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billmoren
Reviews
Maniac (1980)
Total nonsense
I read reviews before I decide to watch and from the "featured" review It sounded like it would be worth watching. Wrong. It turned out to be one of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time. All the horror cliches are here. Looking in the mirror while some one comes up behind you, spooky music to let you know things are going to get bad, Ziti's voice gets grumbly and hard breathing and his eyes seem to bug bug out. Technical issues abound. One victim to be fumbles to get a transit token to get on the subway (Tokens only - no cash accepted.) Somehow Ziti gets on the subway without a token. And lastly, the dried blood is bright red. Anyone who has ever seen dried blood knows it turns brown.
We the Animals (2018)
A waste of time
The most boring waste of time I have watched in a really ling time. A ;of shots of three 8-10 year old brothers who have no clue about what is going on in their life. The younger of the three spends an enormous amount if time just staring at the camera looking confused. Their father is abusive to his wife; their mother. About 2/3 through the movie the father digs a grave. Aha you say getting interesting. But the only thing that happens is that the younger brother jumps in covers himself with mud. His two brothers find him and pull him out. You never see or hear anything about the grave for the rest of the movie. The pace of the movie is super slow. Found myself fast forwarding several times.
The Inbetweeners Movie (2011)
Did I Miss Something?
I just don't get all the raves and high marks this movie got. The praise would be understandable if they were given by British schoolboys. Maybe not, but that is the level of humor and/or sophistication here. It follows four socially awkward "inbetweeners" . They are on vacation and looking to have sex with whatever girls will let them have it. At least one of them admits that he is still a virgin. The ending is so obvious that you don't need to watch more than the first 30 minutes to know exactly how it is going to end. The rest of the movie plods along with juvenile jokes and ends predictibly.
After Earth (2013)
Waste of time
It seems to me that Will Smith must have used his Hollywood muscle to get his son Jaden into the starring role in this movie. I guess Will Smith's son's acting prowess would make him a star like his father. Good try - Didn't work. Jaden's acting was terrible. There is a reason that we have never heard of him again. Will Smith must have twisted some arms to get M. Night Shyamalan involved in this movie. Poor Mr. Shyamalan must be quite embarrassed to have his name associated with it. Life has evolved to hunt humans but since there have been no humans for 1000 years how could that be. There is also a monster that looks nothing like anything that it could have possibly evolved from.
It Will be Chaos (2018)
Heart wrenching but one sided
This documentary showed the incredible tenacity of migrants trying to have a better life for themselves and children. Leaving countries that they love to strike out into the unknown. It does show Italian natives complaining about the negative effects the migrants are having on their native culture, but I think that part was underplayed. Thee migrants had the misfortune to have been born in a terrible country that they can no longer live in. However, most of them seem to feel that their problems should now be everyone else's problem. I see very little regard or acknowledgement that their actions are in many cases making other peoples lives worse. A case of I'll get mine and you can all deal with it.
Deadly Passion (2021)
1 1/2 hours of my life lost forever
I watch a lot of movies. Some great, some some just OK, and some are just bad. Among the bad ones there are different levels of bad. Plain bad, really bad, and horribly bad. If it is possible to be even worse than even that, this movies is it. The budget of $7,500 for the whole shebang tells it all. It seems like the camera operator was never quite sure where to point the camera. Worse yet was boom/sound-man was seemingly someone they dragged in off the street and who had never done this kind of work before. Two people sitting at the same table. One you can hear loud and clear, the other sounds like he was in the next room. If you are a glutton for punishment this is for you. It inflicts more pain on the viewer than on any of the characters.
First Cow (2019)
Better than a seeping pill
2 men team up to try to make a go of it in the old west by selling little cakes that are made with milk. This is big success because they have the only cow in the area. The Cook keeps baking and his buddy helps rake in the coin. A wealthy businessman shows up with his own cow. Everything is going fine until,for no apparent reason, the pair decides steal milk from the businessman's cow. He finds out and starts a hunt for the milk thieves with rifles Apparently to shoot them. This all takes place in the first half of the movie. The rest of the movie is the two men trekking through the rough woods and rivers trying to evade the pursuers to get to San Francisco. The ending leaves it up to you to decide if they made it to SF or if the hunters catch up with them and kill them. In any case the movie was sooooo long with sooooo many time wasting glorious scenery shots and sooooo much inane dialog that by the end I didn't really care if they lived or died.
Deathwell (2020)
Utter Nonsense
I tried really hard to follow the story line of this movie. Full of cuts to prior times which in itself is not necessarily bad bur here they were chaotic ans impossible to follow.. I could not figure out if they were flashbacks to a prior time, something currently happening, or his imagination. Story lines were introduced that were then dropped and never seen again. The audio was horrible. It often completely over-rode the dialogue at times which wasn't hard because the actors - especially the female lead, seemed to think that mumbling under her breathe added some sexuality to her character. If you enjoy a pointless, poorly acted and poorly directed movie, then this is for you.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
No coherent story
If you are a fan of spectacular special effects then this movie is for you. Lots of explosions and mystical transportation's appearances and disappearances. Full of intelligent magical animals. If, on the other hand, you would like some sort of coherent story to go with it then you will be seriously disappointed. Trying to figure out who all the characters are and what drives them and who they are allied with is a whole 'nuther story. I can't believe that J. K. Rowling wrote such a mess. This is a pretty long movie - over 2 hours - but finally in the end I was left hanging. Like, what the hell, what just happened.
Threads (1984)
Unrealistic
The synopsis says it shows how this nuclear attack on Britain changes the UK and the whole world. The entire movie does in fact show the devastation and effects on England, there is absolutely no reference to the rest of the world. Were other countries in Europe attacked? Was the US Attacked? Was the USSR counter-attacked? Are they not part of "the whole world"? Fifteen years after, people are still starving and dying. After WWII there were cities in Germany that had been totally flattened worse than what we see in England in this movie. And yet, 15 years later - 1960 - most of Germany, Poland, and other heavily destroyed cities were pretty much re-built. But Britain just was totally unable to pull it off. The US sent thousands of tons of food to Europe - there was not a lot of starvation. The movie doesn't say what happened in the US. It also doesn't give a clue of whether there were counter-attacks on USSR. So when it refers to "the whole world", There seems to be a whole lot missing.