vossdoug

Good Burger being a childhood favorite of mine, I couldn't help but feel excited upon hearing that there would be a sequel to the then-25-year-old-film. Needless to say, I was left disappointed by this lame addition to the series.

While nowhere near a masterpiece, the first film is at least consistently funny and entertaining. It also has serious messages about personal responsibility. This film manages to be only occasionally funny. Most of the jokes are just recycled from the first film and told in a clunky manner. The first film, while a bit ridiculous, did have a sense of believability to it; this one pushed the absurdism way too far to have any semblance of realism. The message at the end of the film is a trite story on friendship that's been done a million times before and had no real impact. It seems they tried to pad the plot with 1,000 celebrity cameos, which to somebody's surprise did not, in fact, improve the movie. Also, why did Dexter seem so surprised at Ed's antics? They've been friends for like thirty years.

If the IMDb rating system had decimals I'd give this one a 5.5, but I'll round it up to a 6 since I'm feeling generous and some scenes did make me laugh.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a seriously underrepresented topic in cinema. This film, along with In This Corner of the World and Black Rain, may be the only ones that cover the event in-depth. While I have not yet seen the other two and thus cannot compare them, I can offer my commentary on Barefoot Gen.

First of all, the film did a very good job portraying the suddenness of the explosion-I was completely caught off guard by its extremely graphic depiction. It could have easily had a devastating emotional impact, and while it was still fairly disturbing, it was dampened by the odd writing. It felt as though they were trying to dumb it down for children, even though this is clearly not a film meant for kids. Few scenes are truly absorbing although it still did a good job realistically portraying the struggles of the bomb's survivors. Another complaint would be that the children seemed oddly precocious for their ages.

Therefore, I withhold two stars because while it was a powerful and eye-opening depiction of a terrible event, it could have been truly great if it had been more adult-oriented.

"Threads" is commonly regarded as the most realistic nuclear apocalypse film out there, and it may very well be. Having heard many horrific things about the film, I approached it with caution. I wasn't quite as shocked as I expected to be but the film does have a tendency to sink into you.

The acting is fairly good. The production values are a bit dated but still pretty good for the 400,000-pound budget it had, though the fiscal restraints do show in some scenes. The storyline is pretty effective though perhaps could've been better. The narrated info bits were kind of weird though it is important to keep in mind that this was a BBC film meant to be educational. The exposition felt a bit underdeveloped but did a decent job setting the tone for the film. What the film did most effectively was show how all aspects of society fall apart. I thought the time skips were a bit wide but it did go a long way to show how even years and years after the bomb goes off, the world still hasn't recovered and likely will never be the same for a very long time. The thought of this is very chilling, especially realizing how easy we have it now and how it could all just unravel overnight. It's rare when a movie manages to get under your skin like this, and for that it has my respect. What I would like to see is a remake of this using modern technologies.