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ben-winterburn
Reviews
Dark Future (1994)
A lesson in film making incompetence.
Where to start. The film is terrible. The Synopsis - a plague renders humans sterile. A group of aging oligarchs run what's left of the world from a civic building of some sort in Russia. Their rule, such as it is, enforced by sex crazed cyborgs. Yeah it's as good as that sounds. I've seen high school plays that were better acted and made more sense.
The "cyborgs" wear Russian naval survival suits for some reason, Complete with cervical flotation at the neck. Spiffy! The cyborgs, we are told via exposition dump, are wired up to mimic the human brains of what used to be their living human progenitors, who were the mercenary army of the oligarchs. As such the cyborgs still have the human instinct for drinking and whoring, so they go to a theme park populated by human slaves. At the park the cyborgs hear a baby cry! The humans aren't sterile after all!
Once the truth is known, park bartender, Kendall (played by Darby Hinton who seems to be the only one who received his certificate from "how to be an actor in 7 days", I digress) decides to start a revolution. His compatriot Perrine who looks and sounds like the Gestapo man from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, wears round glasses so you know he is slime. Are you still following this?
Kendall seems well informed about historical events prior and up to the oligarch takeover, where he gets this info is unexplained.
Things I noted of interest and points of unintentional humor.
1) due to the lack of budget for proper actors and choreography the action scenes are hilarious. The slave human tactics look like something an epileptic toad might have come up with. Taking cover beside cover rather than behind it, and drawing down on the backs of your opponents and then waiting upwards of a minute for them to turn around and shoot you first being highlights.
2) A woman with an infant enters an airduct at ground level, crawls along laterally some distance and exits some six stories up in another building. Amazing.
3) For some reason the cyborgs have space laser pistols and force fields, but don't have radios to tell each other or the oligarchs what is happening in the theme park.
4) In the final fight, a cyborg takes 3 point blank shots from a laser pistol and is not seriously affected. Prior to this every cyborg has died instantly from a single shot. Kendall decides to fight the cyborg with a cane snatched from an oligarch. His fight with the cyborg looks like an altercation between two Tai Chi practitioners.
5) The oligarchs are all bearded old whitemen (obviously) But the human salves are all young. If the population is sterile where are the young slaves coming from? If they are the last of the pre plague humans why don't they know anything? If they are clones why don't the oligarchs clone themselves? Or produce cyborg bodies for themselves, instead of the ridiculous plan to use the baby to make potions of longevity (tm)?
6) The oligarchs apparently stay on the surface doing....? But send their robots to the pleasure parks?
The dialogue and story are something a 13 year old might write for their homegrown comics. The special effects what you'd expect from the early 80's not 1994. The direction and flow are abysmal. This movie is on par with Robot Monster for cinematic turkey of the century.
BOMB.
Down a Dark Hall (2018)
Needs re-edit or add 10 minutes
I have not read the book. The premise of the film is interesting. The main character is developed not too badly, the supporting characters essentially not at all. Uma's villainess needed more backstory; exposition on her abilities, how and when she discovered them, and why she chooses to use them as she does. As in many horror movies the characters react strangely. Having discovered sinister goings on, no one makes any attempt to arm themselves or prepare in any way before blundering haphazardly into the forbidden zone, how cliche.
The finale feels rushed as the big reveal along with a lot of nonsensical side happenings all occur at once, aka the infamous concerto scene. Also as mentioned the film is shot in near darkness, any darker and it may as well have been a radio play. There was no nudity in the film, it sorely needed some.
Harry and Tonto (1974)
poignant film about aging
The basis of the film is described well elsewhere in the reviews here, so I will try and cover a different aspect. This is the sort of film I would not have bothered watching until recently. As I age, I find I am less interested in watching FX extravaganza's and more interested in human stories. Provided we are successful in reaching Harry's age, any of us could find ourselves in circumstances similar to Harry's.
Retirement, widowed/widower, children scattered across the country, and friends gradually all dying off are the prizes waiting at the twilight of a long life. What happens when in your mind you feel the same as you did at forty but now your body is slower, your license is revoked and you have to give up, for whatever reason, your home?
SPOILER ALERT Like Harry, most of us try to hold on to the past; to live in moments now gone. With the death of Tonto, Harry removes the last of his old ties. At peace with his family and himself, Harry's journey has expanded his appreciation of life. In the glow of the setting sun, we see a renewed Harry, ready to use the last of his own fading light to embrace the opportunities that life can still provide.