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Reviews
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)
I wonder what people say in those interviews
It would be a fantastic documentary with great interviews. Too bad that you won't be able to actually hear any of them, because the interviews are drowned out by - what in other documentaries would be - the background music. My "favourite" moments are when they play clips from Galaxy Quest and even then insist on adding music over the clip, so you have two different scores playing at the same time. I was saved by the subtitles, but it was honestly a struggle to finish, although I really really wanted to see a documentary on one of my favourite movies.
Just baffling why they decided to screw it up so badly in the mix.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018)
I literally can't understand
I have been waiting for this movie for years, but I can't watch it. There are no subtitles, and the music is blaring so loudly, that I can't make out what is being said. It's like listening to somebody mumbling in a loud bar. I don't understand why you would drown out the narration in a movie like this. The pace is very high, you get all that information at breakneck speed, and then on top of it somebody plays music louder than the narrator. Why do that? And then, worst of all, leave out subtitles. It's not 1950, for crying out loud. Why spend all your time and work on such an elaborate movie and then throw it all away by making it inaccessible? Confounding.
Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein (2023)
Content for one episode stretched to four
The "new recordings" are repeated over and over, the same few pictures are shown over and over. The tapes mostly have Gein say "yeah, I guess" and "I don't know really" (paraphrased). It's only interesting because it shows how much the interviewer himself is putting things in Gein's mouth. It's nice to see interviews of some of the people who met Gein or live or lived in the town, but all in all it's a waste of time.
Most baffling is how they used "AI" to animate some of the black and white photographs they have of Gein in prison, when they later see show actual filmed material. Silly. It ads nothing and only distracts.
Orphan Black: Echoes (2023)
So much talent wasted
The writing and editing is so bad, it is distracting.
My "favourite" scene is where a doctor is helping a character with regaining her memories, literally having her repeat information about her life. And when the person asks whether she can now go live with somebody, the doctor scolds her that she can't: "I thought you knew that!". You literally explained TO HER that she lost *all* her memories! YOU would have had to give her that information!
The choices are so perplexing!
Having it set in the future, with everything basically looking the same, minimal differences in technology and clothes (oooh, self driving cars, how "futuristic"). Adults walking into a night club in office clothes (and getting IN!). The weird cheap wigs. Having a 33-year old playing a 70-year-old. Having a Canadian doing a weird over-the-top 1940s British accent, while the British actress does an American Accent (I get why. But it's very distracting). Having characters explain and explain after we just saw what they are explaining (two kids talking about their parents and their strained relationship). It is all quite tedious and boring.
Which is sad. Because we know these actors are capable.
Roar (2022)
Too long, too obvious
I really wanted to like this. The cast is amazing, and each story has a lovely premise, but they are all too long and obvious. Yes, I get the allegory of a trophy wife, or a mother "being eaten alive" by too many obligations, it's not like these metaphors are hard to work out. But you get it and then the episode is another ten minutes.
It's a lot of wasted potential, because as I said: the cast is amazing, as is the rest of the technical production. It's just that they scripts could have done with a bit of editing. We need more stories with women so there are more opportunities for excellency.
Her Socialist Smile (2020)
An insult
Make a documentary about THE most famous blind activist and then make it totally inaccessible to visually-impaired people. For minutes on end, passages of Keller's writings are shown without voice-over, while texts ABOUT her are then read in voice over. So her own words are inaccesibly for anybody who can't read them. I am sure this is meant to be some sort of clever commentary, but it still leaves a movie which is largely inaccessibly for large parts of its target audience. It left me frustrated and annoyed.
The Jesus Rolls (2019)
Remake
This is a remake of the French Film from 1974 and it shows. Everything that feels weird about this (their clothes, the flatness of the female characters, how they find so many vintage cars etc.) makes sense when you realise that they copied those things from a 50-year-old movie. The actors are great, but the story is just a weird macho fantasy that gets boring after a while. Some of the vignettes are really touching like Jack's story, but they don't get enough space.
Finding Alice (2021)
Baffling
I truly don't understand what the writers were trying to say with this. Yes, people in pain behave oddly sometimes, but this feels like a Charlie Kaufman series. Alice decides she wants to do something and three seconds later the paperwork is done or she found the next kink in the machine.
This is like a surreal games of mad lips in parts. It feels like "oh, let's have character X -throws die- shoots -throws die- a duck".
At one point somebody erases all photos of their dead loved one from a computer. On purpose. For no reason. Because what people in grief do, apparently. It is never explained what the reasoning was there. It is bewildering. Another characters spends an enormous amount of money they don't have to woo somebody they have met like three times. Wtf?
In every scene you can only guess what the characters will do. Will they break out the tapping shoes? Is this a Western now? Maybe Alice becomes Prime Ministers in the next episode, because that is how fast things happen in this series.
It's a shame because the cast is great and some moments are really lovely.
Deutschland von oben (2010)
Nice pictures, bad music
That's it, basically. The pictures are nice, although their structure is a bit baffling. I have however, seldom hated a movie's score as I did this one, mostly because of course the music plays a major part here. This is a score for people who think that Hans Zimmer is altogether too subtle and subdued. If you like the emotional point of images being driven home with a sledgehammer, this is definitely the score for you. I was this close to getting out my mp3-player's headphones to muffle the sound. The movie has roughly three themes (with roughly three chords each), and the most annoying part is that you won't be able to get them out of your head once you have escaped the cinema. Again, the images are nice (although I don't know why Berlin gets about 90 seconds and the Alps about 10 minutes of screen time), but the music is dreadful, uninspired, annoying, just terrible.
11:14 (2003)
Not as clever as it thinks it is
[Slightest spoiler by comparison with old movie]
The plot revolves around the interwoven actions of a handful of people around the time 11:14. Those actions are shown Pulp-Fiction-Style, unfortunately most of what are supposed to be "surprises" are signaled way way ahead so that you are neither surprised at what happens nor at how it does happen. Most of the characters are either morons or real a**holes, so unfortunately you don't root for them, no matter what happens. I can't say more about the plot without spoiling it, other than maybe saying that if you know "The Trouble with Harry", you have already seen the much better version of the same idea.
The House Next Door (2002)
Suspensefull. If you have never seen a movie before.
This is slightly less suspensefull then having somebody tell you the plot of "Rear Window". All scenes are done by the book, with no big mistakes, but with no imagination or heart either. The actors save the movie from being downright rotten.