J*A*S*M

This stupid bullshit has better reviews than the brilliant Green Hornet? Poor taste rules the world :D… Captain America felt bland already from the trailers, so I didn’t bother going to the cinema – thanks God for that! It’s been long since an expensive Hollywood blockbuster made me suffer so much. I didn’t like the story, the visuals were very ugly; I really can’t find anything to praise. After the trailer for Avengers (that looks every bit as derivative as the Captain and the other origin stories), I’m now feeling almost certain that the Marvel Universe will not produce anything great.

A very decent film in all aspects, but too safe and dry for my taste. I had a similar feeling recently with Snowtown, for instance. Very high quality filmmaking, but deep down you long for Kameňák to at least laugh, lol.

For three quarters of its run I was really thrilled with Crazy, Stupid, Love, but that clichéd happy ending made me lose that feeling very quickly. Carell, Gosling, Moore, et al. are fantastic, I had no problem liking everyone. It’s certainly a very nice film, but if you want to see a truly great one, turn it off after the “meeting in the garden” scene.

A man with a stump instead of a leg hits the ground with a hammer, producing strange sounds. Bugger me, this is great…

A giant armoured tumour liquidates the crew of an oil rig. That’s the plot. I quite looked forward to this film, I like monster horror, but this one wasn’t good. To begin with, it looks terribly awful (the bike race looks like from a ten year-old video game), I really can’t understand why some people insist on making stuff they evidently have no money for. If instead of that they made a cheap intimate horror movie, the result would be a lot better. But that’s only the smallest problem. Sector 7 could have been a fun western B-movie, but it’s way too weird in an Asian way; what the characters do sometimes it’s impossible to understand. And it’s not even that well made. PS: This film has more speed ramping than any from Snyder, but none of it look cool, it mostly look ridiculous.

Where Vegas surprised with a refreshing take on summer comedies and incorrect humour, Bangkok surprises by doing EXACTLY the same. In addition to the characters, the premise and the style of humour, all the twists and turns have also remained, and some scenes look as if Todd Phillips had shot them again but with a different background. Yeah, it’s still a lot of fun even a second time, but the element of surprise is irreparably lost, which is a shame. Ken Jeong jumping out of a car boot was funny in the first one, Ken Jeong jumping out of a freezer is funny in the second one, but then, after several experiences of deja-vu, you’re certain that he will jump out of somewhere and it’s no longer effective. And Alan’s transition from a typical “moron” to almost dangerously close to a “mentally ill wreck” is no so funny as it is sad. But still, thumbs a little up, I laughed, I did…

I’ve made a screenshot so future generations will see that Wrong Turn 4 was in the red for some time, otherwise they won’t believe it. (I will comment when I recover, Filmbooster never ceases to amaze me.) After the awful third part, I thought that Declan O’Brien had managed to kill this promising franchise, but it seems that he didn’t and Fox gave him another chance. The fourth one is surprisingly a little less bad than the previous one, but it’s still brown and stinks… When they’re chopping up the victims, it’s is quite watchable, but when the characters have some interaction, the whole thing is laughable. It’s awfully acted, awfully directed, it’s really beyond my comprehension how anyone can praise it. It’s pure subjectivism.

A very pleasant surprise. John Michael learnt from his brother how to blend a crime story with irresistible incorrect humour, so, while Martin finishes his Seven Psychopaths, we can shorten the wait with this movie. Brendan Gleeson literally excels in his role as a quirky Irish policeman. If you liked In Bruges, there’s nothing left to say, give The Guard a chance. The comedy weak 2011 was in need of something this funny.

I’m not used to giving more than two stars to this type of low budget jokes, but I’m making an exception this time. Sod the script and the cheap visuals! The film excels in the atmosphere, especially in the first and the last act. At the beginning it looks like some sort of crude thriller about maniacs who don’t kill their victims directly, but put them into a… very passive state. The second act mostly follows the investigation of the father of one of the victims and it’s the weakest, it doesn’t deliver anything very memorable and has plenty of holes in the logic. The third act unravels things pretty interestingly, has a thick atmosphere and even some truly tense and scary scenes (and I don’t mean at a “semi amateur movie standard”). The authors probably got their inspiration in the mythology of the X-Files, which I can’t blame. It’s nice to see low budget creators aware of their limitations and who don’t try to make something they don’t have enough resources for (for comparison, we have the recent low budget catastrophe from Sweden Blood Runs Cold). This makes Dark Souls nice to watch, even though it’s clear that it didn’t cost much. Thumbs up and keep an eye on the directors, if they get some money, we can expect good things from them.

A very pleasant surprise. A group of students are making a documentary about Mexican refugees and, as it’s usual in the genre, they get into trouble. No, they don’t get lost in the forest, they get in conflict with some kind of radical organisation that solves the immigrant problem in their own (radical) way. The static documentary format blends with live found footage, and from to time it’s shot like a normal feature film. Undocumented knows how use the best of these strategies while avoiding their shortcomings and limitations. The result is an original and tense film with a format that doesn’t grind but entertains. Thematically, Undocumented forms an interesting trio with the recent (and equally good) Territories and Red State. Make yourself some time and watch all three at once.