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Reviews
Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)
mashup-homage to 80s action, with authentic overload of kitsch
Wow this was a bad movie! Shameless wall-to-wall cheese. Great fun!
The maker of this film has clearly just watched Mad Max, Clint Eastwood cowboy movies, and James Bond, and tried to do his own mashup. The opening scene already sets clear the expectations that we'll get a tonne of clichés and mindless action. And it doesn't disappoint. And just to jam in a few more 80s-action classics, let's karate and a crossbow.
Amidst all the schlock I've seen since the 80s, somehow I had not yet seen any Chuck Norris. He does a fine job of playing the emotionally-stunted alcohol-dependent hero (perhaps in the same way Schwarzenegger does a fine job playing a robot, in Terminator).
The script-writer got paid 20 peanuts for his 5 minutes of work, to make way for the exploding barrel budget. So one thing unfortunately missing are those corny one-liners just after a bad guy gets dusted off that we've come to gleefully expect from James Bond and Arnie films.
Nonetheless, there's overused tropes galore. Each character is a stereotype cliché distilled to near purity, and plenty of it is really badly acted as special bonus to us viewers. The plot and all sub-plots are the exact same ones you've seen a hundred times before. The editing is at times atrociously paced. The script has zero originality or inspiration. And as mentioned, the budget for exploding barrels and fuel tankers is improportionate.
Two things actually done well are the music score, and a lot of the camera work, and I sincerely hope the people responsibility for these aspects were given opportunity to work on more quality films.
This is a prime example of a film that is so bad, it becomes enjoyable again. I don't think it deserves the ho-hum 6.5 presently. I rate it a solid 2/10 - conspicuously bad. I'd watch it again, next time with some buddies as a bingo drinking game.
Kampen om Narvik (2022)
how war breaks a village
This is a wonderfully paced film that shows in equal measure the tribulations of civilians and of soldiers, when your country is invaded. It's one of the best films I've seen that successfully shows all aspects of war's destructiveness - not just with physical destruction and bodily harm, not only the emotion trauma (actually, it glances over that rather quickly). But also how it threatens family units, moral values and principles, and loyalties.
All the mains characters are confronted with difficult decisions and are well fleshed-out. Most secondary characters have enough to them that we can't just file them under a good guy/bad guy, or coward/hero cliche.
Narvik has bit of everything. I found myself in various moments with a tear in my eye, with a dry gasping throat, with fists tense, or in wide-eyed awe.
Paradise (2023)
a reminder of the grotesqueness of society
Paradise, already from the title, begins a bit tongue-cheek of modern gig society commodifying everything and our abysmal treatment of low-status humans. Then it gets dark and existential. Then it gets into action. All in all I was pleasantly surprised.
The premise is vaguely like that of GATTACCA, but Paradise's presentation is less wooden and stylised. In all, it's more relatable, and hence much more interesting to me. It was great seeing how Berlin looks in maybe 10-15 years if we were to extrapolate the wedge of capitalism dividing the haves from the have-nots.
The acting was great (am I cynical if I add "especially for a German movie"?). I'm not sure why other reviewers complain about the script. It all seems natural to me, and delivered well. Maybe European dialogue seems underwhelming to an audience used to OTT Hollywoodness (and I'm starting to realise why I liked this more than GATTACA).
Also, it's not in English, which for some idiotic reason seems to always drop a movie's average rating by about 1.5 stars on IMDB.
But, I would agree with critics saying the ending is somewhat anti-climatic, and could have been explored in a more interesting, if not convoluted progression. What IS great and unexpected about the second half, even as it feed some of the grumblings, is the unexpected character developments. Rather than a plot-twist, we get twists in morality.
In all we are forced to question: what is the cost of a human life? Or in other words, at what point does my well-being trump yours? And what is the moral cost of commodification in general?
Or in other words, and without totally nerding out on tech, this does exactly what sci-fi should do.
The Edge of All We Know (2020)
It's about process, not results.
Why such disparate reviews and ratings? I think it's important to set your expectations correctly for this film.
Chances are you (prospective viewer of this documentary) already know much of the pop-science explanations of black holes from other documentaries, books, New Scientist magazine, etc. If so, don't expect to learn anything new about black holes here.
"If there's nothing to learn here, why bother?!" I hear you ask. Well, you will learn about humans and process, rather than facts.
This documentary takes more of a meta-perspective, looking at what, or perhaps more aptly put, how the scientists DO what they do to get the info that constitutes what you might see in other black hole documentaries. A montage of day-in-the-lives of the scientist.
The two main disciplines that feed into our current understanding are shown in stark contrast to each other, one a messy cross-institutional tangle, the other a calm dignified sort of family.
There's the experimental physicists and astronomers - a collaboration of 200 people hoping to directly observe and then model a black hole. And there's theoretic physicists - Stephen Hawking and 3 others, number crunching their way to a resolution of the Information Paradox.
I don't really understand the complaints of other reviews about the graphics. They're used sparingly, and are beautiful in their minimalism - a mix of hand-drawn and CGI modelling. Interspersed are some more artistic drawing, with the voice-overs of the more philosophical musings. Zoe Keating's layered cello was a great choice for the accompaniment.
If you only have time for depersonalised facts and data, you won't enjoy any of this.
In the end it's a humbling experience, about very human Earthlings exploring the edges of space with their minds and with technology.
6 Days (2017)
Tense, unadulterated, engaging.
This movie tells a fascinating, brief chapter in British modern history using nothing more than the amazing situation and the stories of the involved characters to engage us.
There is no elaborate political sub-plots, no flamboyant character quirks, no excessive melodramatic sequences. There isn't even a prologue into how we arrived at this mess-it drops you right into the opening minutes of the crisis.
From there, we're given the increasingly exhausted perspectives of three or four key persons in the event, representing different key factions that get tangled in the matter-the police negotiator, the BBC reporter, the SAS lead of Blue team, and from about halfway in we're allowed to enter, a little, the perspective of the main terrorist.
It would be easy to simply cast the terrorist as a depthless one-dimensional paragon of evil, or the SAS guy as machosexy action hero of the day. But we're mercifully spared such cheesy caricatures.
All characters really come out as REAL people, relatable humans, but without getting bogged down in backstory or insufferable relationship dynamics. Admirably, even the terrorist's human side is shown, as desperate as he is, in pushing for his outcomes whilst being emotionally rattled about the escalating need to create (and receive) violence.
Similarly, instead of getting clogged with mil-jargon and weaponry talked up like they are their own character, we're shown only enough of the spy gadgets and mil-tech to show what's in play here. As part of this, some backstory of the hostage-rescue drilling is shown, since their training and preparation is as critical as hardware. I'm no expert, but the technical details here seem excellent-precise, and understated. Apparently Rusty Firmin himself was technical advisor on set.
A few months ago I binged through some movies and docos on the SAS' involvement in the early days of the Gulf War. You know the ones. (Was this really the same elite regiment as the one in WW2 I'd read about?) Though it's set a decade before Bravo Two Zero, and presumably a completely different arm of the regiment, 6 Days redeemed all respect I had for the SAS.
This film does brilliantly to transmit the tension, really making us feel for the characters, and leaving nothing superfluous to detract from the captivating progression of events. 6 Days could be enjoyed not just by war-nerds, but I imagine would be fascinating for anyone who personally lived through that week in Britain in 1980, or just anyone who's had their fill of overglamourised action films and wants something more down-to-earth.
Greetings from Tim Buckley (2012)
Never gets beyond the greetings
The inane title, taken from the invitation to the Tim Buckley tribute concert, is a foreboding of how dull and vague is the movie to follow. This movie was to me at times frustrating, at other time just boring, most of the time frustratingly boring.
I have a healthy appreciation for Jeff Buckley and was curious to see a bit about his father's life, as well as explore the relationship between the two. Unfortunately what we're given is a string of thematically incoherent scenes, too lacking in substance to be considered vignettes. There's almost no progression - plot doesn't unfold, themes aren't explored, we never dig deeper into the characters who don't develop anyway.
With each new scene I found myself initially engaged, partly as relief from the having the last meaningless scene end, and partly in anticipation that the next might delve into something a bit more meaty and substantial. Alas, each is as directionless as the last.
Penn Badgley, as Jeff Buckley, is quite convincing as a troubled creative mind. Though many times the wistful aloofness does not endear himself to us. The character lacks charm. Tim Buckley is thematically central to the movie, but the script effectively leaves him with the status as a secondary character, appearing in a jumble of cut scenes smattered here and there. Imogen Poots does well as an unnecessarily cliché love interest. The acting was overall quite good, but lets us down with a miserable script.
The cinematography department mostly did a good job. Some of the scenes are very pretty. The sensitive serenity of other scenes are ruined when, for no apparent reason, the cameraman does away with the tripod and shifts to the shaky-camera style that has gotten all trendy the last few years (my headache-inducing bane!).
The audio seems a little rough. Some of the interpretations (I don't believe there's any of Tim or Jeff's original music there) are lovely, but the levels jump around a bit. A lot. And Badgely does his darndest to hit the wailing falsettos characteristic of Jeff, but let's face it - it wouldn't ever sound as good. His voice could have been put through a compression filter with a bit of delay or something - anything to take the edge off his voice, which really starts to grate on one's nerves with some extended scenes of him singing to himself. Though the movie is not for want of detailed post-production audio editing - for some reason a few scenes are filled with annoying electronic whines of amp-feedback or TV static, filled to such an extent as to sound like tinnitus as it verges on being painful (more headaches)(Why??).
To sum: the movie fails mostly due to a complete lack of storytelling. The potentially very interesting story of paralleled talent and tragedy, and the intricate inter-generational themes behind it, are all left untouched.