Monday, December 19, 2022
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
As far as I’m concerned, an Avatar movie does not need to be 3+ hours long. This one treats the audience to the best VFX yet seen in a major motion picture. It’s 90 minutes of anti-war VFX, 90 minutes of anti-whaling VFX, and a few minutes in the part of a screenplay called “resolution” to tie up loose ends.
I don’t see the point of these big dumb Hollywood blockbusters. If this were 30 minutes shorter and had more than a dozen non-VFX shots, I might recommend it.
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Bullet Train (2022)
This is a mixed bag if I’ve ever smelled one. I liked the actors and performances. I hated the direction and pacing. Maybe I have different tastes from the dumb hicks in the audience, but while they were lapping this schlock up I just wanted to catch the next train.
Saturday, June 12, 2021
Without Remorse (2021)
“”"Tom Clancy’s”"” Without Remorse is a mindless action movie that manages to be simultaneously politically correct and frustrating to watch. There are no bad guys and no real enemies, the whole movie is an anticlimax, and the producers had the gall to leave it open for a sequel.
My favorite part of the movie was the gunshot sounds. The silencers sounded realistic, and the M16s and Russian rifles sounded distinct. For some reason the silencers were louder than the non-silenced weapons, and sometimes the gunfire was muted entirely in favor of dramatic music. Those three sound effects were pretty decent. There were also punching and exploding sounds. If you like noise, you’re in for a treat.
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
The Adderall Diaries (2015)
I can hardly fault Hans Reiser for what is a common, almost mundane crime. I can fault the filmmakers for missing the opportunity for a crazy Christian Slater performance. Slater is at least 15 years ahead of Nicolas Cage in terms of career decay, despite them being the same age. When Slater gives a fuck his performance can reach the edge of Cage, but that did not happen here. The worst thing a movie can be is boring, and due to bad casting and bad writing, this movie stinks like a corpse.
It could have been due to fear of lawsuits or plain old apathy. It’s less like a rogue journalist reporting on the OJ trial and more like James Franco writing for a college newspaper.