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But the way teens are represented is very unrealistic. We dont go to parties or drink or anything. We sit around and do nothing. Sometimes chat with each other but nothing too dangerous.
Guessing you’re not American since this is what American teens do.

The last movie i watched was Ocean's 8
... you yourself can imagine that movie is a masterpiece.
Not me. I thought it was atrocious.

I'm a big fan of Andrea Riseborough
Me too.
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Almost bailed out, but managed to finish. Brad Pitt made this movie for me. Very slow & some very implausible scenes.



Very interesting & absorbing true-life story. Anyone or any corporation that pollutes water should be shot on sight.





From Paris with Love (2010)

Oh, man. What a mess. Mild(ish) mannered embassy worker (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) gets partnered with over-the-top American spy (John Travolta) and must work to thwart various nefarious plots.

It can be really fun to watch a thriller. It can be really fun to watch an over-the-top, cartoonish action movie. From Paris With Love never seems to decide which one it is. The plot itself is not bad, and there are some fun twists and turns along the way. But the cliches pile up in a way that's super lazy and it comes off as racist and sexist at the same time. How to identify the bad people in this movie? Are they white men? Good guys. Are they non-white? Are they women? Watch out! And it's not just like, one group. There are the evil Asian characters. Then they travel to a different location and encounter the evil Black characters. Then they get down to the evil Middle Eastern characters. This might seem like an exaggeration, but it is true almost to the letter.

I also didn't fall for Travolta's "lovable rogue" character. You can tell from the way that his character is filmed and the musical cues that his behavior is meant to be charming. But I found his behavior both immoral and obnoxious. Pointing a gun at a woman and then having sex with her while she's still their hostage? Allowing innocent police officers to be killed? Monologuing about profanity at the airport? You can just feel how cool the writer thought these moments are, but for me they landed with a thud. The worst part is Travolta delivering a line about a "Royale with cheese", and he at least has the decency to look embarrassed as he says it.

The "bad boy" secret agent can be a fun trope, but here it's done so lazily that . . .blah. A waste of time. I kept pausing the film to see how many minutes were left.


I enjoyed this film. I haven't seen it in while but it was fun to watch Travolta let loose with such a wild character. I thought the plot was decent and the twist at the end came as a surprise. Then again I'm a fan of action films so I judge them less harshly than most people. As for the whole "all the non-white guys are evil" angle, I honestly never noticed but I as I recall the plot was focused on hunting down Islamic terrorists and they're almost always non-white so I have no issues with it.



matt72582's Avatar
Please Quote/Tag Or I'll Miss Your Responses
Voyeur - 7.5/10
I was looking for something on Netflix (since most of it is crap, but hey, free trial) and saw "Voyeur". It could have been made better. It started to go downhill towards the end, when a lot of focus was on the write, Gay Talese, and some discrepancies, but it would have been nice if they would have had someone with an interest in voyeurism going into the psychology of it, or maybe the details of observation.
Watching the watcher is now the new role for this voyeur.




I enjoyed this film. I haven't seen it in while but it was fun to watch Travolta let loose with such a wild character. I thought the plot was decent and the twist at the end came as a surprise. Then again I'm a fan of action films so I judge them less harshly than most people.
I love action movies and I just hold them to a "fun" standard. This one did not deliver. Wax (which also that name is *thumbs down*) felt more like someone *trying* to let loose than a truly spontaneous character.

As for the whole "all the non-white guys are evil" angle, I honestly never noticed but I as I recall the plot was focused on hunting down Islamic terrorists and they're almost always non-white so I have no issues with it.
To me it was a step beyond the typical action thing of "vague Middle East terrorists".

There were three separate groups involved in the drug trade/plot. First, there were the Chinese characters--bad guys. Then there were the Black characters, also bad guys. THEN you got to the Pakistani terrorist characters. There were no good (or, heck, neutral) non-white characters. Around halfway through the movie it started to feel like a bad joke.

Then they introduced
WARNING: spoilers below
Amber Revah's character (really like her from The Punisher) and I was like "Oh, okay, they're balancing things out." Not a minute later Travolta's character shoots her in the head. I actually laughed out loud when the fiance goes "She's Pakistani, that doesn't mean she's a terrorist!". I was like, "Lady, clearly you don't know what movie you're in."

The master planner of it all is a character whose name we barely learn and who has no personality beyond "angry Muslim man".

And I had to laugh when the main character is talking about his FIANCE and he's like "Yeah, I never asked her about her family. I know nothing about her." You got to the point of being engaged to someone and you never asked about her family?! You know "nothing about her"?! We learn that she's converted to Islam but are never given a reason why, or a reason why she is willing to kill herself and many other people.

I spent a lot of the film thinking that the twist was going to be that Travolta's character was actually NOT who he said he was and that he was going to turn out to be the bad guy. He was so unethical and reckless (repeatedly causing death and injury to innocent bystanders, all with zero remorse).

When the film ended with the two character playing chess next to the plane(???????), I was like "How high were the people who wrote this movie?".


I will praise the film for some really good driving stuntwork in the chase scene. That was maybe the only part of the film that I found genuinely gripping.

As a whole, though, I thought it was a cliched mess, even if you lower the bar to account for the genre.



I love action movies and I just hold them to a "fun" standard. This one did not deliver. Wax (which also that name is *thumbs down*) felt more like someone *trying* to let loose than a truly spontaneous character.



To me it was a step beyond the typical action thing of "vague Middle East terrorists".

There were three separate groups involved in the drug trade/plot. First, there were the Chinese characters--bad guys. Then there were the Black characters, also bad guys. THEN you got to the Pakistani terrorist characters. There were no good (or, heck, neutral) non-white characters. Around halfway through the movie it started to feel like a bad joke.

Then they introduced
WARNING: spoilers below
Amber Revah's character (really like her from The Punisher) and I was like "Oh, okay, they're balancing things out." Not a minute later Travolta's character shoots her in the head. I actually laughed out loud when the fiance goes "She's Pakistani, that doesn't mean she's a terrorist!". I was like, "Lady, clearly you don't know what movie you're in."

The master planner of it all is a character whose name we barely learn and who has no personality beyond "angry Muslim man".

And I had to laugh when the main character is talking about his FIANCE and he's like "Yeah, I never asked her about her family. I know nothing about her." You got to the point of being engaged to someone and you never asked about her family?! You know "nothing about her"?! We learn that she's converted to Islam but are never given a reason why, or a reason why she is willing to kill herself and many other people.

I spent a lot of the film thinking that the twist was going to be that Travolta's character was actually NOT who he said he was and that he was going to turn out to be the bad guy. He was so unethical and reckless (repeatedly causing death and injury to innocent bystanders, all with zero remorse).

When the film ended with the two character playing chess next to the plane(???????), I was like "How high were the people who wrote this movie?".


I will praise the film for some really good driving stuntwork in the chase scene. That was maybe the only part of the film that I found genuinely gripping.

As a whole, though, I thought it was a cliched mess, even if you lower the bar to account for the genre.

I'm not saying it was a high quality film, just that I enjoyed it for what it was. I know some people are very sensitive to race but it didn't bother me, in fact it's refreshing in today's climate where often the straight white man is either evil or incompetent and the women and ethnic minorities are the smart, strong heroic characters.



I'm not saying it was a high quality film, just that I enjoyed it for what it was. I know some people are very sensitive to race but it didn't bother me, in fact it's refreshing in today's climate where often the straight white man is either evil or incompetent and the women and ethnic minorities are the smart, strong heroic characters.
From my point of view Middle Eastern terrorists/bad guys are the lazy trope, not a refreshing departure.

The idea of
WARNING: spoilers below
his fiance having played him and used him just to get insight into the details about the summit is a decent twist. But the film totally fails to bridge this betrayal (by a white woman) to the Islamic terrorist plot. Again--this white woman was radicalized how? And when? And why? The main character is said to have done a background check on her, and yet he "knows nothing" about her?

The film develops neither villain--the generic Middle East terrorist man or the fiance--and it means that there's just nothing to grab onto. I didn't find the relationship between the two main characters that compelling, and in the end the film wants us to care about the main character having to kill the fiance. I felt nothing. When it comes to the storytelling rule of "show, don't tell" it fails at showing us critical information about either baddie.


Honestly, though, the lazy racism wasn't even my main problem with the film. I thought that the writing was poor, the tone was inconsistent, it did a poor job of building stakes, and the chemistry between the two leads fell flat. Luc Besson wrote the story, but the actual screenplay was completed by a different writer. And you can feel the film straining for the manic/outlandish tone that marks so much of Besson's work and just failing to achieve it.

Again, Travolta's embarrassed expression as he delivers the "Royale with cheese" line summed it all up for me.

I'm not mad about someone liking this as dumb fun. Like you say, "for what it is". I like a lot of films that are lazy and cliched in their own way. But I set a pretty low bar in my head--I just wanted some dumb fun action for a late night film--and I felt let down. Should have gone with something Scott Adkins.



VFW (2019)

A group of war veterans must defend their local VFW post against a deranged drug dealer and his relentless army of punk mutants

Oh hell that was quality with the most nostalgia inspiring cast I think I have ever seen, bad lighting, really gritty camera, tons of gore (albeit colourless) and a throbbing bassy soundtrack.. Stephen Lang (the blind guy from Don't Breath) is terrific in this.. they all are.. its the dialogue and commadrie between them that overshadows any negatives from the film, genuinely funny and believable.. you even have the kobra kai sensei from the karate kids films as one of the vets, Im so pleased I knew nothing about this going in, it was a joy to behold.

Fred Williamson and William Saddler are in this movie lol

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The Hunt (2020)




I loved the idea and enjoyed it quite a bit, but it could've and should've been so much better. The action and violence was well done and I liked how it made fun of the differences in stereotypes between liberals and real people. The lead actress was pretty good.



Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)

This, for me, was more interesting than the actual film itself (which I've recently watched the "REDUX" version of). It's well known the production difficulties this film had but the background of FFC wanting to make it for the longest time was really enthralling. Think he says that being a director is one of the last jobs you can be a dictator in. Also his sage words drawing parallels between the Vietnam War and his film crew...lost in the jungle with too many gadgets.

I rated Apocalypse now fairly tepidly but their a great look into the artists eye/camera.




Borg vs McEnroe (2017)

I was huge fan of tennis as a lad and this was the rivalry that whetted the whistle. Different attitudes and different styles (base-liner vs serve and volley). Pleasantly surprised that, as a sports film, it really keeps the narrative tight and both performances are interesting. Shia LaBeouf looks dorky and self-obsessed as "SuperMac" and Sverrir Gudnason does well as the ice cool Swede that superstardom does not sit comfortably with. 2 minor issues, Borg was a V-shape with shoulders that would fit a "zoot-soot" and that was not well portrayed but the acting was great.

2nd issue, I'm not 7 anymore watching these guys go at it Still amazes me that Borg really retired at 26...both were great athletes.






THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE
(1976)

First viewing. A TV movie that stars John Travolta right before he made Saturday Night Fever and becoming a big movie star playing a kid who is quarantined in a bubble due to an immunity disorder he was born with. Watching it in the current era of the coronavirus pandemic didn't make it feel outdated, almost like the movie was ahead of its time. It's a sweet family film, and Travolta delivers a believable and subtle performance.
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