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Gia (1998)
For a 90's TV movie, it did not age poorly, but it's not that good. A generous 6.
Not spoiling anything that isn't in the keywords, but you can guess the whole story from the keyword "drugs." All drug stories are the same, whether it's model, rock star, athlete, etc.
Drugs damage one's relationships, finances, career and ultimately health. This story is another rise-and-fall story with drugs as the culprit.
Don't expect much in terms of cinematography, soundtrack, etc. a it is a 90's TV movie. There's a lot of nudity, which was a big draw for some at the time.
It's just okay. If you have nothing better to watch or do. Not the one for a big movie night.
Black Sails (2014)
It gets better, so much better, I swear.
I wasn't a huge fan of this show at first.
It was more "adventure" than "drama" if you know what that means. More light-hearted, simple, short-arc, event-driven, rather than having a bigger narrative, season or show-arc, etc. It quickly pivoted to the latter, becoming a captivating political drama.
It is similar to Game of Thrones (at its peak) - everything matters. The past matters, minor characters matter, backstories, previous episodes, throw-away lines, events, facts matter, from salaries, shares, fortifications, agreements, fresh water supplies, distance, votes, etc. It's all important.
No teleporting characters, no infinite-ammo guns, plot-armor, etc. The first season feels like it's one of those shows, but it quickly gets very serious.
A must watch.
Sleeper Cell (2005)
Low grade (4/10) version of Homeland (9/10). (No plot spoilers, just dialogues)
The writing is 2/10. The dialogue is inorganic and unconvincing, as if written by robots simulating how people talk. People speaking Arabic appear to stutter, pause mid....phrase and deliver... words without knowing what they mean. Their intonation, pace and delivery doesn't match what they're saying (from the subtitles).
The dialogues are nonsense and have no basis in the character's backstory. In one scene a father offers, insists on giving his son a Persian rug to decorate his "house" so that he can find a wife. Except the son doesn't live there, he's in the army and is deployed overseas. Is there no script supervisor? Showrunner?
Another father attempts to arrange his son's marriage, hooks him up with a girl and says that marriage is of utmost urgency. That plot is quickly forgotten.
In a Muslim Women's group, the organizer says that they only cover their hair in public where there are men, except the main character who only covers her hair when she is in that all-women group.
Some of the traditional clothing they wear in the Saudi Arabia scenes is traditional Arab wedding gowns. In the show people wear such costumes at home, with head-gear and everything, at home.
Not nitpicking, but this is as if Tommy Wiseau directed Homeland. It's not that bad to be funny, but not that good to be enjoyable.
There are a lot of existential and philosophical questions about Islam, religion, freedom, the West, identity, etc. but they're dropped in the most random places - existential discussions at the cashier of a bodega or the gas pump. They could've built up these discussions over a long car ride, but instead they happen in a 2-minute scene in a parking lot as they move a barrel of something.
There are a lot of contrived actions by the characters, doing something completely irrational and out of character just to increase the suspense - committing minor crimes for no reason when they need to be the most careful. (ONE SPOILER) - after a long journey of keeping undercover, avoiding people, not bringing any attention to themselves and have one final step remaining, a character decides to buy and use drugs a walking distance from the border, telling the other, a wanted fugitive, "you need to learn to relax."
Abysmal writing. Everyone else (camera, sound, etc.) tries to save their train crash. They get it up to 4/10.
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne (2019)
And now my watch is ended.
Good bye, Game of Thrones.
You were once loved, but you turned into a zombie of your former self.
What is dead may never die.
Fans of D&D, I wish you good fortune in the trash to come.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015)
Interesting start, gets boring as time goes by
This is like a primer for people that know nothing about Scientology, its origins, practices or high profile cases. The more you know about it, the less interesting it gets because there's very little original discovery in the documentary.
The beginning was very, very interesting. The first 48 minutes had me glued to the screen. It is a biography of LRH. The rest of it, if you're old enough or read enough, is all from the news.
Kongen av Bastøy (2010)
Brutal and powerful
I was surprised by the level of brutality in this film, both physical and psychological.
The psychological abuse was even more of a weight than the physical - mind games, blame, isolation, collective responsibility and punishments, shaming, repeated shows of system's strength and of the children's weakness and helplessness - it felt like a mix of a nightmarish boarding school, a kind of cult or Nazi camp for brainwashing and a slave-labor camp for prisoners of war, not of young offenders, many of whom sent for petty crimes.
The kids don't have any visitors from family, they don't seem to have any kind of free time for any leisure whatsoever - there is no escape from the drudgery, yet despite being putting their heads down and accepting their lives as slaves, the corrections officers still abused the prisoner-laborers physically, mentally and sexually.
Yet it's the hope that sometimes kills you. The location of the island, so close to the mainland yet so far from everyone, makes it worse. Unlike Siberian prisons where there really is no hope of escape, this one is close enough to freedom that kids get the idea that they could make it. The guards have no dogs, no fences, no barbed wire, so there's hope for escape, but winter and hunger will catch up with you.
The soundtrack is haunting and fits perfectly with the desolate, hopeless environment.
The movie really sucks you in and you empathize with the kids in it, getting enraged at the injustice of it all.
It's difficult to watch, but it's a must watch for fans of film.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Pointless, barely entertaining
The casting was good, the acting was good, the locations, direction, editing, of course, it was all Hollywood-grade stuff. There was nothing out of the ordinary for a big-budget Hollywood film. But the script?
Yeah, the script wasn't good. It was so bad that I'm not sure if the story itself was good and if there's any way that this could've been fixed.
I have been told that there are other adaptations of this story, but now that I know the story and the outcome, I'm not sure why I would watch them.
Molly's Game (2017)
Very entertaining, but not great, rewatchable or timeless
A seven out of ten is a fair rating, but the story is a little bit understated.
The voice over is a major complaint for most people, but to be fair, it's probably the only way to explain some of the game scenes such as the calculations, odds, cards needed. In other films about sports, gambling or chess, this stuff is explained by the TV commentator. Since these were underground games, they were not aired on TV and so there's no commentator. The alternative would be to have people in the crowd explain it to each other for our benefit, or dead silence as we see poker faces computing odds and read each other's faces.
There are a lot of strange things too. Did Molly not have a boyfriend of some sorts? Or a friend? The film showed her having no significant other, no friends, but did not show how lonely it was for her and how money did not bring her happiness. She didn't seem all that sad to lose it either. She didn't even seem to spend it. They made her very robotic, with the exception of her father issues.
The dialogue was very witty and the quips were funny.
The film also glossed over the people that were coming to the games and the writing of her book. It could've been interesting if they integrate those two into the story - i.e. while writing her book, she learns something important about the people that were playing the game, or she discovers facts and information for her defence.
A good film overall.
Sriracha (2013)
Amazing documentary, even for non-Sriracha fans
I'm not a huge Sriracha fan myself - I just like the sauce, not love it, and I certainly don't have any Sriracha tattoos or anything of that sort. But this was a good documentary.
It was the perfect length, not too short and miss out on certain things and not too long and meandering. It really covers a lot of things - the production, the business, the origins, the history of the producer, the fandom, the history of Vietnam, the controversy of its true origin, etc. taking you from sushi kitchens to Thailand, from farms to college campuses.
It is quick and to the point, but still has a sense of a travel documentary.
It's entertaining, funny and informative. A must-watch for anyone interested in the sauce, the business or culinary culture.
The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012)
Highly overrated, deeply disappointing
So many things wrong with this film. Where to start?
The script is weak to begin with and I'm surprised that so many people worked on something that resulted in this mess.
Maybe too many cooks? Perhaps. When you see the director writing the script, you start to wonder a little, but when the lead actor has a hand in the script, it's a serious red flag.
For one, they could've cut it better. The story does not need to be linear. For example, they could've shown a flashback of Elise moving furniture out, making us think that she's moving out, only to reveal that she's making room for the baby's room. Then show us the current time of Elise really moving out. Smart editing tricks like that. Events that trigger flashbacks and past-present parallels.
Then there are inexplicable things in this film. Didier rants about the US cutting spending on stem-cell research. Elise should've just told him that the US is not obligated to save a Belgian baby or spend money on cancer research. It is their country and their money. It doesn't matter what their reasoning is, whether it is Jesus or Santa. Europe is not a third world backwater. Elise should've told Didier that if he wants to research stem cells, he should perhaps study science rather than play in a band.
The child's battle with cancer is not explored. The child faced a dead-end with treatment. We could've seen something like this:
It would be better for the film to show something like this: Child: "I'm done. I want out. I can't take this anymore.. I won't get better." Dad: "How do you know you won't get better? You don't know that." Child: "The same way you know there is no God. I just do."
Didier wants his child to keep on believing and hoping when there is no doubt that death was imminent. Show him as a hypocrite who wants the child to believe in an unrealistic and impossible future but not an afterlife. If the child shouldn't believe in a life after death then how would she believe in ever seeing an 18th birthday when science says that won't happen? Didier's hypocrisy is never explored.
The parents' blame game was not explained. When Elise screams at Didier for his family having cancer genes he says nothing. He doesn't tell her "I told you I didn't want a baby. You insisted." This is all true, so why didn't he say it? She wanted a baby with a man with cancer genes. He told her he didn't want one. How can she yell at him for the child getting cancer?
Elise, the mother, drank and smoked while she was pregnant. Didier started drinking heavily near the end of the pregnancy and when Elise was in labor. Why not show these things? Why do we get this information through dialogue?
The news shown in the background could've been handled much better. In this film we first see news of 9/11 and the war on terror, which Didier ignored. Then we see the ban on stem-cell research which incensed Didier. It's too contrived. Didier's kid gets cancer, there's no hope but stem-cell research, then he turns on the TV and guess what? Bush banned stem-cell research. What are the chances?
A better way of showing all these things is to simply rearrange them. We see the war on terror and Didier is indifferent because it doesn't affect him. We then see Bush ban stem-cell research on the news and Didier is indifferent again because his kid doesn't have cancer and this means nothing to him. Then he hears of stem- cell research and discovers that it has been halted. Then he gets angry. Then subsequent news about the war in Afghanistan or Iraq would incense him even more, than money goes to death rather than saving lives. Make him a hypocrite, make him flawed. He didn't care about the halting of stem-cell research or the wars before, now it's all he talks about.
The rearrangement would've told a better story without adding anything new.
But the film is clearly on the side of Didier, rather than a neutral look at the situation.
The conflict between secularism and atheism in this film is not linear. Didier is angry at the Catholic church and certain American denominations (condoms, abortion, stem-cell research) but takes out his anger at his wife who believes in her own religion of reincarnation (her child could come back as a bird or star). He groups all faiths together, but that makes no sense. People that believe in reincarnation of children as birds are not the ones who halted stem-cell research.
Ranting at Belgians for the actions of Americans is like screaming at Indians for Japan's actions in WWII, or ranting at a Muslim belly dancer because of the Taliban's dress code or ranting at a Belgian director about this year's Oscars. Belgians, Christians or not, had nothing to do with the election of Bush or stem-cell research.
Didier is in an imaginary war against all faiths because his daughter died and the film presents him as somewhat reasonable by not having anyone challenge his beliefs or arguments. They are presented as valid. Some religious folks in one particular country stopped stem-cell research. Other religious folks in the US did not. The rest of the world had nothing to do with it either way, especially ones that believe in reincarnation-as-birds whose religion has nothing to say about any kind of research whatsoever. China, Japan and India are also religious and have non- rational belief systems. They're still doing lots of research. Why can't he see that?
Oh, because it's not relevant to the plot.
A highly-contrived religion vs secularism story filled with massive grouping of unrelated groups together, false equivalence, collective responsibility, etc.
Memento (2000)
Great film with a great plot twist
A critical review of a film I liked.
I saw this film when it came out and rewatched it again, knowing what the twist was. It is a great film, but once the twist is revealed, there's not much else in it.
There aren't memorable or iconic shots, locations or scenes, memorable or quotable lines or dialogues, soundtrack or strong characters. The timeline doesn't allow for much character development, but characters are still one dimensional - they are who they are and that's about it. We only get to see a thin slice of time, so don't expect character growth or change, but one could still expect strong, unique, memorable characters. There's none of that.
There isn't much of a sub-plot or other threads competing for our attention or making the story deeper or more complex.
The locations were also anonymous. Everything is there just to serve the twist. There is nothing more, nothing less. It would've been interesting to be lead to a false conclusion before the reveal, or have elements that raise doubt or debate in the viewer's mind - there's none of that.
My biggest complaint is that the film is not that enjoyable for the duration of the film, except the ending. If one were to leave before the end, he would not have enjoyed the film at all, whereas that is not the case in most films. As someone who rewatched it knowing the ending, parts of it felt boring.
This was not a great film with a twist at the end, but a great twist with an okay film at the start. I never find myself googling quotes from the film, searching youtube for great scenes from it, don't remember the soundtrack at all.
Compare this with Fight Club or Inception, where the soundtrack, characters, scenes, events and lines have such a lasting impact on viewers. But those are different films with bigger budgets, so I'm not penalizing Memento for that. I'm penalizing it for not being very enjoyable without the ending.
I still give it an 8/10 because although it does one thing, it does it very, very well.