Friday, April 28, 2017

Born to dream

Right there on the living dead bandwagon. While it's still trendy, it's quite frustrating to go through dozens of new zombie features and find nothing to write home about. But you feel somewhat privileged to witness a fresh yet traditional thing. And this is rather close to that with hundreds of zombies ('hungries') popping up everywhere and it's frightening. Cool shit and it's great to see the more established and renowned actors such as Glenn Close and Paddy Considine doing it.

Hatred drowned by weakness

Fritz Bauer was a public prosecutor in Germany in the 50s, specialiced in bringing down escaped nazi officers from WWII. It didn't help that he was a gay jew and the government office was still occupied by nazi symphatizers. He's still determined to do justice with his new enthusiastic and naive assistant and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to capture the notorious Adolf Eichmann and that, in turn, would reveal more war criminals still walking free. An excellent film of Germany's path towards democracy and its citizens ordeal to meet with responsibility.

Monday, April 17, 2017

If no one sees you, are you really there at all?

Things are bleak in Conor O'Malley's world. He lives in England, he's bullied at school, dad's away, grandma is not too cool and his mom is dying of cancer. His escape route is the fantasy land and its thousand year old tree with three stories to share. Them aside, it's a beautifully told tale of one horrendous disease and the grief and consequences within.

A bear wearing people's clothes

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai has endured many renditions before, so another one won't hurt. A little western town is harassed by an evil gold digger, so the simple peace-loving townsfolk ask for brave gunslingers for help. Little nuances to the original, bodycount hundreds greater, and purely on technical details this is cool enough on its own right.

Magnificent prophecies

The aging Tom Cruise is more fitting to the role as a semi-retired rogue military officer Jack Reacher than superagent Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible franchise. Despite little flaws and ridiculous plotholes here and there, Never Go Back is a fine action-packed thingy of good military officers of the law beating the hell out of the bad ones, and vice versa.

Like going to your favorite cafe

Tower Records, the most powerful record store of our time. Established in San Francisco in the 60s, expanded all the way from L.A. to N.Y., even Japan, eventually up to almost 200 stores worldwide. Survived and flourished four decades until the music world digitalised and inventory became obsolete. Solid documentary by Colin Hanks.

Friday, April 14, 2017

A master plan

Just straight-to-DVD crap Bruce Willis has churned out the recent years. FBI agents, plain cops, bank robbers and all sorts of vigilantes in an awfully confusing plot. Bad as hell, nothing more.

Monday, April 10, 2017

Embodiment of true love

Rachel has issues. She's alcoholic, she's got temper, she's depressed and sad because her ex-husband has a new family. She becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a young woman she's spied out of jealousy before. Emily Blunt is terrific as the crazy drunken person who is afraid of herself. And there are some truly disgusting features that are almost too nauseating to watch, hence a pretty unforgettable film.

In war fathers bury their sons

Desmond is a nutter. He enlists in the army to join the forces in WWII, but refuses to touch a rifle. Stuck deep in his religious blindness he's stubborn as fuck, so he has to conquer several obstacles to get to the war he dislikes so much. It's decent enough a war flick, particularly doin' the intensive action sequences where bullets fly and people die, the director Mel Gibson is on his element. However the portrayal of the god-loving pacifist vegetarian war hero is borderline pathetic.

Thursday, April 06, 2017

Not the business of the living

A widower runs a fortune-teller scam with her two kids. She decides to enrich the business by adding an ouija board to the collection. However the board is the real deal, so they call the local priest for help. Somehow I think I've seen the same thing before. Clichéd to hell and back.

The war ain't over

Newt (Matthew McConaughey) deserts his regiment in U.S. civil war to bury his nephew in a family graveyard. He likes his home just fine, but being a Confederate army deserter, he has to retreat even further in the swamp where he develops a taste for a slave girl and meets other people like him. And soon they grow in numbers and team up as a Robin Hood kind of jungle partisans, altho' U.S. army and government see it as a community of terrorists run by a traitor. The movie feels like a fast-forwarded history lesson, after the fighting's done, it's a political game with constitutional rights stepping in, therefore there's too much to deal in really.

Monday, April 03, 2017

Accept the fact that there is no God

Stephan Lang makes an excellent psycho and, without a doubt, Don't Breathe is one of the greatest contemporary horror cuts. Everything goes sideways when burglars choose a wrong door to break into. Simple effective thrills where excitement turns to fear turns to stupendous terror.

Take us to the great beyond

An animated feature (for adults only) of grocery store products that sit and wait to be purchased so they can travel to the great beyond which, to their minds, is the ultimate place to be and where they meet God. A little accident occurs and a sausage, a bun, a taco, burrito and several others adventure in the product partisans hideout to learn the truth about consumerism. A pretty funky cool feature, although the joke pretty much died out after 30 minutes or so.

The sea of humanity

On 15th of February 2003 was the biggest global anti-war demonstration and still U.S. ja U.K. (president Bush and prime minister Tony Blair) executed the Iraq war on false pretense. Good people like Hans Blix found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, no one did, there was not one single piece of evidence linking Saddam Hussein on 9/11, but the western warmongers went out and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. So who were the real criminals?

Infected with humanity

Season # 1 of Chris Sheridan 's Resident Alien . Just about the funniest shit in the neighborhood right now. Alan Tyduk (best known fro...