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Oblivion (2013)
Joseph Kosinski's 2nd big budget snooze-fest
The beginning looked promising and raised questions, but then the plot and action boredom kicked in and I lost my interest. Run-of-the-mill bombastic orchestra-like music highlighted all the generic "tight spots" and "last minute saves". I wanted so badly to do whatever else, like get out or check for new emails but I endured.
Ditching the action and replacing the music with something more fitting, and refining the plot could have saved this movie. Maybe even insert some desperation, humor or one-liners? I don't know since I'm not a director, but one thing is sure: I won't be watching any more of Kosinski's movies unless someone convinces me otherwise with flawless reasoning.
+1 for visuals and +½ for working but uninspired plot, for a grand total of 1½/5.
Skyfall (2012)
A fine mess mirroring our time
*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
The attempt at making a smaller-scale Bond with the plot revolving around a personal vendetta did not work. Some Random agent gone nuts - which MI6 hosed - wants payback. I could not make myself care about the man's issues or reasons. The dialogue throughout the movie was dreadfully dull and uninspiring - same goes for the characters. There wasn't even one real joke or attempt at lifting the mood which at least in older Bond movies was the norm.
They murdered the Bond girl. Just like that to show how evil the Random agent gone nuts supposedly is. Thanks to the same guy we also get the most remarkable computer-related doohickey for quite some time. The plot's pacing heavily leans on terribly executed and utterly unbelievable magic, which the writers probably mistook for "hacking". I can't fathom what they had in mind but repeated use of awkward magic steadily maims audience's immersion into a thousand pieces.
After that treatment, probably the most touching part of the movie was the destruction of the Skyfall manor. Every engraved wood panel and chiseled stone block was, unlike this movie, a piece of art in itself. And they leveled it all for the purposes of making fleeting entertainment for Western consumers.
About cinematography: Thanks to digital video capture, dark scenes were immaculately clean, but the image fell apart in brighter outdoor scenes. I don't appreciate the looks of light sources and lighter tones in digital video. It is too big of a tradeoff to get a cleaner picture. Colors were quite realistic (read: boring) which suit the overall tone of the movie well.
Nevertheless the movie had some inspired shots, including a silhouette fistfight against a skyscraper-tall advertisement, sailboat in ocean and again some silhouettes against a burning manor on the moors. The highlight probably was when drowning Bond shot an underwater flare, lighting the water below thin ice and contrasting marvelously with the light of the burning manor above.
A true Bond fan does not leave a Bond movie unwatched, but it is difficult to invent reasons to go watch Skyfall with any great haste. Cinematography saves select parts of the movie, but overall Skyfall is not worth seeing even just for the visuals.
The Dream Catcher (1999)
I wouldn't watch this again
I watched the movie with a couple of my friends. We waited for whole movie to something important to happen, the movie to really start, but no. Nearly hour and a half is wasted for pointless rampaging and meaningless dialogue.
The main guy, Fred, just happens to pair up with Albert, a teenage boy, who is one of the most irritating characters I've ever seen. He's a kleptomaniac, who just takes whatever he lays his hands on. Fred isn't much better, but at least he manages to keep his mouth shut most of the time.
They wander around USA driving with a stolen car, sometimes hitchhiking. Fred tries to get money from his uncle, because Fred is too lazy to actually find a real job, but it appears that his uncle doesn't have any. After that Fred decides - Albert is just hanging along - to find his father, to get some money from him. Actually he gets what he wants, since Fred steals some money from a parking house's cash desk, where his father is doing night shift.
Finally they - Fred and Albert - meet some random woman, and Fred doesn't even hit her. At the same time Albert fails stealing a watch from a local store. Police picks him up and send him to welfare authorities. After all the letdowns Fred just decides to go back where he left, and the movie ends.
If the movie had some sort of deeper message to the audience, it didn't make it obvious enough. There were some images of an actual dream catcher, but they simply threw it away.
No wonder that not that many people have seen this movie.