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The Bates Haunting (2012)
Everyone who used the word, "bad"
...has already spoken for me. BUT I do have to note that the director didn't shake the camera to death and that allows the audience to absorb the set, acting and plot--something that is missing in modern movie director's education. Hitchcock shook the set when it was called for, not the camera. The audience looks the actors in their eyes just like in real life. It's hard to do when the camera won't stop being so orgasmic. This is a high compliment for such a bad production. Better luck with experience. Would someone tell me how many lines past "ten" will the guideline finally consider allowing this post to proceed? So, moving on. The (hotty) newscaster was the best actress of the lot. She should have starred.
A Most Wanted Man (2014)
A movie for those who enjoy watching people travel.
From the reviews, I am in the minority. But another reviewer termed it "...a slow burn..." The burn is how every scene shows someone is leaving, going to another place just to leave it. This makes the movie not full of suspense, intrigue, or action oriented but struggling like a grass fire in the dust- bowl States.
The camera man does not help by shaking the camera so much during the actual action scenes that the audience can't connect with the movie.
Philip is a cigarette spokesman by having a cigarette in his face in almost every scene he is in. I am done with this movie at the scene where Philip announces that he is done with Issa.
The Weather Man (2005)
Monotone as Nicolas
Nicolas Cage has always been a wonder to me. Nicolas Cage has always played the same dead-pan character---same as Kevin Costner. I have been fearing that a movie starring Nick (and same with Kevin -- at least Waterworld had action) would come out and be as bland as his acting; now it has. This biography of a normal, uneventful, topically messed-up life of the average, albeit rich, human being is just the kind of movie that would expose Nick's underachieving style of acting that underrates the talent an actor of his status has.
The plot is about a man finding himself by overcoming the burden of his wants for the burden of his needs. The writers missed two very crucial takes that would have clearly shown his former life was going to have meaning without him by having the deer hunt with his daughter that would be her "rock" (meaning) during her bland life and David's Father last scene in the car telling him, "it's not just wind, it's the paper you write on while telling your stories to your reader's. David, you and I are the same-- we tell fiction to an eager audience that cares."
If I wanted to view this movie again, I would become a psychiatrist or an attorney for which this movie must be a complete bore.
The Babadook (2014)
What happens when Al Bundy tries to direct Alfred Hitchcock style
Once again we have a typical 21st century bad horror movie. It is a shame that horror movies have stopped being horror stricken and just went to horrible. Ever since Freddy started hacking and slashing through dreams, horror movies have become nothing more than blood-f-e-s-t. This movie is no different it is supposed to be highly suspenseful --that is why you never see the monster-- but the woman actress portrays her character as just another nagging, dominant, arrogant, female. She blunders her way through the entire movie demanding her point of view be the one that dominates her life and everyone around her. This is typical to females and is in no way scary to the divorced male. if the viewer were to take the monster out of the plot, it would not be hard to convert this movie over to an insane mother flick. It is with great hope that in the next 50 to 150 years Hollywood will stop trying to emulate Chinese style directing and story-line and plot; and will actually go back to the wonderful habits they used to stand for as when Hitchcock actually was doing some of the best suspense movies in film history.
Afflicted (2013)
Typically a 21st century Badly Directed movie.
Since the turn of the century, directors have taken all the bad habits that previous directors Knew not to use and then use them; too close close ups, quarter screen usage, subject not on the screen, camera shaking too much, interviews in which the interviewed faces stage left (why face away from the audience who paid to see the interview scene) or stage right, And three- quarter of a second scene's were all the things that previous directors new alienated the audience and caused the audience to be too busy chasing the actors around the screen. This movie, like too many this century, has - to- failing directing. Why bother making a movie if you're going to exclude the audience?
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Too politically correct
One can get away with changing the race of characters from prose to script such as using Morgan Freeman in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION--it's Morgan Freeman for crying out loud! but to blindly toss in two token Blacks as the adopted children of Jeff Goldblum's without script-written forewarning smacks of the PC racism of demanding Blacks (only) be in the forefront of all movies. He had his multi-wives, why adopt? This PC pro- NAACP racism--along with a weak storyline-- ruined the movie for me. I noticed different races in the upcoming 2015 new release. Refreshing. Additionally, Jeff's character's kids need not have been in the script at all.
Disclosure (1994)
Missed one important point that ruined the movie for me
I a twenty-year-old in the early '80's--and male, AND in the military, I suffered as much as any male in the corporate World regarding the sexism's against the male, the racism against the White, and especially the White-male. It was "open season" on especially White males who were especially disregarded in both being a victim and defense of sexual harassment and racism. This was due to the definition of sexual harassment which, unofficially, was defined as "thinking from behind your zipper---a definition (cleaned up a bit) common to men, for the purpose to "gain power over a person." At that time, changed since thanks to "Sex in the City", women were still seen as sluts and not sexually aggressive. Women, the whole time, were free to practice sexual harassment and discrimination (then called, "get even-ism") which developed as a practice of oversensitivity. The power for which women did (and do) as they practiced sexism was not thinking out of their zipper, but using oversensitivity to the defined sexism (which is sexist in its nature)as a tool to gain power over their environment. In short, women do not practice sexism to gain power over a person, but of an environment (which includes people--male and female). They will use oversensitivity to garner a complaint against a male competitor for a promotion, and the male had no defense as it was open season on him.
This movie (book too?) had Demi Moore's character practicing sexism to gain power over a male competitor to gain power over him by actually using sex. This is not consistent with how women sexually harass. The writers had her using her vagina to gain power over a male, (not unbelievable today, thanks again, to the aforementioned Sex in the City) instead of practicing (and exposing to the public) the way a woman harasses and discriminates.
Had she gone through the movie accusing every male of impropriety's, she would have been a normal "femi-nazi" sexist-believable and bared to the movie-going public--and exposing women's sexism (which is *still* not today in 2011) to the mainstream and opening doors for women to be included in the sexual harassment policies.
As it stands, this movie does what corporations have done since the 1972 equal rights laws have been doing---leaving women out of guilt, and men being the target.
This is what this movie fails to recognize.
Demi Moore's character is sexually aggressive to gain power over a person--and not there environment.
Osvobozhdenie: Napravlenie glavnogo udara (1971)
Well Directed!
I agree with the above comments to a point. This movie is *very* well researched, directed, rehearsed, budgeted, catered, begged/borrowed/steal, and even the concession hats and T-shirts are comfortable! Well worth the above and this review! It is incredible how this producer found so many story lines and accurate-looking actors to play Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, Mussolini, et.al. Each actor portrayed is from the culture they are representing--even though they are Russian. Where the Producers got an accurately speaking Roosevelt (Stanislav Yaskevich)& Churchill (Yury Durov), I don't know. Goebbels, Himmler, Eva Braun, and Zhukov are featured or starred in this great piece of cinematic art.
I would not, however, rate this *with* Saving Private Ryan and contemporary movies as this movie is well directed. Contemporary director's have picked up a bad habit of "shaking the camera to death." "Liberation" is easy to watch. It does not force the audience to chase the eyes of the actors across the screen. The scene changes during the battles are approximately 6 seconds apart--allowing the audience to experience the whole screen. Plus, there are some margins on the close-ups of the actors faces--half their foreheads are not missing at the top of the screen. Plus, this is a Division-sized movie reflecting the time it was made. Moscow/E. Germany didn't spare a ruble/Mark on extras. Since then, movies have been more squad-level...more or less. All of these good habits have been discarded by the film industry; perhaps for the hyperactive, short-attention-spanned, ADHD, instant-gratification, computerized audience member today. I rate this movie *above* the above mentioned movies.
The Soviets and East Germans were not attempting to politicize this movie. It is told with the same entertainment value as any western movie. The subtitles are a bit tricky, but easy to overcome. This movie is well worth watching because it is easy to follow, easy to read and view at the same time, and if you are into WWII history as I am, you will enjoy the feel the historical accuracy will give.