Change Your Image
espoeth
Reviews
Aquaman (2018)
Wooden acting, CGI fatigue
Even in the realm of a make-believe comic book universe, things should respect the rules of physics. When you watch Aquaman, you are left with the newly emerging (and very real) condition of CGI-fatigue. Nothing you see before you registers as real, in your brain, because nothing that moves a certain way in water moves that way in this film. One exits the long, dizzying experience feeling like they've just watched a long video game. Nothing is scary anymore. Nothing is exciting or suspenseful, because the filmmakers use no visual restraint in their storytelling. The excess of CGI use in films like Aquaman have just made us stop caring.
Jason Momoa mumbles out his words without any charisma or life; he comes across like an early and unpolished version of The Rock, and his lack of acting experience stands out in stark contrast to veterans like Nicole Kidman and Willem Dafoe.
Where Aquaman fails in engaging the audience in a compelling story through its weak acting and visual diarrhea, it does make up for in one area - costume design.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Tarantino succeeds
What this film succeeds in doing, in my opinion, is to accurately show what thirst for revenge does to the human psyche. Where other films might show the Germans as the "baddies", this film manages to make the viewer look at the German military as more restrained, cultured, dignified and human. They are with the arts, cinema/music, languages, are polite and courteous. Conversely, the Americans and Allies are painted as uneducated, uncultured, sub-human animalistic savages. While neither of these extremes, of course, represent the whole truth, Tarantino seems to intentionally role-reverse the good guy/bad guy concept in this film, particularly. Whether he is doing it to make a statement about the evils of war is dubious. What's clear is that the audience is not cheering on the Jewish cinema owner, whose terrorism / suicide plot is almost Satanic in its portrayal, nor are they cheering on the "basterds".
This film is not meant to be a parody or commentary on history, but simply a spectacle of unimaginably immoral conduct; where many reviewers might see it a justification of violence, it is plain to see that each member of the "Inglorious Basterds", as well as the cinema owner and her accomplice, is in fact motivated by the age-old fallacy of redemption through revenge, which never ends in redemption or satisfaction, but only in tragedy, loss and suffering.
Jerusalem (2013)
Jerusalem 3D is a gem
Jerusalem succeeds in two major ways - firstly, it manages to present the religious heritage of the city with incredible sensitivity and respect. It could have taken the faux-moral high ground of concluding that religion, and not land, is the cause of all war - and thus saved face. Instead, it considers its audience and gives screen time to the three great religions fairly and equally, not taking any one side. It is able to connect the three to a common ancestry through the clever and subtle marriage of archaeological digs and visual effects.
Its second success is in capturing the sounds, sights and smells of the ancient city with startling realism. None of the thousands of people featured in its majestic shots appear to be looking at the camera, yet are too real to be extras. You feel the experience of being there in person, peering into ancient rituals and customs from a perspective few get to see.
As a viewer, you are left not with a shallow materialistic mantra of "can't we all get along?", but of a sense of curiosity and wonder, and a desire to explore and research what the film describes as the "heart of the world".