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jamiewalton
Reviews
Svart krabba (2022)
Ice Skate from Victory
It's the future and everything is GRIM. Sweden is at war with... well, somebody. Either referred to as 'them' or 'the enemy'. Personally, I just assumed it was Russia. Sweden is on the verge of losing the war. Or at least that's what they tell us. They also tell us that nobody knows what's really happening, which rather takes the edge off that statement.
Caroline Edh and a small group of expendable other characters are tasked with transporting a MacGuffin across a frozen sea. Said MacGuffin will apparently win the war. Caroline is told that doing so will see her reunited with her daughter, from whom she was previously separated. This is her motivation.
The journey across the ice is broken up by several set pieces, that range in quality from 'meh' to 'alright.' Characters exhibit annoying lapses in common sense. One gets shot and then insists they all continue without tending to his wound for no reason. And then he ends up shooting himself so as to not slow down the group, except his sacrifice means nothing because there was no reason for him to have been in that situation in the first place.
Eventually we find out the MacGuffin is some sort of chemical weapon that Sweden wishes to unleash on 'the enemy.' This causes consternation in the remaining group over the use of such a weapon but Caroline is insistent on continuing. Because genocide is clearly less important than getting in some quality mother/daughter time.
Caroline reaches her goal: an enormous Swedish military base that's right out in the open. Even though we were told she was heading deep into enemy territory. Which is why they had to travel by skate, rather than - for example - helicopter. Oh wait, a load of people leave the base by helicopter at the end of the movie and everything is fine.
The twist is that they don't really have Caroline's daughter, they just lied because they knew that's her motivation. Which means she's no longer content with the whole genocide bit (I guess she was never really that interested with saving the country) and she ends up destroying the MacGuffin And sacrificing herself in the process because GRIM.
This is actually quite a well-made film. It's visually very arresting. The frozen landscape that occupies most of the runtime is extremely well realised. The acting isn't always the best, but it's pretty good across the board.
My issue is the film feels pointless. Sweden might be losing a war against an unknown force (maybe it's not Russia, maybe it's Finland?) The main characters have to travel by ice skate, except it turns out they didn't have to, because they could've got there in a fraction of the time by helicopter. The main character's motivation is to see her daughter, and then she doesn't. The MacGuffin is supposed to win the war and then it gets destroyed. What happens with the war? Is Sweden defeated? We don't know. The film just ends. They're literally in the same position as when the film started. Maybe Caroline could've pushed for an alternative plan that, though potentially riskier, could also have helped them win the war? To make it feel as if there was some actual outcome to what we've sat through?
A big issue I have is with 'the enemy' (could it be the Welsh?) who are shown as unremittingly evil. They kill everybody and anybody. They commit war crimes left and right. I don't know why they're not using chemical weapons themselves. But they're also undefined and with no known motivation.
In fact, I just noticed that the current featured review describes it as being a civil war. I never got that from the movie. At all., Is that even right? If it is a civil war, why wouldn't people just leave Sweden? You see how this is not only lazy writing, but it's frustrating as well?
Everybody else does their jobs quite well, but the writing absolutely kills this movie. Unless you really want to see a movie with both gunfights and ice skating (and, to be honest, I don't know why you would) I really cannot recommend you watching this movie.
BoJack Horseman: Ruthie (2017)
With my apologies to BoJack Horseman
I remember watching this episode very well, because it made me doubt BoJack Horseman (the series, not the character.) This episode has a framing device showing an ancestor of a lead character (Princess Carolyn) tell people about the events of the episode. It's such an old and clichéd well to tell a story that I really wondered: have the makers of of BoJack Horseman lost it? Should they call it quits? And the feeling only got worse the more the show went on. As usual when this framing device is used, you start to wonder things, like why are they mentioning certain events... or how are they mentioning certain events?
Except I was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
You see, BoJack Horseman is one of the few shows capable of taking such an old idea and turning it into something amazing. The end of the episode twists it into a sucker punch that's one of the most emotional moments of the whole series.
So, I'm sorry, makers of BoJack Horseman, for ever doubting. I leave my confession here for... well, hardly anybody to see, but to help assuage my guilt.
Oppenheimer (2023)
Did I miss something?
I was a huge fan of Christopher Nolan for years, but went off him following Tenet - a film that seemed like Nolan on autopilot and exposed his worst flaws. So, despite the massive critical acclaim surrounding this film, I feel my expectations were actually quite low.
Yet, somehow, I was still disappointed.
Nolan is a great director, but he works better when somebody else is taking the lead creatively. The script is a mess and often avoids following the most basic principles of writing, leaving nothing in their place.
You might think, based on the trailer, that the film is focused on Oppenheimer developing the first atom bomb. And I wish it was. That's actually the middle third or so of them film. It's the best section of the film, but there are so many people thrown at the screen in such a short space of time that none of them are developed or especially (outside of a decent line here and there) memorable.
Outside of that, we follow Oppenheimer on a breakneck tour of well-known scientists, most of whom serve no purpose. Take his meeting with Schrodinger. It's basically the two of them saying 'hi' to each other and then we never see him again.
The bulk of the film (about two thirds) is devoted to people sitting around talking about Oppenheimer. It can be summed up as: 'He's brilliant, but can he be trusted?' repeated for almost two hours. Robert Downey Jr is in these sequences (he has nothing to do with the middle part of the film) and I'm not knocking his acting, but for a character with so much screen time he was exceedingly uninteresting. Oppenheimer made fun of him and now he doesn't like Oppenheimer, and that's his entire motivation for being the film's antagonist.
Focusing more on the atom bomb project and taking time on the other scientists would have made for a much stronger and interesting film. Oh, except then the film couldn't be cut into a random order, which is apparently clever.
I've seen so much praise for Nolan's work here, but I felt like even he felt the film was lacking. For around the first half of the film, there are random shots of explosions and stars with loud noises, as though he realised people might get bored. And, as is well known by now, Nolan mistakenly thinks that too loud = intense and that intense = good. There's no purpose for them, and I guess they stopped at a certain point because Nolan figured anybody who was still watching would be staying until the end.
Cillian Murphy gives a fantastic performance, but once again I felt it was let down by the writing. I never felt enveloped in the story or especially cared for his troubles.
A big problem this film had to overcome is we know that Oppenheimer was successful. If Nolan had got me really involved, I still would've been enthralled, but I never felt that interested.
It's got an amazing cast who incredible performances and it looks amazing, but it was boring, and that's the worst thing a film can be.
Escape Room (2017)
The most worthless, mediocre and annoying film I've ever seen
The film is built on a basic premise: imagine you're in an escape room, but the actor pretending to be a killer turns out to really be a killer. Your only way out is to solve the puzzles, all the while risking your life. You can imagine lots of people have had this idea, but the people who turned it into a film did so really badly.
You'd think an 87 minute film with a simple premise would pretty much hit the ground running, but no, this takes ages to even get started. The first several minutes are devoted to a boring sequence so we can learn all about a boring cursed box that didn't need to be in the film. All you needed was a killer in an escape room. Have one escape from a prison, kill the actor and then take his place. It's that easy. You do not need to waste so much time.
It's about a third of the way into the film before the characters even get into the escape room - and not only are they really boring characters, they also don't do anything interesting.
Even once they're in the escape room, it's still watching some badly acted idiots trying to solve a really bad escape room. It's not until about halfway through the running time that we get the first death and it becomes an actual horror movie.
It should be gripping from this point at least, right? Nope. We still get to hear the owner of the escape room complaining about why business is so slow. Once we're in the escape room, that should be it: it should be tense and claustrophobic, not cutting away frequently for no good reason.
It's obvious why his escape room is failing: because it's terrible. It's one small room, with one jump scare that doesn't factor into the puzzles, and the puzzles are lame beyond belief. The gimmick of the room is that an actor playing the killer is chained to the wall and the chain gets longer every five minutes. You therefore have 55 minutes until the chain is extended all the way and he'd be able to get you. You would not need 55 minutes.
Here's an example: there's a set of drawers with three drawers, only the middle drawer doesn't have a handle. The handle is in a box. You use a pair of scissors to open the box, and you need to get the scissors from where they are locked away.
Only you don't need the scissors to open the box because it's made of cardboard. So that's a waste! You don't need the handle either, because: a) the handles are held on with a screw, so you could unscrew one of the other handles and use that, b) you could open the drawer above and then reach under to open that drawer, or c) (most effectively) you could pull out the drawer above (as a character does later in the film) and then grab what's in the drawer (there's nothing between the drawers.)
The final puzzle to open the door involves pushing four triangular buttons in the right sequence. You only use the buttons one time each. The combination turns out to be the first one I thought of on seeing it. Even if you wanted to get the clue that gives that combination, you wouldn't need to do most of the puzzles in the room.
It stumps the main characters because they're idiots. They have a plan to escape by setting off a smoke alarm and get help to come. One of them has a lighter, so they have to risk getting right by the killer to hold the lighter right up to the alarm. Just start a fire! There's a bookcase full of nicely flammable paper right next to them. Burning a pile of them would set off the alarm!
I rarely write reviews, but this movie was painful. Not the worst film I've ever seen, but not far off. Utterly worthless.
La nuit a dévoré le monde (2018)
A poor starts drags down a promising film
28 Days Later and The Walking Dead both had characters waking in hospital to find that a terrible, apocalyptic outbreak had occurred in the previous weeks. In this film, it happens overnight and the main character sleeps through it. Yep, the major city of Paris, with its population of 2.2 million people, seems fine one night and then is completely abandoned by morning.
I'm assuming the main character has extremely selective hearing or sleeps so deeply he might as well be in a coma, as a flat full of people get killed the other side of a door and it doesn't disturb him from his slumber. There's blood splattered right outside the door, but nobody tried to get into the room where he was asleep. Surely the sound of people banging on the door (and surely somebody would have tried to get in there) should have been enough to wake up anybody.
Other reviews I've seen are complimenting the main character's logic, but the guy's an idiot. It's clear from early on that the zombies are attracted to sound. So what does he do? Play loud music. The zombies must have broken into the building through the doors on the ground floor, but none of them try to get inside. At least until the end, anyway, when a much quieter fire alarm (the main character starts a fire and then leaves it, because he's an idiot) makes them burst into the building. If you were planning on staying in the building, maybe barricade the doors?
There's a bit of a twist near the end, but it's as underwhelming as the rest of the movie. Shortly afterwards, the film just ends, with not even an attempt at a resolution. Unfortunately, this is inevitable when a film has so little to resolve.
The zombie stuck in a lift was definitely the highlight of the movie. I preferred him to even the main character. There was something satisfying about a zombie being so quiet and seeming rather confused, instead of being crazy and murderous. My absolute favourite part of the film was that, when he's finally let out of the lift, he just goes home.
There you go, no need to see the film now.
The Signal (2007)
Great idea + Good moments = Bad movie
There's a decent, if not original, idea at the heart of this movie, but the film makers are trying too hard to be arty and clever for it to ever really work.
Telling the story in three parts is a terrible idea. It's such a basic story that's being told that it feels more like a way to extend it to feature length than a worthwhile method of story telling. Part 1 is dark and brooding, part 2 is like a comedy and part 3 tries - but fails - to tie the whole thing together.
I liked part 1. It had a great atmosphere and such a feeling of dread that's it's the only part of this 'horror' movie that even approached being scary. It's also getting somewhere when it cuts to part 2, which is so tonally different that it's like a different movie. Don't get me wrong, I liked part 2, but it would have been better on it's own rather than lodged haphazardly between the far more similar parts 1 and 3.
Part 3 struggled to do something and provide a satisfying conclusion. The trouble was that this movie went from the madness caused by the signal turning people into homicidal maniacs into people who talk at random and don't know what's happening. Add the misplaced cutaways and editing tricks and it just becomes a confusing mess. The end just fizzles out and its unsatisfying, muddled and dull nature just about sums up the movie.
Having these three parts as three separate stories would have made for a better experience overall. The main story could have easily been told in Part 1, Part 2 (with a few tweaks) could have stayed the same and then Part 3 could have been a proper finale rather then the delay of something that could have happened an hour beforehand.
The best part of this movie can be found much better elsewhere. The acting was all over the place, with some pretty bad examples on show (unfortunately including a character who appears predominantly in all 3 parts)
I really did want to like this film, but I just can't do it. A nice effort, but just not a very good result.