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Reviews
Inside Job (2010)
Effective at exposing the ill effects of systemic corruption that caused the recession
This film takes a adversarial position towards the perpetrators of the market crash of 2008 and its consequences. The film is narrated by celebrity Matt Damon and there is a rock and roll soundtrack, demonstrating that it is going for a wide audience demographic. Often showing candid moments during the talking heads interviews, we are shown the interviewees drinking from water bottles, sweating and stuttering on questions. The interviewer is often heard asking questions from off-screen, though we never see him, thus becoming a main character himself in the movie. At times the interviews become visibly hostile, and more like interrogations. There is no doubt about the viewpoint expressed in the film. Worth watching, and entertaining at the same time.
Freakonomics (2010)
Insincerity is counterbalanced by a lack of dishonesty
Freakonomics presents us with these two guys, an economist and a journalist who try to summarize a popular book they authored of the same name. I found it mostly trendy, quirky ways of looking at mostly mundane realities of civilization. There is a lack of cohesion between the "chapters".
The first chapter is about how someones name might be proportional to their success in the economy. There is a chapter on cheating in sumo wrestling in Japan. There is a chapter trying to explain how legalized abortion was the major cause of a decrease in crime in the USA in the late 1980s and early 90s. Finally there is a chapter where the authors intervene at a middle school and offer "incentives" to students who meet a minimum grade. They offer 50 dollars to the students who can obtain a minimum passing grade every month. The incentives don't really prove anything. The authors decide they need to go to preschools, and get them while they are younger. At the end of the film, one of the authors after giving an opaque monologue explaining the themes of the film, then finishes off by saying, "that's total BS wasn't it". I think he pretty much sums it up. The authors insincerity is made up by their lack of dishonesty.
Where this film really shines is in its marketability. The use of trendy rock music, quirky characters, special graphic effects, and conclusions that are fairly uninteresting outside of the context of the film itself. I think this film would most appeal to middle of the road liberal minded people who are not specializing in any particular realm of knowledge.
Event Horizon (1997)
haunted house on a spaceship
There are two main problems I have with Event Horizon. First, the unbelievable storyline and characters. Second, the lack of originality and taking ideas from other famous sci-fi movies.
The movie is based on a story that a trans dimensional spaceship returns after having gone missing for 7 years. The "Event Horizon" which has a black hole engine, folds "space" so that it can travel faster than light. A rag-tag group of swearing, smoking and brawling space "soldiers", accompanied by the delicate mad scientist who invented the ungodly missing ship go on a reconnaissance mission. Basically, the doctor goes berserk on the ship, and people start going mad, tearing out their eyes and so on. The ship, it is suggested, has most likely travelled to trans-dimensional hell. The ships crew is seen in the video log consuming itself while the captain offers a monologue in Latin while holding his extracted eyeballs.
Event Horizon liberally steals ideas from superior sci-fi films. The grungy space cowboy themes from alien, and the cerebral psychological aspects of Solaris. The film degenerates to lots of running through cryptically Gothic space ship corridors, and self-immolation. Finally there is some large explosion after most of the actors have died.