JudgeSteve Reviews

One Under the Sun (2017)

Incomprehensible Garbage

[1/10 · 28 December 2020]

I watched this on a Sunday afternoon during the pandemic because it's On Demand viewer rating was 88%. Ten minutes in, I had concluded that it must be a great story because it had no production value, stilted acting, and no discernible direction. It was like watching a really bad community theater play but with no lighting, no costumes, no sets. To call it amateurish would be to insult amateur thespians everywhere. I stuck around figuring for it to be a viewer favorite, there must be a message of tremendous depth and weight. After all, it is made clear very early on that the protagonist has been chosen to save humanity.

In the end, it's left unclear whether the world needs to be saved from its dependence on science and technology or from the willful ignorance born of religion. After having been told, several times, that the lead character has been given powers that will allow her to deliver her messianic message of redemption to the entire world in a single transmission, there simply is no message, no point, no climax, nothing. Just awful from beginning to end.

The Devil All the Time (2020)

Study in Trauma

[7/10 · 12 October 2020]

I am a state court trial judge. Every day I get to see, first hand, the worst things people can do to each other. And, every one of those people have a rationalization, or what they believe to be a rationalization. In the case of this film, the acting presents one spot on display delusional rationalization after another. Every character is deeply, deeply disturbed, although in most cases we don't really have enough development to know why. The central and most developed character is driven by his Appalachian, evangelical upbringing and a belief that he must right every wrong done to those important to him by any means necessary. And the means are always violent. From beginning to end this movie is violent. As I watched, I began to think much of the violence was gratuitous, for shock value. However, I began to see that it was conveyance of intergenerational trauma experienced by so many. As in life, the traumatic experiences suffered by the characters in this film are most often at the hands of those we expect to protect us. Clergy, parents, police.

There is nothing about this film that will make you feel good for having watched it except for knowing that, if you are disturbed, you are capable of empathy. This movie is based on a fictional novel but it is a very real study in the worst things people do to each other.

2067 (2020)

Suspension of disbelief is necessary

[6/10 · 11 October 2020]

I am a fan of what the Mothers of Invention called Cheapness. Science fiction movies, primarily from the 1950s and 1960s, in which you could tell Godzilla was a man in a rubber suit, or see the strings suspending the rocket against the black backdrop of outer space. This film, made in Australia, is a modern version of Cheapness. The time machine at the center of the story appears to be a large piece of concrete piping decorated with blinking lights and plastic tubing. There is absolutely no CGI and only one or two soundstage sets. Paintings are used to depict future cityscapes. The story is disconnected, the script straight-up-corny, and the antagonists predictable. But, if you relax and enjoy, without looking for the lack of continuity, it's entirely enjoyable escapism. I really don't think this movie takes itself too seriously and you shouldn't either.