Several women and one man get together to discuss the novels by the titular writer. They draw parallels between the works and their personal lives.
Formulaic chick flick, which draws on a notion that is both dangerous to life and demeaning to art: that you can use 19th-century fiction to illuminate 21st-century lives. As is always the case with chick flicks, the main purpose of a woman's life is to be in a "fulfilling" relationship. As for Austen, I only read one of her novels, and saw a bunch of film adaptations, practically none of which were retained in my memory. Perhaps the movie would seem better with that extra knowledge (and the original audio, instead of the Portuguese-dubbed one). As it is, it only entertained me superficially.
Rating: 40
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
The Associate (1996)
Based on the novel El socio, by Chilean writer Jenaro Prieto, first published in 1928, and on the movie L'associé (1979), which was based on that novel.
A black woman starting her own investment bank is having trouble attracting clients. She then invents a male partner to give her business more credibility.
Interesting comedy which however has a few plausibility problems, for example I dare say it is not as easy as that to make up a person nowadays, I am pretty sure there is a unified database of U.S.A. citizens, etc. Anyway, once a few concessions are made, the film is fairly enjoyable.
Rating: 50
A black woman starting her own investment bank is having trouble attracting clients. She then invents a male partner to give her business more credibility.
Interesting comedy which however has a few plausibility problems, for example I dare say it is not as easy as that to make up a person nowadays, I am pretty sure there is a unified database of U.S.A. citizens, etc. Anyway, once a few concessions are made, the film is fairly enjoyable.
Rating: 50
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
A teenage scientist invents a machine that converts water into food. An accident occurs which alters the weather of the town where he lives in a most peculiar manner.
Considering the mind-numbing idiocy of most recent big-studio animations, this is a breath of fresh air. The extravagant premise and the bits of political and social satire, combined with some impressive visuals, make this a very watchable movie, even if you are older than the target audience.
Rating: 63
Considering the mind-numbing idiocy of most recent big-studio animations, this is a breath of fresh air. The extravagant premise and the bits of political and social satire, combined with some impressive visuals, make this a very watchable movie, even if you are older than the target audience.
Rating: 63
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
A young loan officer at a bank refuses an extension on a mortgage and is then cursed by her client, an elderly woman. The young woman begins to experience strange hallucinations, and decides to consult with a seer.
Effective horror, with some virtuosic set-pieces. Some grostesque elements are a bit over-repetitive, though. The second half of the movie loses some steam as it pursues the supernatural premise to the last consequences, forgoing somewhat the humorous aspect which was strong in the first half. Some astute viewers noticed several hints pointing toward her hallucinations being caused by an eating disorder. Some people have pointed out similarities with Thinner (1996) and Night of the Demon (1957).
Rating: 62
Effective horror, with some virtuosic set-pieces. Some grostesque elements are a bit over-repetitive, though. The second half of the movie loses some steam as it pursues the supernatural premise to the last consequences, forgoing somewhat the humorous aspect which was strong in the first half. Some astute viewers noticed several hints pointing toward her hallucinations being caused by an eating disorder. Some people have pointed out similarities with Thinner (1996) and Night of the Demon (1957).
Rating: 62
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
I girasoli (1970)
English title: Sunflower
Italy, in the days of World War II. Antonio meets Giovanna and during a few days they love each other. Antonio is due to embark to the Russian front, and Giovanna suggests they get married so he gets a few more days in Italy.
Not especially plausible tearjerker. The central plot points are exceedingly simple, yet often get, all the same, spelled out in the form of casual dialogue or lengthy explanations given by characters to each other. It has a very melodious yet a tad overbearing score, and location shooting in the Soviet Union. Speaking of which, how about some History to wrap this review up? As is becoming a habit of mine, I pulled it from the user review section in IMDB, where Mihnea the Pitbull writes the following:
[quote]
(...) Fact is that it's literally IMPOSSIBLE for any missing-in-action Italian (or German, if we come at that) soldier, to have been cutely integrated in the Russian society. The N.K.V.D. was everywhere, and any such foreigner would have been found in a matter of weeks (months, at most), and treated like a spy. The Georgian Butcher was reserving the same fate even to the Russian soldiers who fell prisoners to the enemy: his paranoia dictating that the only explanation for having survived was defection, they were considered by default traitors and sent to the Gulag. So, our poor Mastroianni here, far of happily living ever after with Savelieva, would have been deported to Vorkuta or Ekibastuz, as a spy, for 10 years (or, rather, 25 - these being the standard imprisoning terms). After being released (in case he survived the abuses of the extermination camps), he would have been forced to live in exile (forced domicile), still in some village of Siberia or the Central Asia deserts. No way in hell for him even to travel in some other Russian township, close by - while the idea of coming back to Italy for a visit is as ludicrous as sending him to Mars.
(...)
[unquote]
I saw a cut version, dubbed in English.
Rating: 45
Italy, in the days of World War II. Antonio meets Giovanna and during a few days they love each other. Antonio is due to embark to the Russian front, and Giovanna suggests they get married so he gets a few more days in Italy.
Not especially plausible tearjerker. The central plot points are exceedingly simple, yet often get, all the same, spelled out in the form of casual dialogue or lengthy explanations given by characters to each other. It has a very melodious yet a tad overbearing score, and location shooting in the Soviet Union. Speaking of which, how about some History to wrap this review up? As is becoming a habit of mine, I pulled it from the user review section in IMDB, where Mihnea the Pitbull writes the following:
[quote]
(...) Fact is that it's literally IMPOSSIBLE for any missing-in-action Italian (or German, if we come at that) soldier, to have been cutely integrated in the Russian society. The N.K.V.D. was everywhere, and any such foreigner would have been found in a matter of weeks (months, at most), and treated like a spy. The Georgian Butcher was reserving the same fate even to the Russian soldiers who fell prisoners to the enemy: his paranoia dictating that the only explanation for having survived was defection, they were considered by default traitors and sent to the Gulag. So, our poor Mastroianni here, far of happily living ever after with Savelieva, would have been deported to Vorkuta or Ekibastuz, as a spy, for 10 years (or, rather, 25 - these being the standard imprisoning terms). After being released (in case he survived the abuses of the extermination camps), he would have been forced to live in exile (forced domicile), still in some village of Siberia or the Central Asia deserts. No way in hell for him even to travel in some other Russian township, close by - while the idea of coming back to Italy for a visit is as ludicrous as sending him to Mars.
(...)
[unquote]
I saw a cut version, dubbed in English.
Rating: 45
Monday, September 16, 2013
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Second viewing; the first was before 1987.
Beginning shortly before the Russian revolution, it tells the story of an upper-class physician who falls in love with a lower-class nurse nicknamed Lara, both being married to someone else. Several characters enter into the plot: the lecherous attorney who covets Lara, Yuri's half-brother who is a bolshevik who makes a career in the Red Army after the revolution, Lara's husband who initially is a menshevik but later becomes a bolshevik, etc., all against the background of the upheavals occurring in Russia (World War I, the Revolution, the Civil War, etc.).
The clearly melodramatic plot has, against all odds, people reencountering one another no matter how remote and haphazard their location is. Despite that, I think the movie gives a pretty good idea of what communism did to the country. Another of the movie's pluses is the sheer richness of imagery contained in it.
Seen in pan-and-scan and partly dubbed in Portuguese.
Rating: 51 (up from 47)
Beginning shortly before the Russian revolution, it tells the story of an upper-class physician who falls in love with a lower-class nurse nicknamed Lara, both being married to someone else. Several characters enter into the plot: the lecherous attorney who covets Lara, Yuri's half-brother who is a bolshevik who makes a career in the Red Army after the revolution, Lara's husband who initially is a menshevik but later becomes a bolshevik, etc., all against the background of the upheavals occurring in Russia (World War I, the Revolution, the Civil War, etc.).
The clearly melodramatic plot has, against all odds, people reencountering one another no matter how remote and haphazard their location is. Despite that, I think the movie gives a pretty good idea of what communism did to the country. Another of the movie's pluses is the sheer richness of imagery contained in it.
Seen in pan-and-scan and partly dubbed in Portuguese.
Rating: 51 (up from 47)
Shanghai Knights (2003)
1887. Wang -- a Chinese man who has moved to America and is now a sheriff in a small Western town -- receives word from China that his father has been killed and the Imperial Seal -- of which the latter was the guardian -- has been stolen. Wang's sister has tracked the thief to London, to where Wang and a friend he picks up in New York head.
Passable entertainment, with an absurd plotline and jokes and fight sequences mostly rehashed from older movies.
Seen partly dubbed in Portuguese.
Rating: 50
Passable entertainment, with an absurd plotline and jokes and fight sequences mostly rehashed from older movies.
Seen partly dubbed in Portuguese.
Rating: 50
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Torque (2004)
Ford is coming back to town, after some time away in Thailand. He tries to win back his girlfriend who is pissed off over his having disappeared prior to a police raid. The day he left he took with him (and later hid) some motorcycles belonging to Henry, a biker gang leader; the bikes contain a drug load belonging to Henry. Henry is trying to make a cooperation deal with Trey, who leads another gang and also is drug dealer.
Comic-book-style script wrapped up in flashy technique and cartoonish action sequences. Watchable provided you are in the mood for this sort of thing.
Seen about two-thirds with the original audio and the remaining third dubbed in Portuguese.
Rating: 35
Comic-book-style script wrapped up in flashy technique and cartoonish action sequences. Watchable provided you are in the mood for this sort of thing.
Seen about two-thirds with the original audio and the remaining third dubbed in Portuguese.
Rating: 35
Monday, September 09, 2013
12 to the Moon (1960)
An expedition led by an American and comprised by a crew of eleven others, each from a different country, sets out to travel to the moon.
Hilariously incompetent sci-fi. As is sometimes the case, IMDB has a user-made review that is short and to the point, and which I will transcribe here (the author is Carolyn Paetow):
[quote]
Could any space flick be worse than The Angry Red Planet? Yes, it could. The script for the disaster at hand is so dopey and disjointed that it could have been scrawled out in crayon by a classroom of third-graders, each child submitting a short scene that teacher then patched together, helter-skelter. As for the actors, some of them are without doubt competent. They've exhibited this in other movies. But, here, with such dipsticky dialogue, no one could ever know. It makes it easy to understand why Tom Conway turned to drink and died broke. The story starts with a big strike against it: twelve characters with little to distinguish most of them. There are nine white guys, two women--Swedish and Japanese--and a Nigerian man whose accent never sounds West African and sometimes slips into Southern American. The hatch is scarcely secured when the inter-ethnic squabbling and recriminations start. Didn't these people get acquainted before blasting off in a rocket? From the amorous behavior of the females with two of the males, one would think so. But maybe there's something in the air--or lack of it. There must be some air, even on the moon, since the spacesuits don't have visors. The ship itself, with its bare-bones instrumentation and lack of even a beep or buzz, must be of such advanced technology that it all but runs itself. But, no, that can't be right. The teen math whiz has to use paper and pen to calculate a path through a meteor shower. The medical personnel has to struggle with wrap-around blood pressure cuffs--which they obviously don't know how to use. The only recorder on board--oh, forget it. There are, in addition to the dozen humans, two cats and two monkeys in plastic cases, two parakeets in a traditional cage, and one spaniel on a leash. The boy genius tells them they've been brought along to see if they'll mate on the moon. In the doggie's case, the answer is probably no. One silly circumstance follows another, but maybe the most asinine is that involving a screen-scrolled message from the Moonmen. Although it's somehow known that they communicate only telepathically, they have chosen to relay a series of repetitious, somewhat hieroglyphic-looking symbols. One crew member decides that the writing looks Chinese (it doesn't) so the Japanese woman is told to translate. She does, without a hitch. Now, who but a very young child could make such an assumption?
[unquote]
Concerning some interesting facts about the film's cinematographer there is another review, also by an IMDB user, which I will also transcribe here but for the last paragraph (the author is boblipton):
[quote]
I have given this movie a rating of 1 because I don't know how to describe the feelings of anger and confusion that washed over me as I watched it. Twelve scientists go to the moon -- taking a cocker spaniel on a leash with them, wouldn't want it to run away -- and the story, though well-intentioned, was tripe, the acting was horrible, the dialogue was stupid and even the science was idiotic gobbledygook -- in 1960 the screenwriters felt no need for anyone to express surprise when there was plenty of breathable air on the moon.
Yes, it clearly had a budget, something in advance of the usual Roger Corman shot-on-three-days-with-what-we-found-in-the-payphone-slot amount of money. But I was getting angry because I couldn't stop watching, even as I wanted to turn the sound off, or at least jab an icepick into my ears. What was going on here...... and then it hit me: they had John Alton as the Director of Photography!
Who, you ask, is John Alton? Well, I would suggest you go over to his IMDb page and see for yourself, but let's put it this way: when you're shooting pictures, the DP is important. A great one can make a mediocre movie great. A bad one can ruin the world's greatest script, director and cast. And in the subjective and opinionated world of commercial art that is film making, if I told you that X was the greatest cinematographer ever, you'd look at me like I was crazy. But if I went before a meeting of the American Society of Cinematographers and announced "John Alton was the greatest cinematographer ever!" The reaction would probably be "Well, I think so-and-so had a little more on the ball, but not a bad choice."
Well, you say to yourself, everyone has his ups and downs, some great careers end badly, sometimes there are no comebacks. But that's not what happened here. Alton was assigned this movie, shot it in his usual impeccable fashion, then went on to his next assignment, Richard Brooks' ELMER GANTRY, then quit. Just went away and didn't keep in touch, and when he called up a third of a century later to ask for tickets to an exhibit for his work that he had heard about -- it's my stuff, at least you can comp me in -- they were surprised he wasn't dead. He explained that it just wasn't worth it. He had enough money, so he left And he lived happily for the next 35 years. And this is the movie -- or one of the movies -- that made him decide to leave. And not shoot, what, twenty, thirty, forty a hundred other movies that could have been great or greater because of his sure touch? Because while it must have been nice to work on great pictures like AN American IN Paris and ELMER GANTRY, he must have felt like a schmuck coming in to work on stuff like this. because the front office told him to. So he looked at his bank book and quit.
[unquote]
Well, this was another lazy review (mine, I mean, not the ones I quoted), and of course now I will give you the movie's rating.
Rating: 14
Hilariously incompetent sci-fi. As is sometimes the case, IMDB has a user-made review that is short and to the point, and which I will transcribe here (the author is Carolyn Paetow):
[quote]
Could any space flick be worse than The Angry Red Planet? Yes, it could. The script for the disaster at hand is so dopey and disjointed that it could have been scrawled out in crayon by a classroom of third-graders, each child submitting a short scene that teacher then patched together, helter-skelter. As for the actors, some of them are without doubt competent. They've exhibited this in other movies. But, here, with such dipsticky dialogue, no one could ever know. It makes it easy to understand why Tom Conway turned to drink and died broke. The story starts with a big strike against it: twelve characters with little to distinguish most of them. There are nine white guys, two women--Swedish and Japanese--and a Nigerian man whose accent never sounds West African and sometimes slips into Southern American. The hatch is scarcely secured when the inter-ethnic squabbling and recriminations start. Didn't these people get acquainted before blasting off in a rocket? From the amorous behavior of the females with two of the males, one would think so. But maybe there's something in the air--or lack of it. There must be some air, even on the moon, since the spacesuits don't have visors. The ship itself, with its bare-bones instrumentation and lack of even a beep or buzz, must be of such advanced technology that it all but runs itself. But, no, that can't be right. The teen math whiz has to use paper and pen to calculate a path through a meteor shower. The medical personnel has to struggle with wrap-around blood pressure cuffs--which they obviously don't know how to use. The only recorder on board--oh, forget it. There are, in addition to the dozen humans, two cats and two monkeys in plastic cases, two parakeets in a traditional cage, and one spaniel on a leash. The boy genius tells them they've been brought along to see if they'll mate on the moon. In the doggie's case, the answer is probably no. One silly circumstance follows another, but maybe the most asinine is that involving a screen-scrolled message from the Moonmen. Although it's somehow known that they communicate only telepathically, they have chosen to relay a series of repetitious, somewhat hieroglyphic-looking symbols. One crew member decides that the writing looks Chinese (it doesn't) so the Japanese woman is told to translate. She does, without a hitch. Now, who but a very young child could make such an assumption?
[unquote]
Concerning some interesting facts about the film's cinematographer there is another review, also by an IMDB user, which I will also transcribe here but for the last paragraph (the author is boblipton):
[quote]
I have given this movie a rating of 1 because I don't know how to describe the feelings of anger and confusion that washed over me as I watched it. Twelve scientists go to the moon -- taking a cocker spaniel on a leash with them, wouldn't want it to run away -- and the story, though well-intentioned, was tripe, the acting was horrible, the dialogue was stupid and even the science was idiotic gobbledygook -- in 1960 the screenwriters felt no need for anyone to express surprise when there was plenty of breathable air on the moon.
Yes, it clearly had a budget, something in advance of the usual Roger Corman shot-on-three-days-with-what-we-found-in-the-payphone-slot amount of money. But I was getting angry because I couldn't stop watching, even as I wanted to turn the sound off, or at least jab an icepick into my ears. What was going on here...... and then it hit me: they had John Alton as the Director of Photography!
Who, you ask, is John Alton? Well, I would suggest you go over to his IMDb page and see for yourself, but let's put it this way: when you're shooting pictures, the DP is important. A great one can make a mediocre movie great. A bad one can ruin the world's greatest script, director and cast. And in the subjective and opinionated world of commercial art that is film making, if I told you that X was the greatest cinematographer ever, you'd look at me like I was crazy. But if I went before a meeting of the American Society of Cinematographers and announced "John Alton was the greatest cinematographer ever!" The reaction would probably be "Well, I think so-and-so had a little more on the ball, but not a bad choice."
Well, you say to yourself, everyone has his ups and downs, some great careers end badly, sometimes there are no comebacks. But that's not what happened here. Alton was assigned this movie, shot it in his usual impeccable fashion, then went on to his next assignment, Richard Brooks' ELMER GANTRY, then quit. Just went away and didn't keep in touch, and when he called up a third of a century later to ask for tickets to an exhibit for his work that he had heard about -- it's my stuff, at least you can comp me in -- they were surprised he wasn't dead. He explained that it just wasn't worth it. He had enough money, so he left And he lived happily for the next 35 years. And this is the movie -- or one of the movies -- that made him decide to leave. And not shoot, what, twenty, thirty, forty a hundred other movies that could have been great or greater because of his sure touch? Because while it must have been nice to work on great pictures like AN American IN Paris and ELMER GANTRY, he must have felt like a schmuck coming in to work on stuff like this. because the front office told him to. So he looked at his bank book and quit.
[unquote]
Well, this was another lazy review (mine, I mean, not the ones I quoted), and of course now I will give you the movie's rating.
Rating: 14
Saturday, September 07, 2013
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
An invalid woman alone in her apartment accidentally overhears a telephone conversation about a murder plot.
Everybody stinks except some minor characters; they call that film noir. In good old ancient Greece days, people of high extraction made mistakes in plays and suffered a magnificent death. In late-40s films noirs, their extraction is not as high, and their death is not as magnificent. The plot is full of coincidences. IMDB user miriamwebster shrewdly observed:
[quote]
Basic plot rips long arm of coincidence out of its socket--screechy self-centered invalid is accidentally patched into phone call where she overhears two men plotting a murder--her own! (What are the odds?)
[unquote]
One might ask the same question regarding the fact that the district attorney is married to, of all people, the heroine's school friend and love rival. Another observant IMDB user (lucyrfisher) deserves to be quoted in extenso:
[quote]
I love movies of this era for the social comment. I like the glimpses we get of the characters' lives. Dr Alexander with his younger girlfriend in a sleazy nightclub, for instance. (I doubt that "cardiac neurotic" is still in the DSM as a diagnosis.) Sally Hunt lives in one of those New York apartments with a strange layout - you come straight into the kitchen, and all the other rooms seem to open off it. The little boy sleeps in a closet screened off only by a curtain. And if Barbara Stanwyck is so rich, surely she could afford to live somewhere quieter? Is Staten Island really semi-deserted? Who would build a clapboard Victorian house on a beach and name it "20 Dunstan Terrace"? Where are numbers 1-19? Why does Sally Hunt have a peculiar English accent? And why does Waldo Evans waffle about growing up in Surrey among horses, and his longing to buy a little place in "Dorking, England"?
[unquote]
Anyway, this is the end of this rather tired review (mine, I mean, not the ones I quoted). And now you get my rating.
Rating: 51
Everybody stinks except some minor characters; they call that film noir. In good old ancient Greece days, people of high extraction made mistakes in plays and suffered a magnificent death. In late-40s films noirs, their extraction is not as high, and their death is not as magnificent. The plot is full of coincidences. IMDB user miriamwebster shrewdly observed:
[quote]
Basic plot rips long arm of coincidence out of its socket--screechy self-centered invalid is accidentally patched into phone call where she overhears two men plotting a murder--her own! (What are the odds?)
[unquote]
One might ask the same question regarding the fact that the district attorney is married to, of all people, the heroine's school friend and love rival. Another observant IMDB user (lucyrfisher) deserves to be quoted in extenso:
[quote]
I love movies of this era for the social comment. I like the glimpses we get of the characters' lives. Dr Alexander with his younger girlfriend in a sleazy nightclub, for instance. (I doubt that "cardiac neurotic" is still in the DSM as a diagnosis.) Sally Hunt lives in one of those New York apartments with a strange layout - you come straight into the kitchen, and all the other rooms seem to open off it. The little boy sleeps in a closet screened off only by a curtain. And if Barbara Stanwyck is so rich, surely she could afford to live somewhere quieter? Is Staten Island really semi-deserted? Who would build a clapboard Victorian house on a beach and name it "20 Dunstan Terrace"? Where are numbers 1-19? Why does Sally Hunt have a peculiar English accent? And why does Waldo Evans waffle about growing up in Surrey among horses, and his longing to buy a little place in "Dorking, England"?
[unquote]
Anyway, this is the end of this rather tired review (mine, I mean, not the ones I quoted). And now you get my rating.
Rating: 51
Thursday, September 05, 2013
The Fourth War (1990)
An American colonel with a temper problem is assigned to a patrol post in the border of West Germany and Czechoslovakia. He soon gets into a conflict with the Soviet colonel who is in charge of the other side of the border.
At about half an hour into the movie I thought it showed some promise as a comedy, but found it strange that the director seemed to ignore any comic potential, conducting the film with such dramatic tautness one would think this was another First Blood installment. Anyway, the promise was not fulfilled, and the film ends with a pacifist message which assumes that economic factors are irrelevant, wars beig merely the product of certain people's psychological immaturity.
Rating: 30
At about half an hour into the movie I thought it showed some promise as a comedy, but found it strange that the director seemed to ignore any comic potential, conducting the film with such dramatic tautness one would think this was another First Blood installment. Anyway, the promise was not fulfilled, and the film ends with a pacifist message which assumes that economic factors are irrelevant, wars beig merely the product of certain people's psychological immaturity.
Rating: 30
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
The Net (1995)
On September 8, 2013, after hearing an astounding news story on TV, I have decided to edit this posting. The movie's synopsis will not be altered, and is the following:
A computer analyst gets into a lot of trouble because of a computer disk which is sent to her by a friend. Said disk has the power of invading government computers.
The comment below, on the other hand, can no longer be sustained:
Suspense thriller the mcguffin of which is a completely implausible computer fraud. The action proper is also completely implausible, and so is the main character. All these levels of implausibility place the film on a decidedly abstract dimension at which any thought of an underlying structure is futile. I guess that makes it postmodern; nay, I am sure of that. You get to watch a rehash of several topoi of suspense cinema -- the carnival sequence, the boat sequence, the car sequence, the elevating bridge sequence, etc. At the end you will feel like the protagonist's alzheimer-ridden mother: mindlessly happy, unable to say who these people are, what world they live in, and what you are doing in there. Wait a minute -- we may have found that underlying structure...
The above, I repeat, can no longer be sustained in its entirety, although a critical reading of it may still give you an insight into some aspects of the film. If the news story I mentioned above is correct, the film was either prophetic about real occurrences, or provided the idea that originated them. The idea I am referring to is that of networks with an in-built vulnerability. In real life, governments were reportedly responsible for, and took advantage of, that vulnerability, whereas in the movie that was done by an evil guy in the private sector. I also recoil from the demeaning remarks about the film's art, which I called a "rehash". All things considered (and some do not have to do with any piece of news), this was a watchable suspense thriller done with competent technique and containing a few good ideas.
Rating: 50 (instead of the earlier 31)
A computer analyst gets into a lot of trouble because of a computer disk which is sent to her by a friend. Said disk has the power of invading government computers.
The comment below, on the other hand, can no longer be sustained:
Suspense thriller the mcguffin of which is a completely implausible computer fraud. The action proper is also completely implausible, and so is the main character. All these levels of implausibility place the film on a decidedly abstract dimension at which any thought of an underlying structure is futile. I guess that makes it postmodern; nay, I am sure of that. You get to watch a rehash of several topoi of suspense cinema -- the carnival sequence, the boat sequence, the car sequence, the elevating bridge sequence, etc. At the end you will feel like the protagonist's alzheimer-ridden mother: mindlessly happy, unable to say who these people are, what world they live in, and what you are doing in there. Wait a minute -- we may have found that underlying structure...
The above, I repeat, can no longer be sustained in its entirety, although a critical reading of it may still give you an insight into some aspects of the film. If the news story I mentioned above is correct, the film was either prophetic about real occurrences, or provided the idea that originated them. The idea I am referring to is that of networks with an in-built vulnerability. In real life, governments were reportedly responsible for, and took advantage of, that vulnerability, whereas in the movie that was done by an evil guy in the private sector. I also recoil from the demeaning remarks about the film's art, which I called a "rehash". All things considered (and some do not have to do with any piece of news), this was a watchable suspense thriller done with competent technique and containing a few good ideas.
Rating: 50 (instead of the earlier 31)
Monday, September 02, 2013
In the Loop (2009)
It's question of an invasion of a Middle East country. A British government minister makes some ambiguous statements, which arouse his superior's rage. They all go to Washington to find more about a secret war committee. Said minister brings his new young assistant with him. They both get in a lot of trouble.
British sitcom-style humor (later I found out that it is indeed a spinoff of an existing sitcom). It is reasonably well-made, mostly thanks to the competent acting. The lines of dialogue are filled with mediatic references, and are perhaps more incisively satirical than what is being made in America these days (but I am not keeping up with stuff, so you should probably disregard this comment).
Rating: 59
British sitcom-style humor (later I found out that it is indeed a spinoff of an existing sitcom). It is reasonably well-made, mostly thanks to the competent acting. The lines of dialogue are filled with mediatic references, and are perhaps more incisively satirical than what is being made in America these days (but I am not keeping up with stuff, so you should probably disregard this comment).
Rating: 59
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