An American drama directed by Chris Weitz, starring Demián Bichir.
An illegal Mexican father works in landscaping. His sister lends him money to buy his friend's truck, but the truck is immediately stolen. His son has been distant, but grows closer to his father while searching for the stolen truck.
Pretty cool. The plot held my attention and characters fit their roles. Acting seemed natural and dialogue was convincing, meaning there was good writing. Camerawork and editing looked good. The audio was pretty level and mixed Spanish and English in a convincingly Mexican American way. I'm talking about a solid green good rated film in which everything just worked. There's not much more to say, except you should probably watch it.
An American action thriller directed by John Singleton, starring Alfred Molina, Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello and Sigourney Weaver.
A young man is being hunted by government agents and spies because of his spy father.
Not very good. Let's start with what other folks thought: paraphrased/compiled
"soulless and incompetent
actual abduction may be preferable to the movie of the same name, but only if your kidnappers don't torture you by forcing you to watch it
Lautner "has the acting chops of Bert from Sesame Street
cringe-worthy dialogue and a wooden leading man
a haggardly slapdash Bourne Identity knockoff"
I was unable to find positive comments. The plot almost held my attention with action sequences. Those were alright, but everything else was terrible. I'm talking fun to mock terrible here. Most of the characters were either cookie cutter or horribly acted. I've seen better acting in TROMA films. What I would like to know is how Sigourney Weaver got roped into this. I wanted her to blow the male and female leads out of the goddamn airlock. I don't have the patience to point out the flaws in every film element on every crappy movie I watch. However, I could hear it, see it and understand the plot. I have to rate this poor because it sucks, but there are so many worse films. Don't watch it.
An American drama directed by Jonathan Levine, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and Anjelica Huston.
A young man gets cancer and has a hard time dealing with it. He breaks up with his girlfriend when his best friend catches her cheating on him. He also begins a romantic relationship with his doctor.
This is about as sappy a film as I can take seriously. The plot was not extremely eventful, more like "slice of life" style. Casting was awesome, so the good actors played their parts well. Some references to note here: Joseph Gordon-Levitt was also in A River Runs Through It (1992), The Lookout (2007), he was Hesher in Hesher (2010) and Wilee in Premium Rush (2012). Anjelica Huston was the Grand High Witch in The Witches (1990) "GRANDMA!". She was also in This is Spinal Tap (1984), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Art School Confidential (2006), The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and Isle of Dogs (2018). Video was nothing fancy, but it got the job done. There wasn't much creative camera placement that I noticed, but it was not all too dark (horror style) or all too bright (romantic comedy style) either. Audio mostly worked. There was some inaudible whispering and were some crappy soundtrack songs, but I could hear dialogue and music stayed mostly out of the way. I rate this good, but it's not a keeper. Mostly I like who was in it because of what else they were in. You should probably watch it.
A French Austrian Brazilian British crime drama directed by Fernando Meirelles, starring Jude Law, Moritz Bleibtreu, Jamel Debbouze, Rachel Weisz, Ben Foster, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Anthony Hopkins.
People are involved in sexual situations. One woman is a hooker, a man orders her, but misses the connection, a sex offender gets out of jail and is tempted by a beautiful woman at the airport...
Boring and desultory. The plot or plots did not hold my attention at all, maybe because of the audio, which I will get to. There were far too many characters. Some of them seemed to be connected in some way. The video was all great. There was a variety of shot duration and camera placement. It really looked great, natural and not forced. The audio was horrible. Most of the dialogue was whispered. When that happens, I take it as a sign that the filmmakers thought dialogue was unimportant and don't care if the viewer hears what people are saying. If the dialogue was important, we should be able to hear it, right? Given that I only heard a few words and phrases over the course of almost 2 hours, I rate this bad. It looked great, but sounded terrible. Don't watch it.
An American crime comedy directed by Ruben Fleischer, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Michael Peña and Fred Ward.
A pool cleaner wants to have his rich father assassinated and asks his friend for help. The hitman costs $10,000 so they abduct the pizza delivery driver and attach a bomb to him, telling him to rob a bank. The pizza boy picks up his friend and they try to go through with the robbery.
Not too shabby. Cliche, predictable and stupid, but funny. The plot held my interest really well and the characters fit their roles well. Everyone did a good job of acting, but I like Jesse Eisenberg because of his role in Zombieland (2009). The video that I found was absolutely terrible. It was stretched vertically and very grainy. I would not recommend arabmoviez. The video all looked to be correct exposures and there was shot variety. Editing was mostly quick because of the numerous action scenes. Audio was surprisingly good, although that may just be the extreme compression. I could hear everything well. I'm rating this adequate because it's a fun movie that should just be taken at face value. You might want to watch it if you liked 21 & 22 Jump Street (2012 & 2014).
An American comedy directed by Dennis Dugan, starring Adam Sandler and Al Pacino.
A commercial filmmaker's sister visits for a holiday. He needs Al Pacino for a commercial and Al falls in love with the sister, but she doesn't like him.
Really stupid, like only Adam Sandler can make it this stupid. The humor was all "lowest common denominator" fart jokes, falling down, you know what I mean. Lots of the jokes like farting in the bathroom had already been done to death years before: Dumb and Dumber (1994) had a better bathroom fart scene. Al Pacino didn't do such a great job either. His acting seemed off like he wasn't really into it for obvious reasons. Everything looked and sounded fine, except for some whisper acting. The plot and characters were all stupid. Obviously because Adam Sandler was involved in writing. The only thing that really impressed me was special effects in the jumprope scene. How was Adam Sandler both of them and they touch? If they had not leaned shoulders and high fived, I would know it was just compositing. I rate this bad because it almost hurt to watch. Don't watch it.
An American romance directed by Nicole Kassell, starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Rosemarie DeWitt, Romany Malco, Treat Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Dinklage and Kathy Bates.
A woman finds that she has cancer and falls in love with the doctor.
This was on a list of worst movies ever made, but I have seen far worse, and tons of them. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 4% and Metacritic has 14%. Sure, it was shallow and vapid. The writing and dialogue were terrible. The acting seemed forced and the camerawork and editing looked like the filmmakers thought it was better than it actually was. So great movies like The Breakfast Club (1985) are going along great until the sappy, crappy ending. This was sappy and crappy most of the way through with an amazing ending. I'll just go ahead and spoil it: the woman dies and all of her friends and family have a party "Yay! She's finally dead!" I was thinking it was totally trite until that point. The name of the film comes from one short scene in which a male midget prostitute is hired for the woman with cancer (image). I rate this tolerable because of the ending. You probably should not watch it, though.
A Thai American action directed by Prachya Pinkaew, starring Djimon Hounsou and Kevin Bacon.
An assassin in Thailand is originally only supposed to kill a few guys when he sees a female witness. She finds him while he is steaking out the club where she works. They become friends as he hunts down more of the gang running the club.
Standard gunfight action flick with a stupid ending. Gunfights, a big black guy, Kevin Bacon and a bunch of Thai girls. I expected better from Prachya Pinkaew. It looked fine visually and there were 2 dream sequences that I liked. There is really nothing else to say about this kind of movie. I rate it poor.
An American crime drama directed by Oren Moverman, starring Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Ice Cube, Sigourney Weaver, Robert Wisdom, Robin Wright and Steve Buscemi.
A corrupt and violent cop is having trouble with his family and with following the rules at work.
The best thing about this was the casting. Woddy Harrelson makes a great violent cop. In camerawork and editing, I liked the shot of the main character underwater in a pool most. Other than that, it was very mediocre. This is part of why I haven't been posting. Most of the stuff I watch is just mediocre and not really worth writing about. I rate this o.k.
A Chinese wuxia directed by Tsui Hark, starring Jet Li and Zhou Xun.
Continuing the adventures at Dragon Gate Inn, a royal servant has become pregnant and escaped from the palace. A rebel swordsman is attacking east and west government officials. A fake, copycat swords-woman is impersonating this man and saves the servant from the government. Again, opposing groups meet at the ill-fated Dragon Gate Inn right before a sandstorm. The inn owner and her tattooed thugs are hanging around because the sandstorm will uncover a lost city full of gold.
This probably looked better in 3D at the theater. It looked fake and too CG on my computer screen. The plot was as convoluted as most new wuxia flicks. I think that too much stuff and too many people were written in. There was definitely no shortage of extras. Some of the scenes showed armies and gangs that looked real. The few main characters were a little difficult to keep track of. I watched this half last night and half this morning, so that may have something to do with it. Again, I liked the inn owner most. This time she had face tattoos and came onto a shy man. Coming in as second favorite character was her monster giant warrior dude. Both of these characters were acted very expressively. The dialogue seemed standard. There was some type of riddle password about the steeles which are the namesake of Dragon Gate. Different groups knew different information about this and about the mazes and traps of the lost city. I was disappointed in how little time was spent at this set. One would think that the lost city would get some serious screen time, but no. All of the sets costumes and locations looked amazing (as expected of the genre and date). The pacing felt rushed all the way through. The only scene that really felt on time was people arriving at the inn. Camera-work was as expected: fast cuts, lots of camera movement. I think that there were more extreme long shots in this to make use of 3D camera/projector technologies. Composition on the slower shots looked very professional. There were too many special effects. I'm good with Hong Kong wire flying, green screen, digital magic spells being cast, etc. When I say it's too much special effects, you really know it's over the top. The audio seemed to be mixed a little bit low, but proportionally well. IMDb lists a rating of 6/10 and Rotten Tomatoes lists 69% Tomatometer with 48% Audience Score for an average of 59%. Even though the pacing was too quick and there were too many special effects, I think that score is a little low. I rate it adequate. If you're watching Dragon Gate films, you might as well see them all, right?
A Chinese wuxia fantasy directed by Wilson Yip, starring Louis Koo and Kara Hui.
The tree demon's servant from the original has a thing for mortal men. One of them stabbed her in the head with a magic dagger to make her forget him, so she falls in love with another one. Her new romantic interest and 3 demon hunters work to defeat that same tree demon again.
This is obviously not part of the original series. The hour and 36 minutes seemed a little long in comparison with the original film's hyperdrive speed. The plot wandered aimlessly through love affairs, magic and violence that all became a big, muddy mess. Characters were very identifiable, but all of their dialogue and acting was very similar. It was sets and costumes that made this worth watching. Everyone had different clothing and hairstyles. The tree demon even got a hair color change at the end (oops, I ruined the whole plot). The magical locations had the best sets like inside the tree and a sea of leaves. In special effects, we had CG snakes and hair (among other things) as well as people and items flying. Audio had clear dialogue, a good mixdown and a sappy musical score. Although more modern and technically superior to the original film, this lacks its namesake's style and flair. The China Post gave this 2/5 stars, it has 5.7/10 on IMDB and 32% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. 43% average is a little worse than it deserves, but not much. I rate this tolerable because I like the genre, but realize that it's totally lame and hollywooded.
An American documentary directed by Andrew Corvey and Andrew W. Robinson.
The history of kung fu films is related with examples showcasing actors, directors and sub-genres.
I spent more time copying down titles than I did watching the actual film. The hour 16 duration seemed longer because of this. The actual pacing of the film was absolutely breakneck speed. It was packed with information and examples. There were no interviews, but the subject matter interested me a great deal. Between examples, there was a cartoon of a video store clerk (the narrator) explaining kung fu flicks to a silent man. I really appreciated the on-screen text of film titles with years so I could add to my movie list. The audio was mixed well, considering the variety of sources and reputation of old kung fu films for bad audio. I did not like the narrator's voice. He sounded like a college frat boy: too young, excited and trying to sound cool. A more academic and scholarly approach would have worked better for me. This has a 6.6/10 on IMDB and 56% on rotten tomatoes for a failing grade of 61%. I think that this is a little harsh, considering the information density. I rate it o.k. because it was full of titles and examples of good films, but the presentation was a little too annoying.
An Irish crime comedy directed by John Michael McDonagh, starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and Fionnula Flanagan.
An Irish cop gets a black, American partner and they try to catch a gang of drug dealers.
Amazing! I don't have anything bad to say about this. The plot was written very well and held my attention through two consecutive viewings before writing this. The characters were written and cast well. They were unique and colorful and made me feel like I had known them my whole life. Even the secondary characters were written and acted perfectly. The dialogue was on par with Quentin Tarantino material. Video looked more like Wes Anderson style. Everything was contrasty, over-saturated and extremely planned out. The audio was great. Everything was mixed right and I could hear the music and dialogue all very clearly. Overall, a fucking masterpiece. There is no other way to rate this than best. You must watch it!
A British American disaster adventure directed by Joe Carnahan, starring Liam Neeson and Dermot Mulroney.
A group of men are on an airplane that crashes in Alaska. They try to survive with a pack of wolves chasing them through the wilderness.
How disappointing. The plot held my attention because of the subject matter. The characters were not very developed and lacked back-story. They spent the whole time arguing and getting killed. The video all looked good. There were some very good shots of landscapes and action sequences. The audio was mixed well and I could hear everything. The soundtrack music stayed in the background and seemed appropriate. What irked me was that the rising action would almost instantaneously skip to resolutions. This was particularly true of the ending. Overall, a disappointment. I rate this poor, mostly because of the ending.
A French American science fiction directed by Duncan Jones, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
A soldier in a military experiment is transported into the past to stop a bomber from destroying a train.
This was kind of sappy for a science fiction. The plot held my attention because of the idea of being sent back in time, into the body of a victim of a disaster and trying to stop it. The main character was developed, but the others were not at all. The video all looked professionally done and the editing was extremely seamless. Special effects when the train blows up multiple times were done quite well and convincingly. The audio sounded good to me. I could hear everything very clearly and the music was mixed very low. My beef with this is the super crap happy, sappy ending that took too long. We go from explosions, death and destruction with the main character in a strange situation to almost a romance chick flick. Whatever. I rate this o.k. because it was going so well until it went down the drain.
A British science fiction directed by Joe Cornish.
Aliens land in urban London and teenagers fight them.
This was really cool. The simple plot worked because it was backed up by all of the other film elements. The characters were unevenly developed and all development was in the present tense. However, the viewer is clearly supposed to like the characters. Good acting definitely played a role in this. There was a scene with rough, funny characters telling a straight character that she was swearing too much. This means good writing too. The video was done very well. I could see everything that was happening and the best part was the motorcycle/BMX/parkour chase and action scene. The audio had clearly audible dialogue in an urban London dialect and the soundtrack mainly featured rap music. Overall, it came together to form a nice little package that was fun and entertaining to watch. I rate this awesome because it went above and beyond requirements. WATCH IT!!!
An American science fiction drama directed by Mike Cahill, starring William Mapother.
An exact copy of Earth is found in the sky. The same night, a successful female student has a car accident with a male professor, killing his family. When she gets out of jail, she applies for a space mission to the new planet and begins cleaning the house of the professor.
Well, that went nowhere. The plot was a little muddy and pointless to me. The characters were developed a little bit. The video looked awesome. One of my favorite scenes involved dust in the sunlight (image). The audio was mixed correctly. Overall, did we need all of this extra stuff just for shots of dust in sunlight? I rate this o.k.
A Chinese kung fu comedy directed by Vincent Kok, starring Louis Koo and Sandra Ng.
Male and female superheroes meet. They get married and want a child, but their lives are not exciting enough to be fertile.
Not too shabby. The plot was a little too convoluted for the simple premise. I think there were too many characters and that the two main characters were not developed enough. The video was the best part. It all looked great and had amazing special effects with the magical super powers of the couple. I was reminded of Kung Fu Hustle style of physical comedy. The audio was in Chinese with music mixed very low and I was able to find good English subtitles. Overall, A fun watch with only a few flaws. I rate it adequate. You might want to check it out.
A science fiction horror remake directed by Matthjis van Heijningen Jr., starring Joel Edgerton and Ulrich Thomsen.
An alien and spacecraft are dug out of the ice in Antarctica. The alien bursts out of the ice block and takes on the appearance of crew members.
I didn't like the original and don't like the remake. I think that this is a very mediocre science fiction with a lackluster monster. The plot almost held my attention. The characters were very shallow. We're talking little kids' plastic backyard swimming pool lack of depth here. The video was the best part. It was all expertly done and the special effects were amazing. That's where all the money went in this flick. The audio was decent. There was some type of foreign language with no subtitles, but most of it was in English. Overall, there are much better science fiction and horror films with much less fame than this. I don't understand why people like it. I rate this o.k. You might want to think about watching it sometime if there's nothing better.
An Iranian documentary directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb.
An Iranian filmmaker has just served a 6 year jail term and has a 20 year hold placed on his film career. He invites a friend over to film him explaining his script, but they get distracted.
It's right, this is not a film. There was no plot and one of the three characters was the camera operator who wouldn't cut when the director told him to. The garbage man was my favorite character. OH! I forgot the iguana! Four characters then. And the dog, that's five. The video was not really the best I've seen. Sure, it was good quality, but lacking in substance and material. The audio was in Persian, with accurate English subtitles. Overall, this would be something for the director to share with his friends, not for public release. I rate this poor. You really shouldn't watch it.
