Reviews

Being familiar with Israeli cinema and hating it, I have to say that I welcomed the idea of this movie when it was announced. Among tearful melodramas, unnecessary and unfair political films, boring war pictures and idiotic romantic dramas, Kirot stood, at first, as the refreshing example of the much needed genre cinema in Israeli film industry.

Just imagine following pitch: sexy Ukrainian woman is forced to work as a prostitute after being threatened and violently beaten. Then she gets a gun and forced to become an assassin, also becomes involved in a lesbian relationship with her neighbor. But when she is given an assignment that she doesn't like, she rises against her abusers and her former pimps in old fashion bloody revenge.

Sounds great, isn't it. Juicy, violent and gory exploitation flick in potential. In some places such idea could turn out to be "Thriller: A Cruel Picture", in others it could turn to be ""Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion", even "Kill Bill", but for some reason in Israel it turned out to be "Kirot", which is more an insult than a compliment.

So maybe no one actually intended to make an exploitation flick here (and really why not?), but this is besides the point. The movie "Kirot" is a pale shadow of any good expectations I've had about the film. Instead of daring plot, bold direction and uncompromising violence all we got here is a boring story with carton characters without any ability to be liked, crude and dull direction, forceful and artificial manipulation on the viewer, and finally many rip offs and little imagination.

And although camera work is somewhat innovative, sometimes even very nice (single shots), it feels disconnected and pointless in connection to the movie itself. Because every part should work together, here each part is pulling to a different direction.

Lerner is not a good director and even worse screenwriter. His rise as the next big thing in Israeli cinema is not surprising, because he is not representing anything new, only an upgrade of the old. You can imagine how bad the old school is if even the younger upgrade still fails where the majority of world cinema succeeds for many years.

A viewer should not spend his time justifying narrative flaws and implausible events, viewer should not be forced to feel sorry for a female character for a sole reason of her being abused by a man, and a viewer should not have only that feeling alone towards her. Seriously, for each character in this film you can only have one single emotion, so underdeveloped and caricature they are. It's like being back in kindergarten when they said to you - "a cow goes moo", because this is the only thing she goes.

Instead of telling a story, defining the characters by their actions, Lerner decides it is time to play very sad piano music while showing the heroine walking on the street and crying, for like 3 minutes. Then to show the depth of her inner desires, wishes and hopes he shows her painting a sad picture on the wall with black colors. So sad (wiping tears). Instead of showing characters trying to deal with the world around them, he shows them escaping it. Instead of showing some kind of character development, because people do change under harsh conditions of reality, he decides that his characters will remain the same, keeping same faces, same attitude, same problems, same idiotic ideals. The characters are stuck in their private hell, each one of them, without any ability to evolve and change. And maybe that was the point of the movie, but doing stupid things intentionally doesn't make them smart.

Which illustrates my point exactly - Israeli filmmakers are simply unable to change, unable to adapt themselves to the current world of film goers and filmmakers. All the talking about new approach, new style, are false statements from someone who doesn't understand what does it mean to be different and innovative. Same all drama, same old forced tears, same old unconvincing conflicts and same old dramatic weaknesses.

Looking for a new path, a fresh start, a new wave in Israeli cinema is still not dead, but it sure will not start with 'Kirot' or Lerner. I am still looking for a day when Israeli filmmakers will not act like homeless beggars, going to film festivals just to collect their season donations. Still looking for a day an Israeli movie will be actually remembered one year after its release, or at least will have more than one comments page on IMDb board.

When announcing the film production Lerner said that the movie will be about two chicks and lots of guns. Far from the truth. More like a depressing love story about people accepting their fate and unable to change. How very relevant in that area of the world.

This is rational and perspective review:

If created in US, this movie would be laughable, ridiculed by all, and reduced to its own special place on a shelf in your local video store. The main actor would receive invitation to be an extra in a movie directed by Dolf Lundgren, and from there he would slowly grow as an actor, until the highlight of his career will be playing a bodyguard for a villain in a movie directed by Uwe Boll.

But since it's not, since this was created in Chile and has this special exotic smell, it goes to film festivals and gets screenings at the theaters. The main actor will still receive invitation to be in a Dolf Lundgren's movie, but that is not the point.

The movie looks like an amateur action/martial arts movie, but actually has a little more to offer.

The martial arts are good, and although it's not Tony Jaa good, the important thing is that it looks and feels very real. That is a first achievement. There are some funny scenes, sort of self humor, that have this WTF? potential and will make you laugh. Like when the Mirageman jumps from height to land bad on the hard asphalt, and then he rubs his foot, like it really hurt him. This small self humor is another achievement.

The story is rubbish, of course, full with melodramatic moments and silly situations. The production value is very poor, some of the street scenes were filmed with hidden camera and the reaction of people is real.

The Mirageman is not bold thematically, and mainly uses primitive and stereotypical tearful situations to awake some emotions in the viewer and create an empathy toward the heroic protagonist. You will find just a little complexity in this movie.

But Mirageman explores some difficult issues too, like what people are capable of in order to get famous, the price of fame and what is it mean to be a hero and what are the reasons to be one.

Overall the watching experience is very decent, and it even gets some big reinforcement by the ending, which is surprisingly good. The ending puts all the movie in the correct proportions, tights properly the plot, and delivers the movie as a good and solid product. The ending is the final and the biggest achievement.

Giant monster movies can be fun, when it's old Japanese B-Godzilla or newer Cloverfield.

But Ultraman is not like that at all. This is in the league of Power Rangers, very childish with people dressed in costumes and fighting each other on the miniature sets so they will look like giants.

The story is also lame, nothing to challenge the mind.

This movie is for kids under 8, people that want to see a superhero movie will be disappointed. I wanted to turn this off after first 20 minutes, but instead I just watched it in fast forward.

I am not familiar with the original animated series, so the fans may enjoy the movie because of the nostalgic reasons. For me it was just waste of time.

The main thing about this movie people need to know, is that Alexandr. Nevskaya Bitva could've been a solid Hollywood production, unless it was made in Russia. I mean, the structure of the plot and the themes appearing in this movie are heavily used in many Hollywood movies, including big summer blockbusters.

The difference, of course is the budget. Due to the lack of enormous amounts of money usually spent on such movie in Hollywood, the filmmakers were forced to work with what they could get. And they are doing the job very well, despite the obvious flaws - the decorations and production design are small and only fragmental, the amount of extras for the battle scenes is limited, the fight choreography of the mass on the background is not very good.

But these problems are more or less overcomed by good director, good camera work and good editing. The viewer just needs to help a little by being less critical on production values. We are all used to big Hollywood spectacles, and this movie would've been glad to be one, but cannot from obvious reasons. It could be easily ridiculed because of it, but it will not be very justified.

I was satisfied with the story, which is clear and straightforward. There are intense moments, the movie keeps the interest and the attention of the viewer by action, plot twists and relationships between the characters.

This is a bold attempt to make Hollywood like movie, and the result is quite entertaining and watchable.

Pathetic. This is what happens when director comes to work just because someone is paying him to.

The intentions were good, great locations and settings for a film of epic proportions. But the performance, damn! I swear, in some shots you can see extras on the background staring in the camera, or looking at the actors because no one told them what they should do when they hear "Action!". The battle scenes are so bad you wonder - are these people for real? They could've done more damage just by hugging each other. In the slow-mo scenes you can see people on battle field walking around or just standing, waving their hands.

Only action in the foreground is somehow emphasized. But for what? The story is so illogical and discontinuous, it seems like random situations in chronological order, sometimes not even that. The dialogs are dumb, the love plot is more embarrassing and ridiculous than in Hong Kong action movies.

With a budget of 40 million, and you can see every dollar invested on the screen, in best case scenario, the final result of all this enormous effort is a shiny round laser disk in the thin cover placed on the shelf in video store.

This is one of those films when you just can't believe what you see on the screen during the movie, when it ends you laugh for some time about how awful that film was and the next day you forget all about it.

This movie is a proof that porno should be on film, not on video. The fact it was shot on film adds so much to the porno scenes, it is actually pleasant to watch.

Bad quality of this C-movie can't hide some deep observations and conclusions of human, both male and female, psyche. The desperation of man in boring modern society, search of forbidden, of pleasures and adrenalin excitement, is a main theme here. But the low quality of the movie is ruining it, there is a lot of potential wasted.

And the movie is definitely not a thriller or a horror. It's a porn with a story, a very vague one.

Worth seeing once. In best case scenario - at some point of your life you will be able to mention the fact you've seen it, people will jealous and you will feel good about yourself.

It was embarrassing to watch "Breach", nothing in this movie make sense. Just a pile of cinematic clichés, done extremely bad. Not entertaining at all (for those who want to be entertained by a spy movie) and lacking any important message (for those who want to see serious and deep movie with some value behind it).

This movie has unbelievably boring story with bad dialogs, stupid situations and even more stupid characters. The writing is incoherent and self contradictional with many scenes without purpose or meaning. Acting is alright, and the soundtrack is good though, creating suitable mood for this film, maybe that's why people liked it.

If you want to see very good spy film, try "The Falcon and the Snowman" ('85) by John Schlesinger.

This film is clearly outdated. It can be considered classic or whatever but this movie is boring, melodramatic and no longer relevant as cinematic experience.

Geek teenagers that think about themselves as movie freaks and watch old movies may find this one thrilling and exciting. Not me.

I admit that at the time of this movie release it could be fresh and extraordinary, but not according to year 2007. In 17 years a lot was done, a lot was seen.

And BTW I've seen many old sci-fi movies, not all of them were affected by time and still great cinema, like Soylent Green, Silent Running, A boy and his Dog, Dark Star and more. This films are true classics, they are standing out of time and in each generation they have potential viewers that will admire their ability to be interesting despite their age. But not Jacob's Ladder.

His themes are chewed up, the plot seems banal and clumsy, many dull moments. From philosophical point of view it's not rich at all, it is lacking real imagination.

Not total waste of time but definitely not excellent cinema either.

First, let me explain why I rated this show with only one star. I actually think "Firefly" is the greatest TV masterpiece of our time and I wanted to give it more then 10 stars, so I gave 11. On the other hand, watching this series made me very, very upset. And the reason for me being so angry with "Firefly" is that I won't see more than 15 episodes of it. "Serenity" the movie is not the same. And I really angry on Joss Whedon for not fighting for this show, not struggling enough to continue this phenomena, whatever it takes. So for this lack of the effort he deserves only one star.

The first time I've encountered Joss Whedon was with 'Toy Story' back in 90's. I think I've made some sort of a record when I watched this movie 10 times in only two days. I was not aware that he was the screenwriter but I found soon enough when "Buffy" opened my eyes. Watching "Buffy" was an "out of the body" experience, I really doubted that Whedon will mange to create something so good again. "Angel" didn't interest me too much, and I've only heard about "Firefly" just before the "Serenity" hit the big screen.

So my expectations were low and first episodes didn't prove me the opposite. Imagine my surprise when somewhere on the 7th episode I realized that I am participating in historic event, that I am observing the first and the only TV show that succeeded not only to create the most realistic sci-fi ever, but also to recreate in live action the wonderful experience of Japanese Anime series.

The show is not exposing everything at one time, but slowly revealing pieces of the puzzle along the way, adding even more aspects and layers. So the impression from the show can be only constructed through time. The effect is gathered, not delivered.

I saw all episodes, and then I saw them again just to see if this holds second viewing. I got to say, each following episode is better then previous one, each following viewing helps understand more. And I wonder how much higher "Firefly" would have gone, what kind of effect I could've get from it after seeing, say… 100 episodes?

Whedon brings to it all his knowledge and ability of storytelling and writing, and I know more people were involved in this creation, but something tells me that he was the man with the last word and the biggest influence.

I don't want to start and list all the brilliance of this show; anybody with eyes can see them. I'll just say that the production design is awesome, dialogs are sharp and witty, visual effects are stunning, characters are colorful and imaginative, the Diegestic world is rich and complex - the reality of the series has many social, cultural and philosophical layers, the terms "bad" and "good" are flexible, and of course the women in the show are still favorite subject for Whedon.

Personally I think the depiction of female characters here is revolutionary for any TV show or Cinematic film, straight from Laura Mulvey's theory. And this is so excellent.

And the story … well, fantasy and imagination were never a problem for Whedon, so the levels of entertainment are incredibly high.

Too bad some network executive jerk woke up some morning and asked himself: "what can I do to make large group of people mad, frustrated and miserable? Oh yes, lets cancel the most brilliant show in the last decade!"

And where does it leave us, the fans? I can only comfort myself with endless reviewing of each episode, thanking Joss Whedon for this joy, and crying silently at night while cursing everyone responsible for this shameful situation.

Well … here I am.