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Glass Onion (2022)
It was like watching a flamboyant interpretive dance of a morality tale
Billionaires suck. Flashy business women influencers suck. Now, watch us say this over and over in many different ways, together with Kate Hudson twirling and woo'ing. And then the cheesiest plot twist ever.
Maybe if I had a big group of friends around and we were all hammered on cheap wine, then the movie would drift past pleasantly enough.
This seems a minor point in the light of the above - but Glass Onion appears to take the most sexist bits from the first movie and give them a re-do in the 2nd. You have a man who made a truckload of money and has hangers-on because of it. Because making big money is something men do, even if they didn't make their money in any legit way. And then you have the very young eye-candy woman. (De Armas was the eye candy in Knives Out 1. Cline is fine in 2., but I'm just saying it's obvious why they put her in this movie.) And then you have the young, attractive woc who the detective sides with. (Monae was great, but the material she had to work with was just a resorting of Knives Out 1 - and she deserved better.)
Anyway, I was just bored.
One star for the concept of a glass onion. That I like.
The second star for Kate Hudson's outfits.
The Wheel of Time (2021)
It's watchable but mostly quite tedious
I admit to not reading the books, but I'm a fan of fantasy. I adore LOTR.
This is just missing so much. There is no build up to anything. It's just... this happens, now this and now this. Oh, and then this.
It doesn't feel cohesive. Sections of it look fantastic, such as the abandoned city. But again, if the abandoned city is so lethal, why on earth is everyone allowed to wander around and do their own thing? It doesn't feel dangerous at all, but then it is. Visually, it looks great, but that's all.
The trollocs are awesome scary. But...... where was the build up to their attack?
All we had in the lead up was some boring mishmash of village life.
I don't think the scriptwriters understand conflict and building tension. I've watched five episodes so far. There is no tension. No anticipation. No building dread.
A lot is made of one character being a healer, and she sort of puts flowers on a wound. But it doesn't do much. And at the next place, a proper healer cures the wounded person. It is so frustrating.
The Silent Sea (2021)
Engaging - worth watching if you like scifi
Engaging Korean series set on the moon.
Earth is running out of water, but what did the researchers on the moon's space station discover before they all died?
Wonderful acting and it held my attention all the way through.
The downsides are the slow pace and the lapses in logic. Strangely, for such a slow pace, there is perhaps too much story crammed in. Might have been better to pare that back - a lot of the stuff that goes maybe a few steps too far revolves around a new character who is introduced.
A satisfying ending. What more can I ask for?
El páramo (2021)
Pointless
One star for the fantastic actors - they played their parts well.
One star for the cinematography - wonderfully done.
One star for the set - perfect for the story.
Zero stars for the story. It has been done over and over again. The story is that there is no story. It's pointless. Half the movie consists of the boy yelling out "mum" and the other half the mum yelling out "Diego". That's it. There is nothing else.
Why bother making something like this? Who knows?
Love Hard (2021)
Can't believe a dangerously sexist movie like this was made
Talk about problematic.
Catfishing can be a crime. At best, it's very unethical.
A man catfishes a girl, pretending to be his best friend. A girl sees his picture on the dating date - and is attracted. Getting to know him comes after that.
She springs a surprise visit on him, finding that he is not the person he has been pretending to be. She ends up falling in love with him anyway, because his personality suits her.
What in the actual???!!!
Problem 1: Catfishing is unethical and often criminal. Why on earth would you promote this behaviour as being okay?
Problem 2: Women are not allowed to be attracted to looks, while men are allowed to be. Apparently. The catfisher chose to target an attractive woman. Did he care about personality over looks? Seems not. Yet, the woman is able to look past the appearance of someone who she found to be very unattractive (the catfisher) and fall in love. This perpetuates the myth that women should not care about looks because it makes them shallow. Women are PEOPLE.
Problem 3: He's trapped her into falling in love with illusion - and now traps her into pretending to be his girlfriend until christmas so that she can try to start a relationship with the real object of her desire (his best friend). More manipulation.
Problem 4: The whole movie gives boys the idea that women are easily manipulated - that all you need to do is to trap them somehow and force them to see your "good points" and that women will easily see past looks to a man's heart. This sets boys up for a lot of confusion and heartache - and also harm and hatred against women. Men online who hate women and who idolise men who kill women often grow up thinking that women are pure, rather than the truth - women are PEOPLE.
Besides that, the movie was silly and predictable. I watched to the end, hoping against hope that the woman would realise that catfishing was wrong and the guy was a dud. The best ending would be that the two of them became friends, and that she helped him past his catfishing days.
This movie made me damned angry that such a storyline could happen in 2021.
Hypnotic (2021)
Silly on all possible levels
How do movies like this get made?
I give a star for the camera work and sets, which were great and atmospheric.
But as for the rest?
An evil hypnotist/therapist plots to get a woman under his control via hypnosis... when in reality, she's single and seems to like him and even went to dinner with him. He's also cashed-up with an amazing house.
There was a far easier route to win this woman's affections, dude.
The storyline bolts out of the gate and shows its hand quickly, leaving the plot with nowhere to go.
After finding out the therapist is bad, the woman goes to the cops, but there is only one cop, and he can't get the other cops interested in the case, even though the evidence is blatant.
Cue too-stupid-to-live woman going back to the therapist and trying to tape him. Of course, he finds out she's taping him during the hypno session. To move the plot along though, he lets her go....
Woman takes the tape to the cop. There is now a mountain of evidence. But apparently, the cop still can't get anyone else interested. And now the cop is in danger. And then a hairless girl that is a client of the evil therapist breaks into the cop's apartment and tries to stab him to death. (hairless girl has somehow become an expert at breaking into cops' apartments and stabbing people, under the therapist's hypnosis.
At a point before this, the therapist phones a client and tells her the code word that will make her imagine her worst fears have come to life - a tarantula crawling on her. She's driving at the time, seeing this arachnid crawl up towards her chin. Best scene of the movie. This was the kind of thing that could have been used to make a very different, far more intelligent movie. But anyway... of course the man sitting beside her can see that that she has gone into shock, but does he grab the wheel, does he leap over and put his foot on the brake?? Nup. Instead, he just sits there, crying out at her while doing some kind of vaudevillian jazz hands, letting her crash into another vehicle and killing them both.
The too-stupid-to-live woman drives to a house that she has seen in her fuzzy hypnosis-induced dreams. But, aha! The house belongs to the therapist. Oh no, what next!
Stupidity follows.
Deux (2019)
So very watchable
Nina and Madeline are secret lovers, both from a town in the South of France.
They've been hiding their romance, which feels especially saddening as they are both in their seventies and should be living life as they choose.
But there are as many complications and conflicts as lovers might face at any age, with the societal views on lesbian relationships causing additional pressures.
The pressures lead to Madeline suffering a seizure. She can no longer speak, and therefore she can no longer tell her family about Nina. The story broadens into a look into the way Madeline's adult children view her - not as a person in her own right, but as a mother and wife who was there to serve. With her now unable to speak, they speak for her.
The movie is beautifully shot, but the story was so engaging, I mostly forgot to notice this, which is the sign of a story well told.
Halloween (2018)
5 for fantastic actors. 0 for the film
First, I want to say that all the actors were great. Especially JLC. They all acted their parts well and were believable. JLC was fantastic to watch.
It started so well. The two reporters going to the secure property owned by Laurie Strode and trying to convince her to meet with Myers and put her demons to rest. Laurie's lifetime fear and preparation for the return of Myers was over-the-top but hey, it's a movie and not meant to be true to life. But it was believable that someone would be severely traumatised and not be able to get past what happened. And the part with the reporters in the jail trying to talk with Myers was great, too.
But after those opening scenes, the film itself was so silly. I couldn't believe the writers had written in so many plot holes and silly bits. Also so many wasted scenes.
A bus is escorting prisoners on Halloween night crashes. The prisoners escape. (Let's forget the laughable security)
The escaped Myers just happens to come across the two reporters who tried to talk to him in jail and who just happen to have his old mask. The female reporters sees a man come into the petrol station toilet acting creepily while she's sitting on the toilet, but she just rolls her eyes and isn't scared at all. When he rattles her toilet door she just calls out that it's being occupied. A woman alone in a bathroom who sees a man slowly walk up and down, let alone try to get into her stall (when the others are empty) is going to be seriously freaking.
Two police officers look at the list of escaped prisoners and note that Mike Myers is on the list. One of those police officers was there back in the 70s when Myers was last on the rampage. What do they say? They say they can't shut down Halloween and then they have a chuckle. Yep, let the kiddies go trick or treating while a serial killer is on the loose! Don't ruin their fun!
When the keystone cops realise Myers is killing people, you'd think they'd bring in masses of police, including SWAT teams. I think it might have been mentioned at an early point. But did it happen? Ummmm....no. It's all just local police bumbling about, including the two police who were sitting in a police car and looking at each other's lunch boxes and giggling.
Laurie Strode says she prayed every night for Myers to escape from jail so she could kill him. Huh? She was happy for him to get out so he could kill a crapload of people just so she could kill him? Wouldn't she pray for him to die in jail or at least stay there?
When the parents of the teenage girl (Strode's daughter and son-in-law) find out Myers is on the loose and their daughter is missing, what do they do? They go and hide away in Strode's house. What??? ANY parent would be out there driving around and searching for their kid, not in a bunker protecting themselves. The father was actually playing with a yo-yo just before he was killed - and no wonder. Too dumb to live.
Strode brought her daughter up like the kid in Kickass. Taught to shoot and fight and outwit a killer. But the daughter (now in her 40s) is a useless sap, all the way to the end. She does finally pick up a gun. (Why are guns so damned scary to women in movies?
Strode being so terrified of Myers that she was screaming was disappointing, too. She'd had all those years to harden herself.
Strode had all that equipment in her house but still didn't have a headlamp to use instead of the stupidly awkward flashlight? Carrying a flashlight and a gun together is just plain dumb.
Why the script didn't call for the three generations of women to work together to outwit Myers is beyond me. Instead, it was just a dribble of events. Did the three women have to turn into a screaming mess? It was such unsatisfying ending.
In the beginning, Strode believes Myers is supernatural (the bogeyman). She goes to watch the prison bus leave that night. She's been waiting all these years for her chance to kill him and should have a pretty good idea that a supernatural being is gonna escape from a bus. But what does she do? She goes to a restaurant where her family is and starts raving about Myers - instead of, oh, tracking the bus and seeing for herself if Myers escapes or not, and then luring him back to her house and trying to trap him (not that this was ever a solid plan, but it was her only plan).
There was no real plan. If you want to lure someone and trap them, this is not the way to go about it, folks.