pasany Reviews

Cambridge Spies (2003)

It's a soap opera not a spy story

[2/10 · 25 October 2014]

When you see a title like this, you expect secrets, conspirations, tension, etc. Especially if it's about the famous Cambridge Four. What you get instead is love, friendship, tears, gay love, drama, complete historical inaccuracy and sheer boredom. It focuses on all the wrong aspects. And it portrays the Cambridge Four as insecure kids instead of cunning master spies. Also the part when Kim Philby travels to Vienna couldn't be more ridiculous. It portrays Litzi Friedman as a petty thief (and still expects the viewer's sympathy towards her). And it portrays Vienna in 1934 like Berlin 10 years later. Roadblocks on every corner with soldiers asking for papers? Jews must hide and if found they get executed on the spot along with their helpers? In Vienna, in 1934? ARE THEY F*-ING SERIOUS?!!! Hitler just rose to power, Jews were largely unharmed yet even in Germany, and Austria was still independent for a long time.

Shutter Island (2010)

An OK story fully loaded with subliminal propaganda

[4/10 · 24 October 2014]

Are the holocaust-movies so plenty lately that even the most liberal ones are getting tired of them? But you still need to push the agenda to guilt-trip the people? Well lets make a completely unrelated movie, then scatter „flashbacks" in it with the most emotionally loaded pictures possible! (Dead and frozen women and children puring out of boxcars? Only the dead puppy is missing!) You might as well also put a historical controversy in the flashbacks about Allied war crimes and than claim it's a madman's fantasy at the and while you are at it. Some radical feminist agenda can also be found in the movie, for example the way they present domestic violence, or that the husband is responsible for everything, even his wife's crimes.

The story itself is OK, with a clever plot twist. However there is something amiss the whole time and not in the way they intended: the island supposed to be a well locked mental hospital for the most dangerous criminally insane people in the US. But there are no Hannibal Lecters locked up there! The inmates you find are ordinary madmen with 1-2 „ordinary" kills (without extreme brutality) tops, some of them didn't even kill anyone. These people wouldn't need a maximum security institute. The same is the problem with the threat that they will find a way to diagnose the inspector with something and than keep him there: an ordinary madman has no place in a maximum security madhouse.

To sum it up: the idea for the story is good and they could have made a really good movie of it if it wasn't just an excuse for pushing an agenda. Like this it's so full of mistakes it's barely a mediocre movie.

Rambo (2008)

Stupid white kinghting

[3/10 · 23 January 2014]

The whole movie revolves around a (pretty stupid) white chick. Everything happens because of her. She convinces Rambo (with some utter bs long talk) to give up his peaceful life for another suicide mission - even though he was quite unwilling to do that before. Than he goes back for more when the chick gets kidnapped (how predictable!), and does the whole usual Rambo thing - wrecking havoc, killing hundreds of men, getting almost killed - for this one girl. No higher morals, no riches, no nothing - just a "Thank you!" from a silly white girl! They don't even really care about the locals! At least this film has some pretty good action scenes. That HUGE fighting scene near the end compensated for my lost hour before that. But I still consider this a bad movie.

The Expendables (2010)

Just a remake of Dogs of war - only worse

[2/10 · 23 January 2014]

*This section might contain spoilers* The plot is roughly the same: a mercenary gets hired to make a coup in a far away country run by a brutal dictator, he goes there, scouts around, barely escapes then returns with a small squad and wrecks havoc. He even gets helped in both films by a girl related to the dictator. *Spoilers end here* But while in the first move there is at least a tiny grain of realism, here there is nothing but exaggeration. The mercs are superhuman who cannot be harmed and 5 of them defeats a whole army (btw don't get fooled by the cover: there won't be that many people in any mission only like 5), they are so pure hearted they don't care about the money, the main antagonist is as evil as Dr. Evil etc. And what really blew my mind was that utterly stupid plot device that - as I mentioned earlier - the mercs didn't care about the money, and wrecked the whole nation FOR ONE GIRL!!! Those damn white knights! Thet's the stupidest idea I've ever heard! As others have mentioned even the action scenes are so overly exaggerated they lack even the tiniest grain of realism thus challenging seriously your suspension of disbelief. I don't recommend watching this even for free. You won't get your 1,5 hour back! Watch Dogs of war instead! That's not a very good movie either but much better than this!

Sharpshooter (2007 TV Movie)

Rubbish

[2/10 · 26 February 2013]

Note: even though I added a spoiler warning I think I won't spoil anything because the whole story is so predictable!

This is total rubbish both in plot and in action. Either the writers were morons or they thought the audience will be morons (or maybe both). To begin with they mistook a spec ops agent for a hit-man: a hit-man might works alone, may collects enemies (of course only if someone finds out his identity!) and probably has a hard time retiring because of the said enemies and lack of friends. A special agent however is very unlikely to work alone, has more friends than enemies (the agency has his back) and so he can retire without fearing of getting assassinated. Also they might assassinate a foreign terrorist arms dealer on foreign soil, but they won't do that to their own citizen in their homeland - they have the police to arrest such people! (And if they decide to assassinate the delinquent anyway they would just send a frickin' drone - after all, drone warfare is legal even against American citizens in American soil!) As for the actions, they didn't do the slightest effort to make them the least bit believable! Even the very first scene is bull****: a single sniper to rescue a hostage from about 8 thugs in two vehicles! Even if they were really that incompetent that they can't fight back or escape, any of them could have killed the hostage as a last resort! Then there came those kind of action scenes I hate the most: getting the protagonist in a 200% certain death situation and then making him beat the odds - by plot holes, previously nonexistent superhuman capabilities and making the enemies doing blatant mistakes! From about the middle of the film it's full of these! (Escapeing in the boathouse, when his hands, tied in the back suddenly get tied in the front so he can cut the rope; clinging on the top of the escaping car and not getting shot nor falling, running with a shot leg like it was healthy, etc.) For me the most over the top was when Dillon, having run out of ammo (despite shooting very few times with that rifle!) turns his rifle into a bow and carves an arrow (with a f*ckin' stone!) in less than one minute and shoots the final boss in the heart from pretty far with dead accuracy, even though that "arrow" didn't even have feathers, it was just a pointed wooden rod! There are also some random stupid moments, like when the protagonist hesitates to kill his target despite doing that job for 20 years, just so that his target can mock him in a final line. And the worst part was an absolute stupid and unnecessary twist (it's real purpose is probably so that the movie can get longer), in which Dillon's friend suddenly turns evil - by wanting to quit and keep a large pile of money. And he also turns mean, to make sure the audience won't like him anymore! And he does that the cheapest way: by hitting his female colleague for no real reason! (The only cheaper thing would have been if he kicked a puppy!) What makes this stupid twist so outrageous is that Dillon, like a knight of honor refuses the offer to split the money and get away, which of course brakes out a new conflict, but in the end, after killing his old colleagues (and only friends), he keeps the loot anyway and escapes with the last survivor of the opposing band (the chick whom the "new bad guy" have hit).

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

A strange mixture of horrible and awesome

[1/10 · 12 September 2010]

This movie contains some very well made, interesting and realistic parts, but in overall I still regret spending my time to watch it, because unfortunately the rest of the film is totally awful, and as a whole it makes no sense at all. At first a large black stone(?) slab seems to have some important role (first it enlightens some prehumans, then astronauts find it and research about it) then after about one third of the movie we never hear about it again, it loses it's importance in the plot and a completely different story starts. At least this other story makes sense, except for it's ending which is a total nonsense again - even worse than the first part, because here you don't even know what's going on, it's totally random and has not much (as nothing) to do with the story it should end. The parts that worth watching are between the parts I mentioned before. I'll write more about them later. Apart from not making sense this movie will try your patience in other ways too, especially in it's first half. For example the film-score is horrible. Not just because that music sounds very bad, but also because it's style is never appropriate to the actual scene of the movie. For example many times there is a dramatic music when actually nothing special happens. Then there are parts, very long ones in which absolutely nothing happens. You are to watch an empty desert for long minutes, a spaceship docking for at least 10 minutes and probably other such things I don't remember. During these scenes of course you can listen that "masterpiece" film-score I just wrote about. (Some say that docking scene is the best part because "it's so artistic and beautiful" - well maybe I would agree with them to some degree if it wasn't longer than 2 minutes, but too much is too much!) Now let's get back to the part I wrote about that it worths watching. It's the part which pictures a space mission to some distant place (I don't remember where) - hence the title. It is surprisingly realistic: there is weightlessness everywhere in the ship except for a large block witch rotates to provide gravity; outside the ship(s) there is gravely silence, the route takes years - so most of the crew are hibernated; and when a TV station from Earth makes an interview with the (awake) crew members they tell the viewers that it takes minutes for their question to reach the spaceship (and also the answer to reach Earth). They must have used some experts to design this, it totally lacks those fancy but unrealistic stuffs we got used to in the modern sci-fis. If this was the whole movie it would worth much more than like this. But it gets screwed too when the computer, Hal makes a small mistake and many very illogical decisions ensue from both its and the crews part!

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Probably the most stupid movie ever made!

[1/10 · 31 August 2010]

People get used to unreal movie elements, like broken glass that doesn't cut or a badly wounded hero who can still fight like a healthy man, etc., and they just ignore them to be able to enjoy the movie. So do I. But sometimes these unreal element get too many and too blatant to accept or just ignore them! This movie is a fine example to that! Starting with the protagonist waking up from years long coma by a damn mosquito bite!!! Then she carries her sword around openly as if it was some harmless toy, and nobody cares about it. She can even bring it up on a plane! And when it gets to a fight, everyone stand against her with mêlée weapons (mostly swords) as if it would be in the Middle Ages and not the 21st century. There isn't a single gun in the whole movie (except for a toy shotgun which fired popcorn at the protagonist, obviously not hurting her)! And these are just the most blatant bull****s, there are many more! The movie fails morally too: every single person in it are violent a**holes, the good guys are as bad (or even worse) as the bad guys. Actually, by the standards of the protagonist, slaughtering people for the smallest insult makes you good - as we see it by the introduction of the Yakuza leaders personal bodyguard: a 16 yo girl, who is "mature" and "good", because she gutted a guy who wanted to get her laid. And of course our heroine is really good by this standard, she mutilated horribly (or killed, I don't remember) 2 people right in the first minute after she regained consciousness. (Not to be confused with conscience, because she never regained that - assuming she had any to begin with!) Then she murders a mother in front of her little daughter, and in the end she chops off a few hundred limbs (and has fun doing it). Of course the police is never after her (maybe there is no police at all there), violence has no consequence in this move - not even this huge amount of violence.

The Birds (1963)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

[1/10 · 14 October 2009]

When I started to watch this, I thought "It's Hitchcock, it can't be bad then!" Later on, as nothing seemed to make any sense, I thought there must be a bang at the end, but no, even that failed to happen, the ending is just as flat as the rest. I'm totally disappointed.

In this film nothing happens for a reason, nothing is explained, everything contradicts common sense (even if we accept that every bird gets mad and attacks people), and there isn't even a solution at the end - nor the opposite, a doom instead of a solution, nor any conclusion, it's essentially an "immedias res ending" (the protagonists abandon an undefendable house, and that's it, the film ends as they drive away). The special effects are extremely weak too, but it's forgivable because it's a very old movie. However even the best effects wouldn't save this!

*SPOILER* The 1st part of the movie is not only flat and boring, but pretty stupid: the female protagonist meets the male protagonist in a bird shop, and what happens between them is opposed to all reason: he PRETENDS to mistake her for the shopkeeper, and asks her help to find lovebirds. She, instead of telling that she is just a customer too, also pretends to be the shopkeeper and of course makes every mistake possible. When the truth is out, he offends her by telling she should be in prison, FOR Driving INTO A SHOP WINDOW (!!!) (later he turns out to be a lawyer - a fine lawyer, isn't he?). Being offended, she inspects him by his license number and finds his name and address. Now guess what she does: buys the lovebirds for that hated person and brings to his address!!!! And when he turns out to be (about 60 miles) away for weekend, she, instead of waiting until Monday, drives to his house in the country with the birds. (And now I guess it's clear that they'll become lovers...)

My comment on this part: I thought Hitchcock is a better writer than this! How couldn't he make the way the protagonists meet and get into a backwater town at least a little less lame?! It' the lamest plot I've ever seen!

The rest of the movie is about the attacks of the birds, which gets more and more organized. They attack for no explained reason, and it seems that only that one particular town gets raided. They also don't care about the heavy casualties every single attack costs, and are eager to attack well defended houses (how the hell they know at all if there is anyone inside?!!), even if there is only one person inside to kill, instead of attacking only in the open, where they have much better chances!

An ornithologist says in the film, that there are billions of birds in the USA only, so if they manage to attack the people organized, they are doomed – this is also bullshit, because birds can't take supplies with them as humans do, they need to gather their food day by day, so even a well organized bird society wouldn't capable of anything more than occasional raids – maybe if they would eat the bodies, but they don't eat their victims in this story!

All in all, as I told in the introduction, this film is utterly stupid, and the actors performance wasn't too good either. If I say it's as bad as an average Uve Boll film, I don't exaggerate at all! Don't watch it!

Ps.: By the way, to get a hint about the intelligence of the protagonists: they can't distinguish a raven from a blackbird!!!

Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (2007)

inappropriate, not worth to watch

[4/10 · 23 September 2009]

Before I saw the Japanese letters I thought it's a Hollywood movie, its characteristic is so Hollywoodish: perceptibly big budget, nice effects, and baaad script. The movie has pretty nice battle scenes and costumes, but probably that's all positive in it.

While watching it I kept feeling it's not how steppe people behave, and sometimes I felt it's not like any people behave. Many scenes were overacted and/or corny. Gengishes character was quite different than the real life Gengish probably was. And the movies atmosphere was killed by the totally inappropriate music. That bugged me the most, they constantly used those customary corny symphonic tones we usually hear in the love scenes in Hollywood films! The finishing stroke was the end title music, which was some pop song! For a movie like this they should have used some Central Asian music! Only that would fit.

I try to cite some real wtf moments (SPOILERS HERE!): (I think the whole childhood part could be cited, it's the worst part of the movie. I'm not sure if the young actors were bad or the script or both, but that part got really screwed!)

• When Gengish goes with his father go to look for a wife, there is a kinda stupid conversation between them in which the father mentions the blue wolf, as if the 14 years old boy haven't heard about that before. It's clear that he actually tells it to the audience, not to his son, but then why must he tell it?! They use a narrator, why doesn't she tells it instead? That would sound much less stupid!

• When Gengish meets Börte, they just stand near each other, and the writers couldn't give them any intelligent lines!

• Then comes Börtes friend, Jamuka (or how it's written), he just meets Genghis, they speak a very few words to each other, and they go for an archery contest right away. (Of course Gengish wins, with exceptional accuracy.)

• After the contest they vow eternal friendship. (Remember, they know each other for no longer than an hour!!!)

• As they vow, Jamuka explains to Genghis (actually to the audience again) what this friendship means, as if he didn't know! Again, why couldn't they use the narrator for the explanation, this makes Genghis look like a complete idiot!

• 1-2 days later a messenger comes with bad news, and instead of telling them right away, he says "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" for minutes. And when he finally tells, Genghis acts like a total moron again!

• One time he is too coward to pull out his sword and fight his enemy. He runs away, than returns and kills his enemy when he sleeps. I'm not sure, maybe this was his true personality, but then why do they suggest differently other times? And if they want to picture him as a positive hero, then why didn't they make him win in a sword-fight?

(All the above-mentioned scenes are from the childhood part!!!)

• In the whole movie people sit (or stand) not in front of, but next to each other (and in front of the camera). It's so unreal!

• When he captures Jamuka (after bloody fights, where even he almost got killed), he offers him to be his right hand, but Jamuka turns it down and asks Gengish to choke him with his own hands. Gengish does this only after a long hesitation (and Jamukas body don't twitch a single time when he is chocked!). Common who buys this bullshit?!

• When his son dies, Gengish overacts his role so much, I almost turned the player off right away!

• There is a very stupid conversation at the end between Genghis and his bodyguard: she asks him why does he continue the conquests, when he managed to unify the Mongol tribes. He says that wherever he gets, borders are washed away, this makes flourish the trade, life will be richer, and ultimately, there will be peace! This is a lie from the mouth of any conquer, but especially bullshit from such a ruthless one as him! Yeah, thriving trade and richer life, when most people of the conquered towns are slaughtered mercilessly, and the rest are enslaved!

• The movie ends as he orders a cavalry assault against the Great Wall. Cavalry assault against a fort!!! Like that they would have never conquered China!

• Every tribe had uniforms! In the 12-13th century! That's not very realistic is it? But actually this is forgivable, because like that it's easy to make difference between the units in the battle scenes. It's still unreal tough.

Well, there are much more, but these came to my mind now. And I think it's enough to see why is this movie a failure.

Budapesti mesék (1977)

This film makes absolutely no sense

[1/10 · 8 September 2009]

The base idea of the movie, ie. WW II. refugees trieing to reach the city by a dismantled tram, sounded promising. It could have been a fine movie, but they screwed it as much as they could!

The biggest flaw is the it has no story at all. They just push the tram on an endless line of tracks, people and things appear and disappear randomly - probably because there are much more of them than they could fit in that tram - and they say from time to time totally inappropriate, perceptibly boned up lines (like how to write an application, how to nurse a baby, how to pack for a long trip, or some babbles about their feelings), not even to each other just into the camera. And thats it, that's the whole movie about!

Alright they face some hardships - like uncooperative, parasitic fellow refugees, a wall of fire, bombed track, bombed bridge, etc. - and it makes some parts interesting, but they are still not "good" parts, they are just "less bad", because everything is so unreal:

• They manage to put the tram back to the track by manpower.

• The people talk about how far they are from the city (and any inhabited area), yet there are an extreme amount of refugees around, coming from anywhere and everywhere!

• They find an unguarded warehouse full of food. (Remember, it's war time!)

• This food gives them an undepletable stock.

• Wherever they are, they always have drinkwater.

• When they pass trough the wall of fire it's so hot, that the tram looses its painting, but the many wooden parts remain intact, and no one gets hurt.

• Whatever happens, they always have the appropriate tools to fix the problem: they can repaint the tram after the fire, they can create rafts, they can even dissemble and reassemble the whole f*ckin' tram! (Not kidding, they do it!)

• Average people swim trough the Danube in winter (!!!), and than push the tram half naked.

• A man sells a roll of linen to the others. In the next scene everyone wears a piece of cloth made from it.

• A woman looses her glasses, and goes totally blind. (But she still FEELS the colors!)

• Even the time is totally blurred: they seem to travel days, maybe weeks, but one woman gives birth to 2 twins without having any sign of pregnancy before, and by the end of the movie those babies become about 3 years old children.

• Hungary is a small country, Budapest (the capitol) can be reached by walk (or by pushing a tram) from anywhere in no more than a week. A city, or at least a village is reachable from anywhere in much less than a day walk. But they travel for days, maybe weeks, and never find any inhabited place! Not even a damn homestead!

Well, unreal things are totally acceptable in a tale, and the title tells it's a tale. But no, it's not a tale: here everything suggests that it should be taken seriously. And a tale has a proper beginning, a story, and a proper conclusion; but this movie hasn't any, it just goes from nowhere to nowhere!