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Reviews
Man Push Cart (2005)
Boring, SLOW, utterly devoid of passion or interest
If you like long scenes of a guy sleeping in a subway, or smoking (endless!) cigarettes, close-ups of him staring into nothing, or just wandering around NYC at night, this is the film for you! Although frankly it should only be watched by art school grads, I honestly can't think of any other realistic target audience. Insomniacs I guess?
We learn almost nothing about the main characters except they like to drink, smoke, and live on the margins in New York. What brought them there? We are given only small clues, and that is slooooowly drip-fed to the viewer, so that by the end we are left with far more questions than answers.
Ultimately, nothing happens and the director takes almost 2 hours to take us nowhere.
3/10.
Oh, and at NO point does a man push a cart. He sure pulls it a lot, and while that minute difference may seem pedantic, it does characterize this film well overall: a promising idea that fizzles mightily!
Bei xi mo shou (2015)
Stunning visuals ruined by total lack of context.
10/10 visually, 1/10 for everything else.
Mining is dirty; it is also essential for literally every aspect of our daily lives. Despite being billed as a documentary, and a lack of any actual dialogue, Behemoth still comes off a bit preachy - and leaves the viewer awed but ultimately unsatisfied.
Intermixing fantastic shots of several mines, a smelter, and a 'ghost city' is a nude narrator who spouts lines of poetry with gusto. Want to watch a miner make dinner? How about another get scrubbed clean? How about one taking his potted houseplant for a walk? Then this film is for you.
Want to know WHY any of this happens? How about the reasons why these people labour in one of the most rural (and poor) areas of China for their daily wage? Perhaps get some context on the perpetual trade-off between resource extraction and modern progress? Sorry, no answers for you!! Just more shots of sheep grazing, trucks rolling by, and later, a nuclear power plant.
The film is slow, the audio is annoying, but the mining shots are hellish and other-wordly.
While I get what the director is trying to do, he ultimately fails.
My recommendation is to watch the film at 1.5x speed and muted, and if you want to actually learn anything, read the wikipedia page after!
5/10.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Terrible snorefest that delivers only "pain, pain"
Horrible film with a ridiculously grating soundtrack...nonsensical thru and thru. Do you enjoy dialogue mumbled thru a cigar? Then this film is for you. The run time feels like double, and the editing was clearly done by high schoolers...it's jumpy and features endless panning scenes of the town with no one doing much of anything.
But the real joke is to call this a 'western', heck, even calling it an 'anti-western' isnt accurate...its a random, plodding, drama that just happens to take place out west. The only redeeming feature is the pretty Canadian wilderness, which unfortunately isn't shown off anough.
Altman fans are clearly masochists as this is supposed to be a better example of his work, and it left me swearing off his drivel forever! AVOID at all costs!!
Menace II Society (1993)
Exciting premise, very poorly made.
Yes this film is gloriously violent, and relentless in its assault on our senses...there's just nothing like it that so well defines the violence and hopelessness felt by many ghetto men of the era. But that doesn't make it a good movie.
To start, the acting is atrocious, and there's very little plot or direction. Characters come and go with minimal introduction, gone in a minute to reappear an hour later. Plot holes are gaping, if you can even keep track of the plot. Characters slur their speech, and it's so profanity laden that it's hard to discern what's being said. While I appreciate the realism of doing that, this isn't a documentary...why write in dialogue no one can understand? I get the feeling there wasn't really a script (or a lot got chopped in the editing room), and they just set up the cameras and rolled.
Above all, it's pointless. Sure I get that's ostensibly the point, that for these black men there's no way out, but they don't make much effort to try them trying, and yet multiple scenes are given to talk of 'Kansas' and 'Atlanta' without actually bothering to show any real drama about the decisions being made... we're left to assume getting out is an option, just that nobody takes it.
Overall it's just amateurish, compared to far better films in the genre like Dead Presidents or Boyz in the Hood. One positive is the sets, filmed on location they are superb, and it definitely feels you're in the middle of the action. But otherwise, it's just a waste of time. 4/10.
Revenge (2017)
Absolutely terrible...it would have made more sense if she was an alien or a zombie!
Nonsensical, poorly acted, slow and boring...I only add 1 star for its pretty Moroccan sets.
Suspend all sense of reality for this badly written 'revenge' film. Have you ever asked yourself if a 110 pound woman can lose 111 pounds of blood and still run for miles and look good in her underwear? The answer, of course, is yes if these writers are to believed.
We also know that cauterizing an exit wound while doing nothing for the ENTRY wound won't affect healing, right? How about firing a shotgun with a superscope at pinpoint accuracy at 200 yards? Again, who we were to ever imagine that wasn't possible, in fact, it's all so simple that a L. A. model can do it with no training at all!
As I said, it would have made more sense if she'd been a zombie, alien, ghost, or even Jason Statham's twin sister but in the absence of that explanation it's just ridiculous, as is the entire film.
2/10. Avoid this stinker like a 3 hour old bloated corpse!
Playmobil: The Movie (2019)
Nowhere near good enough...
Very much 'meh'. Simplistic plot, passable voicework, boring music...its unlikely to meet even the lowest of 'fan' expectations. The few funny bits from Mr. Gaffigan and Daniel Radcliffe can't make up for the underwhelmingness of the rest. Nothing in the playmobil 'world' is ever explained, and other than the usual themes of teamwork, family, rah rah rah there's nothing memorable here. Better to spend 90 minutes playing with the REAL toys then watch this!! 4/10.
Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things (2015)
Boring look at interesting subject
Ultimately this movie is just a waste of time...it offers no useful tips or instructions on how to 'live' the minimalist lifestyle, instead being filled with various talking heads saying how it 'changed their lives' and 'made their life worth living'. We see the main duo walking/driving around to various events, interviews, etc. where they are to give a talk, but do we ever get to actual hear anything useful? no.
So, how? why? Tell me! Teach me! Many promises, no substance. Skip it. Spend the 79 minutes googling 'minimalist living' instead.
Super Trash (2013)
Poorly Edited, Surprisingly Boring, with rare moments of interest
Despite the interesting subject matter (man with camera spends 2 years living in a massive garbage dump in France) I just couldn't get into this. The editing is very poor...it jumps around so much there appears to be almost no 'beginning', continuity or real ending. There is almost no explanation or context of the events we witness and so you're left with endless moments of 'huh? what just happened?'. He finds a package of (unopened) discarded hot dogs and proceeds to open them and take a bite, but then immediately moves on to something else, ditto when he eats from some found tin cans...we don't even find out what was in the cans, did they make him sick? who knows! who cares! The director/protagonist seems to just like to see himself on camera doing bizarre and pointless things. In the end, I'm left to believe this film was made for an audience of 1...the director. For all else, it's a pointless waste of 2 hours.
Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away! (2014)
Reasonably entertaining look at a tough job; a bit repetitive.
Caught the first 2 seasons of this on Netflix. Most of the other reviewers have it plain WRONG as they're critiquing the job, not the show, to which I'd respond "Don't hate the player, hate the game!".
The show follows various different 'high court enforcement officers' in carrying out their daily jobs. Sadly, their job involves repossessing houses, apartments, cars and property from down-on-their- luck members of society, usually with either Sad, Pathetic, Hilarious, or sometimes Violent consequences.
The people they meet come from across the wealth spectrum in the UK, poor, middle class, and also wealthy. What they have in common is they didn't pay their bills; full Stop. If they'd paid, they would never have been in the situation, hence the show's title. Most times their predicament is their own fault (not paying rent for 8 months, house sitting in a mansion and then refusing to leave), but occasionally there's a tale that tugs at the heartstrings.
What people lose sight of is that there's always a 2nd party being wronged...it's not just the tenant being kicked out that's losing something. Several episodes discussed the landlords, who've often bought the property as a long term investment, like the seniors on a pension who can barely make ends meet as their tenant hasn't paid rent in 6 months and who leaves the apartment in a trashed condition to boot! Is it fair to have a system that doesn't have a recourse for them? No. Hence why this job (and the show) exist.
Overall it's a poignant, realistic look at a job that appears both tough and heartless, but plays an INTEGRAL part in keeping the gears of modern society in motion. 7/10.
ps. Would rate higher except the editing is crap...typical repetitive techniques of 'what's coming later' and 'what's already happened' really slow many episodes down.
Harsh Times (2005)
Waste of time
I'll start this review by using the cliché that I want my 2 hours back.
This film features an assortment of detestable, unlovable characters alongside a chaotic and slow moving plot. They go places, and do things, all the while moving toward the inevitable conclusion, which by the midpoint of the movie we've already figured out. There is an underlying theme of PTSD, but if the writers were trying to garner sympathy for the soldiers who suffer from it, they sure picked an awful individual. If anything, you leave more convinced that 'Jim' (Bale's character) was an crazy a-hole BEFORE he joined the army, and at least they unleashed him on the enemy, instead of the rest of us.
If you are a die hard Christian Bale fan, and think you'd enjoy him spending 2 hours talking in gang slang, and breaking every law in the book, then this is for you. For the rest of the 99.99% of us, there are much better choices. Save your life and don't watch this one.