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An error has ocurred. Please try againcannot go wrong with these. All killer no filler. No particular order
Reviews
Scarecrow (1973)
A recommend for a lazy Sunday afternoon
After working through Pacino's back catalogue, filling in the blank spots I came across Scarecrow, and I'm glad I did. This one gets little mention on forums or the podcasts I frequent. Everybody knows Serpico and Dog Day. Even Panic and Cruising have garnered mentions over the years, but never Scarecrow.
Surprising because it also stars Gene Hackman who delivers a performance reminding us why he's one of the greats.
It's Hackmans film mainly. Hackman commands the screen and this could be considered one of his best and funniest performances as the grouchy drifter who loves to fight. Pacino's role expects less, and he plays a naive young drifter who loves to make people laugh. Hackman teaches Pacino how to grift, and be tough. In turn, Pacino's character teaches Hackman how to trust again, and grow as a person. Pacino inexperience at this point in his career, and somewhat miscast, gives a naive performance as a naive character, he seems out of his depth or out of his wheelhouse, and doesn't seem as honed in goofing around playing the clown. I've never seen Pacino play the 2nd fiddle comedy sidekick role in a drama bofore or after, and it doesn't fit him well. His performance felt a little forced, and he looked lost as he's constantly searching for things to make his character funny while interesting. As he's young Pacino has yet to pick up the skills he needs to slip into any role, and we don't see any of the Pacinoisms he picks up later down the road. Maybe it was the wrong role for him at the time, but at the very end Pacino does get something to chew on showing us a glimmer of what's to come.
The story is about Trust and Loss. Hackman trusts no-one. Pacino wants to trust everyone with a childlike naivety. Pacino's girlfriend trusted him to be there when she needed him most. Pacino in turn trusts her to tell the truth and in consequence, suffers loss. This breaks him, combined with a second event, and it pushes him over the edge.
Finally, Hackman loses the only person in the world he trusts, and it ends like most 70's movies do. Badly.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
A successful amusement.
It was good but not a true great we expect from Kubrick in his prime.
It humoured me enough to keep watching throughout the whole 3 hours and was never bored. The great character actors brought a humorous edge to it most notably Murray Melvin and Leonard Rossiter.
It looked beautiful and the editing was sharp, an editing style that accompanied and complemented the wonderful music for long sections, like it coasted along with the musical beats.
I thought the pacing was good and never lingered longer than it needed to, even though sometimes shots intentionally lingered which I did like mainly due to the wonderful cinematography. Every scene looked like an oil painting, camera barely moving and holding the frame. It was a beautiful looking film.
I was only really gripped once during the final pistol duel and that whole segment was pushed along by 11 minutes of music from where Lord Bullingdon entered the drink house Lyndon occupied until just after the final shot of the duel.
I don't think the film was meant to keep you gripped, like I said it humoured, it was an amusement. That's what I think this film is merely an amusement and it succeeded with that in my eyes.
7 out of 10
Saw (2004)
great premise but a cheap trick horror that disappointed me again.
Last night I rewatched Saw for a re-assessment, I remember going to the cinema to see this one and from what I remember I was luke warm about it back then. I remember being mildly put off by the guy from Robin Hood Men in Tights being the lead, I couldn't take him seriously after that film and he isn't the best serious actor. Comedies maybe. Acting, no.
so i thought id give it another chance, get over the fact robin hood was in it and watch a supposedly horror classic but again was extremely disappointed.
don't get me wrong the premise is great and a new idea for once, the mystery theme was OK and twists at the end good also.
Was surprised to see the budget for the movie, pretty OK job for that budget but at times it did feel a little amateurish, not in look but the use of a lot of cheap tricks, the execution, plot holes and acting of some scenes was poor enough to take the horror right out of the scene and I've seen some cheap ass badly acted horrors in my time.
the gore was none existent, and the horror consisted of mostly loud scare noises and the bad guy/people shown moving around in fast forward quick editing then eventually shaking their head close up in front of the camera in fast forward accompanied by a loud scare noise.
That was the main scare because it looks weird/scary but the technique was used over and over and over again, and its a technique thats been used in many films and even TV shows to project insanity/chaos that its become cliché to me now like Matrix bullet time and its a pretty cheap trick at that, although I'm not sure if James Wan invented this technique or Saw was one of the first films to use the trick so i gave the first 10 uses of it a bye on that reason but after that it became a one trick pony, probably the last straw was the obscene car chase fast forward, i suppose it was used to save money and not filming an actual car chase outside or they thought we'd better throw it in 1 last time because its our thing.
People may rest the horror on psychological and its an "in the mind", what you don't see kind of thing but the execution and cheap tricks ruined that aspect for me. the punchlines were always a loud scare noises or/and a scary face close up to the camera.
again the acting from the robin hood guy was pretty bad which is what the movie rested on, because basically most of the movie was 2 guys in a room, the whole plot centred around them and you feeling emotion for them. the 2 guys in a room story ain't a bad thing if done right, the atmosphere and plot of them in the room was done to good effect, the photographer guy sold it but robin hood(Carl Ewles) really fudged it amateur dramatic style and if a better actor was used who brought more to the table i would've liked it much more and would've blind sided its shortcomings in other areas, man i just cant take him seriously and he even upped the ante of bad acting in the final crucial scene.
Michael Emerson although a great actor and was surprised to see him just came off goofy mostly, i don't think it was his fault. Even Danny Glover was pretty mediocre, maybe it was the way they were directed and what they had to work with, it seemed like Danny phoned it in.
there were a lot of things that just irritated me, why didn't Michael Emerson go straight to hospital and alert cops of the whole thing instead of going ahead with everything like a goof, don't tell me Jigsaw has his crap so tight that there's only 1 cure in Country and hes got it, i wasn't falling for this Jigsaw has everything 110% planned, he just wasn't scary to me, he was just a dude with a ku klux clan robe on who coughed a lot.
When the cops found jigsaw and he sets off the drill mechanism and they let him do his speeches and get away, why didn't they just shoot the drills right away instead of goofing around and playing silly Q&A games with an unscary Jigsaw and listening to his vitriol. any cop would've shot jigsaw to bring him down as soon as he set it off the drills the shot the flimsy little power drills.
also in the hospital at the very start when Michael Emerson said to the doc that the sick guy/jigsaw had a name was he poisoned then? why come off like his brainwashed cohort right back then which is what he was painted to be all movie when he wasn't poisoned at that time. He listens to sick peoples drug induced jabberings and takes it way too seriously.
And Jigsaw being in the room at the end was a good twist but when i thought about it felt a little cheap. And the whole Michael Emerson twist was good till thought about, its not worth another watch to see how he reacts in earlier scenes because there is no reaction, he mainly acts like a brainwashed foot-soldier throughout. its not an inception, shutter island or fight club watch it a 2nd time feeling.
And there were a lot of other minor irritants like the girl with the bear trap mouth making male sounding demonic noises when she was escaping it, presumably to add to the scariness of it and the rest i cant be bothered to list.
my opinion is the reason it was successful was based on premise, and the 2 twists.
anyway thats my thoughts on Saw, great premise but a cheap trick horror that disappointed me again.
Disaster Movie (2008)
its so bad its bad
disaster movie is just a bunch of poor skits of movie trailers & of the moment B to Z-list celebrities, thrown together in an incoherent way. when they do try an actual "JOKE" they are built up and delivered with the poorest of wit and timing, with hardly any connection to each other or the story, even classed as inane comedy the "jokes" and delivery still fail.
and the rest of the "comedy" is as much effort as showing a character from another film, telegraphing who it is by shouting their name and doing a bad impression of them, thats as much effort there is to it. i think in a celebrity obsessed society kids are titillated by the mere sight of a celebrity or character from another film being on screen, and thats all the joke is, another character being on screen.
character from another film/celebrity+being told this is a comedy=funny?
The movie is only 1 hour and 15 minutes long, which is kind of strange for a modern movie, its very short, why do you think it was so short? because they couldn't think of anymore jokes to fill in time. Seltzberg had ran out of jokes and couldn't even pad time out with actual plot or character development(the main characters are introduced by just appearing on screen in a fully formed stereotype) which would have made the movie a little(not much) better.
no they just padded it out by dragging the joke out till they couldn't keep it up any longer and dragging the musical interludes out to the fullest, there is no actual tangible plot to base the skits around, the plot is just a backdrop, to show the different skits and celebs with different background scenery so the audience don't get bored.
the acting is terrible, the script is terrible, the characters had no depth or real like-ability unless you are fond of stereotyped clichéd characters and ar'nt developed in any way, the directing is terrible. that's why its still stuck at the bottom in the IMDb list, because its probably the worst modern movie ever made.