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Reviews
Gretel & Hansel (2020)
It held my interest
This movie is slow, and not much happens, and that is going to turn most people off. We never see Gretel and the witch engage in martial arts, and Hansel never gets to torch her with a flame thrower to save his sister.
I went in with low expectations given that it is a horror movie with fair amount of bad reviews and was pleasantly surprised. It was very atmospheric in terms of the acting, the settings, cinematography, and especially the music. It held my interest throughout and kept me in suspense. I'd rate it superior in many ways to the horror films (low budget or not) that get theatrical releases that just feel like money grabs, At least this film feels like it had a vision and effort was put into it.
FilmFakers (2004)
Pretty funny show
I don't even recall what prompted me to record this program. I normally don't even look at shows outside of Comedy Central and the History Channel. Well, I recorded it, but I didn't even watch it until a week later. Based on the reviews here, I wonder if the show has any buzz going for it.
This show needs some positive reviews, the existing positive reviews are most likely shill reviews, and the negative reviews don't do the show justice. Now, the episode I watched was about the making of the movie Mukashi Code, and I think they held the balance between what the actors will accept and what would give the joke away. Basing the movie on a crazy Japanese show gives them a lot of leeway to create ridiculous, but just barely plausible, situations.
I agree with the reviewer who said they talk too much to the viewer about how funny everything is, and how "they aren't making a movie, they are faking a movie". They probably do this because the show is new and they want to make things clear to viewer, and maybe hammer home a tag line.
Oh, and Chris Wylde looks like some Chris Eliot/Jake Busey mutation. He does think he is hilarious, and while he isn't, he is good in his role.
For a nice twist in the series, and to keep things fresh, they should involve the previously pranked actors to play roles in upcoming episodes.
Children Underground (2001)
Reality Programming
Spoilers (for a documentary)
I have just watched the DVD for Children Underground and found it to be very disturbing, as it should be. The situation of the homeless children isn't all that different from the homeless here in the states. The scope of the problem in Romania is larger, but the film only focuses on a small number of children. They are drug addicted, mischievous, and seemingly addicted to living on the street. A group of social workers in a shelter bring up the issue of how children become accustomed to living on the street are not able to adapt to shelter life. I can't recall another documentary touching on the idea of how difficult it is to help certain people, even when resources are available to do so. Medicine is expensive and clinics can not afford to waste it on addicts, shelters can not afford to provide for those deemed incapable of rehabilitation. Even if the children want help, and many don't, or don't appear to know how to accept it, they must be prepared even before being brought into a shelter. The damage done to these kids isn't easy to diagnose or repair. They may have suffered at home, been made despondent extreme poverty, and have psychiatric conditions. Once they are on the street they need to be "deprogrammed" before they can begin to change their ways. In my opinion, they will never be all right, they will always be 'shell shocked' by their experiences.
We hear about one girl that is at times proud of how "street" she is and at other times hardworking and attending school. Unfortunately, she is routinely suspended from school due to her addiction to huffing paint. The drug of choice for these kids is Aurolac, or paint. I saw a documentary on Seattle's street kids and many of them were addicted to heroin. Heroin is a much more dangerous drug, and one wonders if the kids addicted to paint in the movie will eventually move on to harder drugs.
Ana doesn't talk about her parents or her situation. She has run away from home many times, and she has taken her younger brother with her to live on the streets. When the filmmakers meet her parents we learn that they are unemployed and unable to support their kids. The stepfather says that he doesn't beat her, but talks down to her, and says that he almost left their mother because of the kids. The parents ask the children whether they want to stay or go to back to the city, and it is hard to tell what they really want her to do. I felt like they were pushing her away, getting her to make the decision so that they can't be held liable for abandonment charges. The stepfather even says "this isn't abandonment" in response to her decision. Perhaps the most disconcerting moment for me was watching the "Where are they now?" extras on the DVD and learning that Ana's mother gave birth to twins in 2002. I just thought, after all I have seen and learned, Why? Why would she bring two more children into the world when she literally can not provide even a basic existence for her current children?
The movie has the stories of other street children. Many similarities are found in the stories. There are, in fact, tens of thousands of similar stories in Romania. We are left to wonder the eventual outcome. Will these children be ignored and brushed aside by the people walking the streets, and by their government. Will the generation of homeless be left to die out? Will they get pregnant and raise their children on the streets, creating a new generation of street kids? What are the current conditions in Romania? Is there a steady stream of new children coming to live on the streets?
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
I had fun getting angry at this movie.
(Possible Spoilers)
Mildly interesting film plagued by "wouldn't it be cool if...?" moments, poor character decisions, and many more negatives. Normally I don't write reviews, but I feel the need to p*ss on this movie a bit. It should have been made under its own name and attempted to be its own movie, because as it stands, nothing matches up to the original. Whatever royalty money George Romero receives from the making of this film, he should use it to have those responsible for it shot.
I'm sick of hack horror directors using strobe effects (think 28 Days) to make the zombies appear to move at high rates of speed. If it works in the haunted houses... Now, I'm not a fan of fast moving zombies, but they do bring something to the zombie movie genre, but it isn't something that is necessarily good. Why make them zombies at all? Why not people under the effects of a substance that makes them go crazy and attack others. It seems unrealistic to have these zombies behave the way they do after considering the damage done to the body. After a person is ripped to shreds, or succumbs to the disease after being bitten by the zombie, they would be reanimated with a seriously damaged body. Muscles and the brain would be deteriorated, it isn't plausible for the reanimated bodies to get up and start sprinting like Carl Lewis. As opposed to the machine like zombies in this film, the zombies in Romero's films are convincing. You expect a dead person to move with difficulty and in a state of confusion, once you accept that they can move at all. I'm extremely turned off by the herky-jerky motion, and feel that it takes the viewer out of the reality of the situation. The movie becomes slick and like something out of a video game. One second the person is dead, the next, they are alert and running around. Another major problem I have with the movie is the noises made by the zombies. The zombies have all have a generic computer generated (artificial) way of moaning and hissing. A genuine, expressive, human cry of pain is much more terrifying than a zombie who runs his voice through an amplifier hooked up to a distortion box and an echo pedal. A zombie could easily front a NuMetal band should the whole running around killing thing get boring.
The characters are rather thin, and not just the ones we see and hear a line of dialogue from every 25 minutes. I never really believed that Andre (or anyone, ever) would do what he did. Take the standard cliché "I know she is going to turn into a zombie, but I love her, so I will hide it from everyone" and add "wouldn't it be cool if this happened?". I don't see why he would accept the baby that burst out of his dead/zombie wife and then shoot another person to protect it. By the way, the baby's awful scream was cringe worthy. Another major problem is the event that brings about the climax. Nicole takes a truck and places herself in a situation involving certain death, and she does this all for a dog she just met. I could accept this as an example of someone losing their mind under the stress, but why does the group, who up to this point was reluctant to save anyone, rush out and put themselves at risk. This event leads to a situation where they must flee their sanctuary, they do save the girl but lose some of their team, and the zombies are allowed to enter the mall. They must evacuate the mall without time to prepare a proper escape. Never mind the ridiculous propane bombs, why didn't they use fire and bombs to clear the crowd of zombies out earlier? They could have been lobbing molotov cocktails down into the packed crowd and the fire would have easily spread among the infected. This would have cleared the way to the ammo shop, providing them with a ton of ammunition and cleared a path for the gun shop guy, Andy.
Well, this is going pretty long. Let me just to list a few more annoyances; the girl shooting a shotgun from the hip, stick through a zombies skull, inappropriate music accompanying awful montages, not so clever used of a Disturbed song (2 counts), and the end credits interspersed with short clips of what is happening to the characters at the end of the movie..
My final conclusion is that the film is interesting enough, not only to compare it to the original, but as a zombie movie. Even though it is hard to like a movie that goes so far to take a crap on one's suspension of disbelief, it is worth watching. Fortunately for it, the total is greater than the sum of its hack parts.