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Split (2016)
Overrated by moviegoers who feel sorry for Shyamalan
Movie fans has spent too many years now with Shyamalan bashing, why they are tired of it (and themselves). They found a glimpse of light in "The Visit", which indeed was a big step up compared to his recent movies, but it was still a mediocre and not very memorable thriller comedy. The reviews, however, often made it sound like a minor masterpiece.
This movie is also a step up, but not at all the fantastic comeback everybody hail it to be. "Split" would fare better without the twist, which appeal to fans of one of his first movies, but really is awkwardly inserted. Or, it would fare much better if the twist WAS inserted in a skilled and seamless way. Now it is a surprising bullshit ending -- everything leading up to it is muddled, too convoluted and hidden among details which have nothing to do with the twist. The plot you get in this movie is far away from the clear and distinct structure and storytelling in Shyamalan's first movies like "Seventh Sense" and "Unbreakable". You could see these movies a second time and be amazed by how every small detail fitted in the machinery which revealed itself in the end.
Not here.
Ghostbusters (2016)
Oh. My. F******. God.
I really like Paul Feigs previous movies, and I could never believe that this movie was as bad as the Youtube- and blog-commentators thought it should be. Okey, the trailer was probably the worst trailer in Hollywood history, or at least in the last 10 years. But goddamn it, trailers are made by other people than the director! It turned out that Ghostbusters 2016 was a sloppy soup of nonchalant mediocrity, that became insipid after the beginning of the movie and in the end was going straight down the drain. Paul Feig doesn't seem to care a blip about the movie -- the money he got for directing it was probably enough -- and I am sure he and his PR-team at least had a great time with provoking the critics and trolling media with the notion that all is about "anti-feminism" and "racism". One of the biggest points that the critics did beforehand was the ugly racial stereotype written for the role Leslie Jones need to play. This is true -- and it was written by Paul Feig.
The Last Starfighter (1984)
The most overlooked movie in movie history?
This was one of the first movies I saw in a theater, 1985, the year after its release. And I tell you, this movie wasn't a big deal then; it was considered a well made but derivative B movie, and the CGI effects were almost never mentioned in reviews or articles. I have checked it now in newspaper archives online, so I know I remember it right.
The ironic thing is that "Young Sherlock Holmes" (1985) was released this same year; I saw it soon after "The Last Starfighter". The Sherlock Holmes movie was hailed for its alleged groundbreaking CGI effect: a very short sequence where a knight of stained glass attack a priest. This effect lasted perhaps 20 seconds...
"The Last Starfighter" is full of CGI sequences, and either me or my friends in the theater recognized them as computer images, and absolutely not as "cheap video game graphics" as some reviewers here describe it. And no journalist or reviewer saw it that way either, back then. But when I watch this movie on DVD today, many sequences really look distinctly artificial with unnatural sharp edges and light, much like computer graphics, which give them a style that cut them out from the rest of the movie. My theory is that the celluloid copies that we were watching in the theaters smothered this down and gave these sequences a much more natural look; and that the movie makers originally counted on this when they incorporated the CGI scenes with the rest of the movie.
The movie is well made, with a rather original story and good performances by the actors. Not a very great movie, though, but it is entertaining and without doubt movie history.
The Final Girls (2015)
A wonderful little gem
Funny, original, well-made and heart breaking.
One of the very few problem with this movie, is that it was released too late. Better timing should have been after "Scream" and before "The Cabin in the Woods"; the latter movie took this kind of self-referential horror movies to a whole new and unique level, which "The Final Girls" can't match.
The only other problem I can find is that it isn't very scary at all. We have a lot of suspense but it never pay off in a horrific way, because almost every physical attack and all violence occur out of frame or at distance. Probably the movie makers wanted to avoid a higher ranking than PG-13 at a theatric release, but now it went straight to DVD and some stronger scenes could have been inserted for good measure.
But I forget the lack of real horror in this flick. It is a meta movie with heart and brain made by lovers of the horror genre, for lovers of the same genre. That's enough.
Dyke Hard (2014)
A Troma movie without Troma
This so-called movie was first intended to be released by Troma, but of some reason it never happened. Because it is a flick without any blood and gore, or because it is aimed for a purely queer and gay public? Both, I think. "Dyke Hard" had no potential even for Troma. Here are some lame action and fighting scenes, but not one single drop of blood.
Can it appeal to a queer/gay public? I doubt that, too. The movie is a complete mess where almost nothing hit the right note, and it excuse itself with the tiresome attitude "intentionally bad -- and that's the fun guys!" But this cliché in modern B-movies only works if the viewer understand that the movie is made by people who play under their real ability. It is all too easy to make intentionally bad flicks, only because the movie makers are afraid they should not be good enough, if they tried to make something good.
The musical scenes are often OK, and the songs are often catchy. Probably you can see them on Youtube soon, and then you don't need to see the whole movie.
Repossessed (1990)
From mediocre and lame to god+awful crap
As a teenager, I became a Leslie Nielsen fan after having seen Naked Gun and Airplane! I saw everything I could find with his name listed, except this movie. It was there in my video rental shop, alright, but friends told me it was the worst god-awful crap they'd seen. And with respect to Mr Spoof-Master and my feelings for him, I never saw it.
Until now.
Why not, I thought, when it is for free on Youtube? And initially, I was pleasantly surprised. The movie did look good with some production values (professional actors, good photo and locations). The humor was plain silly and was not able to capture the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker attitude it imitated, in which everything seems to be deadpan serious until it turns on its head, but Leslie Nielsen did a good job nevertheless. Not good, but not really bad either.
When Linda Blair became re-possessed and visited a hospital and there after a church for professional help, it was already a lame movie. And from there on it was a downward spiral with lousy, uninspired jokes galore. Really, what is funny with the notion that a possessed woman is used in a television ballyhoo? At this point, "Reposessed" have almost nothing in common with the movie it try to parody; in "The Exorcist" (1973) the possession is a horrible, shameful event the family must hide from public.