20130921: Horror Review--Lovely Molly

Lovely Molly

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, rated R, 100 minutes, horror, drama.
2. IMDB: 5.3/10.0 from 6,697 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter; 32% from 4,840 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Eduardo Sanchez; screenplay by Jamie Nash and Eduardo Sanchez.
5. Starring: Johnny Lewis as Tim Reynolds, Alexandra Holden as Hannah, Gretchen Lodge as Molly Reynolds.
6. Watched streaming on Netflix.  Currently available on Netflix DVD.
7. Estimated budget, one million USD.
8. (Box Office Mojo) Estimated revenues: States, 18,424 USD.  It was in release for 11 days in 5 theatres.  Overseas revenue, zero.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Molly and new husband Tim move into an older home from her side of the family.  Tim is a truck driver who is away a lot on work.
2. First up, their security system gets tripped and they cannot explain to the sheriff what did it.  They get to know the sheriff, who remembers when Molly's father died in the house.


3. Molly starts hearing voices on Tim's next trip, the day after her birthday.  Then the bumps in the night, the sobs Molly hears when she is alone at night, and lights turned on but not my Molly.


4. Great, handheld camera footage at night with light that is about 5% sufficient.  I had thought that this was at least not Blair Witch level bovine scatology.


5. When Tim returns, Molly is alone naked in one of their bedrooms, staring at the wall.  Tim soon segues to 'do you want to see a doctor?' and 'are you using again?' So, is the film psychological drama (denies the supernatural, and she's insane) or horror (embraces the supernatural, it's not just Molly) ?


6. Christian rock concert, followed by church.  Her sister asks where she's been, as in not at work.  The next time Tim is gone, Molly gets out her teddy bear, and opens up a photo album that clearly makes her sad. The bear is where she keeps her stash.  She gets more reclusive at work, asking to work where no one will see her.  She starts hearing voices at work.  Some CCTV footage her boss shows her that something is seriously wrong.  She goes off on her boss, claiming things happened that are not in the footage.


7. Looks like drug-induced hallucinations with unresolved underlying psychological problems.  I'm still waiting for the horror part of the movie, 49 minutes in.


8. She consults with her pastor while wearing a black negligee.  Great. The seduction fails.  Well, the first time.  She seeks help from her sister.


9. Tim returns to the house being filled with a horrible smell.  He finds Molly's drug paraphernalia in open sight.


10. At 59 minutes in, Tim hears Molly making a video.  She introduces Tim to her father, who's dead.  Oh, goodness.  Molly insists that she is not crazy.  Next stop, medical tests, to be followed by psychiatric tests if the sleeping aids do not do the job.


11. Molly kisses Tim, then bites him badly, causing a great deal of bleeding.


12. Things go downhill from there.  No signs of the supernatural, just one psychotic drug addict.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Even worse than American Mary.
2. Final Rating: 2/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Poor.  The interior shots and night shots tend to look bad.  Focus, camera jump, panning that is too rapid.  Tungsten yellow prevalent.  Segments of night filming from low end hand held camera.  Lots of footage where there is not enough light to capture enough information to prevent pixelation at the user end.


2. Sound: 8/10 Actors seem adequately miked.  Creaky doors.  Irritating incidental music.


3. Acting: 0/10 Terrible.  I did not believe a single player.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Merely poor as a psychological drama where the protagonist is crushed instead of defeating the trauma.  This is a complete bust as horror.

20130920: Comedy Review--A Guy Thing

A Guy Thing

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2003, rated R, comedy of errors.
2. IMDB: 5.5/10.0 from 10,310 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 24% on the meter; 37% from 72,885 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Chris Koch; written by Greg Glienna.
5. Starring: Julia Stiles as Becky, Jason Lee as Paul, Selma Blair as Karen, Lochlyn Munro as Ray, Thomas Lennon as Pete.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Paul and Karen are to be married.  Paul drinks too much at the bachelor party, and wakes up with someone not his fiancee.  He jumps to conclusions.  Their timing is off, and it is a while before she gets to tell him that they did not have sex.  In the mean time, he keeps encountering her because she's always changing jobs, and it's in the screenplay.


2. Paul has various misadventures with his prospective in-laws, and spins lies to keep the incident with Becky quiet.


3. Then he finds out Becky is Karen's cousin.


4. Fifty seven minutes in, the useless actor Lochlyn Munro is beating the crap out of Paul, then intimidating him, then threatening him. Throwing Paul to the ground when he has two armloads of groceries was bad enough; then he jams a french fry up Paul's nose.  Why?  Munro had his girlfriend Becky followed, and Paul kept showing up.  This movie is an irredeemable piece of bovine scatology.  The shark was jumped.


5. Earlier on, Munro was shown beating up suspects in a police precinct.  Munro seems to be typecast to play testosterone challenged throwbacks who think that they are entitled to break the law as well as other people's faces.  He's a failed hockey player, so no surprise there.  Later on, he breaks in to Paul's apartment, makes a sandwich, and eats it while roughing up Paul.  Breaking and entering, theft, what else?  More intimidation, more physical abuse, more verbal abuse.  Fortunately, by this time, Paul had already started taping the interactions for the other cops.  Ray gets hauled away in cuffs.


6. The scene where Paul and Becky are trapped temporarily in the shower because Ray's dog keeps baring its teeth at them--was mercifully short. 


7. I could have lived without the 2003-style marijuana humor.
8. Despite all sorts of gaffes, the wedding goes on.  When asked for objections, no one says anything.  Then Paul speaks up.  Then Pete, who was attracted to Karen (as pointed out so many times in the film) sings to her.  Pete and Karen run off together.  Paul gets the bouquet.  Eventually he runs after Becky.  She's in a car, he's on foot. What an ending.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Avoid this comedy of errors.
2. One star of five, one blackhole for having Lochlyn Munro in the cast.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 OK.


2. Sound: 8/10 OK.


3. Acting: 2/10 The actors hit their marks and spoke their lines, but oh, goodness, why did I have to listen to them?  Why would Karen still want to marry Paul after being around any of his friends?  Why would the police department keep a psycho like Ray on the force when everyday he is just a lawsuit waiting to happen?  I usually like Julia Stiles, but the movie is mostly about Jason Lee's character.  Yep, that Jason Lee, the one who went on to give us the memorable (and terrible) My Name Is Earl and Alvin and the Chipmunks.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Neither clever, nor witty, nor funny, nor genuine, nor believable.  It's easy to see why the IMDb and RT ratings were so low.

20130919: SciFi Review--Eve of Destruction

Eve of Destruction

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action television mini-series, 2013, rated R,
2. IMDB: 3.6/10.0 from 168 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 0% on the meter (impressive) from 6 users; 18% liked it from 1,530 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Robert Lieberman.
5. Starring: Steven Weber as Karl Dameron, Christina Cox as Rachel Bannister, Treat Williams as Max Salinger, Aleks Paunovic as Ruslan, Jessica McLeod as Ruby Dameron (Karl's daughter), Colin Lawrence as David Jackson, Leah Gibson as Chloe Banks.


2. Episode 1, 87 minutes
1. From Netflix: "Scientists drill a hole in the universe to harvest a limitless pool of 'dark energy', but the experiment goes horribly wrong and wipes an entire city off the map. Now, the effort to save the world, becomes the ultimate threat that could destroy it."
2. What could possibly go wrong here?  Who sanctioned such an effort?
3. Modelling assertion: Dark energy is 75% of the universe.  The intention is to tap this.
4. Billionaire Max Salinger has a big plans--feed the world with engineered plants; supply the world's energy needs with dark energy.  His Proteus Group has eco-activist opposition, P53.  They start with the plants, then move on to the dark energy effort.


5. Sub-plot: Karl and his daughter Ruby's ongoing dysfunctional relationship; his not resolving the death of his wife ten years previous.
6. Sub-plot: propagandizing by the activist group P53.  Ruby gets sucked into this.
7. Sub-plot: Ruslan was in Russia (living in Lhitiska) as a lineman.  He witnesses his town being destroyed by lightning.  He moves to America, around Denver, and gets another job as a lineman.  His second marriage is not going well.
8. Sub-plot: Max is sleeping with Chloe, and Max's man on scene orders her to keep mum, even from Karl and Rachel.  So the tech leads are kept in the dark about hardware problems.


9. The first full-on tests have problems.  There's a breach in the accelerator's coolant system, and Ruslan witnesses phenomena much as he did at Lhitiska.


10. There was a fatality from this, and the coverup started.  Max entreats Chloe to stay silent about the accident. David tries to comfort and silence the relatives of the dead man.  Ruslan finds Karl and tells him about Lhitiska.  Karl tries to confirm or deny Ruslan's story with an old friend, Ilya.  So much lying, so little time. 


11. Ruby joins with P53, and provides access to the Proteus project.  Sabotage ensues.  She provides passwords.  She provides a security pass to get onto the Proteus campus.  She betrays everyone, in other words, and the huge damage that follows is her fault.


12. After the security breach, another proving test is started, and the effects are immediate.  The neighborhood Ruslan's American family lives ignites. The full test is yet to come.


3. Episode 2, 87 minutes
1. Karl and Rachel argue about going forward.  P53 plans further depredations.  Max wants to go forward no matter what.  Ruslan's friends deal with their house burning down, the wife's mom dying, and their son needing an operation.
2. Max uses Chloe and David to cut Rachel out of the loop, and do the experiment anyway.


3. Disaster results: everything that could go wrong does go wrong.  The dark energy source is found, and keeps coming to us, even when power is shutoff.
4. Will the surviving personnel have any chance of closing the hole in the universe?


4. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Standard fare in high-level failure in decision-making about large science efforts; the story is stretched out too far.
2. Shorter summary: Failure in decision-making in large science effort.
3. Three stars of five.


5. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.


2. Sound: 7/10 Some of the worst incidental music ever in the introductory credits.  The spoken word is well done.


3. Special Effects: 7/10 The visuals are good, but the incidental sound is goofy.


4. Acting: 5/10 Steven Weber, Christina Cox, Treat Williams, and Aleks Paunovic are good enough, given what the screenplay had them say.  Jessica McLeod, Colin Lawrence, Leah Gibson, and the P53 actors I could have done without.


5. Screenplay: 6/10 Beginning, middle, end.  Not so bad there. The P53 crew were not believable, which made the motivational parts hard to accept.  Also, the amount of material here could have been compressed into two hours.

20130919: Drama Review--The Shipping News

The Shipping News

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2001, rated R, 111 minutes, drama, romance.
2. IMDB: 6.7/10.0 from 22,564 users; estimated budget 35 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 55% from the meter; 60% from 20,303 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Lasse Hellstrom.  Written by: Robert Nelson Jacobs.
5. Starring: Kevin Spacey as Quoyle, Julianne Moore as Wavey Prowse, Judi Dench as Agnis Hamm, Cate Blanchette as Petal, Pete Postlethwaite as Tert Card, Scott Glenn as Jack Buggit.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Ecch, voice-over.  Kevin Spacey narrates from early childhood (the not quite drowned cliche) to adulthood, where he's an inksetter in Poughkeepsie, NY, and where he meets his first wife, Petal. The word 'clueless' keeps coming to mind.


2. They spawn a daughter, much to Petal's disgust.  Petal leaves him with another man after his parents kill themselves in a penniless state.


3. Petal and the interloper drive off the road into a river and die.  Nice.  They had sold Bunny (the daughter) to a black market adoption agency for 6,000 USD, and had a receipt to prove it.  That's how the NYSHP tracked them down and recovered Bunny.


4. Agnes Hamm (his father's half sister) visits, helps him relocate to Newfoundland, helps him move into a house the family still owns, and has not been lived in for 44 years.  The house needs quite a bit of repair, and is quite a story in its own right.


5. He gets a job with the local newspaper, and is assigned by Jack to do the shipping news and car accidents.  He learns to write in a journalistic style.  Agnis un-retires to help bring in more income.  He gets advice and learns more about writing.


6. Bunny likes Wavey's son.  Wavey and Quoyle become friends.


7. Quoyle shows quite a skill at finding out unfortunate buried facts.  Quoyle gets into a disagreement with Tert over shipping news content.  It is not pretty, but Jack sides with Quoyle.  Later, he finds a body and a head at sea, and manages to lose his boat in the process.  Quoyle discovers a number of other secrets, like the bad behaviour of his ancestors, his father's bad treatment of his aunt, and the like.


8. By the end of the film, Quoyle is part of the community, and much more at peace with himself.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: A weak man finds himself and his family's history in Newfoundland.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 The majority of the film's frames are on the dark side, almost to the point where some camera/light source changes might have been called for.  On the other hand, the film's locations are northerly with frequent overcast skies.


2. Sound: 10/10 No problems.  The incidental music was excellent.


3. Acting: 8/10 Kevin Spacey is both the worst (as the younger Quoyle) and the best (older Quoyle) actor in the film.  Judi Dench delivered another fine performance.  Cate Blanchette's performance was quite repellant, but that was her assignment.  Julianne Moore was good.  Scott Glenn was delightful. Pete Postlethwaite was great.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Nicely done, except for the early material.  A separate actor for the younger Quoyle would have been much better.

20130917: Comedy Review--Fairhaven

Fairhaven

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2012, NR, 81 minutes, comedy, drama.
2. IMDB: 5.1/10.0 from 278 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 56% on the meter; 31% from 144 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Tom O'Brien.  Screenplay by Tom O'Brien and Chris Messina.
5. Starring: Sara Paulson as Kate, Chris Messina as Dave, Rich Sommer as Sam, Alexie Gilmore as Angela, Tom O'Brien as Jon.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Jon, a former high school football star returns home to the small fishing village of Fairhaven, Massachusetts.  He was an arrogant, useless jerk in high school, and returns a failed, arrogant, useless jerk.
2. We start with layer upon layer of cliché.  Will there be any evolution, or is this just another fouled up, self-regarding 'feel bad comedy'?
3. Dave is back from Arizona to talk to old friends and catch up with his mother.
4. Jon is trying to get into something new, perhaps writing.  He arranges to quit his fishing job as soon as he can find a replacement.  He's in two kinds of therapy.
5. The obligatory drunken barroom and getting high scenes are just as boring as one might expect.  Jon, Dave, and Sam are not any better at it than any one else.
6. Sam has stayed in Fairhaven (as opposed to Jon and Dave), has gotten married, had a daughter, got a divorce, and dealt with the break up.  Nobody seems to be any happier than anyone else.
7. The funeral for Dave's father was nicely awkward.
8. The ending was flat, rather like the rest of the film.


3. Conclusions
1. It's usually bad (Good Will Hunting notwithstanding) when the screenwriters are also stars.
2. One sentence summary: Skip this film unless you like self-important feel bad comedies.
3. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Exceptionally lovely shooting, especially the exteriors.  Depth of field is shallow for the interiors to isolate the character to focus on, showing a nice level of control.  Framing and color saturation are great.


2. Sound: 8/10 Occasionally the music was blaring.


3. Acting: 4/10 The performances are all too often from the 'smile, show how cool you are' school of non-involvement.  Boring, non-engaging.  I liked Chris Messina in Argo and in 28 Hotel Rooms but not this one, not by a long shot.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Stupid premise, bad execution, boring; not aided by immature actors.

20130917: Documentary Review--Life 2.0

Life 2.0

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action and animated feature length film, 2010, NR, 100 minutes, documentary.
2. IMDB: 5.9/10.0 from 202 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 89% on the meter; 48% liked it from 171 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Jason Spingarn-Koff.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The discrepancy between the critics and the ticket buyers on Rotten Tomatoes was rather large.  This does not bode well.


2. Life 2.0 refers to Second Life, an animated, shared, massively multi-user application.  Real life companies have meetings in board rooms in buildings in SL.  People buy islands, land parcels, and buildings in SL.  People run businesses in SL.  It has its own economy, currency, geography, and a host of sub-cultures.


3. One equivalence stated was 1000 lindens (SL currency) was exchangeable for 3.50 USD.  There is an in-game bank that enables exchanges of USD to lindens and back.  During 2009, an estimated 500 million USD were exchanged between SL and real life.  Those who learn how to build in SL can sell services, houses, vehicles, clothes, and the like in SL and get USD in return. Conversely, those with disposable USD, can have a luxurious time in Second Life.


4. The film largely follows the four avatars, Asri Falcone, Amie Goode, Bluntly Berblinger, and Ayya Aabye.   Asri builds and sells clothing in the game and makes money.  Amie and Bluntly are bonded in the game, and somewhat outside the game.  They experience things together in SL; she's married to someone else in real life.  Ayya is an 11-year old girl, whose creator is an engaged man in his thirties.


5. Creepy moments: Ayya's creator discusses what he gets out of portraying a young girl avatar.  His wife is not positively impressed.  His over-spending of time in SL has endangered his job, his marriage, and his health.  Sounds like addiction: users saying sleep was only done out of necessity.


6. The slick, sleek, entrepreneurial type, Asri Falcone, in Second Life turns out to be a person who spends most of her time in a basement in a so-so part of Detroit.  On the other hand, Asri's efforts in SL more than pay for the monthly fees for playing the game.  In fact, for at least one year before the film's release, she was making over 100,000 USD per year from SL, and helped support her elderly parents.


7. Real life and Second Life are sometimes at odds: budding romance in Second Life is confounded by Real life mates, children, real property and other commitments. 


8. It is illegal for real life children to operate in Second Life, at all, period.  Despite this, there are many child avatars, child schools, friendships that involve exploration in SL with other child friends. As well as schools, there are adoption centers where child avatars get matched with pairs of adult avatars.


9. Ayya's creator got himself kicked out of SL by having the avatar do a suicide bombing run.  Linden Labs considered this a denial of service attack, and suspended his account.  That seemed the only way Ayya's creator could get out of the game, given his psychology.  The first time he got suspended for 24 hours; he was hoping for more.  That was a wake-up, and he decides to delete Ayya on the six months anniversary of his joining SL.


10. Gaming the game: when the servers underlying SL would crash, on reboot they sometimes created extra copies of objects, including merchant inventory.  So, some hackers were able to produce many such crashes, which resulted in numerous copies being made, which they snapped up and sold at reduced prices.  The merchants adversely affected by this, including Asri, went to court to get this fixed. This hit about the same time as the real life Great Recession, so the SL economy went into a slower mode as well.  Asri's ability to make money in SL went down severely, and her savings eventually ran out.


11. Steven (Bluntly) and Amie (Amie) live in Alberta, CA and New York, USA.  They started meeting for short times.  Both of them separated from their spouses, and are trying to find a feasible plan for being together in real life.


12. Down the tubes: Ayya and his finance break up after he cuts himself out of SL.  He goes back to SL, but realizes what a mess he is.  Steven and Amie tried to be together, and find that it does not work.  They do not work together for day-to-day real tasks as they did with their time exploring in SL.  Asri does not recover the same income she once had in SL. The successful lawsuit against the virtual perpetrator only yielded about 525 USD for six plaintiffs.  Still, she makes a whole new set of businesses, does a lot more to protect her copyrights and brands in the game, and again makes significant money.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Things can go wrong in the virtual worlds too.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Streamed in HD from Netflix.  This was a total waste, since SL does not have a high enough polygon density to warrant this.  It looks grainy, second rate, poor, all the way through the film.  The 'real' life photography is iffy, showing quite a number of zooming, framing, and focus mistakes.  Jumpy hand-held look. Some of the second half 'real' life camera work was reasonably good.  Toward the very end of the film, much later versions of SL show vastly improved animation. This is only for about 1 minute. Most of the SL footage is just terrible.


2. Sound: 6/10 OK, but sometimes indifferent to fuzzy.


3. Screenplay: 6/10 The stories to be told were told well.  However, it seems a bit lopsided.  The three main stories were about a couple who left their former spouses then failed romantically in real life; a childhood abuse victim using SL instead of a shrink; one of the exceptional few who actually made money off of SL.  Companies that use SL for business meetings?  Not represented.  People who just have a good time?  I did not see much of that.  So many common cases were not represented at all.

20130916: Thriller Review--American Mary

American Mary

1. Fundamentals
1. Canadian live action feature length film, 2012, rated R, 103 minutes, horror, thriller.
2. IMDB: 6.1/10.0 from 5,740 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 57% on the meter; 56% from 2,717 audience ratings.
4. Written and directed by: Jen and Sylvia Soska.
5. Starring: Katharine Isabelle as Mary Mason, Antonio Cupo as Billy Barker, Tristan Risk as Beatrice Johnson, David Lovgren as Dr. Grant.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Mary is a medical student who is losing ground financially, and becoming discouraged with the field.  Her main mentor, Dr. Grant, rides her hard verbally.
2. She tries exotic dancing.  During her interview, she has the opportunity to do 'off the books surgery' for 5000 USD cash.  She opts for that instead of the dancing.
3. The initial experience is shocking, but she gets it done for the money.
4. She goes to a surgeons-only party while she's still a resident.  It turns out to be a date-rape party, and she's one of the guests of honor, so to speak.  Dr. Grant is the one who violates her.
5. She drops out of med school, and arranges to take vengeance on Grant, who disappears after her procedures are done.
6. A detective starts sniffing around, since one of Grant's colleagues suggested she might have motive.
7. Mary continues work in the body modification field, where most of the modifications are more or less illegal.
8. She makes considerable money, but the cops start to close in, and some of her underworld relationships degenerate.
9. What could possibly go wrong?


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Promising surgical student descends into an underworld of bizarre body modifications.
2. Final Rating: 4/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 OK, but not good.


2. Sound: 7/10 OK, but not good.


3. Acting: 4/10 The movie would have been better served without the cameo by the Soska sisters.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 The plot seems aimed only at producing shock.  The ending is dull and flat.

20130914: SFF Review--Robocroc

Robocroc

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, science fiction, horror. Spoken language is English.
2. IMDB: 3.1/10.0 from 573 viewer ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 12% liked it from 27 viewer ratings.
4. Directed by: Arthur Sinclair.
5. Starring: Corin Nemec as zoo keeper Tim Duffy, Dee Wallace, Lisa McAllister as biologist Jane Spencer, Steven Hartley as General Montgomery.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The payload of a failed space launch falls to earth in a large zoo.  The payload contained nanobots, which are absorbed by a crocodile, and proceed to do a re-design on the croc into a completely mechanical form.
2. Anesthesia works initially, but fails later as the transformation goes to completion.
3. The cliche of a government official with rank insisting that the killing machine be preserved while it continues to kill humans is getting awfully old.  All four Alien films used it.  Too many films have some variation of the line 'we have to study it, it's unique.' This ends up with the same result: the menace is preserved by choice, which is absurd.
4. The first 65 minutes (televison time) were consumed getting to the end of this stage.
5. The usual next stage is where the official is overruled, and the remaining forces attempt to save people from the menace.  Unless the official was killed, they reassert themselves, and that happens in this film.  The robocroc menace is rebooted.
6. Why is the croc, now all metal, hungry for organics?  This makes no sense at all.  It clearly not longer has a digestive tract, for instance.  This was one more 'jump the shark' moment.
7. The heroes finally succeed using an EMP device in spite of government interference from Dee Wallace's character.
8. But of course, there is a final twist.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Government field test of nanobots results in a rampaging mechanical crocodile.
2. Final Rating: 4/10


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Fine.


2. Sound: 10/10 Sharp.


3. Acting: 6/10 Dee Wallace and Corin Nemec were competent, as was the actor who played the general.  The rest of the cast was weak.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Nanobots are used as some mighty strong mojo magic.  I don't believe that for a second.  There were too many minutes of teen-aged girls screaming out of desperation.  The inexcusable logic failures were just too much.  The dialog was not the best.


5. Special Effects: 5/10 The croc taking the helicopter was the highlight, but some of the earlier croc close ups were dark and low on detail.  Also, light matching was not very good in several scenes.

20130914: Review--Ragin' Cajun Redneck Gators

Ragin' Cajun Redneck Gators

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2013,
2. IMDB: 3.6/10.0 from 399 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: no page for this movie.
4. Directed by: Griff Furst
5. Starring: Jordan Hinson as Avery Doucette, Victor Webster as Tristan, Christopher Berry as Bud, Amy Brassette as Candy.
6. Filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Well, somewhere near it, perhaps.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Cajun accents?  They come, they go, they are never very good.
2. Avery comes back to the swamp, to her family, after four years in college.  She's a vegan now, which gives an extra layer of problems dealing with a hunting, carnivorous culture.
3. Pluses: the gators have red necks and spiked tails.
4. Minuses: bad banjo playing, bad accents, Avery's sudden, complete switch to 'kill them all' after she sees a giant gator kill someone she's known for years; more bad banjo playing; badly motivated clan feud, Doucette versus Robichaud; more blue tongues than were strictly needed.
5. So, bad moonshine dumped in the swamp water seems to be changing the gators.  People who eat the gator meat or get deep wound from live gators change into gators.
6. After an early success against the gators, the two clans degenerate in to drunken stupidity again.  The human-to-gator changes start.
7. Avery's father had a gold tooth; his gator form has a gold fang.  Avery catches that, just before he pulls her out of the quicksand.  The non-biological gold tooth changing shape makes about as much sense as the humans turning into gators, or the moonshine doing the first conversion.
8. One minute Avery is dead set against killing gators since they are probably her family. The next minute, she's killing three of them by blowing up a gas tank.
9. In the end, about all the remaining Doucettes are gators, while the Robichauds are out to kill them.  Avery tries to protect her father-turned-gator, but that is not to be.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Cajuns fight gators mutated by bad moonshine in SyFy original.
2. Final Rating: 4/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Sharp.


2. Sound: 10/10 Fine.


3. Acting: 2/10 Mostly bad.  Lines delivered badly, accents out of kilter.  Candy was a hoot.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 There's a story to tell, and it moves from beginning to middle to end.  The gaffes mentioned above are hard to forget, however.

20130914: Drama Review--Old Boy

Oldboy

1. Fundamentals
1. Korean live action feature length film, 120 minutes, rated R, 2003, horror, drama, thriller.
2. IMDB: 8.4/10.0 from 209,395 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 80% on the meter; 94% from 124,469 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Chan-wook Park.
5. Starring: Min-sik Choi as Dae-su Oh, Hye-jeong Kang as Woo-jin Lee.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film opens with Oh holding a business man by his necktie to keep him from dropping off a building.


2. Flashback to Oh in a police precinct for extreme public drunkenness. A friend comes to pick him up.  While the friend talks to his wife, Oh walks off.  Years pass while he is imprisoned.


3. He gets to watch a newscast that claims he killed his wife.  He has a bit of a breakdown at that point, seeing ants coming out of his flesh and the like.


4. He writes lists of all his wrongdoings and the people he has offended.  It's more than half a dozen notebooks.


5. Early on, he tries to kill himself, several times.  He gets over this, and starts to keep track of time and to tone his muscles.


6. After 15 years, he is dumped in a suitcase on the top of the building he was held in.  The man in the first scene was a suicide.  Oh tells the suicide his story, then does not listen to the other man's story.  Nice.  'Laugh, and the world laughs with you.  Cry, and you cry alone.'  This was on the wall in his cell; he repeats it, laughing, after the suicide kills himself.


7. Oh's house is gone, demolished and replaced.  His relatives and friends think he killed his wife, so he cannot contact them.


8. An encounter with street thugs shows his training paid off.  Some stranger gives him a mobile phone and a wallet with money. A 'scholar of Oh Dae-su' calls him, and they have an oblique talk.


9. He and a chef at the first restaurant he visits strike it off quickly.  She helps him find what he is looking for.


10. He finds the prison from the taste of fried dumplings.  He finds an audio tape of the person who commissioned his imprisonment.  The prison had a lot of guards, and he did a lot of fighting to get free of them.


11. 'Revenge or the truth? That's a problem for you.'  Great line.  In this case, truth was the ultimate revenge.


12. The mystery is quite intricate, and the protagonist needs much help to resolve it.  One needs a strong stomach to finish the material, but the film is well worth completion.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: This is the best of the three Vengeance films in my view.
2. Five stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 9/10


2. Sound: 8/10 Music was a bit much for a few minutes of the film.


3. Acting: 10/10 The adversaries were excellent, as were several of the supporting players.


4. Screenplay: 10/10 Exceptional storytelling.  This was the most sad film I've ever seen, not just among psychological horror films.

20130913: Drama Review--Mr Vengeance

Sympathy for Mr Vengeance

1. Fundamentals
1. Korean live action feature length film, 2002, rated R, 129 minutes, crime, drama.
2. IMDB: 7.7/10.0 from 31,625 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 55% on the meter; 84% liked it from 38,171 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Chan-wook Park.
5. Starring: Kang Ho-Song as Park Dong-jin, Ha-Kyun Shun as Ryu.


2. Setup and Plot
1. A deaf and dumb man (Ryu) has only his older sister as remaining family.  She has helped him get into art school, but fell ill while he was still in the program.  She needs a new kidney, but his will not do, since they have conflicting blood types.  He works in a sweatshop, double shifts, and clearly does not make much money for this.  He decides to go to the black market to sell his kidney.
2. What could possibly go wrong?  He gets fired, which moves up his time table.  The organ dealers cheat him out of the money they promised him, but do take a kidney.  They leave him stark naked in the middle of nowhere.  On the other hand, they do find a compatible kidney for his sister, and have it inserted into the donor program.
3. How could this get worse? He does not have the money for the operation itself.  His girl friend recommends kidnapping the daughter of the man who fired him for the purpose of ransom.  They go through with the kidnapping.  This seems to go successfully, but his sister commits suicide over the crime.  So, all of the previous activity was for nothing.
4. What story is left?  Burying the sister; getting the kidnapped girl back home.  His carelessness does not go unpunished.  If not for a man more disabled than the protagonist, he might not have even found the body.  Of course, this same disabled man tried to steal her necklace, which woke her up, which led to her drowning.  He steals that necklace after she's dead.
5. The father of the kidnapped girl sells his company and his house.  The police find the apartment where Ryu and his late sister had lived, but they are long gone.
6. Ryu keeps following the dead girl's father around; I'm surprised the cops did not trip over him.
7. The girl's father keeps looking; he finds Ryu's sister's body, and the disabled man who stole his daughter's necklace.  The cops get closer.
8. Ryu finds the organ dealers and kills three of them.
9. The girl's father finds Ryu's girlfriend and tortures her using electricity.
10. One of the few high points of the movie was when the girl's father finds the many pictures of his daughter having a happy and fun time with Ryu and his girl friend, the one he's currently torturing.  It seemed like a revelation to him.  Then one sees it was not.
11. He turns the current back on and goes back to looking at the pictures.  She dies from it, but not before revealing she was a terrorist, at least in her own mind, and gives him a promise of retribution.
12. Ryu returns to the apartment as the police take the body out.  No one notices him.  The police find out about the organ dealers that Ryu murdered.  Ryu rides down in the elevator with them and the corpse. Still he is not noticed.
13. Ryu stakes out the girl's father, but the father outsmarts him.  He takes Ryu to the spot where his daughter was drowned.  He starts explaining, but Ryu is deaf, and he does not know sign language.
14. When he is about to bury Ryu, he gets to receive more vengeance from Ryu's girl friend's organization.  They did the job on him that she promised.  He still does not get it as he dies.


3. Conclusions
1. The depiction of disabled people was rather harsh. The depiction of non-disabled people is even more harsh.   This is the second most sad film I've ever seen; the saddest being Old Boy (2003), this film's brother.
2. One sentence summary: Life is tough; because we are stupid, it gets worse.
3. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Competent.  In some sections, there was more than a bit of camera shake.


2. Sound: 8/10 The spoken word is Korean, and the subtitles presented seem to be OK. Some dialog and writing had no subtitles.  The actors appear to be adequately miked.


3. Acting: 7/10 Reasonable, but not the best.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 The plot is clear, and the action and dialog moves it along, though slowly.  The final minutes make it clear that the build up was worth it.

20130913: Comedy Review--Spread

Spread

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 97 minutes, 2009, rated R, comedy, romance.
2. IMDB: 5.8/10.0 from 23,608 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 21% on the meter; 31% from 22,848 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: David Mackenzie; screenplay by Jason Dean Hall.
5. Starring: Ashton Kutcher, as Nikki, Anne Heche as Samantha, Margarita Levieva as Heather, Sebastian Stan as Harry.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Nikki sets himself up with Samantha: he gets a place to live, food, and new clothes on his back; she gets his attentions.
2. He has a party while she's in New York on business.  Then he betrays her at the party.  The maid cleans up the party mess afterward.  Seems the ability to think ahead is a bit impaired.
3. Samantha's reaction to her first discovery of Nikki's cheating was unexpected: she got more interested in him as they talked things out.
4. Soon after this he meets Heather at a coffee shop.  She is very different than Samantha, and his interest in her (which arose from her lack of interest in him) eventually contributes to his breakup with Samantha.
5. During the second half of the film, Nikki makes a few lifestyle changes in response to the pain he feels over not possessing Heather.  This all seems unlikely; Heather can do nothing for him, since she is a broke sponger just like he is. 'Jump the shark' comes to mind.
6. So, Nikki learns to bag groceries, do deliveries, and slows down on seductions.  Oh, my.  How long will that last, and why should it be interesting?  The weakness in motivational development is perhaps the film's biggest downfall.


3. Conclusions:
1. One line summary: Ashton Kutcher at his worst plus a miserable screenplay.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores:
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.


2. Sound: 6/10 Someone with a more authentic voice might have been cast instead of Kutcher.  His narration was repellant: not the content, but the qualities of his voice. I could not believe that he could convince anyone of anything. The music blares from time to time. When considered separately from the film, it was rather good.  Within the film, it was next to irrelevant.


3. Acting: 2/10 Kutcher drags down the entire proceedings.  The only actor in sight was Anne Heche, and her performance, though good, was not enough to carry this awful mess.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Do I care about any of these characters?  Samantha for about the first thirty minutes; after that, no one.  Did I care how the film ended?  No.  If I were not writing this piece I would have stopped after perhaps ten minutes.  Watching the whole 97 minutes showed that that would have been a good choice; the film was grinding and poor from beginning to end.  Perhaps worst of all, this was a comedy during which I did not laugh or smile a single time.

20130912: SFF Review--Atlantic Rim

Name: Atlantic Rim
IMDb: link to Atlantic Rim page

Genres: Action, SciFi     Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Graham Greene as Admiral Hadley, Anthony 'Treach' Criss as Lieutenant Jim Rushing, David Chokachi as Red, Jackie Moore as Tracey, Nicole Alexandra Shipley as Stone, Steven Marlow as Sheldon Geiss.

Directed by:  Jared Cohn.   Written by:  Richard Lima.

image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film opens to a spill on an oil rig.  A giant monster is identified as the culprit.

Three untested giant robots are sent to find it.  Drunken incompetence results in a lot of collateral damage before an early success over one of the monsters. The 'hero' gets both lionized and jailed.  Nice.

Delineation of conflicts:
There are all sorts of violation of chain of command.  Nonfeasance was all over the place.  After the first incident, another monster emerges.  The robot pilot who was so dedicated to assisting the cleanup earlier is shown playing checkers with his fellow pilot.  The second monster is bombed by one of our stealth aircraft; no one seems to notice that the monster slithers away alive and unharmed.

Reason versus all sorts of nonsense: reason usually loses.  Florida does not really resemble Manhattan Island that much, despite what the film says the location is.  The giant melee weapons used by the gundam (er, giant robots) supposedly were effective against the giant monsters, while much more powerful ordinance used earlier failed.

Resolution:
The video stops.

One line summary: Terrible screenplay and acting defeat moderately good sound and camera work.

Statistics 

Cinematography: 8/10 The lighting, focus, framing, depth of field and the like were better than what I've come to expect from The Asylum.

Sound: 8/10 OK.  The Asylum seems to have upgraded their sound equipment as well.

Acting: 0/10 Uniformly bad.  This was undoubtedly the worst performance by Grahame Green that I've ever seen.  There's a big disconnect between what the actors say and what's supposed to be going on, such as, 'maybe we hit a wreck' -- when the speaker is on a stationary oil rig.

Screenplay: 0/10 Mardi gras in Florida.  Interesting, unexpected.  'The pressure is increasing exponentially.'  Exponentially is not what it used to be; the issue vanishes two seconds later with no explanation.  Which character(s) am I supposed to care about?  Unknown.  Which plot thread is supposed to be engaging?  None of them are.  Generally incompetent dialog.  Needless romantic triangle that was barely explored.  The gratuitous jiggling and drinking was OK, but not really needed.

Special Effects: 6/10 Varies between competent (dinosaurs) and amateurish (fake explosions, loss of the aircraft carrier Wasp).

Final Rating: 1/10

20130911: Documentary Review--Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 1982, rated UR, 86 minutes, documentary, music.
2. IMDB: 8.3/10.0 from 24,271 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 89% on the meter; 91% liked it from 14,778 audience ratings.
4. Directed by Godfrey Reggio.
5. Starring: no one.
6. Music by Phillip Glass.
7. Viewed from streaming video from Hulu+


2. Setup and Plot
1. Videos strung together, coordinated with Phillip Glass' music.
2. Nature (clouds, waves, mountains, shores) is described as beautiful, enduring, good.
3. Humanity is ambushed as ugly, stupid, wasteful, enslaved, impoverished, ant-like, and injurious to the landscape.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: The video was as subtle as a sledgehammer opening an English walnut; the music as finely discriminating as a bulldozer in a rose garden.
2. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 I saw this in the late 1980s, and remember being quite impressed by the visuals.  On the Hulu version I saw in 2013, I was not impressed at all.  The focus was soft, the colors washed out, the contrast low.


2. Incidental music: 5/10 Beyond irritating.  When associated with humans in video, the music had the sort of manic activity one might associate with the Keystone Cops, but with oppressive overtones.


3. Screenplay: 2/10 The point of view is 'nature is great, humanity is the opposite.'

20130910: Documentary Review--Samsara

Samsara

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length documentary, 2011, rated PG-13, 102 minutes.
2. IMDB: 8.2/10.0 from 8,384 users; estimated budget of 4 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 77% on the meter; 86% from 10,673 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Ron Fricke; screenplay by Mark Magidson and Ron Fricke.
5. Starring: no one in particular.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Human subjects are urged to look at the camera and not speak and not smile.
2. Taped subjects such as landscapes are sometimes shown at altered speeds.
3. Cool images: pharaoh's head; castle on a peak; Tibetan images; active sand dunes; high ceilings and stained glass in cathedrals; orange dunes in stark light; dead tree stumps against the rotation of the stars in the night skies; aerial videos of cities at night.
4. Uncool images: ugly old statues with massive time lapse; unused buildings filling up with sand; ruined, abandoned strip malls, stores, school rooms; automobiles and small houses interacting unnaturally; man covering his head with clay since it looks like a cheap, gimmicky horror film; chicken, bovine, pork processing; plastic surgery pre-processing; humans doing garbage recycling by hand for a living.
5. Indifferent images: oh, so many, such as the indoor skiing.
6. After watching the whole film twice, I'd say that all the images became indifferent.  This is just concatenation in void context; all significance has been driven down to zero by the silent treatment.
7. If you've got a story to tell, tell it.  Use language and planning.


3. Conclusions
1. It's awesomely beautiful in stretches, and downright ugly in others, but who cares?
2. One sentence summary: There were many images and videos, but little cohesion.
3. Three stars of five.  Here I'm giving more weight to the quality of the images, and less to the lack of connections.
4. After watching the film the first time, I read well over 50 reviews of it.  In almost all cases, the review consisted of interpretations from experiences and axes to grind from outside the film.  Frankly, it looked like stretching in every case.  Watching the film again reinforced this opinion.  Documentary films, by and large, have issues to raise and things to say about those issues.  This film has images to present, but no point of view.  The reviewers I read loaded in their own POV, whereas I'd say this film is just "I've collected a number of high quality images."


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Stellar.


2. Sound: 8/10 Incidental music, almost no dialog.


3. Acting: N/A


4. Screenplay: 0/10 There were no points made.

20130910: Comedy Review--This Is Spinal Tap

Name: This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
IMDb: link to This Is Spinal Tap page

Genres: Comedy, Music.   Country of origin: UK.

Cast: Rob Reiner as Marty DiBergi (producer of the documentary; main interviewer), Michael McKean as David St. Hubbins (lead singer), Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel (lead guitar), Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls (bass), Tony Hendra as Ian Faith (manager), June Chadwick as Jeanine Pettibone (David's girlfriend; manager while Ian was gone).

Directed by: Rob Reiner. Written by: Christopher Guest and Michael McKean (screenplay).

image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Camera follows the fake UK band Spinal Tap as they play at various venues in a comeback tour in the States.

Rob Reiner interviews the band outside the concerts.

Delineation of conflicts:
The band's sexist image (and the anger it generates) is dealt with again and again. The latest album is not doing well at all. These two factors contribute to internal bickering. The band's gigs were cancelled in Boston, Memphis, and just about everywhere after Ian quit.

Nigel quits.  The 'End of Tour' party starts early, and starts the 'End of Spinal Tap' discussion.

Resolution:
Nigel returns in Los Angeles, and Ian's back in Japan.  Does one hit single fix everything?

One line Summary: Comeback tour in the States disintegrates for a UK rock band on its way down.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 7/10 There were more fluorescent green tones than I wanted to see in any one movie.  Fortunately, most of the film was fine on that score.

Sound: 4/10 Ridiculously bad.  The sound levels keep toggling between too loud (need to change the volume down to avoid the neighbors complaining) and too soft (need to up the volume to make out normal voices at all).  I gave up after a while.

Acting: 5/10 Michael McKean was exceptionally good.  Harry Shearer was in that special place he occupies between boring and repellant.  Christopher Guest is an actor I hope never to see again.

Screenplay: 6/10 The story was moderately funny throughout as the band stumbles from town to town. Chewing gum with the mouth open describes the whole experience.  The band is in a state of permanent arrested development. The film captured that strongly.  Some of the vignettes were funny, such as the Stonehenge prop in Austin, or their difficulty finding the stage in Cleveland.

Final Rating: 6/10

20130910: Mystery Review--Immortality

Name: Immortality (The Wisdom of Crocodiles) (1998)
IMDb: link to Immortality page

Genres: Crime, thriller, romance   Country of origin: UK.

Cast: Jude Law as Steven Griscz,  Elina Löwensohn as Anne Labels, Timothy Spall as Inspector Healey.

Directed by: Po-Chih Leong.    Written by: Paul Hoffman.

image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Steven snares women, then bleeds them dry.  By the time someone catches up to one, he's on to the next.

The film opens with a car in a tree with copious blood flowing out of it.  This was a former girl friend of Steven's.

Steven prevents a woman, Maria, from committing suicide, then romances her.  Later he dumps her body in some quicksand.  The body is found by a Spanish fisher.  Steven gets a visit from the police.

Delineation of conflicts:
Anne Labels is a structural engineer whom Steven meets at a museum.

Steven saves the inspector from a gang.  The gang re-appears later while Steven is with Anne; the leader means to use her.  Steven beats up the other four gang members and gets Anne away from the leader.  He subdues the leader; she returns with a weapon; they leave more or less unscathed.

The police bring him in for more interviews.

The police give up for a time when the inspector learns from Maria's friends that she was contemplating suicide and that Steven prevented it.  Steven returns the crucifix that the gang leader stole from the inspector at their first meeting.

Steven falls in love with Anne.  He needs her blood, but he cannot do it.

Resolution:
Steven can live for a long time, but he needs to feed on blood.  He's in a quandary about Anne.

One line summary: Slick alternate approach to a vampire story.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 10/10 Sweet; well done.

Sound: 10/10 Also good.

Acting: 10/10 Top notch.

Screenplay: 8/10 A little slow moving, but well-constructed.

Final Rating: 9/10

20130910: Horror Review--Lady Vengeance

Name: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)
IMDb: link to Sympathy for Lady Vengeance page

Genres: Horror.   Country of origin: Korea (Spoken language is Korean, with English subtitles.)

Cast: Yeong-ae Lee as Geum-ja Lee, Min-sik Choi as Mr. Baek.

Directed by: Chan Wook Park.  Written by: Seo-Gyeong Jeong, Chan Wook Park.

image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Geum-ja was framed for killing a child, then served 13.5 years for the crime. Flashbacks tell how she created loyalty within her prison mates.

After she gets out, she takes a job with a baker, and takes triple advantage of his generosity.  One wonders why the baker put up with this.

She decides that she is a position, finally, to settle some scores.

Delineation of conflicts:
She has a custom gun built to deal harshly with her nemesis.

She dreams that her daughter is with her.  This is, as far as I can tell in this horrid mess, contrary to fact.  The battle in her mind rages on.

She collects real evidence, and gains real allies, against the murdering bastard who framed her.

Resolution:
Lady Vengeance lines up everything for her revenge.  Does she take it?  Does she get any lasting benefit from it?

One line summary: Badly done fractured fairy tale of tremendous ugliness.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 6/10  There is a tendency for most of the screen to be out of focus.  This does fit in with the protagonist's obsessions.  However, it is distracting and ugly for most of the screen to be meaningless.  There were also camera jerks and bad zooming, but only occasionally.

Sound: 8/10 The subtitles do the job, but the voices seemed to be miked OK. 

Incidental music: 2/10 I like harpsichord music.  The presence of horrific and disgusting passages filled with harpsichord music increases my dislike of the film.  Generally speaking, I like Vivaldi's compositions.  There are several Vivaldi pieces used in this film, which seems discordant (sound versus visual content) at best. I am most strongly reminded of A Clockwork Orange (1972).  Since I like Beethoven's music in general, I had the same sort of reaction.  The beauty and the clarity of the music being pressed into association with psychotic violent behavior was just disgusting.

Acting: 2/10 Much of narration is told from within a particular daydream or hallucination.  The high density of flashbacks contributes to the difficulty telling whether the performance is acting or just a crazy twit being herself as opposed to acting.

Screenplay: 4/10 Flashbacks, daydreams, and hallucinations are film devices that I do not care for.  They usually do not work, and they are very irritating here.  Voice-over narration is another sign of script failure.

Final Rating: 4/10  It's competent visually. It's well-miked for sound.  Otherwise it's unforgivable.  Three black holes for screenplay, acting, and incidental music.  It's difficult to believe that this film had the same director as Old Boy (2003).

Hide/Show Spoilers

1. As the film progresses (well, the clock goes forward; there is not progress), Geum-ja has an ally drug her nemesis.  They bind and gag him, then transport him to a place that they control where no one can hear them.
2. Other victims of the real killer are found, ones killed while Geum-ja was in prison.  The parents are offered to watch the last moments of their children's lives, as filmed by the killer. This seems needless infliction of additional suffering.
3. How did Geum-ja arrange this without the cops arresting her and carting her off to jail again?  This seems to be skipped over.
4. In any case, in the film, the parents decide to punish and do in the child killer themselves.
5. Then they do it.
6. Later they meet at the bakery and have cake.  Lovely.

20130910: Documentary Review--Carthage the Roman Holocaust

Carthage: the Roman Holocaust

1. Fundamentals
1. British live action film for television, 2004, NR, 100 minutes, documentary.
2. IMDB: 6.5/10.0 from 25 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: no result.  Seems it's a tv movie
4. Director: Joseph Maxwell; writer: Richard Miles.
5. Presenter: Dr. Richard Miles.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Re-enactments (?) using modern people; so many anachronisms!
2. Lots of footage of ruins, mostly the ruins of Carthage in what is now Tunisia.
3. The thesis of the piece is that the ancient world was not just created by Egypt, Greece, and Rome; Carthage, a former Phoenician colony, had a big influence.
4. Around 500 BC, Carthage was the richest city-state in the Mediterranean.  The Carthaginians pioneered the navigation of the western Mediterranean, and had mapped the entire sea.
5. In 500 BC, Rome was made of wood, not the later towering marble monuments.  Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica were Carthaginian at the time, and the Romans were a bit claustrophobic about it.  The western Mediterranean was African (well, Carthaginian), not European.


6. Carthage built ships by kit (wood pre-cut to exact sizes with instructions on the wood; somewhat like Ikea today), so that any journeyman carpenter could build a Carthaginian warship.
7. The First Punic War started in 264 BC, and lasted 25 years.  Rome became a sea power, partly by capturing, then reverse engineering, a Carthaginian warship.  Carthage gave up Sicily in 241 BC.  Rome annexed Sardinia and Corsica the following year, and unilaterally amended the peace treaty.
8. Carthage expanded in Spain, and the silver mined there helped Carthage recoup its position.  After this, Hannibal rose as the leader of Carthage.  In 216 BC, Hannibal was at the gates of Rome in the Second Punic War.  Roman generals diverted Hannibal long enough for Roman forces to attack Carthage itself.  Hannibal returned to Carthage, but was soundly defeated there.
9. All Carthaginian colonies were seized.  All Carthaginian warships were sunk.  Carthage had 50 years to pay off a huge sum of money to Rome.


10. Cato was a young veteran of the Second Punic War.  In the Senate in his older years, Cato ended most speeches with Delenda est Carthago! (Carthage must be destroyed!).
11. Meanwhile, Carthage paid off its debt in 10 years, not 50, and became wealthy again.
12. Carthage rebuilt its navy (in defiance of the treaty) by having the shipyards inland and disguised.
13. A new Carthaginian leader rattled swords, and the Third Punic War was on.  Rome sent 85,000 troops and the general Scipio to end the city.
14. The savagery continued, and the Romans reduced Carthage to nothing.
15. In the same year, 146 BC, Rome also annihilated the Greek city of Corinth.
16. The aristocracy in Rome had the habit of seizing the lands of soldiers while the soldiers were away fighting Carthage.  So the soldiers came back to landless poverty.
17. Carthage stayed down for a good century.


18. Rome rehabilitated it in order to eliminate it even more.  They scraped away the rubble of the old Punic city Carthage, and created a new Roman city, Concordia, which became the second largest city in the Mediterranean.
19. The presenter discusses the content of the Aeneid, which describes the founding of Carthage by Dido, and Rome by Aeneas.  This was one of the earlier forms of propaganda.
20. The presenter makes a good case against the 'child sacrifice' mantra repeated by Roman commentators and by later writers such as Flaubert.
21. The film finishes by discussing what Rome inherited from Carthage, such as shipbuilding, olive agriculture, some laws, and bath house design.  One of the areas where Rome far surpassed Carthage was in its ability to win the loyalties of its allies.  The allies had the sense that they were Roman citizens.  Don't kill your enemies; assimilate them.


3. Conclusions
1. The film makes its points about history being written by the winners; in this case, the Romans and not the Carthaginians.
2. One line summary: Carthago delenda est!
3. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Good enough.


2. Sound: 10/10 No problems.


3. Re-enactments: 2/10 Fire effects layered above paintings: absurdly bad. Discussing Carthage's 'superb ports' by showing 21st century ports is irrelevant.  There were few diagrams indicated the ebb and flow of the three Punic wars.  Discussing foundations of cities as if one could visualize what used to be there is unconvincing.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 There is little new here, but the exposition is reasonable enough.  The central theme would was that Carthage was Rome's forerunner and teacher.

20130909: Comedy Review--Look at Me

Name: Look at Me (2012)
IMDb: link to Look at Me page

Genres: Comedy, Romance.   Country of origin: USA.

Cast: James Duval as Frank, Jill Hoiles as Chloe, Katherine Pawlak as Lindsey, Yousef Abu-Taleb as Chris, Jessica Rose as Elizabeth, Matthew Florida as Brad.

Written and directed by Alesia Glidewell.

Image courtesy of IMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film is set in New York City, mostly in a bar after normal working hours.  The film was shot in Manhattan and in LA.

Frank was the piano singer who's too old for the rest of this crowd.  Chloe was tall, awkward, plain, and uninteresting on all counts.  Lindsey seemed to being 'taking one for the team' for a lot of teams.  Elizabeth was cute and flighty.  Chris taught school and looked for women at night.

The map of who is with whom is somewhat murky and changes considerably during the course of the film.  Unfortunately, the map goes from one set of mismatches to another set of mismatches.

Delineation of conflicts:
Choosing significant others seems to be a slow process, since the characters seem to be figuring out how they are making the decisions as they go.  In some cases, there is little conscious thought. Most of the pairings seem bad matches from the start.

Resolution:
So, what is this film about?  The decision making process? Does anyone learn something significant?
The film is slow moving.  Is it worth the wait until the end?

One line summary: Young idiots in lust.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 The whole film seems to have been shot in near darkness.  The cameras are fit for this, and most images are clear enough.

Sound: 5/10 The sound is uneven.  The actors are badly miked now and then.

Acting: 4/10 James Duval was quite wooden as the piano player/singer.  Jill Hoiles seemed like fish-out-of-water the whole time.  Lindsey is one-dimensional to the point where she never seems to connect to anyone other than physically.

Screenplay: 4/10 Motivation is problematic, and betrayals are many.  By the end of the movie, I did not care to keep up with any of the characters.  They would be changing their minds soon enough, but with no progression, no improvement, no redemption.  There was plenty of regret and confusion to make up for that.  Perhaps that was the point.  Three of the cast members give really fine musical performances at the end.  Seems that only came from suffering personally, 'paying their dues.'

Final Rating: 4/10