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Reviews
Phase IV (1974)
A hidden gem, but not a diamond.
I really enjoyed this as I generally like movies of the 70s more than contemporary movies (slower tempo of cuts, real stunts & less special effects, surprising endings... although they had cliches of their own!). The plot may be a bit stupid this time, but visually this was really nice. Not too long, either! You can find even some serious themes in the movie.
I think the original cut for the cinema was better than the refound alternative ending. The longer ending doesn't really add up anything to the plot and it seems to be just another "psycho trip" that were somehow trendy in movies back then...
The Matrix (1999)
Average sci-fi movie
Yes, I know The Matrix is an iconic movie, but I have watched it only twice. For the first time about 20 years ago and now for the second time. I'm quite sure this was also the last time as it was just as average as I remembered it to be.
The biggest problem is the plot which is just too generic (mad AI destroys the civilization but a lonely warrior can save it... hmm... Terminator and a bunch of other sci-fi movies already used that!) and full of weird holes and stupid ideas... You have to answer a phone to exit the Matrix? Why? Why the Oracle is in the Matrix? Why, why, why?
The story lacks surprises. After the first 30 minutes or so everything goes just like you expect them to go... They have an excellent option to erase either Neo or Morpheus (just like the Oracle predicted) from the story and bring some moral thinking with that into the box, but nooo... Of course all the good guys in the main roles must survive. How boring.
I know that 23 years ago the special effects of the movie were cool, but I have never really appreciated special effects that look like... well, special effects.
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Now this was something!
I really liked this... Heroes and villains are ah so stereotypical and the old Hong Kong looks so unbelievably charming. The island of Han reminds me of the old Bond movies in a good way. As an old movie this also lacks the political correctiness of today's movies.
Certainly the movie is also a fantastical tribute to Bruce Lee whose career (and life) was cut short shortly after.
The Running Man (1987)
Arnold saves this with his oneliners
Interesting plot is somehow ruined by bad actors and even worse screenplay. Arnold saves the day with his plentiful oneliners, though. However, those alone are not enough to rise the movie to the same level with his other 1980s hits like Predator and Total Recall.
Jaws (1975)
As a classic it's a must see.
Now over four decades after its release Jaws still is a good movie, mainly because it can tell its story without too many special effects. Especially the first half of the movie is enjoyable not only as a movie but also as a depiction of the life in the 1970s. Unfortunately the latter half of the movie is a bit too stretched in every way...
12 Monkeys (1995)
Misses its potential
The plot of the film a bit more original than usually, but unfortunately it has too many holes in it. There are also serious issues with plausibility... How on Earth people in the future can travel in time but can't figure out how the virus is made of? Why the time travellers just don't tell the people of the past some convincing facts so that they are believed (just like "the child in the barn")? Why, why, why... I asked this too many times during the film. The dystopian future was also ridiculous...
The characters in the film are too thin or stereotypical. Bruce Willis can't grow out of the typical character that is identical to many of his other movies... Certainly not a classic scifi movie that I hoped it could be.
Deliverance (1972)
Great movie.
Great movie. Nice story, interesting characters, beautiful scenery... Maybe a bit over extended, it would have worked even better without the last 15 minutes or so...
Escape from New York (1981)
Enjoyable B class movie
What can you say... to be sure, it's awful. Characters are ridiculous as well as the plot. On the other hand, it's so camp that it's actually enjoyable. I wouldn't look it again, but I did enjoy almost every minute of it. The music fits the movie well, very simple but it just works...
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Just a too long chase, really.
I had high expectations of the movie as I had heard positive stories of it. I had watched the three previous Mad Max movies on the previous week and thought that really almost anything would be better than the awful Thunderdome. Well, certainly the Fury Road wasn't such a flop. I just didn't recognize it as Mad Max anymore, really. It wasn't the dystopian Earth anymore but like a fantasy world in a distant galaxy, a bit like Sin City meets Star Wars meets the Lord of the Rings. In the Road Warrior everything was in a really small scale, but now the tribe of the warboys was living in a gigantic fortress which would be hard to build even with modern technology...
To start with, there was an overdoze of special effects. It just makes the world feel not real. It's ok if the action should be "cartoonish", but I'm not sure if it was the intention. The plot was also boring, really nothing more than just a looong chase. Actually so long that in the end it was hard to concentrate on it anymore and then all of sudden you realize that "whoaa did the big boss just died, not sure as I almost fell asleep".
It wasn't as bad as the Thunderdome, though. At points the action really had some balls and in overall the movie was quite "stylish". It's a pity that the story itself wasn't up to all the effort that was used to make the chase look like a computer game with steroids. But maybe this is a generational thing...
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
What a disgrace!
If I should list the worst sequels of all time, this film would certainly be on that list. Not only it is awful, but the contrast to the previous one is so big as the Road Warrior was so great...
It's like the film makers have thought that let's put more of everything and it should be great. Certainly the it's not the resources that are missing, but the fresh ideas and the atmosphere of the two original movies. The plot is stupid to the point of ridiculous. The characters are caricatures to the point of boring. Action is sometimes hard to follow or just illogical. Everything is underlined as if they think film viewers as morons...
In the Road Warrior action was also brutal with (mostly) no round edges. In Thunderdome it's rather cartoonish as if trying to keep it not restricted.
Mad Max 2 (1981)
Action as its best!
An iconic action movie that has it all. I especially appreciate "the old school way" to make movies without modern special effects which make scenes taste so real... The plot is also believable as it's not too big - everything happens in a rather limited space, but it works. Lot a of action with some peaceful moments in between. And the end has also a small nice surprise... Great movie!
Mad Max (1979)
Entertaining
A nice old style action movie without modern Hollywood cliches. Also interesting as Gibson's breakthrough movie. Not worth a second watching, though.
El Topo (1970)
Weird but fresh western
The plot contains many good elements and the storyline is interesting, you can never know for sure what happens next. It was fresh to watch this kind of film that would be politically highly uncorrect nowadays. Also the absence of special effects makes the movies of the 1970s so real.
The world of El Topo is weird, almost a fantasy, but is actually just a caricature of our own. Symbolism is strong in this movie. It also pinpoints some ugly things in our society. The story is divided into two rather different episodes which is a good decision. Bad and good, and good doesn't necessarily prevail.
As a movie it's still a bit hard to watch at some points. Some actors are not that good and it takes time to tune yourself to the weird world of the movie. Dubbing is ridiculous at times. It's a movie with full of holes in it, just like your dreams. Just try to forget those and it will be an enjoyable ride.
Kaikki synnit (2019)
Politically correct mini series
The series has some potential and the plot is good enough to keep you somehow interested in it for six episodes, but unfortunately it's not really living to its full potential. The main characters would have been sensational in the 1960s (policeman, promiscuous and emancipated cougar police, some kind of antifa guy, immigrants etc.) but nowadays they are just banal. They have tried to make it more interesting with these "interesting persons" but in the end they make it just more unbelievable.
The plot itself offers a couple of nice cliffhangers, but has too many holes in it. It's also a bit too underlining... Some of the actors are mediocre at best, but there are also some quite decent performances.
It's not bad. It's quite good but with too many irritating aspects.
Interstellar (2014)
Utter disappointment
I just saw the 70 mm version of the film (I hadn't seen it before) and I had high hopes of it. After all, in many reviews it was compared to the Holy Grail of science fiction, Kubrick's 2001: Space Odyssey. But instead of cosmological Beethoven I saw a rather ordinary rock'n roll space movie.
Sure, many scientific facts were correct and special effects ok, but the athmosphere of the movie collapsed to the normal cliches of Hollywood movies. The hero was a rough corn farmer turned into a space cowboy. The end was underlining and giving all the answers instead of rising any questions. Driving of the space ships seemed to be rather easy feat, and surely you got those chases with them with some explosions, too...
Perhaps the worst thing in the movie was the complete failure of painting the space as a huge place where we are just tiny grains of sand. In Kubrick's Space Odyssey even the journey to Saturn was an extreme journey taking the whole movie to complete. In Interstellar humans are jumping to other galaxies in just minutes of movie time. In other solar systems the journey between planets is not even worth showing... What's the hurry? Instead of describing the feelings of crew in the middle of nothing there seems to be always a great hurry to the next scene of action...
After a couple of hours I almost fell asleep. Only when our space cowboy entered the black hole did the movie turned into something of bit interesting, but just when it would have been a terrific spot to end the movie it just went on until the ridiculous end.
Hereditary (2018)
Ridiculous movie, I can't find anything good in this...
The film has all the old cliches of horror movies (spiritualism, teen parties, a cottage in the middle of forest on the mountains, slightly deformed weird child etc.) and not really anything original. The plot was a complete mess and just got worse as the movie went on. The movie achieved its climax quite fast and after the first 30 minutes or so I mostly hoped that something a bit more interesting would happen - but it didn't.
I got scared - a bit - just once during the film, when something was suddenly thrown on the screen. There were similar "whoaa silence is interrupted by lighting fast boogieman on the screen" moments several times, but as I said, I got scared only once... Acting was rather dull, too.
I'm not sure if the ant infested dead bodies should have been scary. But nowadays people see the real thing - deformed bodies, bloody bodies, burned bodies etc. - really easily in internet, so that kind of special effects don't really have any real potential to add suspension to any movie nowadays... maybe in the 1970s those would have been cool.
Maybe, just maybe, the movie get some additional fame later on, because it was just so ridiculous...