.
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
I shouldn't have watched the trailer
Jake Gyllenhaal is becoming one of my all time favourite actors but his performance alone doesn't carry the rest of this movie with him. I enjoyed his scenes but the rest of the movie is bland, boring or laughable. There could be an interesting movie beneath all the forced pretentiousness in here.
The trailer shows pretty much literally everything worth seeing in the movie. The rest of the movie was just people explaining the plot to the viewer, it's nothing you haven't seen before. Characters throwing embarassingly obvious metacommentary about the current state of whatever just made me feel annoyed. Art, movies, superheroes, this movie tries to say something about everything.
Director Dan Gilroy's previous movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler, was such a thrill to watch. Did Netflix have something to do with the quality of the movie? All the Netflix Originals I've seen recently have been really formulaic and bad, like The Discovery or Annihilation.
I really wanted to like this movie. If you are interested, definetely skip the trailer and go watch this as your everyday average thriller with zero expectations.
Climax (2018)
Hypnotic, beautiful, thought-provoking, silly, and a bit boring
What a film. When I wasn't mesmerized by the insanely beautiful dance scenes, I was bored to tears by the characters explaining the plot each other or trying to cover my laughter in the theatre. Some of the scenes were hilarious. I'd really like to avoid using the word "pretentious", but the dialogue, or general interaction between some of the characters felt pretentious. Weird for the sake of being weird. Which is sad, since most of the scenes manage to capture the eerie euphoria of the party perfectly.
The party is a joy to see and hear. The soundtrack was nothing short of perfect, but after two visually stunning first two "parts", the third part is somewhat bland looking.
I wish there'd been more of the good stuff. The movie turned out to be pretty lame, I was told that this movie is terrifying. It was, but I really mostly laughed at the movie, in a positive way. It's definetely not a bad movie but I wish they'd delve a bit more into world of lust they explore very well.
The kid was great.
Archer: Honeypot (2010)
One of the best episodes
This episode feels such a classic Archer episode. It's full of politically incorrect humour and quirky dialogue. Episode flows like a charm. I've watched this episode tens of times and it makes me laugh every time.
The plot, revolving around the seduction of a gay enemy agent, is full of clever comments on stereotypes. A potentially controversial topic is handled with a professional touch, the creators really did great work overall on this episode.
Great episode to introduce your friends to the weird and funny world of Archer!
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Bite nails or pull earlobe?
I'll start off by saying that I've only watched the first season of Black Mirror. The National Anthem is absolutely terrible and ridiculous. Fifteen Million Merits manages to be even worse. Luckily The Entire History of You was a good episode revolving around a very interesting and even a possible topic.
Next off I'll mention, that playing Heavy Rain was one of the biggest video game disappointments of my whole life. The "interactive drama" thing really didn't quite touch me, all the choices felt so artificial and forced. Two similar games, Telltale's Batman and Life Is Strange were possibly among the worst games I've ever played in my life.
Heavy Rain, Life Is Strange and Telltale's Batman had all a similar problem. The choices didn't feel real, everything in the games felt like slightly alternative paths to a mandatory conclusion, instead of a real, authentic freedom to choose what the main character gets to do.
I feel we are still very far away from succesfully attaching choices to video games.
Black Mirror's first season felt very ambiguous, but the execution was weak. I didn't start watching Bandersnatch with any expectations, other than hoping it wasn't a complete trainwreck.
The main character is really annoying, most of his attempts at being serious or sad are just laughable. All the interactive choices feel so artificial. I like the idea of trying something entirely new, but the "default" plot and the choices the viewer "gets to choose" are just getting to the mandatory ending where the main character realizes he is inside a Bandersnatch game himself.
The interactivity is merely a gimmick and without it the story is still weak, the plot makes no sense and the characters are uninteresting.
I'll add one star for the soundtrack, and another for at least attempting something new. That's never a bad thing.