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Line of Duty (2013)
Who Read This Script And Said "We Should Film This?"
A good script can carry a lot of weight. A bad script, not so much. A script that insults your intelligence and makes the characters behave like they had just been lobotomized will doom any project.
This atrocity . . . I really have no words to describe it.
The fact someone read this script and decided to green light the film makes me think this was nothing more than a vanity project or a way to launder money. The actors had nothing to work with and because of that probably won't ever work again. That's a pity because they did what they could and they were OK. Still, if you handed Jack Nicholson or Julianne Moore your supermarket's weekly coupon circular, the end result may have been more enjoyable. I hope they get new agents-although the people who got them those roles either had vendettas against them or were negligent and inept and simply cannot be called "agents" in good faith.
If there was a good thing about this . . . Attempt at making a movie? . . . it is that it was short. Not short enough, as I found myself fast forwarding through parts of it, but since two-hour-plus-long movies that could have lost thirty or forty minutes and be better for it are becoming commonplace, an hour and forty minutes is a blessing.
They (and I don't want to know who they are lest I wake up with a horse's head next to me) had high hopes for the this monstrosity, as it is evident if you sit through part of the credits. May God have mercy on everyone's soul-except for whoever got this made. That person can burn in hell.
Palm Trees and Power Lines (2022)
A Spotlight on Evil and (Modern Day) Innocence
Palm Trees and Power Lines is a slow descent into hell.
Good art is all about making people feel something. The emotions this film brings up are visceral. Evil is often a straw man set up by people with a philosophy to push, but "often" isn't the same as "always" and this film is a case in point if when there is no possible way to justify someone's behavior.
The film highlights how loneliness, social isolation, and the demands of modern life can cause havoc in young people's lives. This is a work of fiction that could have been inspired by a news story in any city or town in the U. S. It is a modern story in the classic Brothers Grimm style, without being sanitized by Disney animators. With standout acting and photography that is both beautiful and shows the banality of modern living, it is a cautionary tale that hits hard and makes you want to scream.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Bless Its Pretty CGI
Sometimes just one scene can tell you all you need to know about a film. In Avatar, The Way Of Water it is the Hakuna Matata shot of Blue Guy Número Uno raising up his baby boy to the skies.
That visual cliche sums up the movie. You get a little Tarzan, some old Western train heist mini-movie, a lot of Finding Nemo scenery, and an entire Moby Dick (in Space!) film with a little Dances With Wolves "white man teaches you how to fight the white man" for good measure. But when it comes to the story, it's a lot of blue and turquoise cardboard cut-outs tugging at your heart strings. And maybe I'm heartless, but it didn't connect.
Actually, I can't be heartless. I absolutely loved the Baby Shelob The Builder spiders and the crab cabs. I didn't care for the new skinny exoskeletons, but most of the space hardware was space cool. And Pandora *is* pretty. Not so pretty that we need what should be a five second shot last fifty seconds, but at least you can go pee without being worried about missing anything important. It still is the story of a manly man protecting his family because another manly man is trying to harm him. Sure, the manly men are blue, but an important lesson from the movie is that manly men are manly. Also, don't be wasteful and save the environment. But mostly, be manly.
Should you watch it? Sure! Everyone else is. But don't try to be manly and hold your pee for the whole movie. That would be bad for your manly kidneys. And really, you have seen this movie before, just with normal hue humans and a shorter run time.
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)
Ugh.
Every bad movie with a cult following has a kind of work ethic behind it. The irredeemable ones (like this one) fall short because someone had a chip on their shoulder and was certain it can't fail.
I'm here from the future to tell you that not only can it fail, it most likely will.
This particular film has a cool name and some above average actors portraying insipid characters with awful dialogue, doing dumb things because the writers demand it. The action sequences are unimpressive and pretty much everything that happens is unrealistic, unbelievable, or unconvincing. What feels like an interminable run time is actuality just 98 painful minutes of insultingly bad decisions made by the least nihilistic group of carefree "friends" you'll never believe could exist.
This "film" may be a historical artifact. If so, it should be in a drawer in a storage facility in a museum with all the other artifacts that are not worth displaying in the galleries of said museum.