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Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee (2022)
Predictably, it left out McAfee's most intriguing message
An entertaining documentation and dive into at the eccentric life of the infamous computer anti-virus software pioneer's eccentric life -- of which he seemed to have had large portions recorded. However, perhaps the most important message he left the world -- assuming he is, in fact, dead -- and if he is dead, this message might have been in part why -- was elided:
"Coronavirus facts:
Less than 2% of all cases result in death.
Approximately equivalent to seasonal flu.
Relax people.
Don't buy into this charade.
Something far more important is happening in the background."
"Do NOT, under any circumstances. Take the vaccine!!!"
(Feb. 5, 2020, via Twitter: John McAfee, @officialmcafee)
Last Call: The Shutdown of NYC Bars (2021)
A pity piece soused in "COVID" fear mongering
It starts off alright, providing some backstory to the people being interviewed. But, from the outset, seeing the rather extraordinary measures they go to to "safely" interview the people -- effectively isolating them in a room with a camera and, seemingly, conveying the questions via microphone -- the sense of absurdity already hangs heavy.
Following some piteous tales detailing the overreactive measures taken to curb NYC's corona outbreaks of crica March 2020, and the emotional and non-mutually exclusive fiscal toll it takes on workers in the appertaining industry, the film ends up too mired in "COVID" fear porn; which entirely detracted from the what piece sold itself as initially; and increasingly so, as the film progressed.
It is difficult to recommend this, despite the "grass roots" perspective on the subject matter; given that, at the time of writing, we have been aurally, visually, and psychologically assailed by "COVID" insanity, non-stop, 24/7; and this film ultimately only serves to further compound this mind-altering corona catatonia. 4/10.
Alien Conquest (2021)
I'm confuse about Tom Sziemore... and this film
I watched a movie called "THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (2021)", that sports the same poster as this film (Alien Conquest), and, among many notable nonentity 'actors' (*term used ironically), starred Tom Sizemore... Yet, said once-serviceable actor -- cast in classics like Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Heat (1995) -- who is now making Steven Seagal look like he's exiting this existential plane gracefully, is no where to be found in that film's IMDb roll call... Very confusing.
Notwithstanding, the sweaty, uncomfortable-looking, sickly... drugged (?!) Mr. Sizemore was outright cringe-inducing to witness lurch through this first semester film student assignment tier "manure picture". I'm just not sure what's going on with Mr. Sizemore -- other than his wealth-defying, deathly appearance, combined with his seeming drug addict's level of desperation for work / money, indicates that an immediate intervention is needed. I know Bruce Willis is also going through a similar end-of-life crisis... So, it seems to me that this disorder (?) is endemic to the industry, when it comes to its has-been stars. Whatever the case, this kind of public self-immolation is unpleasant for all concerned -- especially the viewer. Please, stop.
Now, as for the 'film' (*term used sarcastically) itself, as alluded to, is essentially what one would expect from an ex-Eastern Bloc schlock: Playstation 2 CGI effects; attempts at acting that redefine said verb to be an epithet; and a story / script that is as meaningless as a review of something so undeservëd of the time it takes to compile a critique.
2/10: Only worth it if one has a deep-seated hatred for Tom Sizemore -- i.e., for the Schadenfreude derived from watching a man in the throes filmic suicide.
Music Box: Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021)
A good doco, polluted somewhat by customary racial palaver
A by-the-numbers, sometimes opinionated documentation of the goings on at the infamous 1999 Woodstock event: a well-known, festival that was created in the late 1960s, as a way for youths' to "rage against the machine" through music; as well as the drug fuelled love-in it has often been wistfully (and selectively) recounted as.
This analysis is a relatively balanced account... Albeit, as implied by the review title, tainted by the now nauseating bent of American documentary-makers to twist themselves into knots to try and paint every historical event with a racially tarred brush -- which comes off as especially cynical in this feature. In addition, the divisive rhetoric along the lines of sex were at times, to a lesser degree, also irksome. Thankfully, these instances only rear their capacious heads a few times during the 105-minute rumination, and are not a deal-breakers as such; nor even for those sensitive to such toxic, political issues.
For the viewer uninitiated with what transpired over those few, fateful days in July '99, they should find this vivisection enlightening, and even entertaining -- snippets of the acts are played throughout. For those who have opinions already formed regarding the dubious eventuations of what was meant as a celebration, and instead turned into something resembling a Bacchanalian assault orgy (perhaps appropriately enough, given the locale -- Rome, New York), may not find anything new presented here. Even so, it's still worth a watch. 7/10.
In the Name of Confucius (2017)
Unrestricted Warfare
This is how wars between major powers and First World countries are fought in the 21st century -- i.e., using any and all means necessary. China play a long game; as the West play political musical chairs every three or four years. This dynamic -- communism versus democracy -- is the perfect playing field for the latter -- a home ground advantage, if you will -- for a system that, by its very design, is tailored for wars of attrition. As one democratically elected administration enters, and another exits, the C. C. P. Stand by the riverbank, immutable, watching the bodies of its enemies slowly float by.
The irony evoked in of the appellation used for 'In the Name of Confucius', borrows the same ironical license that the Chinese do with the naming of their soft power projecting, "Confucius Institutions" -- almost as if to tell the West, to their faces, exactly what they are doing; comfortable that the infamous cultural ignorance of the "laowai" will carry their subterfuge forward, irrespective of the blatancy of its ruse.
The documentary does well in focusing on the underlying motives of these, what are effectively military propaganda institutes', without getting bogged down in interminable Chinese history lessons, not detailing the endless horrors perpetrated, and that continue to be perpetrator by the C. C. P.. In the Internet Age, those outside China should have a reasonably grasp on why "The China Century" is not something the world should advocate for. Some have sighted the "lower budget" nature of the feature: this is a subjective analysis, and does not distract from the contents therein. For comparison, clocking in at under an hour, 'Confucius' is akin to a 60 Minutes or Frontline exposé, more than it is a fully-fledged documentary -- which is, by no means, a criticism; even part compliment, in terms of a higher likelihood of arresting viewer attention.
The self-sabotaging negligence of Western (et al.) governments in allowing the "red peril" to sidle its way into their sovereign nations' most sensitive sectors -- and in exchange for little more than a handful of beans: beans which the West handed to it on the platter, via its jobs, livelihoods, and irreplaceably resources -- is something historians will be left to adjudicated upon. However, as I review this film (2021), the ingravescently pressing issue of the "China question", is front and centre of all Western nations' geopolitical radars. Productions like 'Confucius' are vital pieces of information to non-Chinese to better understand these arcane peoples'; and, of import, the myriad machinations of its dastardly current government.
Greenland (2020)
America: 400 Million Guns; Greenland: <20
This is "2012" (2009), both in premise and quality. The kid's separation from his parents McGuffin, and the see-Jesus moment that the swarthy gangster on a manic shooting spree has, notwithstanding, this is a half-decent Armageddon popcorn flick.
Butler's Butler (good). Aside from, perhaps, the "abductor", all the supports were serviceable. Special effects did the job adequately enough (albeit, utterly unscientifically so... * cough AIR BURSTS cough *). The pace and run-time were just about right (never felt boring).
So, yeah... If you can look past the conspicuous absence of firearms in the U. S. -- during an extinction event, no less -- you should get some entertainment out of this film... Especially in light of all the straight-to-torrent schlock that the Internet movie-makers have been barfing up of late. It's still advisable to leave one's brain at the door, though.
6.5/10
Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
Nonsensical, convoluted garbage
Shadow in the Clouds is the pinnacle of a video game script ripped from said interactive pastime, and shoved, sans lube (or even a kiss on the cheek) into the film medium's sigmoid colon... And, as far as I can be bothered researching (i.e., not at all), it wasn't even adapted from a video game!
This film is made for the kinds of children whose parents allow them to play with their phones 15 hours per day, and holds little entertainment value beyond that intelligence quotient range (a.k.a., subnormal). None of the subtext makes a lick of sense; none of the story matters; none of what take place is in even in the same super cluster of anything resembling logic or rationale (even within in the universe the film takes place in); and the it all bookends with as dumb a third act as I've seen outside of a 1980s, back-of-Blockbuster, VHS horror rental.
Avoid, unless you like to be confused, dismayed and likely put off watching films for a few weeks thereafter (in order to neurally detox).
Tenet (2020)
Garbage in Reverse
It stinks, either way. Nolan may be known for his gimmicks ("dreams within dreams"), and some of them may serves as a foundation to make a movie on... But, "inversion" is a poor man's excuse for re-running the same scenes backwards, in order to pad out 2.5 hours of nonsensical garble barfed to screen.
Casting is all over the place; acting is so-so; script is nonsense; screenplay is dumb; action is generic and uninspired. A film of this subpar quality attracting average user ratings in the high 7's, means that the bar of acceptability has been lowered to a subterranean level.
Worse than both Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, and will be overrated accordingly. 3/10 -- Nolan should stick to historical non-fiction.
Money Plane (2020)
Straight-to-Video Tripe
Do not be fooled by the presence of Grammar or Jane -- this movie is C-tier 'entertainment', through the through. The lead "sports entertainment" wrestler and now budding actor, is as wooden as an oak tree (parried by amateurishly unseasoned / ridiculously overacting cohorts); the plot is derr-dumb stupid; the seasoned "with" actors are merely serviceable (strictly in the context of such a rubbishy project); and the overall product is little more than an exercise in pay cheque accrual. Meaningless, uninspired rubbish.
The "streaming" era and the various platforms' esurience for content, has spawned an utter glut of substandard films from substandard 'creative talent', that reach a far larger audience than they should otherwise ever merit. This film as an exemplar of thus lowering of the bar.
3/10
The Hunt (2020)
A House Divide, Cannot Stand (+a T-shirt-wearing piggy)
An amusing, entertaining enough, leave-your-brain-at-the-door wet dream fantasy for all politically-minded "centrist" viewers, who possess a triple-digit IQ (which can be dialled down to two digits for film's running time), and/or for those with a penchant for / knowledge of video game "battle royals" / "survival shooters".
The left/right ideological schism in the U.S. is the primitive tribalism that is tearing the nation's society asunder at its seams. This film pokes fun at said political schism (underpinned by cla$$ warfare), which seems to pollute (much to the chagrin of the world) almost everything that seeps out from that reality schlock of a nation.
Decent acting + slap-stick gore + comical action/violence + smirk-worth humour + gentle political ribbing = 7/10 -- good (+1 for the piggy).
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
A 2.5-Hour, Contiguous Trailer for a Really, Really Poor Movie
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is what a SW film would look like if directed by a Pulp Fiction era Tarantino, while on a drug binge: a bunch of half-realised scenes and set-pieces, thrown into the air and edited together at random, into one, unholy migraine-inducing mangled mess, and then cynically packaged as a film for the mindless, mouth-breather masses.
There is no redeeming quality to this film -- period: not its writing; certainly not its hammy acting; not its action choreography (sheesh... could these "Jedi" be any WORSE swordsman and Force practitioners?!); not its video game-y special effects; and especially not its remedial directing school drop-out tier directing. Heck, if "Jar Jar Abrams" ever gets another big budget project after his two SW self-soilings, the perceived dire dearth of talent in the film industry, will be proven irrefutable fact.
There is literally zero point in delineating any further on this faecal flinging fest of a film, because it is nothing more than an incoherent mess of what genuinely seemed like the brain farts of a 12-year-old (Disney) SW fan, projectile-vomited to screen. The film is really THAT bad -- even from a non-partisan, purely filmic perspective.
SW: TRoS is, without doubt, objectively the worst SW film ever produced; and arguably, pound for production budget pound, one of the worst films ever rendered to screen. Read the myriad reviews here detailing why -- no blockbuster with a "Star Wars" moniker attached to it would attract such negativity, if it were not grounded in some fact. You have been duly warned ⚠
(NB: I did not pay to watch this film, as I did not pay to watch any of the Disney SW offerings, beyond the first one -- ep.VII.)
3/10
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
CGI: Cinematic Garbage Intensifies
The Arnie Terminator robot is now a drapes (curtains) salesman who lives with a Hispanic woman in the countryside -- complete with trusty mutt companion and a rocking chair -- and whose ageing seems to now run deeper than merely his epidermis, with even the metal endoskeleton of this apparent one-tonne hulking machine, swaying in a zephyr (...I know, I know -- John's "gimmie five!" hand slap moved the T's hand in T2... But, that movie was GOOD; Dark Fate is anything but).
This timeline version of Sarah Connor is a crotchety cat lady, who seems to be stuck in some menopausal loop -- causing her to pulverise her dentures, through her constant, elderly angst induced grinding.
The new Terminator (hunter) is... you guessed it -- NANO TECH!: Hollywoeful's new, do-anything magical technology, that allows the film 'creators' (*term used ironically) to throw all semblance of logic and continuity out of the window (Question: Why does a nano-bot Terminator need to seep into a computer KEYBOARD in order to control control it?... Skynet-cum-Legion didn't have USB 3.0 technology in the post-apocalyptic, time-travel-happy future?).
Then we have the "saviour" of the homo-sapien species: an Instagram generation, air-headed, teenage Latino girl (naturally)... To compliment the aforementioned Latino nano-T, and Arnie's Latino helpmate (of course).
>"It's like pottery. It rhymes." ~ George Lucas
Rounding out the leads, there is said she-Jesus's obligatory protector: this time, a cyborg of sorts; who, in-keeping with the "WOKE" zeitgeist (the U.S. zeitgeist, that is) is an incarnation of Ellen DeGeneres--had she decided to fully transition.
The film itself is irrelevant, as it completely defecates all over the Terminator legacy, while presenting one of the most vacuous and poorly conceived pieces of sci-fi cinema since... Well, not that long ago. The action set pieces make Capcom video game intros look like Terrance Malick's flowing curtains; the blither betwixt, as pertinent to the astronomical pay cheques all those who partook in this scatological schlock were clearly beeline focused on, as the dialogue is in an instalment of Resident Evil.
Look, I've been one of the biggest critics of oft-derided " cinema -- for context: "Watchmen" being one of the very few, pure comic book films that I've genuinely enjoyed -- after realising, well over a decade ago, that the process line production philosophies of the Mammon-worshipping film industry, combined with the exponential rate of technological advancement, would invariably bring down sci-fi cinema as whole. So, the fact that T:DF is a conga line of strung-together video game cut-scenes, is hardly surprising to me.
Nobody listened to me then, and no one will listen now. Why?... Because, as with the world at large, the overwhelming majority of film-goers are far closer to what would clinically test as being of a "subnormal intelligence". It is these dull, bovine eyes, representing the demographic of easy-to-amuse cash cows, who the film industry must arrest with their computer-generated boom-crash operas -- in order to continue to propitiate to their patron daemon of wealth disparity and greed... Immolating all artistic integrity and creative merit along their merry way to the netherworld.
As karma would have it, Terminator: Dark Fate will lose money -- hand-over-fist, in fact (*at time of writing, it is projected to end up US$100M in the red). However, this will in no way deter avaricious producers from investing into such bottom-feeder bilge -- safe in the knowledge that every patrician film-goer lost, simply frees up the market for further exploitation of the endless masses of mindless mouth-breathers... And the reality of this now imminent, dark future, is as accursed a fate as any imaginable for this entertainment medium.
After all, if our species forfeits the only string to its bow that separates us from the animals -- creativity -- would we even have reason to fight an artificial intelligence that deemed us disposable? Really makes one think...
2/10
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Poor Man's 'Tango & Cash' Made to Milk Lowbrow Cash Cows
Even for a spin-off of the infamous visual and aural lobotomy that is the 'Fast and Furious' franchise, FF: Hobbs & Shaw is abject schlock. There is nothing to see here for anyone who is not a teenage boy sans another more constructive outlet for their testosterone build-up; or a man of age who has severely stunted maturity (and, likely, intellect).
Biological WMD? Check! Government seemingly oblivious to potential extinction level event? Check! Saving the world(™) left up to a muscle head, a hot head, and their broom-brooms and pews-pews? Check! Femme fatal lust interest with familial complications? Check! Boom-crash opera comprised of video game tier CGI action sequences -- tacked together with lulls of perfunctory dialogue? Check! Truncated third act -- because actors and crew had far better things to do (like, for example, counting their grotesquely exorbitant salaries)...? Check, check, check...!
"Block bu$ter" action films really have been wallowing in the nadir of the genre's own excrement for years now. The correlation between the declination in quality of "leave your brain at the door" entertainment, cannot be seen as anything but analogical to the diminution of collective societal I.Q.'s. As such, it's hardly surprising FF:H&S is the proverbial faeces trowelled to screen -- I don't even hold that fact against the film. It's just disturbing that these junk food products of the entertainment medium, are sustaining the entire Ponzi scheme that is today's film industry... Which surely must indicated its imminent collapse.
Sidebar: Dwayne Johnson not realising his (possible) potential talent, post-'Get Shorty', is disappointing. He was far more entertaining as professional wrestler. As for Statham... Well, he hasn't done anything of note since Snatch -- no surprises here.
2/10
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
Awful
Garbage. Stay away lest you send the message via monetary proxy, that faeces smeared to celluloid is "good enough" for the mouth-breathing masses to subsist upon. To waste US$200M on dross like this, is a capital travesty...
Captive State (2019)
Goodman is a excellent actor whose presence elevates 'average' to 'good'
A surprisingly engaging alien invasion (rather, occupation) film. It has engaging characters; paces itself well; dissembles its premise just enough, without feeling like it's trying to pull a Shamalamdingdong "twist" on the weary viewer; has serviceable special / monster effects; and a denouement that, although nothing particularly new, somehow does not feel fomulaic in the context of the film.
Goodman's presence is almost a guarantee that a film will, at least, be watchable; and this one actually holds its own on merit. 7.5/10
The House That Cried Blood (2012)
Sophomore acting students' slapstick horror schlock
I'm half-certain this was meant as an amateurish pastiche of the 'haunted house' horror film sub-genre; perhaps done as some high school project... For it sure did smack of either being a tongue-in-cheek poke at its target subject matter. However, if it wasn't thus, then it's just plain and simple, abysmal film-making / acting (...If one can even call this 17-minute, mini monster matinee, a "film"; much less, its inane dialogue and eardrum-piercing screeching, as "acting"). This is one of the first films I have seen that I genuinely feel may have taken LESS time to film, than the actual running time of its end product...!
Do not watch this unless you're a bottom-feeder casting agent who's looking to gauge the body of work of one or more of the film's listed wannabe "actors" -- who've happened to lob on your agency's doorstep and are begging for food / their next methamphetamine hit. There is little (read: nothing) to see in this teen turd that one could not perform oneself, without any rehearsal, in one's own home, using a decade-old mobile phone.
2/10 (*1 point for the creaky hag at the end)