I think what pains me most about Sharpe are the budgetary restraints, which meant that they line up twenty guys as a battalion (actual manpower usually 500-1000), turning every battle into a mere skirmish. The Battle of Waterloo episode looks like a handful of guys wandering around empty fields rather than the traumatic horror of a dense concentration of 150-200,000 people packed into a 2-3 mile long killing zone.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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I'd read that too and could kinda feel it just in the moment that I did watch so far. It's like watching an old episode of Dr. Who trying to portray The Rise of Skywalker. Makes the new Napoleon movie all the more frustrating. They had the money and the director and a movie star and IMHO, fell way short of telling us about a giant in history.
Oh yeah, when you watch old shows with could afford 6 actors and a monster made of bubble wrap and they do a good job, then you see zillion dollar productions just not really trying, so annoying.
Yeah, I love the Sharpe series but boy does its budget limitations show. Some episodes are worse than others. Any episode where it’s just Sharpe and the Chosen Men doing a mission against another small company is usually fine with single locations. But yeah, Tallivera, Waterloo and the other big battles were……underwhelming to put it kindly. Plus the sword play was goofy as shit.
Luckily, the show can mostly coast along on Sean Bean’s animal charisma, the excellent chemistry of the Chosen Men, some damn good acting - Pete Postlewaite and David Troughton are standout individuals, and Perkin’s death scene is very affecting - and every so often someone young and pretty gets their kit off.
Love this song though.
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A ★★★★★ review of The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
"What happened to you?" The plot of this film focuses on the titular event. A father (Brian Cox) and son (Emile Hirsch), late at night, need to do an autopsy on a Jane Doe found in the basement of an elderly couple who died mysterious, but violent deaths, in order to determine a cause of death...
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Blackbeard's Ghost. A classic from my childhood (though it was already old then). Silly and good.
The Boy and the Heron
Another beautiful Miyazaki movie. The blue Totoro title card signaling the beginning of a Ghibli movie always melts my heart. Not knowing anything about the movie I was unsure to what degree the story would go for realism, fantasy or magic escapism; suffice to say I wasn't disappointed and loved the way the story evolved. For what it's worth, it felt very much like a blend of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. Glad to have seen it in the theater.
Also, I thought that the basic premise of the story (boy goes into a fantasy world, or does he, looking for his dead mother while accompanied by a big-nosed sidekick) was remarkably like Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Some scenes even felt like they shared the same storyboard.
Another beautiful Miyazaki movie. The blue Totoro title card signaling the beginning of a Ghibli movie always melts my heart. Not knowing anything about the movie I was unsure to what degree the story would go for realism, fantasy or magic escapism; suffice to say I wasn't disappointed and loved the way the story evolved. For what it's worth, it felt very much like a blend of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. Glad to have seen it in the theater.
Also, I thought that the basic premise of the story (boy goes into a fantasy world, or does he, looking for his dead mother while accompanied by a big-nosed sidekick) was remarkably like Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Some scenes even felt like they shared the same storyboard.
Bradley Cooper's Maestro on Netflix
This exemplifies why grading some things is so difficult. Yahtzee once likened doing so to trying to come up with a phrase for a dinner that in turns is great and terrible. Yumawful. Tastasterous.
This is a supremely well made movie with interesting construction, terrific performances, excellent production values. Maybe its that I just don't know enough about the guy, don't appreciate him enough? I found the subject matter un-engaging.
MEHTASTIC!!!
This exemplifies why grading some things is so difficult. Yahtzee once likened doing so to trying to come up with a phrase for a dinner that in turns is great and terrible. Yumawful. Tastasterous.
This is a supremely well made movie with interesting construction, terrific performances, excellent production values. Maybe its that I just don't know enough about the guy, don't appreciate him enough? I found the subject matter un-engaging.
MEHTASTIC!!!
Red Sonja
This is really bad, so bad they are currently in the process of making a new one.
This is really bad, so bad they are currently in the process of making a new one.
Curate's Egg? Though that refers more things that are good and bad, not so much things that have any great bits, I think.
I made it to 20 minutes. This movie is to Latino representation what dead lions are to kings and dentists. Empty posturing next to a trophy so you can get the real trophy, which is the picture.
A real Latino family, if it's supposed to be as tightly knit as the one in the movie, would go to the son's graduation. It wouldn't wait for him at the airport, he wouldn't get the drop on them and they wouldn't go for fucking tacos to celebrate, they would go to a fancy restaurant they probably can't afford. And there is absolutely no way they would keep the secret of losing the house, dad losing his job or dad having a heart attack.
They can't even roll their Rs convincingly. The kid can't even say 'carnal' properly, and the sister can't even pronounce Jaime without sounding like a gringa, which is what she really is. Phoniest Latinos since Charlton Heston played one in Touch of Evil.
Don't even get me started on the Spy Kids special effects.
Saltburn - The Untalented Mr. Ripley/10
The movie is literally the same movie but the main character is far more bland and untalented than Mr. Ripley. It's interesting enough to watch and all, I thought the movie was going to go in a more Get Out direction in the beginning but it did not go there at all.
The movie is literally the same movie but the main character is far more bland and untalented than Mr. Ripley. It's interesting enough to watch and all, I thought the movie was going to go in a more Get Out direction in the beginning but it did not go there at all.
A ★★★★★ review of Maniac (1980)
"I told you not to go out tonight, didn't I? Every time you go out, this kind of thing happens." The plot of the film follows Frank Zito (Joe Spinelli), the titular maniac, as he goes on a killing spree. Between killings, however, you get a good look at his psyche, and get in the mind of a...
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I think what did it for me is when the sister points out that Jaime's love life is like some telenovela and then the whole family starts breaking into song, singing and dancing the theme tune. That felt kinda gross, not to mention a weird thing for them to do considering Jaime currently has an alien artifact grossly sticking out of his spine.
And yeah, the special effects were bad enough that my dad asked me if this was a B-movie. Even just establishing shots looked awful.
Red Sonja was pretty much my first on-screen crush. I’m there by default for the remake, regardless of how much better or worse it might be.
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All the President's Men - 10/10
Its the movie with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, about the pit of ratfuckery and skullduggery that was the Watergate investigation. Its good, go watch it.
Its the movie with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, about the pit of ratfuckery and skullduggery that was the Watergate investigation. Its good, go watch it.
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
First (and only) feature film by Robert Longo, adapted from a short story by groundbreaking cyberpunk novelist William Gibson and starring Keanu Reeves. Set in a dystopian high tech future, Reeves plays the titular Johnny. Outfitted with an implanted storage device in his brain, he works as a courier for encrypted infirmation. This puts him in the crosshairs of various corporate assassins when he takes on a contract to smuggle data stolen from a powerful pharma company.
This probably could have made for a decent movie but Johnny Mnemonic is... not it. It's a fine premise but the execution is, honestly, some poorly constructed nonsense. Very early on in the movie the data that serves as the movies McGuffin is downloaded into Johnny's brain to transport it from a small CD and I don't think the movie ever makes a case for why they don't just make him carry the fucking CD instead. And that really sets the tone for the entire movie, you know?
Johnny Mnemonic is a movie all about interesting concepts no one thought through to the end, or was particularly concerned with writing an actually engaging story around. It's why it squanders a whole lot of visual and conceptual ideas that I feel like I should have liked on something that feels distincly less than the sum of its parts. You have a lot of fun ideas like mental storage devices, psychic dolphins, cyborg preachers, low polygon VR cyberspaces and weaponized heated wires (This is where Cyberpunk 2077 got its Monowire weapon from, by the way) in something that just feels amateurishly put together.
Way too many confrontations play out with people conveniently not pulling the trigger when they have their opponents at gun point, there is an incredibly controved plot point about an electronically induced plague that exists only to raise the stakes and just doesn't work (Interestingly enough, this plot point was not present in the short story this movie is based on, as I understand) and perhaps most importantly, Keanu Reeves really isn't selling the lead role.
I think a lot of people tend to forget about this with how popular an action star he's now, but before he decided to grow that beard and lean into that sort of melancholy, world weary "Too old for this shit" persona he brings to roles like John Wick or Johnny Silverhand, he had a tendency to slip into that dopey dudebro stoner delivery that was appropriate for his role in Bill and Ted, but doesn't at all work for something like this. And Johnny Mnemonic really doesn't help his case by giving him an equally bland love interest.
JM is a textbook example of a movie that's just not quite fun enough to be a cult classic. It has a lot of the nerdy genre quirks and shamelessly self indulgent iconography but it's too clunky to be fun and too poorly constructed to be taken seriously. Occasionally there are glimpses of what it might have been if it had leaned more into its pulpier side (Dolph Lundgren as a violent cyborg monk elevated the movie whenever he's on screen, which isn't often enough) but it's just not there. It's honestly impressive how it manages to make some really out there concepts this dull.
First (and only) feature film by Robert Longo, adapted from a short story by groundbreaking cyberpunk novelist William Gibson and starring Keanu Reeves. Set in a dystopian high tech future, Reeves plays the titular Johnny. Outfitted with an implanted storage device in his brain, he works as a courier for encrypted infirmation. This puts him in the crosshairs of various corporate assassins when he takes on a contract to smuggle data stolen from a powerful pharma company.
This probably could have made for a decent movie but Johnny Mnemonic is... not it. It's a fine premise but the execution is, honestly, some poorly constructed nonsense. Very early on in the movie the data that serves as the movies McGuffin is downloaded into Johnny's brain to transport it from a small CD and I don't think the movie ever makes a case for why they don't just make him carry the fucking CD instead. And that really sets the tone for the entire movie, you know?
Johnny Mnemonic is a movie all about interesting concepts no one thought through to the end, or was particularly concerned with writing an actually engaging story around. It's why it squanders a whole lot of visual and conceptual ideas that I feel like I should have liked on something that feels distincly less than the sum of its parts. You have a lot of fun ideas like mental storage devices, psychic dolphins, cyborg preachers, low polygon VR cyberspaces and weaponized heated wires (This is where Cyberpunk 2077 got its Monowire weapon from, by the way) in something that just feels amateurishly put together.
Way too many confrontations play out with people conveniently not pulling the trigger when they have their opponents at gun point, there is an incredibly controved plot point about an electronically induced plague that exists only to raise the stakes and just doesn't work (Interestingly enough, this plot point was not present in the short story this movie is based on, as I understand) and perhaps most importantly, Keanu Reeves really isn't selling the lead role.
I think a lot of people tend to forget about this with how popular an action star he's now, but before he decided to grow that beard and lean into that sort of melancholy, world weary "Too old for this shit" persona he brings to roles like John Wick or Johnny Silverhand, he had a tendency to slip into that dopey dudebro stoner delivery that was appropriate for his role in Bill and Ted, but doesn't at all work for something like this. And Johnny Mnemonic really doesn't help his case by giving him an equally bland love interest.
JM is a textbook example of a movie that's just not quite fun enough to be a cult classic. It has a lot of the nerdy genre quirks and shamelessly self indulgent iconography but it's too clunky to be fun and too poorly constructed to be taken seriously. Occasionally there are glimpses of what it might have been if it had leaned more into its pulpier side (Dolph Lundgren as a violent cyborg monk elevated the movie whenever he's on screen, which isn't often enough) but it's just not there. It's honestly impressive how it manages to make some really out there concepts this dull.
Oppenheimer: Good / Great
Story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his involvement in the development of the nuclear bomb, and how the project and his pursuit of curiosity would unravel his life.
Second only to Tenet, probably the most "Christopher Nolan" film Christopher Nolan has ever done. The video below is parody, but damned if it isn't an accurate depiction of Oppenheimer.
It spends three hours weaving an ever more convoluted web of intrigue with a plethora of names, positions, and situations, then in the final minutes, it tries to put all the pieces together in an "obvious" way completely oblivious to the fact that the audience has long since lost the thread. And while that sounds like a criticism, it was an absolutely fascinating movie. I was enthralled with how much it felt like it was actively trying to lose me, or at least it felt so involved in itself, it didn't seem to care if I followed, but still wanted to tell me something it felt was really important.
Without intending to offend anyone, it makes me wonder if Nolan is on the autism spectrum. His films tend to be his own, unique vision that apparently make total sense to him, and everyone else just accepts them as his way of expressing himself. And I say that as someone who's completely willing to accept that perhaps he's perfectly normal, and I'm simply not smart enough to keep up with his rapid pace of storytelling. I'm the guy who will forget your name 15 seconds after you tell it to me, so 3-hour movies that are 90% about exposition based on name recognition are basically like opera in a foreign language to me, i.e.: I can hear the music and appreciate the voices, but I'm mostly coasting on the gist as suggested by the context.
Story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his involvement in the development of the nuclear bomb, and how the project and his pursuit of curiosity would unravel his life.
Second only to Tenet, probably the most "Christopher Nolan" film Christopher Nolan has ever done. The video below is parody, but damned if it isn't an accurate depiction of Oppenheimer.
It spends three hours weaving an ever more convoluted web of intrigue with a plethora of names, positions, and situations, then in the final minutes, it tries to put all the pieces together in an "obvious" way completely oblivious to the fact that the audience has long since lost the thread. And while that sounds like a criticism, it was an absolutely fascinating movie. I was enthralled with how much it felt like it was actively trying to lose me, or at least it felt so involved in itself, it didn't seem to care if I followed, but still wanted to tell me something it felt was really important.
Without intending to offend anyone, it makes me wonder if Nolan is on the autism spectrum. His films tend to be his own, unique vision that apparently make total sense to him, and everyone else just accepts them as his way of expressing himself. And I say that as someone who's completely willing to accept that perhaps he's perfectly normal, and I'm simply not smart enough to keep up with his rapid pace of storytelling. I'm the guy who will forget your name 15 seconds after you tell it to me, so 3-hour movies that are 90% about exposition based on name recognition are basically like opera in a foreign language to me, i.e.: I can hear the music and appreciate the voices, but I'm mostly coasting on the gist as suggested by the context.
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Society Of The Snow: Why? / Great
The harrowing story of the Uruguayan rugby team that found themselves stranded in the Andean mountain range after their planes crashes. "Survival" ensues.
For all intents and purposes, it's a "remaster" of the 1993 film Alive. Same story hitting all the same notes. The only appreciable differences are that the title is longer, it's runtime is longer, and it's in Spanish (for authenticity, I guess.) Why they made it? I have no idea.
The harrowing story of the Uruguayan rugby team that found themselves stranded in the Andean mountain range after their planes crashes. "Survival" ensues.
For all intents and purposes, it's a "remaster" of the 1993 film Alive. Same story hitting all the same notes. The only appreciable differences are that the title is longer, it's runtime is longer, and it's in Spanish (for authenticity, I guess.) Why they made it? I have no idea.
Good word though originally about something bad that out of politeness you call it good. Works to day as something that has good and bad parts to it.
And before 1993, they made Survive! in 1976. Wikipedia says it was a Mexican film so I must have seen a dubbed version of it way back then.