Turbo Kid is a feature-length adaptation of a short submitted for the ABCs of Death series. Sporting not one but three directors it's a very competent debut. I only saw one of their shorts a long time ago which was Bagman but that already set my expectations high for midnight fun! The cast is strong and the story inventive & fun. They also took the time to actually build the future this movie takes place in.
It's a mix of retro homage and glorious gore but I sometimes felt these two don't necessarily go together that well. Still a lot of fun!
Having seen the producer's own https://trakt.tv/movies/profile-2018 this year (Timur Bekmambetov that is, who focuses on "on-screen narratives") this one just came off bland and more flawed (but hey, at least less forced FaceTime)... I think the gimmick burns out very fast and comes down to whichever movie is "more" consistent. Given the background I was also expecting this to be a bit darker, and not just a "let-me-spell-this-out-for-you-in-my-great-montage-and-here-is-the-twist-you-were-waiting-for-since-we-hinted-at-it-early-on-but-you-have-to-accept-leaps-of-logic-for-it-to-make-sense-kind-of-thriller" with very cheesy music...
All the press surrounding the movie certainly drives peoples expectations. I had none so it feels to me like just another comedy by those guys (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBuqhbY-K4U)...
Let's see if I'm ready for a three hour lesbo epos..
My bias: I'm not the biggest Oldboy fan and prefer Lady Vengeance to it but I would obviously not pass to see what America would do with the property. I also only saw 25th Hour from Spike Lee's filmography because frankly he seems like an arrogant hack to me (whose hypocrite standards on racism show once again in the movie).
The important question: Should you seek out this remake over the original?`No - Fucking - Way.
While the movie follows the original more or less it does so very clumsy. They failed to make the movie engaging and not only shortened it's runtime but turned the ending into a fucking Comedy thanks to the ridiculous accent and costume design on Sharlto Copley. While the beginning is not that bad, everything after our guy is set free seems to have been lost on Lee. This comes very apparent once the terrible, terrible, CG blood comes into play. It looked so shit I was completley taken out of the scene. They even managed to add in the worst shotgun wounds ever later on (for important enough scenes). The final nail in the coffin is the canon hallway scene. Instead of capturing it's feel they were busy trying to one-up the original by making it play out on more than one level. The thing is, even in the original it isn't necessarily realistic but it still setup a lot better than the broad hallway where armies of cookie-cutter gangster stereotypes storm in to take turns on getting beaten up. Funny enough they do not show any blood until the elevator arrives at ground level despite being hard hitting wounds in bright light and somebody tell me how it is that in such a huge crowd of gangsters, in the US, not a single one of them carries a gun.
Seriously, don't bother with this. It's bland and a remake, -1 points for that.
What a disappointing movie. From what I've seen and heard I thought it would be fun. Instead it's boring and shallow. And that accent, damn that was more funny than anything? Anyways, I think I only needed to see ten minutes of this. It dissolves into quite a mess. Maybe he should have made a documentary or a report on porn addiction? It ended up being preachy as fuck with the dialogue and "story" just being there to talk about it. I also don't think the "addiction" portrayed is actually how this whole thing goes but I wasted enough words already. With different actors the whole thing would be rated a lot lower.
While comicbook movies boom at the box office this one sees the first graphic novel adaptation winning the prestigé Palme d'Or.
Clocking at almost three hours this is a lenghty coming of age story coupled with the main girls discovery that she might like women too (but it really isn't about the gender in this). The french subtitle for this was "Chapter 1 and 2 and a possible end" which gives you an good idea of where the story goes. The movie lives from it's strong performances and is entertaining through out. I would lie if I told you that I never wondered where that "end" could be but it really isn't tedious.
I loved that in many scenes there was something going on in the background and cinematography was quite good aswell. Given that many scenes were more traditionally shot they could have gone for a Steadicam though.
If something caught me a bit off guard then it was the transition to the second chapter. It took my quite a while to be certain that there really was a skip (with the most obvious indicator being the hair not being blue anymore).
Now this wouldn't be a complete without the mention of the sex scenes in the movie. Those are really the thing the press loves to follow up on (just search for related news). They're explicit and let's just say that they scissor the shit out of the molds. I would agree that they might have gone a bit over the top as after a while of love making no audience will be able to prevent some giggles (for ours it was the constant ass patting I guess). Doesn't help that the author itself wasn't happy with them although they're not excatly the straight men variant either. But those are just a part of a long movie.
I felt like I'm overrating this the moment I clicked that eight but it is really solid for it's runtime - just don't expect a revelation.
So... we live in an age where Nolan now has THREE movies in the IMDB Top 20. Figures the word masterpiece is thrown around. I'm not exactly sure anymore what the requirement to achieve that is but I fail to see how Interstellar can be one by objective means anyways.
The movie to it's credit is ambitious and has some visually impressive scenes in there but the it isn't really that much about interstellar travels but is loaded with very simple 'mainstream' american themes which lead to the excessive runtime.
The problem the people on earth have to overcome and leads to everything happening is actually interesting but is handled very poorly, painting mankind as rather stupid in progress but whatever your excuse is for having to make plot happen... right?
I don't want to get spoiler-y so lets just say that after an hour it gets to magic land and is riddled with exposition, dumb scientists and predictable waste of screentime. The whole thing stands on such a weak foundation it is sad really. No matter the scale, I don't think I recently saw something as full of plotholes as this.
I'm not calling the movie terrible but it's a flawed mixture of things other movies did better.
To my surprise this movie wasn't half bad and features entertaining violence but it really needed something extra to complete the package.
Never having read the manga I think Miike does a great job with the movie (his 100th feature film :o). If you're up for 140 minutes of Sword play you will not be mad. For those concerned with the fact that it's based on a manga shouldn't worry that much. The fantasy aspects are quite small in this and it strips the manga-esque progression (1v1 fights) towards the end delivers action similar in scope of his 13 Assassins.
(I attribute Rin's uselessness to the manga)
And this is how you make a straight faced generic horror movie with a clown.
It's not as bad as some horror outlets made it out to be but I doubt the DC would have changed all that much (the oddly positive guys also seem kinda fake).
I've basicly gotten what I expected. My biggest gripe is with the whole showdown aswell the ending which were really lame and for whatever parts that would have been boring they just played metal songs (the Doom Metal jokes were pretty shit too).
So yeah, this got a lot of hype in the press back when it was released here because it's basicly the only Swiss sci-fi movie... They were proud of the special effects in particular which have not aged well and I was more distracted by the balant product placement for the sponsors. Next to recycling various ideas I just couldn't get down with the badly written characters which they cemented in a scene early on which is even worse considering the slow pace.
This should have been better but then, when waiting so long for a release, expectation get set high. The time-skip really resulted in this movie being another build up for more. I did not like the Kaworu piano-session, seemed out of place and well, Rei is not Rei.. :(.
I was mostly on board with this until the later parts... they seemed to lack the finesse this was trying to setup.
I could forgive the movie it's pacing issues if it were something new but there is no point to drag this out so damn long.
Tsukamoto has made some awesome films over the years but this one left me a bit disappointed. My main issue was the lead detective played by Hitomi (an idol). No idea if it was intentional but her acting was glorious shit tier - from the moment where she striked her "thinking-pose" she became distracting. The whole movie was rather "live action adaptation" looking despite being an original idea and and his trademark style was rather toned down. What saved it for me was the dream-sequence towards the end which is what I actually wanted to see more of.
While somewhat watchable I'd agree with any mentions of that this is quite slowly paced for what in the end is nothing more than things done a thousand times before... It's more a road movie (that somehow doesn't concern itself with those issues) than anything horror as one might expect from zombies. I'm willing to overlook all the convenient timings in this ;)...
The Jake husbando simulator (for the most part).
A terribly unfunny spoof of Giallo flicks... would have been good as a short maybe. I've seen the duo's previous movie released under Troma for which the style worked but I guess "The Editor" looks too good for what it wants to be.
Better be ready to stomach a lot of quirk to enjoy this.
Not bad at all but a bit rough around the edges (and I could have done with less songs throughout the movie).
I feel like I say this too often: It started out great but didn't really deliver overall. This shouldn't have gone the route of a shallow action film but actually explore the setting. At least it was reasonably gory for a movie with an A-lister. The hallway scene seems to have been added as a tribute to Oldboy but it's failing just the same as the Spike Lee's version... use your fucking guns, especially if it's right there in a visible holster.
This movie is what happens when your brain farts.
The movie is too long. They should have just toned down the drama in the middle or even thrown out the boyfriend plotline. Other than that it's OK but nothing to write home about.
Too bad you didn't enjoy it :/. I can get that the visuals are a bit off putting (especially in 2d) but it's a fun ride. The ending could have been better though.
I did not expect to like this one as much as I did! While I would say that the bucket for vampire movies is getting too crowded, I will certainly not fault an entertaining one for this!
The characters are rather quirky and it's shot mockumentary style (like The Office) which might be off-putting for some but you have at least give them credit for going through a variety of jokes here! Oh, and let's not forget Stu! Everyone loves Stu!
You have to admire Noé for the way he just fucks with conventions as he pleases and stages lengthy camera rides just for the fun of it. The film sets up a huge cast of dancers pulling off some crazy vogue shit and lets them slowly but surely decend into a feverish hell. I was not without doubts while watching this( and he does let his bad boy hang out) but I ended up just enjoy the hypnotic ride. It's definitly nothing substantial but a big step up from "LOVE".
"pumpkin + tower"
This simple google search locating key players in the story tells you heaps about the thoughtful writing here.
Anyways, I saw this movie already when it was still called Seconds (http://trakt.tv/movies/seconds-1966)... Instead of exploring the theme like any good sci-fi thriller would do we get stuck with bland action scenes. It's all cookiecutter resulting in a boring and predictable movie. There are also a plethora of plotholes to nag at.
Those expecting at least vibrant direction by Tarsem will also be disappointed.
Unlike some people I didn't see anything mindblowing in the movie... I figured that much from the first minute. Guess who did the score? Hans Zimmer. How can you tell? When the fucking Inception tune is horning. What further could you do to alienate me right away? Adjust the colors so that some of the people onscreen have orange skin!?
Well, the good thing is that it isn't riding too hard on the white guilt but still, even the "nice" slave-masters are inheretly immoral. Can't say much about the adaptation as I'm not familiar with the source material but we don't really get much from Solomon's character except for the odd nod that he is a superior slave or at least entitled given his background (as wrong as this sounds)... There was the lack of weight of the 12 years as we can't keep track of time except for the nature changing and but it's still rather episodic.
The acting is one of the better parts although the movie would have benefited from a lesser known cast. Brad Pitt was totally out of place (he was the Producer w/e) and for example Danno's little song was more a bad joke than anything thanks to his general persona.
Despite some good scenes I just never really got into it so the whole affair felt longer than it should have been. This is basicly my Lincoln of 2013.
