Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

David O. Russell's attempts at Oscar-bait just get more and more transparent with each passing year.

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Ah, Hollywood. Nice to see that grandma is a whole eight years older than dad.

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

Agree with you on both The Gift and Joy, probably the two most disappointing 2015 films for me.

Edit: maybe not disappointing, I didn't expect much, especially with Joy after I some reviews I saw.

__________________

And I thought the fact that the woman who played Tony Montana's mum in Scarface was only four years older than Pacino himself was bad.

#768 - The Final Girls
Todd Strass-Schulson, 2015



A handful of college students attend a theatrical screening of a cult slasher movie only to be magically transported inside the movie.

Trying to come up with inventive parodies of the horror genre is a tough racket in an era full of constantly-shifting perceptions of humour and irony, so it's perhaps no surprise that The Final Girls just resorts to playing things straight underneath its outwardly comical premise. After a prologue introduces us to the young heroine (Taissa Farmiga) and her actress mother (Malin Akerman) before the latter dies in a horrific car accident, the film skips ahead a few years. Farmiga is now a college student struggling with homework who reluctantly agrees to attend a theatrical screening of Camp Bloodbath, a Friday the 13th-like slasher movie that also happened to star her late mother as one of the killer's bubble-headed victims. However, when a series of coincidences causes the theatre to catch fire, Farmiga and her ragtag handful of friends - sassy best friend (Alia Shawkat), Shawkat's gawky step-brother (Thomas Middleditch), handsome guy friend (Alexander Ludwig), and bitchy ex-friend (Nina Dobrev) - try to escape by cutting their way through the movie screen and find themselves transported inside the world of Camp Bloodbath itself. They eventually clue into the fact that their only way out of the movie is to see it play through to the very end, which becomes a problem when Farmiga wants to save Akerman from the machete-wielding murderer even though, inside the world of Camp Bloodbath, Akerman is actually playing her movie-within-a-movie character instead of Farmiga's mother.

The Final Girls certainly has a decent enough angle on making fun of horror, but that's not its whole purpose for being. The through-line is definitely Farmiga's character learning to accept her mother's death, especially by going through a serious trial by fire as she does what she can to help protect movie-Akerman from harm even through it threatens to jeopardise the gang's plan to escape the movie. That lends heart to an admittedly standard procession of "trapped-in-the-movie" gags such as visible inter-titles or Groundhog Day loops where the real characters are made to repeat certain scenes until they play along with the plot. At the very least, it knows better than to try playing up the horror aspects, avoiding excessively gory violence or trying too hard to be scary. It also gets a lot of mileage out of the culture clash as the sharp-witted millennials butt intellectual heads with badly-written characters that include casually homophobic jocks and vapidly promiscuous airheads. While there's some degree of cleverness to the film's various gags, it's probably not a good sign that the strongest laughs I got were out of the film's post-credits gag reel than anything in the film proper. I do have to wonder if including said gag reel was the filmmakers' way of hedging their bets if the comedy featured in the film proper didn't pan out.

The performers may not be all that great, but seeing as they do have to play up two different but similar sets of horror stereotypes, they don't really have to pull off anything too difficult. Farmiga is a flat but personable lead and she has good chemistry with both of Akerman's characters, who gets to demonstrate a layer of nuance underneath her giggly blonde exterior as she gets to play a fictional character who has an existential crisis over their true nature. Middleditch proves the outright funniest member of the cast as the socially inept know-it-all, yet he isn't given much screen-time in the grand scheme of things. Ludwig doesn't do much more than play a fairly flat love interest, while Shawkat and Dobrev get to round out the main cast as constantly snarking sidekicks. There's not much to be said for the members of the Camp Bloodbath cast, though Adam DeVine doesn't do too badly as the deliberately obnoxious token jock. The Final Girls also has a striking visual style that involves the colours being heavily saturated and making some decent effects work really pop out in the process. Throw in some chaotic Raimi-style camerawork and some effective use of cheesy '80s pop (especially some surprisingly poignant use of "Bette Davis Eyes") and you have a film that may not be all that funny but is still a pleasant little affair that doesn't totally outstay its welcome.

#769 - Red Hill
Patrick Hughes, 2010



A young constable transfers to a small country town at the same time that a murderous convict breaks free to take his revenge on the local police force.

Going on the basis of its plot alone, Red Hill isn't going to win points for originality even if it does win them for brevity. A young city-dweller (Ryan Kwanten) and his pregnant wife (Claire van der Boom) move to the eponymous small town in order to live a less stressful life than they would have in the big smoke. However, despite Red Hill's sleepy exterior resulting in the local police becoming extremely docile as a result, it turns out that Kwanten has moved in at the worst possible time. Just after he starts working, a convicted murderer (Tom E. Lewis) escapes from prison and starts making his way back towards Red Hill. The chief (Steve Bisley) naturally musters any deputies and allies that he can in order to bring Lewis down. It's pretty familiar when all is said and done and the story doesn't take any especially surprising turns as it progresses. The performers don't fare much better as a result; Kwanten is something of a blank slate as your typical honest cop with a family, while Bisley can only bring so much crusty personality to yet another gruff sheriff (which also speaks for just about every one who serves under him). By these standards, Lewis's turn as a silent, disfigured killer who slowly and methodically takes his vengeance on those who wronged him is one of the better ones as he fills each frame he appears in with palpable menace.

Despite being a bit lacking in terms of both plot and characterisation, Red Hill is at least able to provide a half-decent film to compensate for its narrative weaknesses. The outback scenery definitely looks a treat, while the small town makes for a good setting for shadowy showdowns and destructive rampages. The grittiness of the camerawork definitely aids the film's tale of vengeance and infuses everything from barely-lit streets to claustrophobic air vents with a sense of realism. The technical aptitude definitely extends to what could arguably pass for action, which makes good use of simple effects in conveying some straightforward acts of violence. Red Hill is far from essential but it's not that bad a watch. It's not trying to be especially deep or innovative, but it gets the job done just fine and without major complaint. Unfortunately, there's not nearly enough personality or skill on display to make it stand out as anything more than just a competently-made B-movie that can be watched once and then forgotten.

Just out of curiosity, why do you watch so many movies that you end up not even liking?

I'm an optimist.

Also how are you supposed to know in advance whether you'll like them or not/

Think i liked The Gift a bit more than you, but i was also dissapointed by it.

What did you expect and what was disappointing?

Awe... I was kinda hoping for a real answer... oh well. By looking at the track record of the people involved in making it, and by recognizing certain things from watching trailers and reading premises and reviews. I have about an 80% success rate just from looking at the case without even reading it. I can tell from years of experience what kind of movies I like and what kind I don't like.

Every time someone asks me this question or one like it, I come up with a different answer, but alright, I'll actually give you a decent answer. A better reason would be that I'm trying to get a wider perspective when it comes to film appreciation. A while ago, I was listening to Mark Kermode do a review of what I think was A Serbian Film) and he said something along the lines of how he considers it a critic's obligation to view films that he thinks he will not personally enjoy because viewing bad or otherwise objectionable movies helps to challenge one's perceptions and sharpen one's critical focus (even if the films end up being bad anyway). While I'm obviously not a professional like Kermode, I reckon this is a reasonable attitude to have and many of my bad reviews do touch on general issues I have with not just film but entertainment in general. It's the whole "you can't have light without darkness" thing.

Didn't expect that much, just an above average thriller and i suppose that is what i got but like Prisoners i had heard from friends and people on this and other sites that it was great so i was slightly disappointed when i got exactly what i was expecting;

Thanks for sharing that. I do appreciate it. And that's as good a reason as anyone could have, I think.


If I may offer a constructive criticism, probably the main things that irk me, when you criticise movies that I like and/or think are good movies, is that you pass off assumptions as facts and you tend to equate the reasons you dislike a movie with the reasons why it's bad. I haven't heard you say a movie was good, and why it was good, even though you didn't like it. I have only read a handful of your reviews though, so I don't know if you do it all the time or just in the ones I read.


I think you're greatest strength is in the elegance of your writing. It kind of reminds me of when I started university and my first few research papers were full of red ink because I used colorful adjectives that didn't actually establish my point.

That's a fair criticism. I guess I could preface every single instance of that with some variation on "I think" or "I feel" (and I already do that a fair bit, just not all the time), but I figure that constantly pointing that out to readers seems not only redundant but also somewhat patronising (and would break the flow of the writing). The whole point of reading an individual's reviews is that you're getting their specific perspective on things regardless of how much they profess to be objective (which I never did). What you refer to as "passing off assumptions as facts" is me offering my own subjective interpretations on the work based on what I've observed and understood; others can challenge these interpretations as they see fit. Also, is there any reason why the reasons I dislike a movie can't overlap with the reasons that it can be considered genuinely bad? By that logic, I don't see much point in saying "this was a good movie, but I just didn't like it" - that just seems so wishy-washy (though I admit that arguably applies to some of my reviews, most recently the one for Amy) and I'd rather have some conviction in what I'm saying one way or the other than offer some limp apology for holding an opinion.

I see where you're coming from. But I think it's important to have a margin for error when you aren't sure about something. Because I actually get offended by some things you say, take your Kung Fury review for example. I think it's better to have an "I think" type of clause than to say something you're not sure about in a matter-of-fact way. It's not fair to assume that everyone knows the difference between when you're stating a fact and when you're stating an opinion (or guess) if you don't differentiate them in any way. You don't have to say "I think" all the time. Just get more creative with the way you write your "I think" clauses. You shouldn't have any trouble in that department because you're actually very good at not repeating the same words too often and using a large vocabulary.


There's an expression, "When you assume, you make an ass out of 'u' and 'me.'"


I like to say that something "seems to me," or "I wonder if..." and there are many phrases you can use to clarify that you aren't taking something as a fact that you don't actually consider to be a fact.


A lot of times it could just be the way you feel about something, but it needs to be communicated as that. Our feelings are genuine, but sometimes the way we interpret our feelings is wrong.

This is something I may have said before, but your poor to fair reviews seem to always come from the perspective that the films didn't live up to their rep or were just too weak. Either way, they leave you wanting something you didn't get. On the other hand, the films you give strongly positive reviews, you almost seem to not feel the need to explain why. You seem to think it's self-evident. Either way, I get a condescending (to the movie) vibe. I'll be the first to say that your reviews are well-written, so I should have given you more rep. Maybe I should be pointing some of my criticism toward myself.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Trust me when I say that I'll clarify the instances when I'm personally not sure about something, but most of the time I am and that's why I tend to skip using said clarifications. If I say "I think" then people might be willing to just go "okay" to themselves and not really engage, but if I make a point and stick to it then that will probably prompt some potentially enlightening discussion (for me or others or both), and part of the reason I post these reviews is because I want to see if I can learn something from the process, which naturally includes people disagreeing with me and challenging my ideas.

Also, if you thought my Kung Fury review was offensive, then you do not want to read my review of The Departed.

You're assuming I don't already know this expression.

It's not like I don't already use such clauses from time to time, but I shouldn't have to constantly pepper my reviews with them in case people take everything I write at face value. Also, it's boring.

I think that's because it's fundamentally easier to talk about why a film doesn't work (for me or in general) than why it does work. I do at least try to justify my good ratings from time to time when it comes to unlikely candidates e.g. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning or Turbo Kid, plus I at least try to examine long-time favourites for flaws as a means of critically engaging with them beyond superficial appreciation (such as the plot holes that Raiders of the Lost Ark gets away with thanks to its whip-crack editing).