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Reviews
The Assistant (2019)
PLEASE record sound so we can actually HEAR dialogue..it's important!!
Happens with a lot of movies these days, but in this type of movie where nothing really happens exactly , we really really need to HEAR the various conversations including phones ones..oh, yeah, and when there are notes /letters in frame, often in calligraphic font, we really NEED a chance to actually READ what it says. We could not even read the header let alone text of the invite /memo card or wtf it was she took from envelope early in film. But most of all, convos such as in the back of the limo with Miss Boise, or the asides from her two mail office workmates, Jesus, we need to HEAR wtf is being said, would be great. Especially if as with many movies on my SBS TV Australia channel, there are rarely CCs available.
The movie was something different, well done and enjoyable, I was pleased to recognize Julia Garner from OZARK, ( I did not know in advance who was gong to be in movie!)..even I picked up that we are referencing Harvey Weinstein here...
these people certainly buy a lot of food and then throw most of it away! That goes to amorality for a start, imo.
Poisoned Love: The Stacey Castor Story (2020)
good cast..
The super Emo? Daughter was so incredibly annoying , reminded me of the daughter on Californication except maybe even worse, that it would not have been that surprising her mother making a move on her...but, of course wife/mother had also anti-freezed not one but two husbands so it was maybe three strikes and did not look good for her. It was amazing that twice stupidly calling it 'anti-free " instead of "anti-freeze" (personally I just call it Glycol but I work in the business, it's full title is Ethylene Glycol..) finally got her put in the bracelets.
Of course the spoiled petulant Emo thing and almost getting murdered by her mother herself and having to testify against her own mother meant that she completely over-shadowed the other sister/daughter in the movie.
Probably average to a little above-average as US True crime TV-movies goes.
Solace (2015)
Intrusive deafening music-score
The incessant NOISE LEVEL and utterly intrusive unnecessary deafening sound-effects are doing my head in even right now at the 30% playback mark.
But, I imagine Hopkins got a nice cheque for it and that's main reason he showed up. Pretty good cast. Probably somewhat going to waste.
I would think at most you'd consider rating it a 6/10.
The incessant NOISE LEVEL and utterly intrusive unnecessary deafening sound-effects are doing my head in even right now at the 30% playback mark.
But, I imagine Hopkins got a nice cheque for it and that's main reason he showed up. Pretty good cast. Probably somewhat going to waste.
I would think at most you'd consider rating it a 6/10.
Brokedown Palace (1999)
Familiar formula..dumb/reckless/spoiled/arrogant naive Westerners caught muling drugs in Asia.
Why on earth would you opt for Thailand over Hawaii , was one problem I never solved to kick off with, but yeah here comes Midnight Express/Another Day in Paradise/Bangkok Hilton or books 'Damage Done" and Sunday Smuggler . Westerners who are either reckless enough to attempt to mule dope through Asian airports, or dumb enough to unknowingly have it placed in their luggage/persons by 'charming/charismatic strangers". Then petulantly expect/squeal for their governments to somehow magically extract them from Third World hellhole sewer-prison where roaches are the best thing on the catering menu.
Often it reaches a point where you cannot make up your mind whether the central characters , or the locals, are more annoying and unlikeable.
CSI: Vegas (2021)
Pale and wooden
Stiff and wooden, the show/franchise would never have succeeded in the first place if this reboot version of it had been what it presented as in the first place. The presence of an original main character cannot make up for the miscasting of too many of the new obtrusively-woke cast members. Agree with another reviewer here than Mandeep Dhillon and her precocious UK-Asian accentedness-presence is just, sorry, but it really is like dragging nails down a chalkboard to listen to. I actually wince and FFWD each time she walks on , it is that bad.
The show clearly has also tried to NCIS itself, a bunch of 'cute eccentric" characters playing buddy-movie with each other.
If they redo the Miami one, I hope they do not do it like THIS.
Fortunate Son (2020)
goodish 60s music, continuity mistakes, original-ish subject maybe.
Watching mainly for 60s atmosphere and soundtrack, at least the soundtrack is partly there. On the surface of it, the subject/premise seemed fairly original at least, the subject of US draft-dodgers running and hiding in Canada.
Canada avoided involvement in Vietnam-Australia and New Zealand did not.
So Vietnam caused all of the same social ructions here as in America itself. Peace-marches, khaki elections, Agent Orange. College students throwing buckets of red paint or pig's blood on returning veterans. 501 Australian KIA. Thousands more physical and psychological cripples.
I was 8 years too young to be drafted, don't know to this day whether I'd have gone along with it or run as well if I had bene old enough and had been called up.
Oh well, it was a good war soundtrack music wise. The shows song selection bears useful comparison with another recent 60s time-capsule series like AQUARIUS for example.
Yes, the US ,military or spy-spooks blackmailing some guy that had a patrol/firefight go pear-shaped in a friendly-fire FUBAR , to then go to Canada to infiltrate spy on and help sabotage the draft-dodgers and their support network IS a far-fetched one.
One other thing that could have been done without in both a continuity sense and annoying sense, is a teenager that goes "WHATEVER".
I don't think 'WHATEVER ' was invented in 1968. Which was a good thing.
The hippy-parents with a conservative business-oriented child maybe of course is a little (Alex Keaton/Family Ties) derivative.
It's enough to keep me washing past the episode #2 or 3 I'm up to so far..I'm at least going to look up some of the sound-track songs I did not recognize, about half I did recognize. .here in Australia they out it on about 2310 after he late ch9 news so, another advantage is that the ad-breaks are very short.
Support the Girls (2018)
Promising first 30 minutes..then...bewildered.
Was quite promising in direction and writing first 30 mins, then, completely puzzled in plot after that. The satchel of money re the car-wash fund-raiser and argument Lisa has with two individuals over that...wtf?
Why Lisa is even fired , the two owners, who is what. Arturo and why Lisa asks him to sneak into club and replace money satchel in safe. Ok, she knows he knows safe combo, but why replace it by stealth?
The cast list here is also puzzling as some main characters seem to be missing. Can't find the tall black female club-worker, or Arturo, mentioned in cast list. The former was a major character.
A remake would be great if they could just make the actual story past the first 30% make sense.
Taking Lives (2004)
Waste of top-priced cast
Firstly the average-rating 6.2 here is certainly generous , it's one of those 'give me back the last two hours" movies ..secondly, at least three big-name big-price cast, Jolie, Sutherland and Ethan . Mostly a waste.
I was also saddled with a local channel broadcast on it which lacked CCs..in a movie where there is a LOT of low mumbled muttered dialogue and loud soundtrack music competing even with that. A fair share of the low mumbled muttered dialogue is also in French-Canadian Quebecois accents, making it even more certain that you will lose track of the plot in the middle 60% of the movie. Which I did.
Anyway, I've always tried to avoid Anjelina movies..all that pretty absurd stuff where her and/or her husband Brad are international assassins, coming off of her as the Tomb Raider. Pahhhhh ...basically, shyte.
Do Not Hesitate (2021)
Probably don't bother
I don't know exactly which north African country it is or which modern conflict there involved Dutch troops, and this is not explained in the movie is frustrating. Perhaps a written preface piece at the beginning could have explained. I don't know of any former Dutch colonies in Africa, Belgian, yes, but not Dutch. They do not appear to be UN peacekeepers either, no blue helmets, although, I think I might have seen a UN flag at their camp at the end. So, who the hell are they., where the hell is it exactly, and why the hell are they there? Sigh.
Not sure what we are to make of the local urchin who refuses to either leave OR make friends with them.preferring to demand things from them whilst responding with fits of screaming abuse, anyway, presumably he is mentally-ill. They eventually -understandably-at last- grew weary of his antics and grimly silenced him. That and knowing that the movie was in its last minutes were gratifying. I DID feel sorry for that poor goat, though. But $50 sounds like a lot of money for a goat in that area.
1Hour 50 mins of my life I won't get back.
Hurricane (2018)
Appallingly bad in almost every way.
The only purpose the movie serves perhaps is to increase awareness of the Polish (and Czech like Frantisek, who flew in Polish unit and is mentioned in the film) pilots vital and heroic role in the RAF's struggle with the Luftwaffe in WW2. The movie is predictably all done with the usual CGI flying footage, and although CGI provides easy cheap access to authentic & accurately drawn airplanes and that occurs here, the actual choreography of aerail movement and dynamics is never even almost realistic or accurate, and that is an issue in this one as well. The aircraft speed and movement , the gunfire, the airplane combat damage from gunfire, none of it is even remotely convincing or correct.
And GOOFS what is he ridiculous black & white CLOTH FLAG taken as a souvenir from the shot-down Dornier 17 ? What is that even supposed to be? Which technical editor approves such a piece of nonsensical rubbish??
Goof 2. When Dorniers like the machine in question were hit by aeroplanes like Hurricanes, the TAILPLANE did not burst into flames..You see, there is just nothing about a tailplane to ignite and burn.
Even the explosions and burning of engines and wings is way over the top in way it was portrayed
Goof 3. We see one of the Hurricanes attacking another Dornier 17/215....we cut to an archive gun-camera film..the airplane under attack in the camera film is a He111..NOT a Dornier.
The RAF men are portrayed as a greater nemesis than the Germans are, including the right cad who keeps harassing and assaulting the female lead. Seems over the top to me, although I guess it might feature as a storyline in an ep of Foyle's War.
The WRAF women are portrayed as eagerly and cheerfully promiscuous, and the lead female has a mouth like a hardened streetwalker. I was not actually there or around in those days, but I find it far-fetched that the women routinely acted or spoke like that.
The other reviewers are right that the subject deserved better on virtually every front. I will not be watching. A re-run or buying the DVD as a gift for anyone. .
Desierto (2015)
Implausible in the magnitude of its slaughter in broad-daylight on US border
Pretty appalling/nauseating scenes of violence , pretty blatant in its political/social preaching. Yes, folks, of course anyone who opposes open borders would be a drunk in a pickup with a 'Confederate' flag flapping on it who would just wipe out an entire pickup load of immigrants including finishing off the wounded at close range, and sicking a dog onto them to tear them to pieces . All of this would be compatible with Trump/MAGA immigration policy and the wall, right? Well, no. Also, you can really gallop around a stretch of US/Mexico border with a sniper/scoped hunting rifle , gun down about a dozen people in cold blood across a period of hours, leave their bloody bodies strewn around the place, ...all without attracting any intervention from authorities or from anyone, right?
Pity about the dog, which also curiously got no cast-credit...and no 'no animals were harmed in this production" footnote in credits. If it is any consolation, yeah, I was rooting for the Mexican guy in the Mexican guy with flare-gun vs could have been nice but got raised all misguided by psycho owner Cujo-dog sequence.
The filming and location and rockclimb -chases looks good, which accounts for my 3 stars.
One final thing I'd question is the research/plausibility of the mechanical fault diagnosis by the mechanic when the Coyotes truck broke down. He seemed to pull off the distributor cap? Which exact part of that is he saying overheats and mandates towing? I have a fair bit of mechanical knowledge but I cannot get a handle on what was supposed to have happened here.
Meek's Cutoff (2010)
No subtitles?? Can't hear anything!Meek's Silence.
I guess this movie mostly tracked closely with what I was expecting b4 watching it on DVD this weekend, as I'd read a couple of the reviews here beforehand. It looks nice, has lots of early western pioneer wagon-train atmosphere, even though not much happens during 90% of the movie and then nothing whatsover happens at the end, or, if something does happen we are then denied knowing what it is, but, all of that was still within my expectations after reviews. I have been mostly trying to get out of public library system and catch up on all the Michelle Williams movies I missed in the late Dawson's Creek or early post Dawson's Creek era is reason I took it up. I watched 'Suite Francaise' last week, and "Land of Plenty" week b4., and have "United States of Leland" still here to watch, I think maybe so far I most enjoyed 'All the Money in the World", which is the most recent production compared to the rest.
Anyway, only had one loud complaint on this Meek's movie, and is mostly re DVD rather than movie itself. Much of the movies dialogue is in very hushed tones..it is part of the style of the movie that a lot of the conversation is whispered/muttered/murmured/mumbled. No biggie, I can just turn on the titles, right? Wrong. There ARE no titles whatsoever on the Madman R4 DVD barcode #9322225 092747 .
Apart from being able to not go to my grave having missed maybe 20-30% of the settlers' dialogue, one has to at least ask if at least some of the Indian's outbursts/soliloquys/chant mantras might have born or been enhanced by a translation, as well..but I guess you could argue against that in artistic terms maybe. Anyway, right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable, lack of subtitles of any kind at all is my main angry complaint.
Beachhead (1954)
WW2 in the Pacific -or attack of the killer tomatoes in the Pacific?
One of the most incoherent-scened plot-device war movies I've seen, 1950s era or otherwise. The other reviewer nails it when he refers to continual angry exchanges without apparent cause or resolution. Why does Curtis take the attitude he does and act as he does with the "French" girl ..no cause, but eventual resolution when they make out I guess. How and why the continual futile interpersonal with the sergeant , apart from this continual enigmatic reference to Guadalcanal, likewise, no cause or purpose just keeps breaking out counter-productively with monotonous repetition. Action scene after action scene is preposterous or just puzzling and bizarre in their proposition...the knocking out of the Japanese tank where attacking American soldier is dragged inside the tank ...the strange drawn -out 'we need three bodies' scene in the exposed foxhole ...the whole thing with the booby-trapped Japanese radio-hut which must have been thought up by someone who had been chewing karva-laced beetle-nut. The bizarre perplexing end sequence involving the PT boats at the pier and the shelling Japanese destroyer and Curtis' bizarre frogman grenade attack on....... the wreckage of the PT boat. What the hell is even really being suggested there...he burns up the destroyer..which is hundreds or thousands of metres away btw... by igniting the spilled gasoline from the exploded PT boat???SMH..
Yes, the movie has a couple of things in its favour. Hence my two-star rating. Location and filming is ok, it looks nice , even though Hawaii is probably not fully accurate to the Solomons/Bougainville. We can forgive that. And the one-more strange scene involving the compliant servile Japanese prisoner..and big Melanesian islander with machete guy who is willing to trade his boat for possession of servile grovelling Japanese prisoner guy. This is so way out , and dark as well, that you have to award a star for some more Beetlenut creativity involved in thinking it up. -----
ASIDE :I actually wonder if grovelling Japanese POW guy may have inspired the 'Fuji" character in 1960s war-comedy series "McHale's Navy"?? He even wore an identical type of outfit. -------
The Pawn (1999)
Lookalike cast-member
Completely mistook the female lead 'Megan' in this movie for Tia Carrere...the female villain in 'True Lies" for example.
Four Lions (2010)
Hard to laugh when angry and repulsed.
I suppose if you WERE going to make a comedy about this subject, if you HAD to on pain of , well, death at the hands of terrorists,then, this would be something like what you'd come up with and as good as you'd probably make of it. Yes, as a minority of other reviewers have pointed out, the subject is not naturally funny. The attitudes and motivations expressed by our cute cuddly jihadis in the film are also funny only in the most nervous uncomfortable way, because, they are actually quite typical. The continual incoherent infantile geopolitical and muddle social babble is pretty much as authentic as the ramble in an Osama bin Laden video, or a live beheading video.9/11, London 7-7, Madrid train bombing, Bali 02, Hebdo/Batoclan/Nice , Belgium airport bombing, Boston Marathon, I could go on and on recalling events, those things were all real, the perps were probably just as stupidly 'funny' "misguided" as Omar and crew, the UK examples undoubtedly all spoke in the same UK Asian dialect but that did prevent the fools from killing thousands or hundreds or dozens at a time, and maiming countless more. The 'funny/stupid self-contradicting social and geopolitics can be seen replicated on any social media by actual muslim men-and women, I'd hasten to add, and they are not actors in a movie, they believe that they are in deadly earnest and are convinced that they are right. They are so-called 'radicals" and they are commonplace, even if they are not mobilised radicals, which is obviously less common if not all that far removed. The lead actor/character, sorry, but although I have no idea what Riz's personal world views are, but I cannot even look at his character Omar's visage, or listen to him, without immediately experiencing a very angry version of the creeps. Not my cup of tea the whole thing, and when you see a director/producer --forcefully laughing the subject off--, as it were, you are also somewhat uneasy about his possible ideological motives. Even if his motives are genuine...As my late father commented once
--
" they laughed at Hitler's ranting and his stupid Chaplin moustache...b4 too long, they had stopped bloody laughing"
Forsaken (2015)
Looks nice, big cast, but so by the numbers
Worth seeing for ...the cast, and yes, it looks nice....
but maybe apart from SPOILERS -------
the number of and severity of Kenny Rogers-song grade humiliations that main character endures b4 finally "locking the door behind him" and dealing with the bad-bad guys....maybe apart from how things then play out with ex-civil-war Confederate-gunfighter good-bad guy... it is sooooo seen it b4 and predictable in plot.
Da hong zha (2018)
One of those movies I put out of my misery after 20mins viewing.
Knowing a little about the air-war over China vs Japan in 30s/40s, and seeing a major Hollywood identity in it, I was maybe expecting some kind of modernisation of things like John Wayne's 'Flying Tigers', or 'God was my co-pilot. " ie, a Hollywood movie set in China. That was my assumption. Be aware that it is not Hollywood, it is an actual Chinese movie that Bruce Willis got sucked into in some kind of vortex. I only watched for 20mins b4 giving up, better to wish I had 20 mins of my life back than 90 mins of it. Pretty much "attack of the Killer tomatoes" standard minus , the average rating of 3/10 here is very generous, Written and staged completely and utterly incoherent slop in every scene. Yes, some people have suggested it as deliberate satire. Could be. The CGI Chinese airforce airplanes as Nationalist Chinese marked Polikapov 1-16s and 1-15s are accurate and plausible in their drawing , so are the Japanese G3M bombers, the actual CGI flying combat action is unrealistic and has been muffed as has CGI flying combat sequences in virtually every war-movie of last 20+ years. The A6M1/A6M2 'Zeroes' are probably not accurately placed either in the time-line, or in their being shown as the only Japanese fighter the Chinese would be likely to encounter, fixed undercarriage Japanese fighters Army 'Nate' and Navy 'Claude' would have been as or more likely in the theatre and period. . there was no 'imperial Japanese air-force" in WW2, btw..there was an IJA army air-force, and an IJN navy air-force. You would expect people who know enough to have even CGI-drawn the airplanes to know that much.
I'm glad it was only a free public library borrow.
Time to return it. Maybe stick a warning on it to the next poor slob who takes it out. Bad does not cover it.
NYC 22 (2012)
Promising , would have liked it to be renewed.
It got compared to 'Rookie Blue' all over the reviews here, but I much preferred this show, RB I was pretty much over in 1-2 episodes.Not that I have anything against Missy Peregrym, loved her as the Home Depot chick in that Ray Wise devil/demonic show.
Like the theme too, but I cannot find that exact version of the JZ song anywhere. Thought it was a good cast mix. Yes, Adam --might-- have been getting a little old for the premise, but, now as with the LAPD 'the Rookie" we have a guy joining up for first time in his 40s. And hey, this guy was in THAT beach-landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, if he can handle that, should be able to handle a 'hood in NYC, right? Leela Sobieski might be a little delicate and girly looking for street policing, but reality is, that she is what a lot of western police force hiring now actually looks like, for better or for worse.
Breath (2017)
Clarification on the bikes
One other reviewer writes:
"A particularly insipid example is early in the film the two teenagers get around on under-sized kid's BMX bicycles........."
If it is the bikes I saw, they are not 'BMXs, they are classic 70s 'Dragsters" , in Australia often Malvern Star or 'Sportsworld' brand, banana seat,sissy-bar, 3 speed Sturmey gears. They actually would have obtained those bikes as authentic 1970s props. They are sort of the cycling equivalent of Pet Rocks.They are not out of place for the boys in film to be riding, I did not trade mine in until I hit 15 or 16yo.
Chappaquiddick (2017)
Jammed doors, closed windows
I agree with other posters, one unanswered question raised by scenes in movie is, 4 jammed doors, windows closed, how DID EKennedy even manage some kind of ergo Houdini-trick exit himself? Kennedy was permitted to just say "I don't remember (how)" to this. He gets out, somehow, with the girl possibly likely still alive in the car..the door/s window/s are all closed behind him after his exit?. Neither him, nor any of his odious gofers is able to make any progress re-entering a car overturned in apparently very shallow water.
I agree that Kopechne's futile unaided struggle for life is both grueling and heart-rending...all the more tragic, heart-rending and depraved that there seems to have been not just a very brief window of time to save her, but an unusually prolonged one compared to most car-in-water accidents where drowning of any trapped occupants is generally swift.
The movie is well-done in terms of acting and re-creation of the period, notwithstanding the issues about accuracy of exact Oldsmobile car, the tides and depth of water at the bridge, etc... One thing I never realised was that the Apollo 11 mission was actually in the air/space while all of this went on? But the Kennedy party at least seems not to be paying that much attention to Armstrong and co, even though it figures prominently in the movie front-pieces. Recommended, especially if ur almost always fascinated by 60s/70s America and the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Carter/Reagan political band, as I am.
The Great Raid (2005)
Good to see Pacific War..
Another fairly rare these days Pacific War movie is appreciated at least, of course the Pacific theatre and Japanese enemy has always played back seat to the European theatre in Hollywood in general.We in Australia would probably like to see more Pacific Theatre movies. I'd heard about the Cabantuan POW rescue raid,but did not know many details. A similar rescue of prisoners was tried in North Vietnam during Vietnam War, but although it reached the camp, the prisoners had been moved. In this movie, which I'd rate a fair effort without being brilliant, as often happens in Pacific War movies, the Japanese may be more convincing and authentic looking and acting than the Americans or Filipinos are in a WW2 context. (modern era war movies suffer continually with people who look and sound modern and not like people in 1944, even "Saving Private Ryan" had that problem) Glad the inaccuracy regarding the airplane that flyover the camp was mentioned in goofs here. It appears to be an Electra/ Hudson/Ventura style Lockheed twin-fin plane, although the US made such planes in large numbers, almost all were supplied to the RAF and British Commonwealth, very few were used by US forces at all, and highly unlikely one would have been flying anywhere near Philippines in 1944-45. Turns out the actual airplane in this incident had been a Northrop P61 night-fighter, a comparatively rare WW2 type, none left flying these days, that would have been unavailable to producers.I think maybe something like a B24, B25/26 A20 or even a B17 may have looked more in-place than the Hudson did in this scene.
Probably the prisoners themselves including main characters in camp actually look in a little still too good a condition and too well groomed still to have been guests of the Emperor for 2-3 years.
Unless you have a personal interest in this chapter of WW2, just worth a look, is about the size of it.
The Forgotten Army - Azaadi ke liye (2020)
Interesting subject and chapter..Dubious heroes
Been aware of the Chandra Bhose.INA thing for quite some time now, saw a great documentary on VHS 20+ years back in which British-loyal Indian vets lamented their shabby treatment both by the British themselves...then again in post-war India compared to the Bhose-ites, who were lauded as freedom-fighters of independence and given pensions denied the British-loyal Indian vets, them being treated more as pariahs.The Burmese had their own version of Bhose & the INA- Bhose suffered his own fate surrounded by Japanese friends which I will not spoiler here- the Burmese one, well, he just got dealt with with firm hands by the Brits post-war, as with people like William Joyce in the ETO.
It's an interesting darker less accessed chapter of WW2, British , Indian and Asian history, the term 'Forgotten Army" itself has of course more often been applied to the actual British and pro-British 14th army/SEAC in Burma itself.Slim's 14th is the Forgotten Army, Burma is the Forgotten Front, well, I guess that was one Forgotten Army, but their secondary enemy, the pro-Axis Bhose INA, is an even more forgotten Forgotten Army. But arguably a more interesting and more explosively controversial one.
Anyway, as the Japanese military stormed through SE Asia and the Pacific in 1941-42, effortlessly plucking one Western colonial possession after the other from American , British, Dutch and even Australian landlords and trustees,they also shrewdly tweaked Asia's various independence aspirations with the "Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere" pitch ..it worked better than our own war historians have been inclined to talk often about...in the same way as there was really a lot more willing even eager --and materially useful-- collaboration with Germans in Occupied Europe than we were left with the impression of by Hollywood, Pinewood and comic-books.
Of course in both cases they were pretty much being played, possibly even more so in the Japan/Asia case than Germany/Europe.
In both cases, they pretty much despised their own collaborationists as racial/cultural inferiors.In Asia, there is credible anecdotal evidence that the Indians may have been the people the Japanese despised as much or more than they despised the Chinese.The Indian POWs seemed to have been subjected to worse treatment by Japanese captors than white prisoners were.
As for the "Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere, " they were only ever slated for the kind of independence that streamed the maximum dividends for Japan, who was naturally to always remain its dominant master..And anyone who had ever resented either brutality or hard work for low pay that the white colonists had ever provided, learned that the Japanese also took both of those things to a fresh new level.
Never gloss over that these people such as INA, were, whatever their motivations and however that can be romanticised by revisionist films fronted by star-crossed couples, attempting to assist bringing on Japanese victory in Asia & Pacific, with all of the implications that that would have carried for anyone living there, white or Asian.
Belyy tigr (2012)
X-files meets Eastern Front WW2 meets allegory
Tbh, Two hours of my life I'd take back if I could, I will not get into the deep and meaningful allegories as other reviewers have picked them out.I would disagree that the depictions of WW2 tank combat are very realistic, although things are about as gruesome as they can be made, with the emphasis on what happens when human beings are incinerated in combat either inside or outside of armoured vehicles, the scenes mostly look like the crew went around with a lot of jerry cans of gas splashing it around everything and almost everyone in sight and setting them alight.They put armour-piercing shells through farm-houses and barns...these instantly erupt into billowing flames like they had been napalmed. What is particularly the source or basis of that fiery combustion? Even though tanks themselves of course can and do often burn when hit, often they do not, and the fire on those that we see is also amaterurishly executed, it is not combat-real and just does not look it.
The Soviet tanks are mostly T34-85s, probably genuine museum pieces and necessarily look right enough. So do the fields of scattered wrecks we see in several scenes, an array of German, Soviet and non-Russian allied including a Matilda or Churchill, and maybe an M3 Medium. British and US tanks were sent to the USSR under lend-lease, so that all checks out.
The actual star villain of the show, though, supposed to be a Tiger 1..it is of course a bunch of cutout steel plates welded together on the chassis of something else, its proportions are all wrong, looks like maybe an early Chinese toy designers take on a Tiger 1.
It also is not actually particularly white in colour.
As other reviewers have predicated their reviews pointing out that if you are looking for a Russianised 'FURY" that this is not it, they're right, whatever other things that it might be and might accomplish, it does not get much done right as a straight out Eastern Front armoured warfare movie.
Soviet and German tanks meets Moby Dick and the XFiles.
Public Enemies (2009)
More love story? Less bank robberies and shooting?
Some reviewer suggests maybe more of Dillinger, Billy Frechette and love, less bank robberies , muzzle-flashes and DBs..yeah, right, you'd have to rename it for a start. It could not be "Public Enemies"..would need to be (Public Enemies/John Dillinger) IN LOVE.
If not, lotta people gonna walk out of that cinema just like Dillinger himself did on that fateful night(oops spoiler)
-except now at about the 30min mark.
The Gunman (2015)
Weak Bourne and weak Taken meets weak Syriana
Save two hours of your life, unless you want to see, some or all of the following:
-Sean Penn beat up and/or take out heaps of people, including professional assassins and Technicals full of African rebels.Also, most impressively of all,albeit tag-teaming with Winstone, demolishing a table full of rowdy thuggish lager louts at a pub in London during a televised soccer game.
--Sean Penn prove that even browned-off sick of the whole deal chain-smokers can have magnificently chiseled arms and delts, which I half-suspect were CGI.
--Sean Penn surf, ie, standing on an actual board.Oh, well, I supposed we believed it when Greg Brady did it.
--Sean Penn quickly start an admittedly beautiful Italian classic car which has been sitting idle in a barn for years, the story goes. Anyone who can get a brand new Italian car started is a feat of luck and mechanical nouse, let alone a 1962 model in a barn.Perhaps his Captain America-grade muscular arms helped with the crank handle.
--Sean Penn demonstrate that Africa is all screwed up because of wicked intriguing, and surgical assassinations, by the ruthless diabolical Capitalist West , of decent good-guy African politicians who were just about to nobly divert the continent's wealth for the good of its long-suffering impoverished locals when they were cut down by, well, Sean Penn, with a long-range sniper rifle.... same Schtick as Clooney in Syriana...meshing nicely with each chaps' naive SJW politics and world view.
I knew there had to be a reason why I'd never heard of this 2015 movie with pretty good cast until it came on as the TV late show last Saturday night.Lucky I recorded it and could FFWD the commercials, because even by itself it is far too long.I can understand the Spanish bulls getting mad and goring people getting both typecast and dragged into this crapola.