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arctichome
Reviews
Zonbi asu (2011)
Zombie Ass > Army of the Dead
Being on a Noboru Iguchi kick, it was inevitable that I watch this. Not exactly high praise, I know, and I needed a friend to watch it with me, but I feel strongly that this should be seen by many people. Ideally one would watch this and Army of the Dead together. I'd wager more people would have fun watching Zombie As than anything written by Zack Snyder. Even on its own it is a delightfully awful live-action hentai, and I honestly don't want to know the kinds of people who wouldn't laugh at this.
Everyone involved obviously had fun making this crap, and even though I rate it higher than AotD, Iguchi and Snyder do have something in common: they both make feel like I could be a director.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Minus 8 stars for the terrible writing. The rest is decent, or even great.
I think more than any other movie, the popularity of this one disappoints me the most. That the majority of people that watched this thought it was good leaves me with little choice but to suspect most people of being morons until proven otherwise. Of course, this doesn't mean that most people are "bad", in fact I wager most folks are either/or at different times, so perhaps it's good that geniuses aren't flooding the streets, lest they do some real damage in their "bad" moments. In any case, my self esteem is less shaken than ever with the success of A Quiet Place.
It's been a couple years since I saw this film, so I'm not going to go into great detail, but with the sequel out I feel the need to emphasize this first outing's status as a writing disaster. The problem lies in how much the film demands you grant it. We all have a threshold of how much contradiction we're willing to overlook, and again, the success of this movie chips away at what little hope I have for humanity, because not a scene goes unscathed by paradox-tempting stupidity. Whether it's the survivors of the ear-monster apocalypse letting their youngest child trail 30 feet behind with his new noisy toy, or monsters that are so easily confused by noise that merely having a louder noise (like a waterfall) nearby allows you to be as loud as you please (the world's governments couldn't figure this out?), this film's characters and plot are hopelessly Swiss cheesed to hell. A Quiet Place is a sign of the times: people have no standards and they're fine with it.
Lao fu zi (1976)
The One Stooges
Baffling. Watching this with a friend was hysterical, but only because we could hardly believe what was happening. Can't see myself watching it twice, but I would like more people to know about it. Chinese comedy has always been exaggerated from my point of view, and this film like converting The Three Stooges into animation and then back to live action again without relinquishing any of the gags that animation made possible. This movie throws everything at the wall, picks up what doesn't stick and throws it again till it does. It's comedy by attrition.
Tenet (2020)
Not necessary to watch once, much less twice.
35 minutes into watching this, my buddy and I turned to each other sort of baffled and asked "this really sucks, doesn't it?". Then we marveled at the fact that only 35 minutes had gone by, as it felt like an hour.
This is a heartless film, and, despite years of tinkering, doesn't make any sense, because time travel is inherently nonsensical. People who say you need to watch it twice to understand are delusional, because time travel has never been logically consistent in any story. It's always a paradox, and therefore always impossible. It's a fun idea you can use to set up an unusual scenario, but any story that focuses on the time travel concept more than characters and situations is doomed to failure, and that's the case with "Tenet".
The movie has no characters to invest in. They're unrelatable, inconsistent, and boring. For example, the protagonist is at once an ultra badass that can take out a dozen goons with his bare hands and not scuff his expensive suit, and also the kind of guy to be manhandled by one or two goons when the story needs him to be helpless. And why the hell does he care about the woman? They have no history or chemistry. His drive is not explained.
It could all be somewhat salvaged (maybe a 5 out of 10) if there was at least some major spectacle on display, but the set pieces were all very underwhelming, and often just funny. First off, there's literally no "wow" factor to seeing video played in reverse 120 years after movies have become commonplace, so the "inverted object" scenes were a yawn. The "REAL AIRPLANE CRASH" was just a fender bender; proving real is not always better. And the big battle at the end is comical with half the soldiers running backwards, they look like such tools; but at least that aspect was entertaining, because the editing for the rest of the action sure wasn't.
Nonsense can be fun. Characters don't have to be great for a movie to be worth watching. Action can be subpar and still be of positive service to a film. But if your movie makes no sense, has no good characters, and the sights on display are unimpressive, then you better hope that at least your soundtrack is memorable.
Kocár do Vídne (1966)
Pretty much perfect
Gorgeous film. Sweet sad story. What I really appreciated was that it did not portray Germans as evil. Everyone in this movie is a human being. Typically I avoid any films about WW2 because the mainstream narrative on that topic is pure lies and atrocity propaganda, but "Carriage to Vienna" is just a good movie that doesn't overstay its welcome. I could put this on just for ambiance.
Life (2017)
Upper tier of alien slasher flicks.
I was pleased just to see such a focused film. Someone set out to make a monster movie, and that's exactly what was produced. Political propaganda has overrun most media, and it exists here, too, but not to the smothering point (I don't particularly appreciate that the genius scientist representing Britain is clearly not of the historical stock of Britain, but whatever).
Something I've noticed in the extremely negative reviews for this film is a total misunderstanding of certain scenes followed by a bunch of nitpicks that likely would not have been born if the reviewer had understood the scene he was angry about in the first place. For example, the "Derry let the alien attach to his leg!" complaint. Derry did NOT let the alien attach to his leg, he can't FEEL his legs. Of course I think these people know that Derry can't feel his legs, but are actually confused by the editing. When Derry notices activity in the hallway behind him all he sees is a utility strap floating freely, meanwhile the alien has attached itself to his leg. Later, when he's dying from blood loss he touches a lump on his pantleg, says "I'm sorry", and passes out. there's nothing to suggest he intentionally smuggled the alien.
There are things that don't make sense, or aren't well explained in the film, but I found all of it to be forgivable because the creature itself, and many of the sequences are so well done. Sometimes people are really deadset on hating something and thus unable to just grant a premise, but I doubt many of the super-geniuses that hate this film were so unforgiving to "The Terminator" with its inherently paradoxical premise.
Worth a watch/10