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abmarchant
Reviews
Shortwave (2016)
why one star . . .
Out of 10. Because 10% or less of the film content is interesting at all or contributory to the plot. Distorted audio is not interesting. Random flashes of mental illness don't tell a story. Fogged shower scenes are not entertaining. Fifty year old shortwave equipment is not intergalactic technology. Repeating clips over and over again don't make them more compelling. Buckets of blood and red scene lighting don't make the violence somehow meaningful. And why hire a Chilean actress, then insist on modifying her accent? For such a mood-centered movie, why go to so much trouble to weave in an then explain the mismatched plot threads?
Dark Cloud (2022)
HAL 9000 comes of age
Perfectly paced tech horror with clean cinematography, consistent characterization, and a compelling plot. Maybe you could criticize the Alexys Gabrielle for being too cute by half, but she proves capable in projecting the full gamut of emotional states.
The collection of previous reviews are incomprehensibly inaccurate:
"doesn't appear to be any cohesion between script, actor, director or editor" - No, it all hangs together perfectly.
"insanely slow paced and uneventful" - paul_haakonsen shouldn't review films that he admits to sleeping through.
"nauseating found footage" and "filmed in almost complete an utter darkness" - The movie includes no shaky or low-res scenes, and the night-time scenes are professionally worked to supply the necessary detail.
Rotini-52536 and Horror_Flick_Fanatic should be banned for generic 1-star reviews that say absolutely nothing about this particular movie.
Bokeh (2017)
hardly anything
Nothing to see here but lush Islandic summer scenery, nothing is happening or will happen, please move on. And so they all did. That's the entire plot.
The dialog was apparently written by a high-schooler, and delivered in a nasal voice by simpering naval gazer Maika Monroe. Being unable to afford at two professional actors, the producers should have moved on also.
The fortitude of the Islandic infrastructure and the global bloodlessness of the rapture strain credibility even for an apocalyptic movie. And don't worry about poor bereft Riley. His girlfriend can be seen still respiring to the end.
The Man from Earth (2007)
boring, didactic
As the psych professor says, ''Once I met a caveman who thought he was Jesus." Then Jesus delivers the "new testament in 100 words." That's about it. The Man from Earth presents itself as urbane scifi, but its actually just a tract (humanist, anti-christian).
The film is structured as a one-scene play, no action, undergraduate college dialogue, set in a the living room of a cabin as the protagonist prepares to leave his most recent life behind. Unfortunately, the dialog neither snappy nor consistent. There's some attempt at character development (for the faculty friends, not the protagonist). Throughout, movers remove furniture, evening falls, and old friends get up and leave.
Wormwood (2017)
wooden, yes
. . . also obvious, tiresome, repetitious, and low-rent. Long, moody pauses substitute for meaningful dialogue. The interviews are edited to draw attention to words that the filmmaker can then clumsily twist. The cinematography is weighed down by endlessly recycled special effects.