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Reviews
The Good Wife: Mind's Eye (2015)
An experimental, interesting episode!
Great to see mainstream TV experimenting! Not the usual flow of the show at all, very different, and interesting. I like to see how the writers portray Alicia's thought process.
Additionally, it's interesting to see a female character taken this seriously.
The music emphasises the art-house feel, and it's all a little Grand Budapest Hotel, but that's an interesting way to make a narrative piece.
It's a little unrealistic, obviously, because a book rather than a TV show would be the best way for the writers to show Alicia's thought process, but this works great too!
The Oranges (2011)
Terrible and ridiculous
Ridiculous, bland and terrible. There was no weight to any of the relationships. When the young girl tells her uncle that there are "no rules", she reveals the ENTIRE motivation of both characters.
There are no rules! So lets go to Atlantic City! And hey, if your partner of over twenty years walks out on you because you're sleeping with the child of her (and your!) best friends, well that's just a thing that happens!
The scenes between Laurie and Meester are quite bland, though they get more nauseating as their systematic destruction of their family relationships continue.
It just makes no sense.
Our Idiot Brother (2011)
Lovely, intelligent film
Such a keeper, this one. Sweet, gentle and caring. It shows human hypocrisy in the same breath as human capacity for love and understanding. A really gentle film about a guy who has no discrimination in his heart. It's sweet. We all need to know people who see the good in others and have good intentions, it helps us tone down our own cynicism and propensity for shrewd, self-serving behaviour.
This film also criticizes and shows the best of the hippie movement all in one, and I love it for that. Intelligent, gentle and sweet.
Do watch it. Paul Rudd gives a really love performance... that guy really can do a much wider range than he lets on with his dedication to light comedy. Great show all 'round. Lovely film.
La battaglia di Algeri (1966)
One of the greatest movies ever made
Is there another film that compares? I hope so. This is an inspiring and brilliant work, taking the side of truth and humanity rather than any particular side of a war.
It is very difficult to put into words. The film shows many points of view, nobody is a hero in general (but perhaps a hero in particular). There is a great deal of respect shown to human beings, and tragedy is treated equally. The utter brilliance of this film is in its honesty.
The director talks about "the dictatorship of truth" and this is in this film. It must have been tempting to make certain characters heroes and others into pure villains, but this wasn't done here. The personal sympathies of the viewer are really put to the test.
The Take (2009)
Gorgeous acting and production
The plot is just enough to keep you going. There's just enough, perhaps just a little less than enough, to keep the actors going, and to keep the producers producing. And for that reason this is a GREAT watch.
Tom Hardy's playing of Freddie is chilling yet human and very nuanced. Really worth a watch. And his wife, played by Kierston Wareing, is similarly well played. The entire cast is good, in fact. And the production is high quality.
**** SPOILERS ****
Very gritty, very interesting, and there is a very well-acted weird psychosexual crisis going on between Freddie and Jimmy.
The author (or just the screenwriter?) obviously doesn't know too much about gang life, but the timeline is reasonably spread out and and the clichés are largely tolerable. On the more unforgivable side of stupid, there's a token black guy who randomly gets killed.
Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007)
Brilliant and empathetic
Really worth watching. A great performance by Tom Hardy (it's serious but the comic parts are done very brilliantly too, with a touch of Boycie from Only Fools and Horses).
Benedict Cumberbatch was very good.
The greatest thing here is the script. And the greatest lines come from Stuart Shorter. He seems like he was a very intelligent and very capable man who had a hard life and who made some bad choices. The film neither glorifies nor judges, just presents. Very good writing (or transcribing from the man) and good film making.
Really worth watching.
Beowulf (2007)
Shockingly crap
AVOID. AVOID. AVOID. AVOID.
I watched this a long time ago. Not even the greatest fans of bad movies can appreciate this. Gone was the lovely flowing rhythm of the poem - gone was any potential message.
Instead, they managed to make you go "PICK ONE. LIVE ACTION OR CGI. PICK ONE." and somehow made Angelina Jolie look unattractive.
It's creepy, but in a Zack Snyder sort of way. AVOID.
It looks like a lot of effort, and it has a good cast billing. And Neil Gaiman helped write it. How they went so wrong I do not know. Even that racist, homophobic idiot Zack Snyder could blame the comic book 300 (although the fact that he made it and made it worse is a stunning accomplishment), the source material for Beowulf was BEOWULF.
Guh. Idiots.
300 (2006)
A RACIST piece of crap to feed the stupid.
This is a pathetic film. I don't mean to be destructive of whatever creative juices were flowing to get this thing created, but this film is stupid and insulting. And racist. Wtf. Big white beefcakes plundering Asian and African looking people? I was appalled and kept waiting for them to... put a twist on it. You know, APPEAR TO HAVE SOMEBODY WITH HALF A BRAIN AT THE HELM.
The brave 300? I was just repeating the poem in my head and trying not to face palm. Farcical images of men in underpants, horrific brutality and hyper-Sexualisation creating a ridiculously exaggerated... THING, complimented with bad acting and random accents (I think there was an Australian in there who didn't bother conforming so at least the stupid Americans would be uniform).
A piece of crap. Nice colors. A notable moment of hilarity was watching a bunch of men in underpants and swirling satiny robes declare that "this is gonna be a rough night." or some such macho... thing. The wall of dead bodies behind them took away from the homo erotic fun, sadly.
I can't believe this stupid f*cker has the nerve to take on The Watchmen.
Artistic? Yes. But it's like Nazi art. Fun to see, but utterly abhorrent somehow.