Change Your Image
kilo43
Reviews
Sorority Row (2009)
like omg! it's so like a horror film...
If you tune into this "film" and (I use the word loosely); you may be mistaken for thinking it's a youtube style spoof movie in which some American reality TV show contestants "act" in a "horror" film.
Watch in amazement as, upon seeing brutal murders & and corpses, they offer visual reactions one might evoke upon seeing a rather more unpleasant-than-usual dog turd on the pavement, no more; a slight wince combined with a very minor twinge of disgust.
The hair is moronically immaculate and they are made up & dressed like a dogs dinner and they can't act their way out of a paper bag yup, it is about as good as a spoof movie.
Piranha 3D (2010)
excellent and probably smarter than it seems
Right off the bat i'll just say my take on this movie was that the director rather cleverly created this analysis of the human body in it's role as objectified flesh.. first in the sexually titillating role. Flesh as pleasure; flesh to be devoured by the eyes for sexual arousal; flesh as aesthetically pleasing eye candy... and then switches to depict flesh as meat, gore, red raw meat, bone, tendon and skin; flesh in a butcher-block role. I thought that was quite clever actually, and how people couldn't see this was strange because it was so obvious.
Philosophicaly therefore the movie is smarter than it appears, and then tops of the cake with lots of traditional teen horror icing. The homage to Jaws as Dreffus is guzzled alive in the opening scene is another nice touch. Overall i thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure it's no classic, but succeeds in the genre by virtue of both the clever juxtopositioning of the role of the body and the extreme overkill & superbly done gore fest it becomes... and hey.. it's good fun!
The Diary of a Nobody (2007)
Good try, but it didn't work at all....
How do you take a book which is in the format of a dairy where a man recollects his impressions of experiences, and then convert that into TV comedy/drama? it was a brave attempt; the acting was not bad at all, but it just didn't seem like I was watching 'Charles Pooter'; rather I was watching someone attempt to play Charles Pooter, and in a few places until I tuned out i even found what i considered to be some mistakes in how the performance depicted some sections of the diary - By that I mean the character on screen wasn't acting in accordance with how the emotions of the character would be in the context of the book and the time and social rules and etiquette - I saw this along time ago so cannot relate which actual scenes made me feel this way, but there were a few times when Pooters body language and whole demeanour was just wrong for the incident he was relating to camera (imo) It was a long time ago I saw this, so it is hard to recall exactly which bits i felt were played wrongly - possibly one was Pooter's recollection of the "Cummings is always going, & Gowings is always coming" gaff incident. Possibly it was that.
To my mind some literature simply cannot work in film/TV medium - Some of the more lengthy 'entries' might work excellently if created with cast as flashback type sequences - perhaps that would have been the thing to do - Have Pooter narrate, while the action is done as a series of set pieces.
I am a huge fan of the book but couldn't even sit through this all the way.
In all fairness i should perhaps watch it again, not sure were i could view it tho. The mark given with this review if for brave effort, but ultimately imo it failed to convey the subtle stuffiness of Charles Pooter.
Terminator Salvation (2009)
terribly disappointing (but you kinda knew it would be)
OK. First off, I AM A HUGE TERMINATOR FAN, y'know? the sort of tedious person who says all the lines out loud until people get annoyed, lol Therefore I will always try to side with anything 'Terminator' BUT.... This was utter tripe.
A story would help, but then story lines don't seem required by 90% of US movies nowadays as the industry has destroyed all it's potential paying consumer base over recent years in it's continual marketing-stats driven blunder towards a cinema/DVD userbase of almost exlusively American teenagers... and lets face it, anything that requires even 1 braincell is overload for them, so the ideal seems to be: keep it as stupid as possible.
Bale is just terrible in this, like you know he hates the film and isn't even trying to disguise his utter contempt and detatchment from the job in hand. In all truth, no amount of acting skills could have salvaged this.
The worst thing was that in all the previous Terminator films, the 'resistance' stay inside by day, venturing out only at night to take on the machines with basic weapons as any true 'resistance' would do. In this film the 'resistance' has huge bases with massive arcraft hangers and gigantic hi-end tech control centers etc. Yeah right! about as ludicrous as making a ww2 'French Resistance' film where the resistance have huge airfields and bases that mysteriously the Germans can't detect or find... BUT This is a war against machines; machines which can sniff out even a lone individuals in a desert hiding under a rock, yet somehow 'The Machines' cant detect and find the resistance's massive infastructure? Oh come On!
In summary, to make a movie likethis you simply ask CGI guys to design, build and render a bunch of action scenes; drop them all in a hat, pull them out at random and then cobble them together with any nonsense that vaguely glues them together in a linear sequence.
Glad I saw it, but in a word: tosh probably it's one of those films you dislike in the cinema but then find a lot better watching at home on DVD when you aren't putting so much expectation onto the thing.
Valkyrie (2008)
Excellent British film
Forget all the emotional claptrap about glorifying Nazis's and all that rubbish from people with no historical knowledge of the period; this is a quality British film in essence, and it surprised me nothing I read mentioned this prior to watching it. (not that i read many reviews) An excellent almost exclusively British cast, somewhat let down by Cruise's performance (if for no other reason than he's the only actor not using a British/European accent), but at least Cruise is not continually the sole center of the films attention. Excellent camera-work, music (very subtle) and editing. If you enjoyed Conspiracy and Downfall, you'll love this film.
After watching it, the first thing I asked was "Why on earth did Cruise do this film"?, he just seemed so out of place in it. I couldn't figure it out, mebbe investigating the funding might show why?