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peterbegran
Reviews
Asphalt City (2023)
Excellent - worth your time
Penn shines brightest as tortured paramedic. First half rich in characters - second rich in tone, mood and challenge. Highest respect to first responders everywhere. The director limits the use of wobblecam just enough - it is needed to make you feel, yet it's withheld when you're present in the feeling (used about 15% of movie length). All the way through it's a great watch; not for youngsters!, Do not go into a building with smoke because smoke burns your eyes and lungs instantly (no safe lower limit)!, and the strobe red of ambulances passes quite quickly so close eyes. It's an easy engrossing recommend, and quite an education - I'd bet the author is pleased.
Sniper. The White Raven (2022)
Paced to perfection
A must watch for anyone trying to understand war - why people defend, and what defending grittily requires. If you hold the same values then you would behave the same. It doesn't glorify war, in fact it makes no real statement, other than people are forced by circumstance to do, and betrayal must surely be the worst of vices. It's an excellent relief from most western fare, choosing silence and atmosphere to deliver the tension, and the pacing is excellent - it keeps you engaged at all times. As does the story, revealing itself in balanced rhythm but constantly serving up punches that reminds you; war is cold hard steel yet still necessary to keep freedom relevant for the many, not the coward few.
Unfrosted (2024)
Agony - run away, don't look back
Terrible in every respect - doubt anyone over 3 years old could sit still for this. One funny line from Bill Burr's bit part as JFK, and that's it. Stinks of jobs for the Hollywood royalty; all should be ashamed. A person has their working week, buys a nice bottle of chilled Chablis and relaxes to a Netflix comedy original, on the couch with their partner. All star cast, and Seinfeld penned the script. A top treat. Except it's less funny than a fart gag. You wonder is it you? You're tired, maybe not the time. So you finish it the next day, bright and breezy. It wasn't you, and now you're angry. Can this be classified as fraud?
Cat Person (2023)
Brilliantly relevant
Just watch it, especially if you're college age or parent age, but really any age over 16. Based on Kristan Roupenian's short story from the New Yorker magazine, it's an allegory for the hyper-info changing times we live in, a warning to extremism and a lesson, in where does reality truly come from? Other than that relax, and let the story take you places, and it does. It's intriguingly mixed and edited too, but all to the good. Why must we scrabble with so much rubbish to find this, a diamond in the rough. Fans of Succession will be happy to see Greg again. This is just so well conceived that ?
Ferrari (2023)
Close to perfect
Why? Sublime storytelling, masterful direction and editing and pace; inspirational and compelling - razor sharp casting. This is a movie apart, and not about boring cars. It's even quotable - Brake later (as in Sleep later), or Freedom for that pigeon is pigeon pie. It's family, infidelity, passions and angst - it's curious, when you are watching excellence and wondering truly how could I make this better you must stop. It's 110% enough. Watching it repeatedly is my 10/10 score - because Ferrari is a revelation I have to dock 1 star. Miss this and you've wasted your time watching something else. Finally I actually want a Ferrari.
Act of Valor (2012)
Believable and Engrossing
Beware Michael Bay or Sly or Eastwood - acting, plot or storyline, even script can sometimes be as irrelevant as an assault rifle in the hands of the bad guys. This movie posits the integrated professionalism of U. S. Special Forces in the most believable and least machismomatic (is that a real word?) semi-docustyle to remain wholly convincing.
Surprisingly there's little to no jingoistic warmongering here. It's just fascinating. The perfect recruitment video perhaps? Although playing like Call of Duty, it's not tedious or demanding.
Warning - it will change the viewers opinion of military, from grunt to surgeon, subtly, but it gets there.
Napoleon (2023)
Sublime & Satisfying
Others were expecting another Gladiator - it certainly has the potential, but without an emotive score that is hard to achieve. However it has grandeur and class, and does not hold the hand of the audience, yet you miss nothing. Read a little about the period before watching this. Phoenix and Kirby are wholly believable - still Scott does not over cook the romance; curiously that makes it more intense. I regretted the directors public spat about historical accuracy because it is minor. The battle scenes can be spectacular, not as much for gore as period majesty and vista. Napoleon, as a man, reflects great honour on France in this telling - it was a time of fight or be conquered and he showed largesse in victory...in the movie at least. Thoroughly recommended.
Fair Play (2023)
Dominance
Beautiful and talented young woman laps her fiancé at investment company, gets promoted and he gets jealous - that's what this movie is selling. Except she doesn't put a foot wrong...she's the dream for him and their employer. How did she, with such admirable conflicting qualities, get engaged to this clown. Male dominance, emasculation and violence are the themes, with emergent female power the sub-plot, but this is not sophisticated storytelling. Such powerful gender dynamics cannot be contained by logic or emotive soundbites; they're by nature evasive and destructive - there are only losers. That said this is mainstream tv, and enjoyable if instinct is paused.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
Really enjoyable
This film is full of atmosphere, and very well cast. It's not over-stylized, and the locations and boat are all well lit...even at night..no silly fog blurring the action. Plus it's very believable as the 1830's. It doesn't resort to shock horror tactics, too well directed for that - it's a fantasy horror that fun with popcorn and doesn't lose your interest.
I've seen too many knucklehead movies in recent times (sorry Oppenheimer, but congressional hearings is not what Trinity was about...lazy Chris Nolan) and this movie just promised and delivered. Could it have been better...sure - but it was worth my time.
Oppenheimer (2023)
McCarthy witch-hunt of 1949, little else. Hard pass
Turgid boredom that managed to suck the life out of the awe and brilliance of quantum discovery, portraying seminal theoretical psychists as lowly clerks, and focusing on U. S. commy paranoia. No soundtrack, just a wall of bass. Nolan utterly failed in script. Lighting too dark. No build of tension - you will forget you are there to see the inception of atomic bombs. Not even a courtroom thriller - just endless questioning of Oppenheimer in a room, and a complete fizzle of an atomic explosion. Acting fine, but I'm in the presence of Einstein and checking my watch!?! This should have had huge tension as Nazi's vs. Allies race - you'd hardly know it was WW2. As a warning about A. I., as Christopher Nolan said he had intended, then we are all doomed.