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Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
Another abysmal piece of garbage from the king of crappy filmmaking.
Less of a review and more, just my thoughts while watching;
Opening narration about the "mother world" (no name planet), then how they've run out of resources and then conquered the galaxy, then how the king and queen are assassinated. Wow.
Then a woman is plowing... at night.
A bunch of crap about appeasing the gods with tribute. In this day and age and technology, they still believe in gods and tribute. And don't tell me this is a backwater world where they don't know about technology because, in the next town over, they're all about technology.
Then some stilted dialogue about love being weak.
Bad guys show up, clearly "The Empire" in this (hard pass from Disney) Star Wars.
Some moron starts shooting a Droid to show how tough he is. In an army of discipline, I've seen none. More like poorly paid mercenaries.
A Droid is told to "clean itself off." Why, exactly?
Some shots are clearly out of focus, like the DP or director is a brain-dead moron. Oh, wait, never mind.
The lead is so uncharismatic... that, or the direction is crap.
The action is dull. Even the slow motion is "slow". There's no blood, and you hardly ever see any contact. The fight scenes are PG at most.
Clearly, everyone in this movie belongs to Zack Snyder's amateur bodybuilder gym.
Zack Snyder = Zero substance at all and a lame attempt at some sort of style.
Some of the crapiest costuming I've ever seen. Main bad guy wears a white button down with a black tie.
SFX go from barely average to downright crap.
So all of this is to defend a tiny village... from one ship. Not to defeat an empire mind you.
Now some rebels are getting a speech on why they should be... rebels...? Who the eff wrote this piece of...oh, right.
Instead of shooting a bad guy, one of our "heroes" decides to run up a long plank (while taking tiny steps) to stab him instead... huh? This neither looks cool nor is cool, it's just effing stupid.
You know the fight scenes are bad when almost everyone in every fight has to slow a punch down or misdirect a kick mid-swing to avoid contact because it is so piss poorly choreographed. And the constant slow motion only makes it worse.
Why do people keep giving this complete lack of talent human, who I will admit is an amazing self promoter money? Never mind, answered my own question...
Broken (2005)
Not impressed
Broken, made for $8,000. That's right, $8,000. Wait... $8,000. Just in case you hadn't seen that anywhere else or heard it before. This video looks like it was made for a lot less. I'm not easily impressed by standard camera angles and color correction. What I am impressed with, is depth of field from a short camera lens. This video has none. It looks flat like video usually does.
It's not a film, as it was shot on video. It's a video and these people are video makers. But, let me get to the meat. Wait, there is none. Apparently the Joker has lost his makeup and for absolutely no reason, whatsoever (at least not that the audience is aware of) he kidnaps some woman in a t-shirt and claims that everyone in the room wants to kill her. Um... why? So the video makers seem to think that if you don't tell the audience anything that that now becomes tension. Maybe that's how stupid people see it, but with people with one iota of intelligence, this comes across as preposterous and boring.
The acting is not atrocious, but it's not good either. I've heard people deliver their lines like they're reading them. These actors don't do that, but what they do do, is take themselves entirely too seriously. If they had, perhaps, planted their tongues firmly in their cheeks, I might have enjoyed the performances.
The action scene, there is one, near the end. Was shot adequately enough, but for what they're doing in this short, it doesn't need to be anything special. The lighting was about the ONLY thing that was done really well. Honestly. I've seen indie films/videos done for far less that actually look better than this.
Was this the end-all/be-all of indie film/video making? No. Not even remotely. Would I go see a big screen version of this? No. Not even remotely. Would I recommend this to other indie film/video makers out there? Certainly. If for nothing else, it shows you what can be done with a micro-budget. Also, not to take anything away from the makers of this short, but they really need to learn story telling above and beyond anything else they may think they need to know.
Rollerball (2002)
What has happened to John McTiernan?
To preface this, I am a huge John McTiernan fan. Predator ranks right behind Aliens, in my opinion as the best Sci-Fi action movie ever. Die Hard invented a whole genre of film unto itself. Remember Die Hard on a plane? Passenger 57. Die Hard on a boat? Under Siege.
Hunt for Red October was hailed as the best sub movie since Das Boot. Still is in my opinion. Thomas Crown Affair was better then the original. I hear the first cut of 13th Warrior was outstanding (Michael Crichton re-shot and re-edited much of McTiernan's original film). Die Hard: With a Vengeance was a masterful sequel.
Personally, I like Medicine Man, but I can see why a lot of people did not. The Last Action Hero had a horrible story, but it was well directed.
Rollerball, much like Last Action Hero, was also a horrible story. The difference was McTiernan's direction was absolutely rancid. The editing was amateurish. The music was mundane. And the direction was awful, oh wait, I already said that.
The plot involves a wayward amateur athlete in the 'States hoping to get his break. He does in the form of a childish sport involving roller blades, motorcycles, steel balls and viewer ratings. For some reason he gets paid lots of money, but when a dimwitted teammate gets creamed upside the head with one of the afore mentioned steel balls, he suddenly develops a conscious, after all he's only making "100 times more" than his teammates. Why would he care if one gets knocked off?
What follows is a terrible story that tries to involve the audience on some pseudo-political level, but never even gets close. Jean Reno plays the owner of, apparently, not only the central team, but the league as a whole. LL Cool J plays a throw away part as Chris Klein's best friend. And Rebecca Romjin Stamos plays Chris' teammate/love interest. We don't care about any of the characters, they're never fleshed out. And they're doing something so childish, that even if they were, we still wouldn't care.
The direction is so terrible, that it looks like it was edited on someone's home computer by an inept amateur. There are silly things like an entire night scene that is shot with a green tint. I assume that this is supposed to give me the feeling that I'm watching this through night vision goggles. Basically it made me want to fall asleep. Later on in the same scene two vehicles bust through a wire fence and there is a, I'm not kidding here, "sproing" sound. Much like the sound one would hear in a Wiley Coyote cartoon. Both vehicles make this sound. That basically describes the whole movie. You sit back, scratch your head and say, "did I just see that? And if I did, that was terrible."
I can't say the entire movie was awful, the opening race through San Francisco had McTiernan's usual flare and panache. An ensuing car chase scene through some dirt roads in the Ukraine wasn't bad either. But the rest can be flushed right down the commode.
3 out of 10 stars. D+