Epicly brutal battle scenes, heroes dying suddenly quickly, as in life. Pathetic commanders and little people who only want to survive. And 100 meters from the battle, spectators literally looking at death through a lorgnette. It’s strange that this happened. There are gaps in logic , but it's a good movie about war - shit☮
For someone who was born in 2001 and not being able to watch Matrix in theaters this movie has a special meaning to me.
Edit: Never mind this was film was a piece of crap
Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia.
If anything, Hollywood has boiled that concept down to a science over the past few years, as this film is basically a summary of everything that’s wrong with the industry in a neat, 148 minute package.
It thinks it’s meta and self-aware by pointing out how cynical and cheap franchise filmmaking is.
That might sound similar set-up as 22 Jump Street, but this film proceeds to be cheap and cynical itself without saying anything substantial beyond its own set up, so it embraces what it’s trying to criticize.
Everything in this movie is structured as an excuse to show stuff you’ve seen before, there are little to no original concepts or ideas that push the franchise in an interesting direction.
It’s mostly a rehash of the first film (mixed with some stuff from Reloaded and Revolutions in the second half), except the action isn’t nearly as good, it’s more predictable and convenient, the performances are nowhere near as memorable (that’s what you get from replacing your 2 best actors), it looks uglier and more synthetic, the pacing isn’t as tight, and it’s a lot more dull because of how much it overexplains itself.
It also ditches the cyberpunk aesthetic, and replaces it with something a lot more bland and boring, stripping the franchise from a lot of its personality.
It’s honestly quite an accomplishment when you think about it: the original is one of the best, most successful, big budget films ever made that still maintained a strong artistic and alternative impulse.
This, on the other hand, couldn’t be any more lowest common denominator if it tried to.
It’s a parody of itself and modern blockbuster filmmaking.
I suppose that was Lana Wachowski’s goal to some extent, but it isn’t very compelling to watch.
3/10
I do not understand why this movie is being so universally panned. I loved everything about it, even if it's not the most unique story of all time. I felt like the casting was absolutely perfect. Rebecca Ferguson took my breath away almost every single second she was on screen. Hugh Jackman effectively portrayed an intelligent technologist and expert who betrays his own instincts about the capabilities and consequences of the technology. The music was awesome, especially Rebecca's singing and the way that it is eventually woven into the plot. The noir-like overlay of the narration was awesome. The environment was unique, intriguing, and believable. The slow-rolling unravelling of the mystery seemed to be perfectly paced for me. I was so busy taking in all of the details of each scene that it never really felt slow to me in the way that others are criticizing it for.
I loved this movie.
Clearly destined to be an underrated, under appreciated masterpiece by Lisa Joy, who clearly understands film noir better than most directors working today.
Denis Villeneuve is the man!
There’s only one word that came into my mind after watching it: finally.
Finally, a blockbuster that isn’t afraid to be primarily driven by drama and tension, and doesn’t undercut its own tone by throwing in a joke every 30 seconds.
Finally, a blockbuster that puts actual effort in its cinematography, and doesn’t have a bland or calculated colour palette.
Finally, a blockbuster with a story that has actual substance and themes, and doesn’t rely on intertextual references or nostalgia to create a fake sheen of depth.
Finally, a blockbuster that doesn’t pander to China by having big, loud and overblown action sequences, but relies on practical and grounded spectacle instead (it has big sand worms, you really don’t need to throw anything at the screen besides that).
Finally, a blockbuster that actually feels big, because it isn’t primarily shot in close ups, or on a sound stage.
And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.
(Yeah, I know Tenet did those things as well, but I couldn’t get into that because the characters were so flat and uninteresting).
This just checks all the boxes. An engaging story with subtext, very well set up characters, great acting (like James Gunn, Villeneuve's great at accentuating the strengths of limited actors like Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa), spectecular visuals and art design (desaturated but not in an ugly washed out way), pacing (slow but it never drags), directing, one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores: it’s all here.
I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half.
It can occasionally hold your hand by referencing things that have already been established previously, and some scenes of characters explaining stuff to each other could’ve been conveyed more visually.
Other than that, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.
I’ve seen some people critiquing it for being incomplete, which is true, but this isn’t just a set up for a future film.
It feels like a whole meal, there are pay offs in this, and the characters progress (even if, yes, their arcs are still incomplete).
8.5/10
Let me start this off by saying that this sequel did not feel outside of what we remember.
Blade Runner 2049 maintains the mood and feel of its predecessor. The visuals, the sound... the dystopian future, it's all there.
| FIRST THOUGHT |
I love writing reviews, it comes somewhat naturally to me after watching something that I learn to feel passionate about.
This movie taught me to be passionate.
But... it's really hard for me to express judgment. And I'm going to explain why:
Actually, it's very simple. This was a 3 hours movie. Of these 3 hours, 2 were simply... air. Now, don't get me wrong, that isn't always negative, like in this case. It was refreshing air, but still... it doesn't (at first glance) hold anything on the plot.
Because of this, the viewer (me at least), is left with a lot of questions, the picture doesn't explain itself. Also; as a side note - you most definitely need to watch the first one. The great majority of the runtime is inexplicably useless.
The longer it goes, the longer it begins to add new stuff, and then some, then it seems somehow related to what's actually going on, but right after it deviates the actual story on an ideal from the characters involved, that at a certain point, evaporates. I'm really conflicted about this because it looks to me like the screenwriters and director wanted to leave all of this to theory and the fans.
Why is this confusing? Because it's a very strange mixture of linear narrative and non-linear narrative. One is focussed on one objective, the other starts a bunch of other objectives and then it simply dies. No explanation was given, no closure was given.
And this is aggravated by the fact that it's a 3 hours movie, of which 1 hour of the actual story is spread and mixed amongst 2 hours of absolutely nothing. VISUALLY IMPRESSIVE NOTHING. A VERY INTERESTING BUNCH OF LITERAL VOID.
This is actually the only thing I did not like about the movie. Which, again, if you are like me and enjoy movies that aren't patently explaining themselves, it's not a bad thing. I just feel like it could've been much more interesting if they explained somehow what happened to all the side characters, or just cut them out.
|STORY & ACTORS |
Aside from what I've mentioned before, the more "linear" part of the story is actually not that bad. It's nothing impressive. A part of what I said earlier connects to the fact that this movie constantly keeps juggling between what is real and what is not. Be it by robots, or actual reality that the characters are living. So it came out pretty obvious that the movie would have a twist at some point, somewhere. I will admit that I did not get it until the very end, so, don't be discouraged.
Ryan Gosling was great, also because he as an actor was perfect for his role. Being so that he has this way of being and looking conflicted, and so it portrayed really well on the protagonist.
Harrison Ford had less value to this movie than he did in the last Star Wars.
Jared Leto's character is a mystery to me, but he did a phenomenal job talking random shit.
All of the other actors, Jared Leto included, were there to push the story forward (or to add random bullshit) and that's it. They did a fantastic job, but unfortunately, as mentioned above, at first glance it looks like they don't mean shit.
| CINEMATOGRAPHY |
The movie is visually pleasing, it's bliss for people with OCD. It's perfectly round and at the same time perfectly square. It keeps smooth lines combining great color combinations in the palette, and utilizing great solid colors at the same time.
As I said before it holds perfectly a spot near its predecessor, the mood and feel are almost identical. (Having watched the first one only an hour before going to the theater to watch this one)
I have to say, this one looks A LOT, like A FUCKING GIGAZILLION LOT more gruesome and splatter than the first one. The fighting scenes are brutal, they do not go into dramatic effects, they just are what they should be. A punch in the face, exploding heads and blood.
There is no doubt that this movie looks fucking amazing.
It sounds amazing as well. It has a collection of deep, pure sounds. There is not a lot of music, but when there is it's powerful and present and it makes you wake up and amaze. Same goes for the special audio effects: I have watched it in ATMOS and I have to admit, they did not utilize it at all, except for one scene later in the movie, but the way it goes from absolute silence to seat trembling sensations it's really amazing. The sounds were so powerful I could literally see the movie screen shake and the subwoofer hit made the whole room shake.
I would also like to add that in the Italian version, you can clearly see that they used "incorrect" words grammatically, they used a lot of anglicisms, I guess they've done that to express how language is evolving? It's actually current of our generation, I see a lot of people adapting English words in Italian, so I was very impressed by that.
| FINAL THOUGHT |
I feel like everyone needs to understand, before watching this movie, that you need a time, a mood and a place perfectly fit to sit for a 3 hours movie that it's going to feel like a 6-hour long journey into colors, shapes, and absolute "living" silence.
This is NOT a Marvel movie, there is action, well-done action, but it's not about action. You need to sit, relax and don't think about time, because, trust me, it's going to fuck you.
Please like my comment if you enjoyed my review, it makes me really happy.
Note that all of this is driven by my personal opinion. If you think I wasn't objective in some of the parts of what I've written, you're welcome to make me notice where.
On Twitter, I review the entire world -> @WiseMMO
Thought this was much better than I'd been led to believe, or than the trailer made it out to be. Fan of the book, and it is utterly unfilmable, so this could only ever be 'inspired by' really, and it does a good job in that respect.
Took Brad a long time to figure out what the weakness was though! Considering his reputation he really should have seen it when they met the soldiers in Korea... Massive signpost.
This movie is a lot of fun and such an easy watch! The acting is brilliant and the humour is spot on. The negative reviews are pretty pedantic in my opinion.
I watched this movie with probably too much high expectations (John Landis as director, Pegg and Serkis and Curryas actors, cameos from Lee and Harryhausen) so at the end I've been a bit disappointed.
The movie is not bad, it has its own good moments and some good ideas but it seemed that Landis didn't want to go fully inside the Black Comedy. I'd have loved to see those two characters being much more "evil" and filth. It's at least enough enjoyable to use it to burn 1 hour and a half
i'm surprised there are any drivable police cars left at all by the end of the movie
I first watched this when I was too young to truly get the most out of it, and loved it to bits. The music, the comedy, the action.
It's low budget, but it has fun. It has some of the most amazing musical talent you will ever experience. The biggest musical scenes. And at the time, the biggest car crash ever put on film.
Every time I watch this movie, I find new levels of love for it. It truly is my favourite movie of all time.
"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses."
It doesn't matter when I watch this, with whom or where, I will always smile the whole way through. The car chases, the amazing cameos, the dialogue, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's chemistry, the music, the different groups chasing the Blues Brothers, the humor, HUT HUT HUT, Carrie Fischer, the way the brothers dance, the final car chase especially all the way up to them delivering the money.
From start to finish I always enjoy every second of John Landis's Blues Brothers. It is by far my favorite film of all time. And everyone I've shown this one, there was nobody that didn't enjoy it. It is truly a classic.
Easily the greatest musical ever made, not that it has particularly stiff competition.
Downloading a power source...................... WTF
How is this movie getting such glorified reviews??? While the action scenes are fine, the story is somewhere between illogical and ridiculous.
None of the story lines make any sense, it's just one fight/chase after the next up until the idiotic finale. And yeah, let's connect the laptop of our villain super-hacker to the local network, what could go wrong.
It may not be the most hilarious mind-blowing comedy that I have ever seen, but it kept me entertained and laughing every minute. Keeping in mind that it was directed and co-written by a Python, you couldn't expect anything else but absurd situations and brilliant colaborations. Simon Pegg awesome as usual.
A HUGE Lord of The Rings fan here! and I have mixed feelings about this movie just like the previous The Hobbit movie.
Let's start with the positive points:
The Acting, it's fantastic and Martin Freeman once again kills it as Bilbo and he is just so fun to watch on the screen and everyone else is great. Gandalf is a huge badass (no surprise there,, this is the same old guy that stood up to the Balrog and said You Shall Not Pass).
The Dragon is awesome and Benedict Cumberpatch is awesome, his voice is amazing and Benedict and Martin together in any scene will make me happy ! The dragon looks majestic and everything worked with that dragon.. honestly it made the movie 10x times better.
The music is great (it's Howard Shore). Some of the action sequences are amazing (the mirkwood spiders, the Barrel scene)
Also the subplot with Gandalf and the Necromancer is actually interesting.
(Lee Pace as Elvenking just decapitating that Orc was so beautiful I can't describe it!)
Then for the negatives:
it's too LONG! and this is not just me saying, anyone who saw this movie says this, it is very long and thus so many and I mean SO MANY useless fillers are thrown in there that just decreases the quality of the movie, they do so much harm!
That Romance is stupid and should NOT have been there, I would have liked it a bit if it was with Legolas and added a bit to his character but nope that Elf is just in love with that dwarf..
The Lake Town people and that useless hate for Bard is incredibely useless.
The dwarves trying to kill a FIRE BREATHING dragon by molten gold is stupid.
Too much CGI and Green screen, as I rewatched this movie I realized that the CGI in the Lord of The Rings was better than this and that was 13 years before this movie, I don't like CGI Azog or Bolg or just CGI orc in general.
Azog is still a subplot that I didn't like.
So these are just the Important stuff that I had to say!
(and Legolas seems to defy Physics.. doesn't matter he's cool LOL)
okay, let me get this straight: It's not the best movie ever. It's no LotR 2.
But: When the Movie starts and you just watch the first scene, you are IN the movie. Totally! Storytelling, smart pacing and a genius Ian McKellen. Also Martin Freeman as Bilbo is just lovley.
I watched the movie as a normal movie. no 480p and no 3d and i missed nothin.
Great Actors, great movie.
9/10
One of the best compliments you can give to a movie is that it takes you and wouldn't let you go before the end credits. That's what Max Mad did to me. The whole movie is so intense that my eyes were glued to the screen. The cinematography is gorgeous and make a world come to life. The main characters feel real and you can rely to them. I like it when a main characters isn't the 'invulnerable' hero, so you feel more tenses in the scenes because 'it could go wrong for him'. All this is directed in a perfect way. All of the action is filmed with a steady cam, thank god! No shaky cam but steady and wide shots which make the action scenes a real experience. I have no real faults with this film, I loved it from begin to the end. So I would recommend it for everyone who wants an awesome 2 hours.
His name was Robert Paulson
I absolutely love this movie. I realize Tom Cruise is not everyone's cup of tea but a true movie aficionado can remove himself from that and see that the acting, cinematography, story telling, pacing, music, scenery, art production and last but not least the insight in the rich Japanese culture is nothing short of awe inspiring. A beautiful piece of film making that deserves your respect, even if you don't like the man in the leading role for whatever reason.
"White people are better at everything – even things which are unique to other cultures."
There's not a clear consensus on this one by the critics and some complain about the plot, but I thought this movie was very well done. The cinematography was beautiful and the actors were great; add in an emotional story along with amazing fighting and that definitely makes it worth watching. If you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, then you will like this movie.
I remember watching this movie as a kid and got really excited. I wanted to watch it again, but I completely forgot the name and could therefore never find it. It just got recommended to me on Netflix and all I gotta say is I had dogshit taste as a kid.
[9.9/10] How do you go about capturing something as immense and horrifying as the Holocaust on film? It is an event that stretched across countries, with an unimaginable, unending array of horrors, that feels too big to be contained within the feeble confines of celluloid. But Steven Spielberg and his team somehow manage it, by going big and going small.
Spielberg gives us avatars for the different sides of this experience. He gives us Itzhak Stern, to channel the desperation, the resourcefulness, the unceasing fear of the Jews driven from their homes and then forced into camps. He gives us Amon Goeth, to symbolize the utter inhumanity, the callousness of the people who carried out such atrocities, who saw their captives and victims as less than human and acted accordingly. And he gives us Oskar Schindler, and with him, the arc of a man who goes from seeing the Jews as a means to an end, of profit and personal gain, to helping them a little when he can, to realizing that he’s sold his soul and trying to do everything he can to buy it back.
Through these central figures, Schindler in particular, the film brings grand, wide-ranging concepts down to earth: the dehumanization of the Jewish people, the different shades of wanton cruelty visited upon them, the gradual realization of their plight by the world, the good works that created light in the darkness, and the bureaucratic state that treated the harvesting and expungement of human lives like a series of numbers on a ledger.
But he also stretches beyond those avatars, to capture the horrors of one of humanity’s great shames as a series of chaotic, disquieting events that affected massive numbers of people. Spielberg’s camera does not shy away from panic, the tumult, the hiding, the casual deaths doled out in the streets in the “liquidation” of the Krakow ghetto. It doesn't flinch from the masses of people loaded into trains, stripped and prodded and treated like animals, and falling apart as families are split up, spouses are separated, and parents see their children blithely led to the slaughter. It holds the tension to the last when a group of Jewish women are disrobed, shaved, and sent into a shower, uncertain whether they are being disinfected, or sent to their deaths.
Through all of this, Schindler’s List provides a sea of familiar faces, individuals who are less fully-developed characters, but still given personalities, connections, quirks, and specific hopes and fears, that make them more than the indistinct mass of humanity their Nazi tormentors see them as. They are distinguished just enough to make them memorable, relatable, recognizable, but their concerns, their reactions and mere persistence or faltering within these stomach-churning events, are real and universal enough to make them stand-ins for the broader horrors faced by so many like them in the Holocaust. The film expertly balances their humanity and the way they represent the humanity of so many other, saved or caught or lost, in the Third Reich’s mortal machinery.
The film, in fact, treats it like machinery. That’s not to say there is pure dispassionate indifference here. One of Schindler’s List’s most intriguing choices is its treatment of Amon Goeth as someone profoundly real and expressive -- in his boorish laughter, his twisted affections for his conscripted maid, his brief and faltering attempts to own the power of mercy -- but also someone with no shred of empathy in him, for whom murder is either an idle sport or a mundane necessity of his job, until the very suffering or salvation of the people under his watch becomes one extneded joke.
But at the same time, the editing and framing choices emphasize the efficiency, the bureaucracy the meticulousness of the Nazis as they processed the Jews into fungible goods and slave labor and ash. Spielberg returns repeatedly to the images of the “listmakers”, the names being typed onto pages, the stamps that dictate life or death, the regimented memorialization of letters and numbers that either allow humble, blameless Polish Jews to hang onto their lives, or condemn them to an untimely death.
This is not the rush of the battlefield or the fog of war or the uncertainty of combat. It is the systematic extraction and extermination of a people at the hands of the state, done with governmental imprimatur. It is one of history’s greatest horrors regularly delivered with the desultory indifference of a civil servant.
At the same time, Spielberg and company take pains to show the contrast between the lives led by the German officers and private businessman who thrive on this murder and forced labor, and the beleaguered Jews struggling simply to survive. The film juxtaposes the lavish parties Schindler joins with the S.S. officers, and scenes of the squalor of the ghettos. He contrasts decadent pleasures of the flesh and of stunning artistic displays, with private beatings by officers who hate the cause of their own twisted feelings, and life events eked out by Jews in captivity. Without ever having a character speak out to condemn this disparity, he lets the disparity speak for itself in the distance between the casual horrors of mass enslavement and extermination, and the flush, spoils-of-war indulgences of those who profit from it.
That’s aided by the black and white aesthetic of the film. That choice certainly bolters moments like when a colorful flame juts back into the monochromatic world of the film, signifying the traditions carried despite the time they were almost snuffed out, or Schindler recognizes the red coat of a little girl that helps spur him to recognize the abominations of these acts and the humanity of the people who suffer under them. But it also allows Spielberg and director of photography Janusz Kaminski to make light the focus of their images.
The flash of gunfire illuminates and identifies the killings that take place in the Krakow Ghetto. The light that shines on Schindler’s face as he leans out of the shadows to comfort Helen Hirsch after she describes the terror-filled unpredictability of Goeth’s arbitrary murders cuts a contrast in the us vs. them divide. And it creates a stark beauty but also a grim frankness to swaths of liberated refugees walking down a hill, or clothless people forced to run in circles so they can be examined, or the bursts of smoke and ash that signal the ending crush of human suffering practically automated. It makes Schindler’s List feel older than it is, whilst channeling the dark realities the film unflinchingly confronts.
It confronts them with the crowds of Jews, the lists of names, thrown into the mortal whims of men who view them as subhuman, to be killed, abused, utilized, or saved. It confronts them with the story of a man who comes to see that invisible machine, the input and output of war, and laments his myopic part in it, and changes enough to save whom he can whilst decrying the more he might have saved. And it confronts us with the unimaginable scope and brutality and lost humanity, channeling the experience into a visceral three hours of trials and loss, of shameful joys and undeserved deaths, of regimented destruction and unsanctioned survival.
It is, in a word, a masterpiece. It is a hard watch, but also a film that accomplishes the impossible -- it captures the all-encompassing maw of the Holocaust, the acts that called into question our very souls as a species, the kindesses and losses that helped to affirm them, into a film so attuned to make us recoil, that also makes it impossible to look away, to cover our eyes, or do anything but reflect and remember what was done and what was lost.
Best trilogy ever made, return of the king best movie ever made!
Every time it's over I feel like I got punched in the fucking heart. And I basically start counting days till I'll be ready to watch it again. There will never be movies more soulful, profound, engaging and gripping with everything from fights and visuals to the deep meaningful connections between the characters and the explorations of grant purposes and philosophical differences. Never. I will love this eternally. I wish I could rate it more than ten. There are movies and then there's Lotr. To be honest I have no fitting words to describe this, no funny remarks or beautiful epithets and definitely no slights. I'm just thankful this exists and I got to experience watching it. I'm out.
