KeyserSoze1988 Reviews

Civil War (2024)

They don't need to explain everything....

[9/10 · 15 April 2024]

Alex Garland started as a novelist and a screenwriter but he has also been a very impressive director. He has only directed four movies so far and, interestingly, they are vastly different from each other. However, all his movies have been excellent so far and today's movie was no different. Civil War is one of the finest movies of the year so far. This is masterful filmmaking and screenwriting with such layered characters. The filmmaker's voyeuristic approach towards an ongoing war felt like a collaborative experience with the filmmaker, the characters and the audience all on one side. The war felt unnecessary, brutal and ambivalent. This isn't a war movie and this choice makes it even a better movie than it should have been.

This is truly a work of a virtuoso. I hope it becomes a cult classic one day and I am sure it will. Highly highly highly recommended.

9.25/10.

Shoplifters (2018)

This movie broke me...

[9/10 · 27 January 2024]

Shoplifters (written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda) is 2018's one of the best rated movies on Metascore and that is one of the main reasons I ended up watching it yesterday. Oh boy, what a movie it is!

The movie shows a poor but loving/happy family living together in a very small house - consisting of a grandma, parents, a son, wife's sister and a little girl. They mostly depend on shoplifting to make ends meet and sometimes work together to collect the items they would need on daily basis. They come across a stranded little girl who might have died if they had not taken her in. They all form an immediate bond with her and start taking care of her collectively.

Some specific events unfold leading to some scary and disturbing revelations of every character in this movie. Some details were shown and some were implied. Each detail, while extremely disturbing, reveals the inadequacies in today's society and how blind/ignorant some of the seemingly composed people can get. These issues are deep-rooted in our society and there is no simple solution for such issues. We can probably acknowledge them or, in some way, try to fight them but this seems to be an everlasting war. And how is this all ever the kids' fault who are probably get most affected by everything that goes around them? These little kids are building memories everyday and we all have to be very careful with what they observe and take in.

This is one of the finest movies I have ever seen.

Oppenheimer (I) (2023)

The soundtrack needs to really quiet down sometimes

[6/10 · 30 July 2023]

Oppenheimer (2023):

I have seen every Christopher Nolan's movie - not in order but they should be seen in order. You can witness his growth as a director and the growing influence of production companies he's working for. His best movie is still Following (1998) which contained really long still shots with absolutely no soundtrack at all. Slowly, he or his bosses fell in love with Hans Zimmer and similar composers over the years - so much that there's never ever a 'quiet' scene in his movies anymore.

Talking about the editing techniques, with the help of cuts, he was able to show three different timelines in Following (1998). He went a bit overboard with this style in Memento (2000) and now it's reached the stage that it literally can cause headaches.

Oppenheimer (2023) was, sadly, an over-the-top blend of non-stop overly loud soundtrack and hundreds of cuts with a speculative approach towards the character and his emotions. There were so many unnecessary cuts that it felt impossible to care about any character. These "parallel" scenes were needed in Memento, Inception or maybe some of his other movies but why would you need to do something like this again in a biopic? Why was there a need of epic soundtrack when two characters were, for example, having a trivial conversation?

A few impressive things about the movie included strong acting performances from some really big names (but I couldn't care about any character just because scenes kept cutting for no reason) and an incredibly well crafted nuclear explosion scene with delayed sound effects - this was probably the closest thing to reality.

This movie could have been so much better if it weren't for the forced cheap tricks which, I'm beginning to think, he's very afraid to deviate from. No one talks about Following (1998) anymore and he probably understands that. He is stuck in his comfort zone and he won't ever get out of it. I recently found out that he's a fan of Terrence Malick which makes a lot of sense now. However, when Terrence Malick adopts this style, it works. That's the difference.

I couldn't like the movie. I tried. I really tried.

5.5/10.

Entourage: Return to Queens Blvd (2008) Season 5, Episode 12

The best episode of the season

[9/10 · 18 August 2018]

After watching the movie first (I know) and as a cinephile, I instantly wanted to see the whole tv series. I was, overall, disappointed. This might be the best episode of the series so far!

Minority Report (2002)

An incredible idea!!!

[8/10 · 26 September 2005]

This movie is a fantastic piece of work and i have liked the way the author has described his idea of the TITLE in this movie but some parts were still unclear. When i read the tagline it said that how would you feel if you had been arrested for a crime which you have not committed YET???i was like what the hell and how come its possible but in some parts of the movie there was unwanted exaggeration. However there were also some scenes showing his "flu" and other "Vomitable" stuff which was not the part of the movie and when ever i have my lunch that scene once goes through my mind. However in conclusion, this was an extremely perfect piece of work and it is very difficult to make a movie like this again even for the WRITER too.