[Hutnicks]

Batalon (2015) 4.5/10
 
 
Hey look, it's Full Metal Uterus!  Or tries to be.
 
What could have been a brilliant effort to tell the story of the Womens Battalion of Death in the First World War winds up being let down by dialogue that is on par with some of the worst American war films of the fifties. Stunningly shot and for the most part well acted this film contains two very well done trench warfare scenes taken from the Russian point of view. Unfortunately that is not enough to save it from cheesy expositional scenes and inconsistencies in the main characters. A shame really as this story is far deeper than the film dares to explore and the writing, which follows the en vogue vilification of the communist ascendance to power  gets mired in it's own preachings by contriving scenarios that simply did not happen from what I have read of the actual events.
 
  Yes the Battalion was formed and command was given to a decorated female officer who was apparently tough as nails. There are no accounts of any female soldier going out in front of the German trenches to pick wild flowers when they deployed however and it is that kind of cheese that demeans the actual story in this film. This was a group of female volunteers (over 2000 to begin with and whittled down to just 300 or so in a very quick training period) from all classes of Czarist Russia who went out when the men refused to fight and took on a hardened German Army who had been at war for 3 years and by all accounts did incredibly well against them. The film treats all that rather ambiguously resulting in the viewer coming away with a very distorted and piecemeal picture of the events.
 
 It's about on par with Jolies effort at a war film, with better direction and cinematography.

 

[mutabor]

Music videos shot in the area where I watch movies in a mall
 

 

 

 

[mutabor]

  Batalon (2015) 4.5/10

 
It is one of those films which were made to propagate patriotism and were sponsored by government. 90% of current Russian films are made and planned by Kremlin political technologists. While two Russian films which were chosen into main competition of Cannes festival 2017 were given 0 money from Russian government.

 

[WraithApe]

 
It is one of those films which were made to propagate patriotism and were sponsored by government. 90% of current Russian films are made and planned by Kremlin political technologists. While two Russian films which were chosen into main competition of Cannes festival 2017 were given 0 money from Russian government.

 
Did The Green Elephant receive government backing? I would have thought it would be Putin's kind of thing.

 

[Hutnicks]

   
It is one of those films which were made to propagate patriotism and were sponsored by government. 90% of current Russian films are made and planned by Kremlin political technologists. While two Russian films which were chosen into main competition of Cannes festival 2017 were given 0 money from Russian government.

I figured as much. Somewhat fitting as that was the intend of the Battalions formation itself.

 

[Hutnicks]

Sand Castle (2017)   7/10
 
 
 The obverse of Batalion. This is a film with mediocre production values but is saved by some good writing. The screenwriter says this script is semi autobiographical so perhaps that accounts for some of the smarts here. Slow paced with not the greatest cast, the weaker links are not on screen for long so that aids the experience. This is a film that captures the futility of the whole exercise without waving flags or hyping policy or agenda.  Watch it just for the single line as an American Soldier tells a "Liberated" Iraqi   "In America, nothing is free"
 
 Lots of budget constraint flaws in equipment and some details but most likely no one will notice those as the film moves along following a bunch of squaddies who are on a mission they are ill equipped and definitely not trained for, while just waiting to get home.
 
 I have a soft spot for films like this, where they work with what they have and don't fall into jingoism to sell seats while at the same time not taking the alternative in your face anti war stance. It's just a story about a bunch of guys slotted into a job they did not want by a typically myopic organization and how they dealt with it.
 
  Well worth the view on netflix if you have an interest in the genre.

 

[tdockweiler]

Going in Style - 8/10
 
Nowhere near as bad as expected. I actually enjoyed this one and a lot of it made me think.
I somehow was glad I went to see it. It was at the discounted rate of $5.
I told myself I need to stop being so picky about what I see since I live next door to the theater.
It's not "LOL" funny, but more just amusing. The older people in the audience thought it was the funniest movie in the world.
This type of movie is made way too much, but this is better than stuff like "Old Dogs" and "Space Cowboys" etc.
 
 
Ides of March - 5/10
 
Totally boring and pointless. At the end you're thinking "That's it?".
Not even sure why they made a movie out of this. I'm totally sick of politics so that didn't help.
The acting from Ryan Gosling is very wooden. He normally acts the same way in every movie.
 
George Clooney directed this and I think he should stop directing.

 

[mutabor]

  It is one of those films which were made to propagate patriotism and were sponsored by government. 90% of current Russian films are made and planned by Kremlin political technologists. 

 
Putin watches current Russian blockbuster The Spacewalker ( 2017). Budget $7 million, box-office $5 million. Flop.
 

 

 

[Subhakar]

"Get Out": 4/10.

The monster hit that made $190M on a $4.5M budget with 99% rating on RT isn't so impressive on viewing to my eyes. They ruined a chance to make a terrific social commentary like a dark comedy the way Kubrick did with "Dr.Strangelove" or a thorough horror flick the way someone did "10, Cloverfield Lane". It ended up like a juvenile attempt at becoming a masterpiece. Mess. Congratulation to the debut director, Peele, though. Rock solid box office.

 

[mutabor]

"Get Out": 4/10.

The monster hit that made $190M on a $4.5M budget with 99% rating on RT 

 
How is it possible for such a small film to make such a big box-office? I also see a lot of negative reviews from common viewers about this movie.

 

[WraithApe]

 
How is it possible for such a small film to make such a big box-office? I also see a lot of negative reviews from common viewers about this movie.

 
When you say common viewers, I assume you just mean non-professional? Agree with @Subhakar - the film's juvenile; neither telling social critique nor effective horror. I'm frankly amazed so many critics have fallen for it.

 

[vwinter]

Looks like the site change stopped this thread dead in its tracks =(

Let's give this defibrillation a shot...


They Live (1985) [6.4/10]
This one was an interesting wild ride. Like other 80's Carpenter fare, it really starts off glacially but with intrigue and at some point just floors it. The first 30 minutes was Roddy Piper walking around to John Carpenter music. And this somehow works.


Highlights include an epic slugfest between Roddy Piper and Keith David and some of the campiest alien takeover plotting and action I have had the pleasure of seeing.


The Handmaiden (2016) [7.3/10]

The relatively high score is for the solid performances and the high production values.


The issue I had with this one is that the script is provocative for the sake of being provocative and worse the twists rely on characters lying which just feels incredibly cheap. My reaction to the twists was pretty much, whatever. It's hard to care when all it takes is a character lying with no setup or foreshadowing, just very unsatisfying.


The ending also seemed a smidge hypocritical of Lady Hideko, at least superficially, but was still... uh... satisfying.


End of the day, it felt like a very high quality pulp-ish romance novel.


The Nice Guys (2016) [6.4/10]

I think what happened here was the producers went,

Producer: Ryan, Russ, we have an idea, hear this out.

Russ: don't call me Russ.

Producer: we're gonna get you two on screen together. Ryan, can you do that guy you did in The Big Short, exactly that guy, but without the cursing. And Russ, be yourself, but lose the accent. No idea where to go from there, but it'll work out. How about the 70's?

Russel and Ryan: I'm in!


Really, there was nothing special about this. A select few good laughs and some semblance of a plot, with useless twists. Best part of the movie was Angourie Rice, playing Gosling's young daughter, delivering some ridiculous lines with surprising composure.

Coulda been worse I guess. Catch this if you must on a lazy Sunday with a nice cold one, or four.


Ju-On (2002) [8.7/10]

Haven't seen this one in a long time. Figured it was worth a go.


The feeling of this one is incredible. There's no dancing around ideas or exercisesn of style. From the first moment, which really does start just seconds into the film, it grabs you by the foot and just drags you deeper and deeper. It's unrelenting and unapologetic. Where it differs from many horror movies, especially western styled ones is the lack of character focus or using characters as a lens and trying to create a hollow attachment or relatability. It's a story about a curse. Listen, and understand. The curse is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Ok so it's not a new story, but what is. Japanese lore is filled with vengeful spirits. This is a matter of taking that sense, that moment, that seeming lifetime, that haunted panic and dread, and experiencing it over and over again.

Spoiler: Maybe spoiler?

The only thing that went a bit off the rails for me was that for some reason I can't fathom, years after the fact, Toshio somehow gets enrolled to be in Rika's friend Mariko's class. This doesn't go with the pattern of how the curse works. And it doesn't explain how it picks and chooses who to kill now and who to kill years later, seemingly at random times.

Otherwise, classic use of some horror acting tropes where needed, understated score, once again not relying on standard horror movie setup, and just beautiful use of interior shots to really create that feeling of having nowhere to go.



Don't Breathe (2016) [2.5/10]

This one was mostly well executed, but was complete style over substance. It got the tension thing down, but was based on kind of a gimmicky setup. Where it goes downhill and incredibly fast is that when you base your entire setup on a gimmick that is based on the laws of physics, and then two minutes into the main story, you pick and choose when those same laws apply or not in order not to torpedo your fragile shell of a script. This is literally what happened. At this point, I rolled my eyes and forced myself to finish it to see if there was any redemption. There was none.


The rest of it was making fools of the viewer with gimmicky camerawork, oh look here, oh look there, and trying to create these cheap "emotional" "backstories" in an attempt to validate just about everything.


I'm frankly just at a complete loss for how this could be considered any semblance of good...




Still need to write up Kimi no Na Wa, which I think it worth seeing in theaters because it lends well to the big screen.

 

[WraithApe]

Ju-On (2002) [8.7/10]

Haven't seen this one in a long time. Figured it was worth a go.

The feeling of this one is incredible. There's no dancing around ideas or exercisesn of style. From the first moment, which really does start just seconds into the film, it grabs you by the foot and just drags you deeper and deeper. It's unrelenting and unapologetic. Where it differs from many horror movies, especially western styled ones is the lack of character focus or using characters as a lens and trying to create a hollow attachment or relatability. It's a story about a curse. Listen, and understand. The curse is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Ok so it's not a new story, but what is. Japanese lore is filled with vengeful spirits. This is a matter of taking that sense, that moment, that seeming lifetime, that haunted panic and dread, and experiencing it over and over again.

The only thing that went a bit off the rails for me was that for some reason I can't fathom, years after the fact, Toshio somehow gets enrolled to be in Rika's friend Mariko's class. This doesn't go with the pattern of how the curse works. And it doesn't explain how it picks and chooses who to kill now and who to kill years later, seemingly at random times.

Otherwise, classic use of some horror acting tropes where needed, understated score, once again not relying on standard horror movie setup, and just beautiful use of interior shots to really create that feeling of having nowhere to go.

Certainly one of the better films of the J-Horror revival of the late 90s / early 00s. I still rate it lower than Ringu and Audition (and probably a couple of others) personally; it scores high in atmosphere and is effective in its creepiness, with some really memorable scenes, but it's a tad uneven I feel - mainly down to illogical plot points, that you touch on, and lack of clarity in getting from A to B. I also think it rode in on the coat tails of Ringu a little bit too. As you say, the vengeful spirit is nothing new in Japanese cinema, and indeed theatre, before that - The Ghost of Yotsuya is the starting point for so many - but Ringu was still a bolt from the blue in terms of re-energizing the genre and putting a late twentieth century spin on old motifs; curse and contagion with a new delivery method! In my book, it was a near perfect horror film.

Ju-On actually has quite a history, with at least two TV movie versions before this one. This is the pick of the bunch though, for sure. Ju-On: The Grudge 2 is worth avoiding (much like Ring 2, though it doesn't quite plumb the depths of that crock). Then of course there are American remakes of all of them - none of which I've seen... and don't intend to

 

[vwinter]

@WraithApe Quoting is broken for me, on mobile and desktop, in different browsers, smfh.

I've sadly only seen the American remake of Ringu, but i'd rate Ju-On lower than Audition also. I read about the TV movies after, but i don't think I have the strength.

 

[tdockweiler]

The Bridge - 9.5/10

Probably one of the better anti-war films i've seen.
I think this is one of those hidden gems that few people have heard of.

A lot of it reminded me of some strange dream, but more like a nightmare. Do you ever have one of those dreams where everything seems more real than real life? I don't know why this is and no I haven't been taking drugs.
Some may find the acting a bit overdoing it, but I didn't mind. How do you portray accurately a person who "loses it"?

It also reminded me of the Japanese war movie "Boyhood" from Keisuke Kinoshita.(lol nice auto-correct).

It seems like not a lot of films tell the experience of war on children.

Anyway, this is a really depressing movie and very sad IMO.
I swear that i've seen a lot of movies borrow ideas from this one, but maybe not..