Change Your Image
shauni15
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Dunkirk (2017)
one of the most perplexing films I've ever seen
Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk was heralded everywhere as his greatest achievement yet, so you can imagine as a big fan of his i was excited to see it.
Well, that excitement turned to disappointment very fast
The first 30 minutes are very impressive, the camera-work, the direction, the pacing are fantastic, the film has the best ship sinking scene filmed since titanic, the air battles are also exceptionally well filmed, and are way more subtle and realistic than most films.
The problems however stem from two different, but very important things.
first of all, the film has no characters, none of them are developed at all, we don't have a protagonist to root for really, all the actors are just used as props for the big battle scenes without any personality or investment.
i feel like Nolan was so happy with how well he story-boarded his big scenes that he only realized he forgot to write actual characters in the movie when the cameras were already rolling, which is really confusing to me, because Nolan used to be one of those directors who prioritized characters over the plot in most of his movies, sometimes even to their detriment (like the dark knight rises).
but this was just a big spectacle with zero personal investment, granted the sequences themselves were exceptionally well executed and filmed so kudos to Nolan for that, he really took it to the next level, but if we're not invested then no matter how well it's done we wont care, so the movie unfortunately became boring very quickly, which wasn't helped by the other big problem.
The movie becomes very repetitive. We see an amazing ship sinking sequence, with mouths wide open, but then the next big sequence is another ship sinking, and then another, and then another, the same with the plane fight sequences, they just did the same thing over and over, and since we weren't invested to begin with, it became even more boring.
So the movie was ultimately an exercise in futility, Christopher Nolan wasted one of his best directorial achievements on a movie with his worst writing one. Resulting in an impersonal, albeit impressive film, that lacks heart and character.
Suicide Squad (2016)
completely misses the point, bigger is not always better
When i first heard that suicide squad was being made into a movie i was ecstatic, suicide squad is one of my favorite parts of the DC comic world and Harley Quinn has been my favorite comic book character ever since Batman TAS, and this was gonna be her first appearance on a live action movie, so safe to say i was really looking forward to this, and the trailers got me even more excited. What i didn't expect was how much different the movie would be.
Somehow everyone seems to think that comic book/superhero movies today have to be HUGE, that the entire world should be at peril, with enormous CGI monsters fighting around a huge sky beam and generic faceless CGI armies swarming our heroes. What writer/director David Ayer completely misses about the Suicide Squad is that the precise reason why they're so great is because they're not big, they're usually small time/mid-tier villains on a small time/mid-tier mission that might have some connection to something bigger but it's usually very contained and personal. They don't "save the world" they merely participate.
The movie starts off great, we have well paced comic book style character introductions, in a fun and enjoyable way, we understand them(mostly) we have dialogues crackling with quips and jokes and the movie's tone overall seems darkly comical, and it seems like DC has finally got it down, but then the story starts.
we have some huge powerful magical generic evil monsters with their generic evil plans sending generic faceless armies and trying to destroy the whole world, and it's up to a guy that has good aim, a psychotic girl with a baseball bat, a guy with boomerangs, a slightly stronger human crocodile hybrid, a guy that can shoot some fire but doesn't really want to, and a girl with a sword to stop them. Wait what? how the hell are they gonna do that?
That's not the suicide squad, suicide squad is about small covert missions to steal some plans or neutralize some smaller threats, they don't fight literal gods nor should they, that's their charm, that their stories are small and you can just focus on the characters and enjoy them.
I hate to bring up Marvel to compare cos i know they're different blablabla, but remember Ant-man? That whole movie was just a heist film, break into here, steal a weapon, get out and fight a guy around a house. It didn't have the need to have the whole world about to explode, it was a small contained story and that's what made it great, and that's exactly how suicide squad should be. You could've just had the joker as the villain or something.
Another big problem is that the movie has this tendency to shift tones so fast that you wonder if two separate guys were making the movie. One moment it's funny and enjoyable, the next everything is super serious and they just don't mash together. It feels like DC had a great, fun style but they just didn't wanna fully commit to it and it had to have those dour joyless elements of the previous two films, which dragged it down a lot.
What i will say is that all the casting and performances are fantastic, Will smith is the same Will Smith we all love, Jai Courtney is surprisingly hilarious when he finally gets to play an Aussie, Margo Robbie is a great Harley Quinn, shes got the voice, the attitude and the general feel of the character down. Jared Leto is solid as the Joker you can really tell he committed despite being criminally underused and Joel Kinnaman is great as the straight man in all the madness.
The actors and their characters basically salvage this wreckage of a story and make it mildly enjoyable, if all of them return in a movie where the story is much smaller and we can just enjoy their interactions without having to worry about the entire world exploding any second, i'm gonna be the happiest man alive and the first to pay for the ticket.
Warcraft (2016)
The best video game movie ever, but that isn't saying much
Let me start off by saying that i am long time fan of warcraft, i used to play warcraft I back in first grade, and i still play WoW to this day, i read almost every book, i know almost every single story element, so it's safe to say i was very invested in the film's success
So when the final product finally came i was a bit disappointed, and i also wasn't, the film could be a lot better and i mean A LOT, but it also tried to do the best it could honestly. Warcraft's story is so dense, with so many characters that it's hard to showcase everything in it in just 2 hours, so the movie feels like a very long game of thrones episode, which is good, but it also feels like we've started off in the middle of season 3 which isn't. If you're not familiar with the universe you might get lost.
The film frantically tries to introduce the myriad of characters with mixed success, sometimes we get a very organic dialogue between durotan and draka(our orc protagonists) where we get their motivations and their characters, and then sometimes we get awkwardly shoehorned in backstories from khadgar, garona and lothar( our human side protagonists) where it feels like history homework instead of actual character building. We keep jumping from place to place so fast that we don't even have time to read the town signs, because it's a huge world and apparently all corners of it have to be introduced right away, it's so obsessed with building a world that sometimes it forgets to make a movie.
Characters don't always get enough breathing room due to how many of them there are and many of them suffer from it, like Ben Foster's Medivh who's painfully underused for such a major role in the story, or Lothar's son who's basically there only to get emotional scenes from Travis Fimmel.
The performances are decent, but none of them are really outstanding, ironically though the orcs managed to get more emotion out of me than the humans despite being entirely CGI, they seemed to fit much more into this world than the humans, and the director and screenwriter seemed to be more interested in them as well, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, we're more familiar with humans than with orcs, because these orcs aren't like any we've seen before, they aren't the mindless evil bad guys of LotR, they're honorable and proud beings who are looking for a new home.
The film does a perfect job depicting the motivations of both sides, and even the different motivations inside the sides, it's not a good vs evil film, it's much more intricate and deep than that, referring back to my Game of Thrones point, it's much more similar to that, no side is wrong and no side is right and the film balances it very well and manages to make us feel bad for losses on both sides, which is something i've never seen a fantasy film do before.
I find it hard to believe though, knowing Duncan Jones, that there isn't an extended version of this where the major flaw of the film (not enough time spent developing the characters) is not "fixed" it feels like a classic case of over editing to meet a certain length cutoff, and so the movie cant really breathe.
But despite all it's flaws it's fun, beautiful(probably the best use of CGI I've ever seen), uses a great mix of comedy and drama, knows when to be serious and when to be light hearted, just like the games. If you're a fan of warcraft you'll probably love it, there's tons of little details and nods to fans in the movie that will just make you squeal with joy when you see them, and if you're not a fan of warcraft you still get a decent fantasy flick, but admittedly you might get lost in the ocean of names and places the movie throws at you. I think it's worth the price of the ticket for sure, even if it is not the saviour of video game movies i hoped it would be, it's a good start.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Disappointing but ultimately expected
Almost everyone had at least some expectations towards Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, even those like me who were skeptical wanted it to be really good so that marvel would finally get shaken a bit and stop falling into the same routines.
But unfortunately the movie failed to deliver in a big way, but the disappointing thing is that while watching it i realized how much potential was in it.
The Movie has fantastic scenes(batman's warehouse fight for example shown in one of the trailers was fantastic) and a lot of great ideas (like the idea of "should there be a superman", or how there are repercussions for every action that these superheroes take)
the problem comes when these scenes should work together to form a cohesive movie, and they really really don't, the movie tries to juggle so many things: setting up batman, making a sequel to man of steel, setting up 2 villains(and a hint of a 3rd one) AND setting up justice league. so it really crumbles under the pressure.
The pacing is really off, we spend so much time following pointless subplots that are really really forced to tie in together and stop the plot dead in its tracks, the movie drags because of it more often than not, so I'm sitting there in the theater watching what should be the most exciting thing ever: Batman and Superman in one movie fighting each other and bigger threats, but instead i have to sit through unnecessary dream sequences - that make no sense and are a really poor way of trying to explain some form of character motivations - and forced subplots for Lois Lane to investigate so she actually has something to do in the movie.
so you're being bored for 2 hours only to have every good part of the movie mashed together and condensed into the last 40 minutes. and it just doesn't feel earned, you don't really feel for any of the characters(except probably Affleck's batman) because they're really poorly set up and developed.
Afflecks's a great Batman and what little we see of Gal Gadot gives a lot of promise about her Wonderwoman, but unfortunately it's just not enough to save a sinking ship. Jessie Eisenberg's performance is pretty much flawless for what the director wanted, I'm just not sure if this is the type of Lex Luthor we should have, it never felt like he was even the slightest bit true to the Luthor of the comics, but i wont fault him for that he really got into the role.
The Batman and Superman fight is pretty good, but it feels like the movie just wants to get it over with by the time it arrives and just forces it to happen by an arbitrary plot device, and all the conflict there was vanishes in a matter of seconds after.
Doomsday as the main villain is pretty underwhelming with subpar CGI (it's not horrible it's jut not good enough for a $400 million movie) and all the flashy CGI effects during that fight just make your head and eyes hurt, his creation is really rushed and barely explained, he's really just there as a video game final boss for the heroes to defeat, when doomsday was a pretty interesting character in the comics, here hes just a random thoughtless CGI monster.
All in all if WB took the time to set up characters prior (especially batman and superman with one more movie for each) this could've been a fantastic movie, all the ingredients are there, but with so much pressure and studio influence on it it just crumbles which is disappointing, but on the bright side batman and wonderwoman's solo films are really promising, unless they cram too many things in those too.
The Big Short (2015)
one of the best films of 2015 but definitely THE most important.
The Big Short is a story about the 2008 Housing Collapse in the United States. It follows 3 separate story lines with 3 different groups of people all of whom are realizing the collapse is about to happen and start betting against the banks. And it's done excellently.
With a subject matter so complicated and hard to understand the movie had a gigantic task of being comprehensible while not being condescending, but director and writer Adam Mckay manages to pull it off flawlessly in an innovative and fresh way of storytelling.
The movie frequently breaks the fourth wall to explain how the system works, but you never really feel talked down or taken out of the movie because it uses such clever ways of doing it (like Margot Robbie in a bathtub explaining it, or a famous chef using a fish analogue) that makes it not only easy to follow, but also fresh and most importantly funny and entertaining.
This is one of the few movies that has so much exposition in it's script that you'd say "it'd never work", but it does, due to amazing editing and great writing.It's handled with such delicate care and masterful direction that you never once feel overwhelmed by the information or disengaged from the movie.
The performances are also all stellar Christian Bale delivers great offbeat and weird performance we're not necessarily used to from him. Steve Carell and Brad Pitt are solid as ever, Ryan Gosling is hilarious and the rest of the cast is great as well.
All in all outstanding direction from Adam Mcay on all fronts in delivering us a story that we probably barely knew anything about and yet impacted us the most in recent years. It's a film everyone should see and it's a film that should and will stand the test of time for flawlessly showcasing one of the biggest and darkest events of the 21st century.
Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
a disastrous sequel that should never have been made.
Kick-ass 2 is a mess, there's no better word for it. the fact that director Matthew Vaughn didn't make this shows at every scene.
Remember the originality? the witty dialogue? the gleeful violence? the great acting? well none of that's here(well maybe except for carrey and moretz) what's left is a movie filled with teenage melodrama, toilet humor, forced dialogue, and completely serious and unfitting violence.
The film cant decide whether it wants to be funny or serious and instead of blending the two like in the first one. it creates scenes that are so totally different from one another and not fit together at all, it makes the movie a big cluster of random scenes that don't make sense most of the time.
the acting is wooden at best(carrey and moretz manage to put some soul into their characters but sadly we don't get enough of them), Christopher Mintz-Plasse as the villain "motherfucker" made me cringe with every line he uttered, the entire supporting cast performs like they're reading the lines, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as "kick-ass" got way worse compared to the first one.
And the worst part is, that it follows one of the best and most original comic-book movies to date, if it wasn't a sequel to kick-ass just a random blockbuster i would've shrugged it off as another okay action flick. But the fact that this film had so much potential and they've wasted it on this travesty is very disappointing.
save yourself the trouble and don't watch it.
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
It's not everyday you see a 7 year old carry a film.
Beasts of the southern wild is the debut picture of director Benh Zeitlin. it's a story about a six year old girl's life in an unusual, secluded community, that gets flooded after a storm.
The story itself is rather simple, it's basically a combination of a documentary-esque depiction of the life of the community through the eyes of Hushpuppy (our main character) combined with insight into her fantasies which she uses to cope with the situation.
What makes this movie so special is the performance of Quvenzhané Wallis. That kid is something else, all her lines are delivered perfectly, she captivates the watcher with the smallest effort, and you basically hang on her every word. It's simply incredible how a 7 year old can act so incredibly well. Look out for this girl Hollywood, she's going places.
The writing is wonderful, literally every word in the story is at the right place and at the right time, and all of them are delivered to perfection. Hushpuppy's inner monologues are amazing.
What keeps this movie from being perfect is unfortunately the direction. Not even all of it, Zeitlin does a great job at directing the cast, and creating the general atmosphere of the film. What he doesn't do well is moving shots, seriously the shaky cam is almost unbearable at times and so unnecessary, all it achieved is making me dizzy and distracting me from the film. I know this has been his first directed film, so ill cut him some slack, but i hope he learns.
Otherwise it's a must watch to anyone who doesn't want themselves robbed of the wonder that is Quvenzhané Wallis, i know I've been raving about her but she IS that good, and seeing as this was her first film, this can only get better.
The Croods (2013)
a stunningly beautiful adventure for the whole family.
The Croods is Dreamworks's latest animated project. It's about a family of cavemen who are suddenly blasted out of their comfort zones into a whole new world. when the separation of Pangea begins.
And let me tell you, it's done beautifully. The visuals alone are spectacular, the animation is jaw dropping, the cinematography is astounding, the creature and world design is extraordinarily creative, the designers didn't hold back anything. They made their own entire world and let their imagination soar freely. I don't think I've seen one unoriginal creature design in the entire movie. It kinda reminds me of Avatar: The Last Airbender's creativity, and thats one of the highest compliments i can give to an animated feature. Even if everything else was crappy about this film(and it wasn't) it'd still be worth to watch for the visuals alone.
The voice-acting is good, Nicolas Cage does a surprsingly good job as the caveman father. Emma Stone is great and the rest of the cast as well.
The story itself is nothing new really. You can almost always guess what's gonna happen, but i didn't really expect an Oscar winning script from a family movie. The characters are still nicely developed, the jokes almost always land (even if most of it is cheap/slapstick humor, but hey they're cavemen afterall), and overall it's done well, even if its nothing special.
All in all, it's one of the better animated features I've seen in a while(certainly one of the most creative), and it's very well worth the watch for anyone, you wont regret it.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
An incredible film, of incredible events.
Kathryn Bigelow is a goddess at making suspenseful war thrillers. And Zero Dark Thirty is no exception. The story itself is relatively straightforward, it follows the 10 years of events that led from 9/11 to the capturing and killing of Osama Bin Laden. And it's done beautifully.
The direction is excellent. The camera-work is amazing. The suspense never lets up for one second. Bigelow makes every scene so captivatingly realistic that you wont know whether it's a documentary or a thriller. She always manages to create the perfect atmosphere be it suffocatingly tense, or upliftingly relieving. And while predictable(it's technically a history movie after all) it still manages to make you cling to the edge of your seat.
The acting is phenomenal, Jessica Chastain knocks it out of the park, and the rest of the cast supports her incredibly well. It's no small wonder she got an Oscar nom.
The writing is great. The characters are very well developed(for a movie not focused on the characters rather than the plot). The pacing is just right. The plot manages to keep you nailed to the screen despite being relatively well known overall, and being not at all surprising.
The problems lie with Kathryn Bigelow's greatest strength being her greatest weakness. It's that damn obvious, and borderline obnoxious, American war propaganda, The Hurt Locker had the same problem, and was lessened by it. Cant you just make the story speak for itself rather than force feeding us the message that "yeah America is awesome at catching bad guys" or at least make it a little more subtle?
Thankfully every other aspect of the film is simply brilliant, so i managed to look past it, and i can see that Bigelow is improving, since she didn't have the cheesy ending The Hurt Locker did, but made an actually powerful scene for the last one. But it's a strong warning to anyone planning to watch this. Be prepared, you may not like the American propaganda.
World War Z (2013)
An entertaining zombie flick, but nothing more.
World War Z is a film about an Ex U.N. Soldier named Gerry Lane who, after being retired, suddenly finds himself in the middle of the zombie apocalypse along with his family. And the government's price for keeping his family safe, is Gerry Lane going back into action to investigate the source of the zombie virus.
Now this film is nothing new under the sun, in fact it's basically a rehash of every zombie movie mashed together. You'll probably see most of the plot development from a mile away since other zombie films have already done it one way or another. The movie is basically following one format from one setting to another: hero goes to x place-> hero finds a clue-> complications rise-> hero fights zombies-> guy we just met dies-> hero escapes-> hero goes to y place because of the clue he found. And this happens from start to finish with every setting.
Another big complaint is, that we don't get to see much of the so called "world war" yes we get a pretty good action scene in Israel, but man i wanted more based on the trailers. We're basically following Gary all the way and the movie suffers for it.
And you could say: hey we don't get to see the war but at least we get good character development seeing as we're keeping so close to our main hero. Well i'm here to tell you it's not the case, Brad Pitt basically takes up 90% of the movie's screen time and yet his character is painfully underdeveloped, it's not even that it's bad, it's just that, if the movie focuses so much on ONE character at least develop him a little more. it would've been okay if we had more characters developed around the same depth as Brad Pitt but no, most of the characters we meet will have either 5 lines in the movie, or die right after we start to like them.
What this movie manages to pull off well is: keeping you entertained. Most of the action scenes are pretty awesome and each has something different that make it entertaining. And i credit that to director Marc Forster, he managed to make a lazy script work, even if barely. He even toned down the shaky cam after the first action sequence which every action director likes abusing nowadays.(I guess he realized you don't need Michael J. Fox as your cameraman to make a zombie apocalypse chaotic) and he manages to bring out a decent performance from basically everyone. Even the most underdeveloped, two line characters do their jobs very well. Brad Pitt himself is giving a good performance , but nothing special since the role itself didn't really demand it. Even the children were less annoying than i'd expected.
So if you like zombies and and great action, don't look any further. It's a decent flick, and you probably wont regret watching it, just don't raise your expectations too high.
Now You See Me (2013)
entertaining while you watch, but dumb when you really think about it.
Now you see me, is a story about 4 magicians who are brought together by an unknown entity to do the best and biggest trick the world has ever seen. Involving a series of robin hood style "rob the rich give to the poor" tricks. And while it's a nice concept and starts off nice, hell even clever, it becomes entangled in it's own web of trying to make you feel stupid, or maybe make itself look smart?
The direction(by Louis Leterrier) is surprisingly good albeit shaky cam is a bit overused on the action sequences(oh god i hate shaky cam), but the magic tricks and all the quirks that come with it are very well done, and make you feel like part of them.
The acting is uneven to say the least. Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco play themselves very convincingly, Isla Fisher is basically playing a bland character with zero personality (mainly due to the writing to which ill get in a second). However Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo and Mélanie Laurent manage to make what little they have to work with pretty good. Michael Caine is pretty much wasted here, and Morgan Freeman unfortunately has nothing to work with thanks to the script(i'm pretty sure they only hired him to narrate the exposition scenes). which brings me to my next part.
The writing. Oh god the writing, it appears that the writers were so busy coming up with forced twists and complicated plots that they forgot about writing actual characters in the movie, every character is so generic and bland that it's not even funny. Yeah thats the guy who's annoying and cocky but we still love him, thats the guy that tries to be the annoying and cocky guy but isn't, thats the girl character, yeah basically thats it, she doesn't need a personality she's a girl! the only character that had even the slightest bit of depth was Woody Harrelson's and maybe Melanie Laurents but if i had to be completely honest i'd credit that to Harrelson's acting and not the writing. I mean there were apparently 5 guys that have writing credits, couldn't they have added at least a LITTLE character development instead of another stupid exposition scene? Oh that's another thing, i know this movie is supposed to be about showing us how the tricks work, but man do they spoon feed it to us, they could do it in so much less time and leave some to the imagination or you know... common sense. But i guess that'd leave them time to make characters that don't have the depth a muddy puddle and we just cant have that.
WITH THAT SAID THOUGH: I found it actually entertaining while I've been watching it, if there's one thing this movie does right, is that it's rarely boring. The action sequences were great (except for the car chase in new york, but i guess thats mainly due to my severe hatred towards shaky cam when its not needed), the visuals were spectacular, and while the movie is going it kinda manages to make you forget about how shallow and forced it is.
So if you want to watch a film you can forget right after you walk out of the theater then go ahead, it fulfills the role of a popcorn flick very well. But don't expect it to be smart despite looking smart, because it'll deceive you just like a true magician.
Pain & Gain (2013)
A story with great potential, fails to deliver
Michael Bay, the king of explosions and bad humor, took in his hands the shockingly true story of the Sun Gym gang. A tale of three body builders who turned to crime because they wanted more out of life. And while i appreciate Bay for going out of his comfort zone and make a movie that doesn't have something blowing up every minute, the sad truth is, that he actually didn't. the whole movie screams Michael Bay without actually having the good elements of Michael Bay's movies(however few there are).
Everything i don't like him for, from unnecessary(and overused) slow mo, to dumb and needless shaky cam. And half the movie is shot in a low angle for no apparent reason. Michael Bay tries to shove every action movie cliché in the movie even if it doesn't have a place here (my favorite bit was him doing the "cool guys walk away from explosions" cliché twice AND in slow mo)
But the main problem with the movie is, that it cant decide whether its a comedy or drama, you'll have torture scenes so gruesome that you'll wonder whether you're watching a Michael Bay movie or Game of Thrones, and yet somehow it tries to come off as funny and fails. I mean it's a true story, why do you have to make it look like scary movie 6? I mean those are REAL people who died there, and you want us to laugh about it?
Now with that said the movie has some good aspects to it. First of all the acting is good if not great, Wahlberg, Shaloub and Harris(for the little time hes there) all give good performances and even Dwayne Johnson manages to not come off as "yeah thats The Rock trying to act". The movie is never particularly boring and even pulled a few laughs outta me(not many mind you but a few). and even the writing managed to be decent however uneven it was.
so all in all a potentially great story that ended up being just another forgettable Michael Bay movie. if you like Bay you'll probably like this movie, but otherwise stay away from it and read the book because the story itself is very interesting.