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ronnybrown1982
Reviews
The Divide (2011)
Worst Film of 2011 So Far
Total and utter rubbish in every sense.
The story makes no sense whatsoever. There is a (presumably) nuclear attack at which point the occupants of the building find themselves trapped in the basement.
After being trapped for a while, one by one they turn nasty and violent and begin to rape and kill each other for no reason whatsoever.
That is literally all you need to know about this movie - there are no great psychological insights, no comment on human nature and it is certainly no great character study.
Even if you believe that humans are inherently evil and this is the kind of thing that would happen, the bad script, storyline and AWFUL characterization in this movie make it impossible to like.
No redeeming features.
Absentia (2011)
Very Good Low Budget Horror
If you come to this expecting something along the lines of Saw then you will be disappointed. It is a fairly slow moving, character driven, existential horror. That said, there are a good number of scares and tense, edge of your seat scenes.
It is well done - good cinematography, acting, soundtrack and story. Hopefully the director will continue the good work on his next film, from the decent way the characters were written and top notch direction (for what I guess was a small budget)this is a truly excellent movie.
Well done to all involved.
Highly recommended.
Cargo (2009)
Not bad, just boring
OK. First, the good points: decent effects, nice cinematography and decent acting. However, I have to agree with a lot of the other reviews and say that the script and story are pretty terrible. The characters are constantly doing things that make no sense. There are also a lot of massive holes in the story and twists that you can see coming a mile away. The story drags horribly and lacks any kind of tension for the final 45 minutes. It is certainly not (as some reviews have put it) unconventional or original. In fact it is a melding of bits of many scifi movies from the past thirty years, put together without reason or logic. Overall, could have been good but was let down by very poor writing.
The Guard (2011)
Brilliant!
A brilliant and very funny film - if you liked In Bruges then you will like this. The scriptwriting is top notch as are the performances from the two main characters and the actors in the (excellent) supporting roles. Apparently the Director is the brother of Martin McDonagh, the Director of In Bruges and although the similarities are very clear the differences are just enough that you can see two distinctive styles. I think the main similarity is in the writing style - both have extremely witty one liners and dark, sharp and sometimes truly odd dialogue which I love. Another review compares it to a few disgusting Guy Richie films but please don't let this put you off - its FAR better... Just go watch it!
Red State (2011)
Pretty Awful
Being a fan of Kevin Smiths earlier films (ie Clerks, Mallrats etc) I was extremely disappointed with this amateurish, didactic and boring movie.
Firstly, the directing would have been OK if it was a first time directors attempt at making an action movie but coming from someone with so many films under his belt it looked awful. To all the reviews that said the chase scenes were good: they weren't. Smith just attached a steadycam to the actors - a technique that has been used many times before and which didn't fit with the rest of the film.
The script was all over the place - going from awful conversational set pieces which didn't flow, to long pointless monologues - in particular the one from the Reverend that was done to show us how awful and bigoted he was which we already understood. The John Goodman speech at the end was equally awful and pointless. In the first 20 odd minutes I thought the film was looking good. After that the film is full of people acting in a way that makes no sense whatsoever and renders that entire film totally stupid and unbelievable.
Thirdly, the characters were all extremely one dimensional from the people in the church who were just mindless idiots, to the kids and the cops - who mindlessly carried out orders.
Overall, the film just treats the audience as idiots. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence disagrees with detainment without trial, with the Westboro Baptist Church, and (what this film seems to be based on) what happened at Waco. And if you don't disagree with all those things then you probably DO deserve to be hit over the head with a dried dog turd like this. Anyone else stay away.
Peace
Sanctum (2011)
No Redeeming Features
I will keep this short because it has all been said in other reviews - firstly, awful script and acting. Characters that you really cannot care about unless you are a total stump dumb moron. The only one to survive is the most annoying character and worst actor I've seen in ANY movie for quite a while. Even for Hollywood this film is bad. It is a total insult to the audience - its full of clichés and like another reviewer pointed out - you have already seen this movie - there is not an iota of originality here. Some people said the cinematography and soundtrack were decent but I think thats being kind - both are distinctly average. In fact, given the locations the crew had to work with it should look a hundred times better. Don't listen to the people who recommend it as a "good adventure movie" it isn't even that. Just don't bother...watch something else.