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Suicide Squad (2016)
Muddled plot, muddled acting, muddled editing.
This is easily the worst movie I've seen this year. I saw Man of Steel, enjoyed it, Batman vs superman, enjoyed that too. This, this I could not enjoy. The editing is confusing at best, fight scenes make little to no sense, with quick cuts between the violence and characters witnessing it, leading to spatial confusion. People in the know would call this the 180 rule, and they break it, a lot. Moreover, the editors applied a LUT to the film in post. This is clear, as half the film has washed out colors, too dark blacks, and saturation that reminds me of watching movies on a TV from the 90s. What's more is that the acting is very hit or miss. Some scenes are basically Will Smith acting, and the others just phoning in their lines as if it were a rehearsal. Easily Deadhshot is the best part of this mess, as he was the only character even partially fleshed out, or even remotely human. Conversely the antagonist who is revealed during the film is even more of a cluster of confusion than most other aspects, at various points their motivation spans from wanting to destroy humanity for "worshipping machines" have mercy on the suicide squad as they are noble fighters, and make a zombie army for reasons I'm still not 100% on. Honestly as a film student I would expect better from another students film. Finally I would like to comment on Harley Quinn, while I am by no means a comic- fundamentalist, this Harley Quinn makes literally no sense, her backstory is explained in what was perhaps a 5 minute scene in which she falls for the joker and is tortured by him in various ways, again for reasons unexplained. Harleys on screen presence was relegated to either making quick jokes about the ensuing action, or to everyone's detriment, weird quirky "i'm so deep" comments, which will likely soon be sold on "Hot Topic" T-shirts across the nation.
All in all, Horrible film, don't see it, don't trust people who say its good. I love fun movies, I love comic book movies, I love basically all the Marvel DC lineup so far, and I would not hesitate to suggest 99% of them, even the more 'off' ones. This movie however, I would strongly suggest avoiding like the plague.
The Wicker Man (1973)
Really deep beneath the surface
So the general plot is that The police man (Howie) gets an anon letter from an island that says someones daughter is missing. Then through trial and tribulations abound, it is revealed to be a great conspiracy committed by the island so as to make a better crop yield in the forthcoming year. Now when I stopped watching that was my general take away from the film; nothing more than basic standard horror fare really, clever plot, but other than that not much else is unique.
BUT now that I have had time for the title to stew in my soul a little bit longer, I can't help but have a growing appreciation not only for the film as a standalone entity (the world/lore/etc is all ingeniously intricate and no corners were cut in regards to fleshing out this religion of the islanders). For me though, the greatest takeaway that I've really found is the revelation that Howie wasn't afraid. Not until it was far too late. He was so bull sure of his authority, of his churches authority, of his police badges authority, that he never questioned what would happen if everyone conspired to murder him. The idea of a murder conspiracy is spooky, but what's really horrifying is the fact that this man, who really could be any man, went to this island with certain preconceived notions in regards to the law of the land, and he managed to be completely wrong in every way, and he didn't even notice until he was being burned alive! It really begs the question of what kind of constants we as a race consider permanent and transcendent of culture, because you can swap out Howies beliefs for anyone's beliefs ( a la, your own) and possibly horrifyingly discover you too would be burned alive for stepping on the wrong toes.
Tl;Dr: Good horror movie, but once you digest it you realize the true horror isn't so much the content of this film itself but rather the message it portrays
Unfriended (2014)
Watched it on a laptop, delightfully meta.
Okay first off let me just preface this by saying that I thought it was going to be a terrible movie, and I only watched it for laughs.
But honestly, whereas at first I just had it on to be amused, towards the end I was actually kind of tickled? I guess the word would be. It's a delightfully meta movie; you have facebook messages, and skype messages, and people flipping between them, messaging each other with imessage, etc etc. As an IT support drone, It drove me halfway insane though; things that can't happen did happen, things that shouldn't happen did (without spoilers: The mouse has motion blur, (not a thing mac has), the "trojan finder" utilized at one point is ridiculous, and the one thing that really drove me up the wall is the fact that they would display artifacts on the film, as though it were being streamed? but as someone who wasn't streaming it, that was just somewhat off putting. but IGNORING all that.
The movie is pretty cool. Not good, not revolutionary, but very neat. Not really 'scary' but very spooky.
Tl;DR its like a horror short story, its a pretty okay movie based around a cool premise.
Snowpiercer (2013)
I have mixed feelings
Okay so it's difficult for me to write down my feelings, as I oscillate between liking this movie and hating it. On one hand it puts forth a quirky, neat, and interesting dystopian society wherein all of society is relegated to a train car, which is neat. BUT on the flip side, it falls prey to all of the overdone dystopian tropes of late; a la the wise john hurt figure who turns out to know more than he lets on, it basically pulls a matrix with the whole "the train is really fueled by people!" and the whole "your revolt was planned" thing. Cinematically it's a really fun movie, characters are very strange and quirky, for better or worse, and even though there were massive plot holes, I felt extremely invested.
To prevent myself from rambling further, basically this movie flys closer to Elysium than District 9, in that it presents a pretty hollow social commentary, has a lot of plot holes, but I think unlike Elysium, it has some heart, which makes it hard to review objectively.
If you like hard sci fi, don't watch this movie, don't even consider this movie. But if you like soft sci fi/dystopias, this is a pretty fun ride, though don't think about it too hard or it'll reveal how shallow its commentary really is.
Elysium (2013)
I'll try to be fair and unbiased
Okay, so Elysium, a film (without giving away any spoilers)about Immigration, the gap between rich and poor, and dystopia's. All fairly generic sci if, but where this film differs (in a way I personally dislike) is that it's rather heavy handed. by which I mean the citizens of 3rd-world-earth all speak Spanish, and all the people on Elysium speak either English, or french. This, for me is why it deserves a six star review. Ignoring these blunders however, it's a solid flick. Or rather its enjoyable. Is it a classic? no, far from it. But it's watchable, and ignoring the extremely ham fisted political commentary which you may or may not agree with, it's relatively well done, and gorgeous to look at.
In short: very political, which could please or disgust you, but beyond that it's enjoyable.
Equilibrium (2002)
Easily in my top ten
This movie is in my top ten; not because of its technical aspects, nor because of its unique story (as neither are really impressive). Best I can tell the story is completely taken from the novel "The Giver" with some gun-fu added.
And you know what? I've never loved a movie on first viewing (excluding pulp-fiction and memento) this much.
This movie is completely stolen, and in my opinion, nothing is unique, but for some reason thats completely okay, I personally don't mind, the soundtrack alone is good enough to necessitate viewing of this film. Christian Bale is an amazing actor, and in my opinion, this movie shows it exceptionally well. Allow me to elaborate, in movies your protagonist always goes through the story and plot and ends up becoming a better (or occasionally worse) person, right? Right. In this movie you can actually see it in Bale's acting, the way he speaks, the way he moves, the way he does everything in the first 20 mins are completely and utterly different from the last 20 mins.
In short, This movie may have most of its plot points stolen, and may imbibe too much gun-fu action for your tastes, but I daresay no movie has ever "clicked" with me so well. Its simple, its exciting, and its entertaining, and for that reason I will gladly give it 10/10