bogymel Reviews

Dune (2021)

A wonderful and complex story stripped bare

[2/10 · 26 October 2021]

I seriously don't understand why people like this movie. I went to the cinema full of hope, listening to all the voices that praised it, to the long round of applause it received at first screening.

Are people these days only impressed by pretty visuals and long scenes of nothing? Is that enough for a movie to be considered great? Just that? Dear lord...

Yes, visuals are stunning and they manage to paint the Dune universe very well. Music is also on point, I mean, Hans Zimmer. Enough said.

However, it's just an empty husk, and an hour too long. It's as soulless and pretentious as the most vain and superficial Instagram influencer, just a very nicely decorated box, but empty.

Story is stripped to its barebones, although pretty faithful to the book. It rushes over every action scene in favour of presenting, long, pointless scenery and people staring into the abyss. The world is dead and only the main characters and some secondaries are moving around here and there. The dune world devoid of life. The main city looks deserted. Didn't they have enough money for extras, I wonder? Arrakis may be barren, but it's not a dead world!

Characters are just as barren as their surroundings. Important characters from the book are missing entirely, some of the ones not missing are stripped bare, others are just plain wrong. Dialogue is also stripped to the bone, nothing memorable is being said here.

It has nothing apart from the modern visuals over previous iterations, in fact, the Dune and Children of \dune miniseris made by SciFi, with a very low budget, and poorly acted for the most part has more to offer than this.

This movie is like opening that delicious looking box of chocolates and finding that it's empty. I was extremely dissapointed and my day was ruined.

Army of the Dead (2021)

oh dear god

[2/10 · 21 May 2021]

Netflix has to read the reviews for their movies, right? Right?

I've always been on the fence about zombie movies, I know they are all the rage but they never really appealed to me and I always put them in the generic clicheic horror movie of dubious quality and entertainment value. This one is all that and then some.

Plot holes everywhere. Not going to go into details but they are there and wide as the grand canion. No care was put whatsoever in the script to have a minimum amount of coherence.

Dull, clicheic and poorly written characters. I can't possibly say I like any of them they can all die for all I care.

The 2 stars is because it got an interesting idea. Could have been a lot better implemented if written by someone who actually knows how to write. MIght have even been a miniseries.

Instead we got... whatever the hell this is. Please don't bother with it watch world war z instead or night of the living dead.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Boring mediocre war movie

[5/10 · 16 May 2021]

I rewatched this film recently, when it first came out I found it rather boring, but then again I was rather young and dumb and lacked the intellect of properly enjoying it. Fast forward to today, not going to pretend that my intellect is now vastly superior, however, I'm now capable of watching films through a more critical eye, and I still found this movie boring.

Blatant historical inaccuracies aside (no banzai? Come on...) this film misses all targets. It tries to be too many things at once: it tries to be a philosophical introspection on war, it tries to be a camaraderie story, it tries to depict the cruelty of war. It fails at every single one of these things.

The company men seem disconnected from each other, there's no sense of proper bonding between the troops. You don't actually see their struggle, you are only being told that it's there.

The action is not flowing, just some random events thrown in without any context. The philosophical introspection doesn't make any sense and it's sort of disconnected from the action. It seems the characters are reading from a piece of paper, the thoughts are not their own.

The characters are poorly written and you simply can't get attached to any one of them. They are as unidimensional as they can be. They don't transform, they're not a journey. They either die or survive. They just are, they don't become.

The 5 star distribution doesn't really do this film much service. They just threw in all these big names, but their potential is barely used. With maybe one or two exceptions, none of them stand out. With so many stars, none have an actual chance to shine.

There are far superior WW2 movies, or war movies in general, to watch out there. You may give this a miss without regret.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

The death of a great saga

[5/10 · 20 December 2015]

I can't even begin to describe how disappointed I am in this movie. Mu hopes were up, and justified since there was a great director in charge of it. JJ Abrams usually delivers.

Not this time though. The story is weak and inconsistent, leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like where the hell did the new sith lord emerge? Was he hiding under a rock in the times of the emperor and Vader and waited patiently for them to kick the bucket so he can take the cake? That's not your typical sith behaviour that's for sure...

Kylo Ren is a weak negative character, he just doesn't deliver. When Vader appeared on screen everyone was in awe and holding their breath. This guy? He's defeated by a teenage girl who found out about the force 10 minutes ago... do the math.

And about the said teenage girl... I still don't get it how she managed to pull all those Jedi tricks without any training whatsoever. How does that work? Might she be some kind of force prodigy with a higher midiclorian count than Anakin?

The movie is not extremely bad, it still delivers some good fun, but for the hardcore fans of the series such as myself simply doesn't cut it. It just doesn't fit well in the series... I hope the next movies will be better.

Criminal Minds (2005– )

Enough is enough already

[6/10 · 16 December 2015]

So I've been watching this show ever since it's beginnings and all I can say is that I'm sick of it... 5 seasons would have been enough. But since I have a mild OCD that urges me to see things to an end, I can't stop watching.

Joke aside... this has become a painful to watch show. It has nothing interesting anymore, it just repeats the same formula over and over for the sake of ratings and/or money. Next to no story whatsoever, just episodes almost without any connection. Just pick an episode and watch, you're not missing anything. Writers out of ideas? Or perhaps due to lack of ideas, they're trying to turn some watchers into sources of inspiration?

But I digress...

The thing I find annoying is that although it has an interesting intrigue (actually 2 now) it isn't properly followed through, leaving the viewer wanting more, but all he/she gets is yet another stupid episode on a random subject.

I'm going to leave out all the abundant plot holes and bloopers because hey, it's a movie, it's fiction, it's not supposed to be perfect but what they're doing with the "story" is just ridiculous.

I really hope this show ends soon.

Godzilla (2014)

Eye rape

[2/10 · 24 August 2014]

This movie has everything... It tries to combine some cinematography techniques in a the most uninspired way possible. It seems like it tries to be some sort of The Dark Night (without the awesome Bat-Man and the Villain) with some sort of Cloverfield. The combination is so badly put together that it will make you cringe.

It looks like those in charge of this movie smoked some weed, snorted some coke, sat on the toilet and thought hmm... how do we sabotage this movie? Uh, I know, let's show 5 minutes or so of monster-monster action, let's use as few words as possible, let's create tasteless, odorless and colorless characters and no one would care if they were chewed by Godzilla, spat out for the lack of taste and finally swallowed and digested by those whatever the hell they are monsters and last but not least let's use a lot of military stuff... everybody just loooves military stuff... boom boom here's your movie.

It has so many plot holes it hurts. It's unbelievable that that huge bunch of people that took part in the making of this movie had all the IQ of an empty bucket.

It is an insult to the public. It is an insult to this fine art that is cinematography. It is a waste of money and resources. It is a waste of Bryan Cranston's talent. I believe he begged them to kill him and get him out of the nightmare.

There you have it. Hollywood is getting worse every year and makes a mockery of every movie subject in existence. They should be ashamed of themselves.