nandoflorestan's Reviews

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

3/10

Popcorn; leave your brain at the entrance

11 March 2023

In my opinion it's like a Tarantino: very well executed, very well acted, very well directed, very well photographed, funny, but completely devoid of any semblance of an interesting or worthy world view. I had fun up to the middle and then I stopped caring -- it became completely boring when I realized they had nothing solid to say.

The philosophy defended in the story is just awful. A work of art, especially a sci-fi comedy such as this, requires a layer of meaning, which here is so wrong that I am not being unfair in considering it totally missing.

140 minutes that should either have been only 70 or turned into something worthy, instead of self-indulging in dirty jokes.

I am not a religious person; it's just that if you think about the one-sentence moral of the story, you quickly realize it's nonsense.

If you are looking for a sci-fi comedy, you are better off watching "Back to the Future" again, and there's no way this is as worthy of that, or worthy of all the praise. I predict everyone will have forgotten this film very soon.

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Dogtooth (2009)

2/10

Dull and lifeless

10 March 2022

Although the premise had so much potential, this film is dull, boring, monotonous and lifeless. Instead of creating some atmosphere, or showing that people will have a personality even under these circumstances, the director decided to depict all his characters as robots. No amount of gratuitous violence or robotic porn is able to shake the boredom, much less imbue the story with a message or moral to make the viewer's suffering worth it. Although many people will say "this is about totalitarianism", if you could force them to tell you what they learned about it that was new, they would certainly return empty-handed. The director would do well to remember that character studies are great, except when they are about robots.

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Hypnotic (2021)

2/10

Nothing but cliché

1 November 2021

Remember those old, bad movies in which evil Russian spies would use their advanced hypnosis to make innocent people carry out murders? Well, Netflix just made one more. And the only twist is, there's no evil foreigner.

There's absolutely no comedy in this. It's played straight as a thriller. The only problem is, there are zero thrills. The plot is more predictable than a kid with French fries. I confess I didn't get to the end - very atypical.

On the bright side, if you are a 12 year old screenwriter, now you know there's nothing stopping your script from getting filmed.

I don't think the film includes any clarification that this is not how hypnosis works at all. In fact, the whole thing smells of religious anti-therapism. Yesterday they had to deface socialism, now they attack psychology.

Anyway, the film is so dumb it becomes repugnant. By the way, the only character that likes opera is the villain...

I recommend you ignore this and watch Midnight Mass instead. Let's see a real twist on the tropes for a change.

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The Fundamentals of Caring (2016)

4/10

Okay but forgettable

5 October 2018

Watchable dramedy. The actors did their part. The problems are...

script full of clichés
mediocre direction and editing
godawful, horribly composed music that calls attention to itself.

The above situation is very common these days. The actors work their asses off but the powers that be don't do their part intelligently.

You won't die if you watch this, it's okay for a Netflix movie. You also won't remember it the following day.

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Blue Note (1991)

2/10

Curb your enthusiasm

8 August 2016

As a pianist and lover of Chopin's music, I really wanted to like this. But it's just an annoying artsy-fartsy mess in which multiple talents are wasted due to the poorest direction.

Director, you are a moron. Hysteria + hysteria + hysteria = boring. When all your "characters" are flamboyant, no one really is. All the portraits in this mess are failures because they have no individuality, they are all the same manic person -- who is this, you? You give it no rest for 2 hours... Such a pain to watch. You have absolutely no sense of contrast or rhythm. And by the way, Chopin's music does not work as background for constant hysteria. You are unworthy of making a movie about any of these people.

Viewers today will be expecting a little slice of Chopin's biography, but instead of doing this respectfully and getting out of the way, the director wants to steal the scene for himself. This is just a bunch of stuff that George Sand wrote, juxtaposed with no sense, care or taste. The direction given to the actors seems to have been, "Imagine a sane person saying this in a normal way, then do the opposite -- imagine you are Nicolas Cage". The result is incomprehensible and fails to portrait any of the famous personalities we could be interested in.

On a side note, viewers today also will be ignorant of the significance of these personalities. I am ashamed to confess I didn't know anything about Alexandre Dumas' son. No help is given -- the director is openly hostile to the masses.

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Deadpool (2016)

2/10

Funny but too violent

11 February 2016

The wacky humor is there, that's a plus and that's all that was needed. Unfortunately -- unlike the game -- the movie is extremely violent and full of gore and may cause nightmares. I like the jokes but find the unnecessary violence -- which includes torture -- in bad taste and it cancels out all the fun.

I haven't read the comics, maybe they are equally violent, but there's a way to film a violent comedy -- even a gory one -- without making it real. Take a lesson from Peter Jackson's "Braindead".

Missing from this movie is the fragmentation of his personality that pervaded the computer game. I wonder if the movie is true enough to the original character.

Avoid if you have any good taste at all. Else have fun.

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Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

2/10

"Thank you."

18 December 2015

Warning: Spoilers

This review contains mild spoilers, but not major ones.

You are going to see it anyway because you're addicted. But "The Force Awakens" is just a drug they're offering you -- more of the same. That's the specialty of director J. J. Abrams.

There is one original thing in the plot: a focus on a storm-trooper, for the first time. Alas, this character becomes less and less interesting as the writing loses itself.

Carrie Fisher is so bad here that I wish they'd hired Sigourney Weaver instead. It's a pity because her character, Leia, could be better explored, but with Carrie Fisher, it will never work.

Remember the character development of Han Solo in the original trilogy, which ultimately made this character grow to be worthy of marrying the princess? The writers redefine that -- the most important error in my opinion. But I've heard "Han Solo and the Princess" (I mean the love theme), so I know Episode 7 is a lie and they are actually soul mates, meant for each other.

Many viewers dislike the villain here. Nostalgia of Darth Vader is understandable, but he is dead and hard to replace -- can you invent a good alternative? So these spectators are wrong, they are just judging people by their faces or masks, and the villain is not the wimp he might appear to be, as the character ultimately proves. Even so, the character trade-off is not worth it...

"Star Wars" (the 1977 movie) will never happen again. Audiences then had never seen a star destroyer like that. They wanted Buck Rogers done right and they got the dogfight of their lives at the end (by the way, the elation created by that dogfight has never been surpassed). Everything was "created" then: light-sabers, spaceships, good versus evil, and the funny tension among heroes who seem to dislike each other but come together at the end. A fantastic religion was created with the help of Joseph Campbell, and it was an invaluable plot device that saves the hero at the end. Also the hysterical music of "The Planets", transfigured by a couple of genius musicians, brought an incredible amount of energy to the screen. "Star Wars" was the right thing at the right time. Never again will an audience be so shocked at actually seeing what they could only imagine before.

The correct way of watching the saga is finally frozen forever: watch only episodes 4, 5 and 6, then "Spaceballs".

When story repeats itself, it's first as a great adventure, then as satire, finally as forgettable slot-machine Hollywood sequels. The plot in TFA is a shameless remix of the aforementioned movies. It is VERY entertaining while you're seeing it (so yeah, it could be worse), and then when it's over you just know you lost your time, saw nothing new and learned nothing. It's a pastime: they pass your time.

Slot machines work -- as the Terminator sequels show only too well. Let's face it: TFA is to Star Wars as "Jaws: The Revenge" (1987) is to "Jaws".

I move that we make a great petition titled "Disney, reboot Star Wars 7". Let someone else attempt this with a more original script that doesn't rewrite characters of the original trilogy. I mean, Star Wars should not become Game of Thrones.

Better yet, viewers could remember what they once knew: sequels are generally not worthy of their time. The public could value originality higher.

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