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No Escape (2015)
HIstory of this title
The reviewers of this title show an absence of knowledge of the Khmer Rouge overthrow of the government of Cambodia in 1975. They did murder all foreigners, then everyone who had graduated high school, been out of the country and even people for wearing glasses. Being able to read carried a death sentence.
The scarfs worn by the rebels in this movie are the insignia of the Khmer Rouge. When the Vietnamese finally invaded and stopped the massacre the Khmer Rouge has murdered about one fifth of the population of Cambodia.
The inspiration of this movie is concealed; it's the Communist takeover of Cambodia. Why don't they just call it what it is?
Skyscraper (2018)
Formulaic Drivel
I sincerely hope this movie is not representative of a new genre on motion picture. Its format works like this: You take the climax of a normal, adventure movie that comes at the end of a 90 minute buildup and just put it on the screen cold. You know the gist, the hero, e.g. James Bond, escapes a terrible demise by a fraction of a millimeter, against all odds and dictates of reality, and the villain gets disposed of at the same time. So you present this climax and its impossible conclusion, as a scene in this new movie genre. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another... ad nauseam.
At some point the viewer starts to realize there's no story, no message, no character development, no drama, no suspense, just mind-numbing series of impossible, violent, climactic pseudo-escapes which at this point are only escaping the inescapable doom by escaping into boredom. The boredom is followed by ennui. The ennui is followed by that familiar feeling that you have wasted an hour and a half staring at another formulaic piece of Hollywood trash that has no value by any conceivable measure.
There have been times when I have thought movie making could not get any worse. I have been proven wrong on each of these occasions. If you want more examples and have a masochistic impulse, try sitting through "Vertical Limit" or "The Long Kiss Goodnight." I'm sure there are countless more but I haven't seen them. I'm developing a wariness to this kind of reeking effluvium and hope to be avoiding it in the future.
Is this the product of cheap, fast movie production via CGI? It brings to mind the shabby novels that were cranked out by machines to occupy the proles with their virtually identical stories suffering only superficial changes in name and place that are described in Orwell's "1984." It is entertainment for morons who couldn't finish the third grade.
This kind of movie maybe a boon to libraries and inspire a resurgence in the popularity of reading.
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Trite, formulaic and (unfortunately) familiar
This movie has some cute scenes but they are so repetitive you could watch the first fourth of it and you would have seen the whole thing. Pretty girl (Geena Davis) gets into impossible, doomed situation and -- pretty girl gets out of it by some one in a billion happenstance. You could cut this film into five minute sequences, shake them in a bucket and glue the random pieces back together and you'd have the same story line.
Good acting, good photography and technical effects but the hack writing spoils it after the first impossible, death-defying escape.
Of course, if you've never seen an adventure, spy, action movie before you might be taken in by it.
Inheritance (2020)
Holy fantasy, Batman!
I don't often review movies but now and then I just have to say something. This movie starts out credibly enough, with dad dying and leaving a key o some great mystery to his daughter. Then it turns into childish silliness. There's a steel trap door in the ground in the woods and under it is a long corridor leading to a cell with a prisoner in it, electric lights, plumbing we presume (he's been there for years) necessary ventilation and -- of course -- nobody knows it's there. The recluse is made up like Ben Gunn in Treasure Island and tells a story about how he got into his situation. From there it wanders into more implausible nonsense that isn't worth considering, or reviewing. This is a good movie to miss.
Shepherds and Butchers (2016)
Violent, gut wrenching fiction
This movie is scripted from the novel of the same title. The novel is a propaganda vehicle aimed at making capital punishment look at outrageous and primitive as possible in which it has a great deal of success. The depictions of group hangings are graphic, explicit and repulsive in the extreme. There should be a content advisory for people who might have a less than sturdy psychological tolerance of brutal cinematography. At the least one should keep in mind that novels are works of fiction. That will help.
The story line is that assisting in such brutal mass executions can cause an otherwise person to become mentally ill to the point of being dangerous to others. This is used as a defense in the trial of a prison warder who has committed a violent crime shortly after one such execution.
The acting is very good, dialogue holds up pretty well and the suspense over how the trial will turn out is well effected. Overall a watchable movie - if the you have the stomach for it.