An Irish British American romance directed by Gerard Stembridge.
3 women from the same family are all interested in the same man.
I could tell within 5 or 10 minutes that this movie was not for me. I waited until 35 minutes in to turn it off. As I have said before, love and war are my least favorite subject matter for films. The video was really bright, which is not bad, but this usually (and in this case) goes along with very feminine films. I'm just too male to appreciate any value which my be there. I rate it shit in accordance with my turn off policy.
An Irish British American animated musical directed by Don Bluth, starring Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise.
A German Shepherd and his Dachshund friend break out of the pound and return to the life of gambling that they had left behind. A Bulldog is now running the casino and has a human girl hidden in the back room who talks to rats and determines winners in their races. The escaped convicts rescue the girl and proceed to exploit her animal communication skills in exactly the same manner as the Bulldog.
Bad music! Don Bluth directed The Secret of NIMH, which was not a musical and was much better. I think the songs only hurt this film. He also directed Pete's Dragon with good music. Ralph Burns did the music for ADGTH and Irwin Kostal did the music for PD, so that explains the difference. Much of the music problem was in audio mixing, with the vocals too loud and instruments too quiet. On an interesting note, the girl star of this film, Judith Barsi, was abused and eventually murdered by her father before he shot himself. Wikipedia reports that she had begun plucking her eyelashes and her cat's whiskers because of the trauma. I thought the plot of this film reminded me of a combination of Oliver Twist and Paper Moon. The innocent child is thrown into a life of crime and her "guardian" is not qualified to take care of her. I think I saw this in the theater when it was originally released. I rate it o.k., but it would have gotten a much better rating without the songs.
An Irish British drama directed by John Michael McDonagh, starring Brendan Gleeson, Aidan Gillen, Isaach de Bankole and M. Emmet Walsh.
A man enters a priest's confessional and threatens to kill him in one week because the man was sexually molested by a priest as a child. He says that killing a bad priest means nothing, so he will kill a good one. The priest then spends the week wandering the small town that he lives in and interacting with people. Most of the residents of the town have a problem that they are seeking advice from the priest to solve.
Very interesting. A drama for the characters within the film, but a murder mystery for the viewer! I know I was trying to figure out who it was. Clocking in around an hour 36, the slow pace made it seem like more. The plot was absolutely brilliant and the varied characters in the town formed a cohesive unit of intertwined relationships. All of the dialogue fit well and the acting was done well. The setting in an actual small town and "street clothes" costumes fit together to convey a bleak style. The camera-work was seamless. That's the goal of good filmmaking, to make even a video dork like me not notice what the camera is doing. Audio included good dialogue levels correctly mixed with appropriate and mostly diegetic music. Other critics have given it a C rating because of the heavily religious overtones and subject matter of sexual abuse. They said it does "not fit in an easily marketable genre" meaning it's not mainstream, braindead trash. I however give it a best rating for being thoughtful and marvelously produced. Watch this!
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!
An Irish American science fiction written, produced and directed by John Boorman, starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling.
In a post-apocalyptic future, the elite are immortal and the rest of the population works on farms to supply the elite with food. This social system is enforced by exterminators who kill the farmers and a giant, floating head that orders them to do so. One of the exterminators stows away in the giant head and enters the area of the immortal elite. Although they originally want to kill him, he is permitted to live and learns the secret of their society. He then calls the other exterminators in to destroy their way of life and save them from immortality.
This is one of the films that I vowed never to review when I started this blog. I had tried to watch it before, but did not like it. The plot seemed to meander aimlessly, but did in fact have a point. I think that it brings up questions of authority and social systems that are followed by tradition, but have lost their meaning. The main character was interesting and did develop significantly. That is, if you can get past his absurd costume. The main villain developed some by a role reversal, but was absent for most of the duration. Everyone else was extras. The video was planned quite well. Their set designs were extravagant and colorful. There were also psychedelic altered states of consciousness sequences that entertained me. Some of these were done with careful placement of mirrors and looked really cool. The audio was pretty standard of the time, featuring classical music in the soundtrack. The dialogue was audible and mixed correctly with the music. Overall, this film was more fun to write about than to watch. I rate it o.k.
A British German Irish American drama directed by Werner Herzog, starring Tim Roth.
A strong man joins a theater group headed by a lying magician.
This was not so great. The plot seemed to go nowhere. The 3 main characters were very well developed though. The technical aspects were great. Good camera-work, carefully planned scenes and a special effect made this beautiful to watch. So, we've got a good looking film with good characters, but a plot that goes nowhere. Looks like a good place to use a weird, pink rating to me.
An Irish documentary by Michael Tsarion.
Extreme close-up Whoa! (picture) I would not have selected this camera angle. The title is not what I would have selected either. A title referring to Atonism would have been more correct. Other than nit-picking details of how the film was made and named, everything is good. The information is so vast as to leave the viewer awestruck. After watching Origins and Oracles, I thought that Mike T. had said everything he wanted to say. Fortunately, I was wrong. He does his standard slideshow deal, this time sitting at a desk and it clocks in at nine and a half hours. As always, the symbolism part is what stays in my mind best. His mention of Marlboro cigarette box design involving a pyramid with a capstone that is removed when the box opens was priceless! The lion and unicorn seal made me think of The Lion and the Unicorn rhyme/poem mentioned in Alice In Wonderland:
"The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown. The lion beat the unicorn all around the town. Some gave them white bread and some gave them brown; some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town."
Overall, it was a great presentation with lots of information. On my documentary scale of education vs. entertainment, this is all education. I rate it best and would recommend it to those who enjoy long documentaries of esoteric knowledge as much as I do.
An Irish documentary by Michael Tsarion and Henrik Palmgren.
Mike T. asks whether people are in control of themselves and examines what forces in the world determine the answer to this question.
As with David Icke and Alex Jones, this is very similar to the rest of Michael Tsarion's work. It does not hold a candle to Origins & Oracles and seems pitiful by comparison. There is some good information and I think that it was well made. Henrik did a good job with the video editing and music. There was one line in section 2 that really interested me about cutting down trees and naming streets after them. Overall, It's alright, but Mike has made better. I rate it adequate and would only recommend it if you don't have the patience to watch Tsarion's longer films.
An Irish documentary by Michael Tsarion.
Esoteric researcher Michael Tsarion shows slides and explains how his research has lead him to see things in the world. He covers subjects like astrology/astronomy, secret societies, religion, mythology, symbolism and the meaning of words.
With a total duration of over 30 hours, this is definitely the longest thing I've ever watched. With just Mike T. talking and a slideshow, this is definitely only for those who are truly interested in what he's saying. He takes the story of our world as far back in time as he can manage to communicate how us humans are a failed experiment in genetic manipulation, created by evil aliens who are trapped on our once peaceful planet. After much high adventure containing giants, monsters, dragons and magical weapons, toxic water rained from the sky as the planet Nibiru was decimated to make the moon and the mystic barrier. Since then we've been "totally lied to by our album covers" as Bill and Ted would say. Secret societies and religious cults have controlled history, leaving Joe Everyman in a psychotic and poverty-ridden mess. Modern politicians are quoted as they brag about swindling, cheating and engineering genocides. Finally, Mikey makes his way to advertising and how everything is a penis or vagina. Along the way he makes some gruesome mistakes. Usually he will be talking about a subject, switch topics and omit some type of connection that should have been mentioned, considering what he was just saying mere seconds before. Other times he will say something that reveals how his "deep and far-reaching research" missed something obvious. My favorite is when he praises the Disney corporation for having good intentions. The final section on advertising had me in tears of laughter as Mr. T pointed out pseudo-cocks, calling them "the male phallic". The noun form of that word, oh linguist supreme, is "phallus". As a documentary, it has lots of good information that goes against the grain of what society has programmed us to think. That means I rate it awesome. Do not, however, take this as the whole truth. Michael has lots of puzzle pieces and can put some of them together, but he doesn't have the puzzle put together. Nobody does yet. Do as Mikey says and find other sources of info.
An Irish American made for TV film directed by Michael O'Herlihy.
When an airplane crashes into his house, a man's wife and children are killed. He sets out to find who crashed the plane and to get revenge (apparently, according to Wikipedia).
I had to turn this off at about the 20 minute mark because I could not hear what the people were saying. The audio was muffled something fierce and they all sounded like they were slurring drunkenly. In a film that is as dialogue-based as this, not being able to understand the words is a fatal flaw. I have to rate it shit because I turned it off.
