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Whiplash (2014)
Nonsense
Predictable Kirate Kid remake at the drum set. Besides some cool drum-lines and jazz performances here and there the storyline is infantile. Can't Hollywood think of an original storyline. I could have predicted the ending in the first 10 minutes.
At various points it just descends into comical farce, but not in a good way.
It also sends the damaging message to everyone that abuse between teacher and student ends up being beneficial, so in the end the film defends and supports that abuse.
How this film can ever be considered to be in the top 100 movies ever made is beyond me.
Never Let Me Go (2010)
Original premise and looks like a work of art but disturbing for the wrong reasons
To enjoy the movie we need to suspend disbelief and a myriad questions about a generation of kids bought up by the state (presumably, we are not really told) only to donate their vital organs to prolong the lives of others more fortunate than themselves.
It is all done beautifully in period style, if a little slow moving for some people's tastes. Many parts of the movie look like works of art and really made me question about our lives and its value and purpose. It is a deeply existential film, in the sense that it makes no moral judgement on situation faced by the clone donors in the film, which both gives it its art-house feel but also exposes some big issues in the plot.
The problem is the lack of humanity becomes more and more troubling as we go on: * firstly the humanity in the "donors", in that even as children when they are told about their fate, they respond with such acceptance that it seems inhuman. Are they really just biological "meat" without a soul? If they were just biological robots, we could accept it perhaps, but the film is deeply ambivalent about this as the central plot is a love story between donors, presumably of which only humans are capable? * the humanity of a society that would accept the rearing of children to be donors and live a short life. Creates so many issues that are utterly avoided. Not even a hint of how this immoral system could exist.
Because the film makes no judgement or gives any degree of insight or clues on these two points of humanity we are left with deeply unresolved puzzles, and in the end the film just seems to question humanity itself - if that is the overall point, it's a depressing conclusion.
The Cove (2009)
American propaganda
Let's face it Americans are in no position to start preaching on animal welfare and the environment, after killing pretty much every living thing in their own region. You can already imagine this film without even watching it - the usual Michael Moore type of affair, starting with stacks of emotive footage about dolphins and their intelligence and so on and how these American activist world saviours are going to save them and how the Japanese are all supposedly poisoning themselves with mercury buy eating dolphin meat and so on and so on, whilst completely missing the cultural complexity surrounding the hunting of dolphins and its tradition.
The film has few redeeming qualities. The bloodbath footage at the end is just shocking, emotive and leaves us with no answers. To tackle this problem is to understand clearly its cultural basis in places like Japan and the Faroe Islands and this film makes zero effort to do that.
It's understanding of the situation is not unlike a bunch of Jewish people going to a pig farm in America to film pig slaughter.
The Art of Flight (2011)
these idiots should not be allowed off the mountain
This gets two stars for some awesome snowboard HD footage to show whats possible at the limits of HD and snowboarding technically and good choice of music.
Other than that its like jackass meets snowboarding without the comedy as rich white US trustafarians with lifelong trusts from mom and dad get to travel the world without a brain with the most awesome RED camera.
The wrong type of comedy comes when we are shown how they delight in smashing up trees with their snowboard, blowing up propane containers, shooting up stuff in Alaska with high powered weapons for fun and thrills.