J*A*S*M

Maybe I will write a longer review, but only after I recover from this crap. :-(

After three hours, I decided I wasn't going to invest another five hours on this. It's a competently put together mystery show, but I am not enjoying it at all. I am not enjoying the characters, I am not enjoying the mystery, I am not enjoying how fucking seriously everything is taken, and I don't give a shit what happens next or how it ends. If it turns out to be something brilliant, let me know, but I won't bother further at this point. And yet, when it comes to the premise, I am the target audience. Oh dear.

I went into this film with no expectations whatsoever and also without a general knowledge of its subject, and suddenly I find myself surprised that I’m rather enjoying it. Sure, if I could choose, I’d rather see this struggle between individualism and overwhelmed communitarianism done by a filmmaker who would take it with more seriousness and credibility, but even this simple B-movie variation quite satisfied me.

I didn’t like this film at all, even though I really looked forward to it. It has a couple of good ideas (almost all the murders are original), but the execution is too amateurish for my taste, it doesn't look realistic at all. For me it was disappointing. 45%

The first part was already incredibly stupid, but quite a few people liked it for some reason. Maybe because Robert Englund played the main role; I’ve never considered him a good actor, but he still maintains the untouchable aura of Nightmare around him. The sequel, however, doesn’t have Englund. Let’s forget for a second that making a sequel of an at best average film when you don’t have the main appeal is not the most fortunate idea. Even without comparing it with the first part, Field of Screams is awful, I hadn’t suffered so much in a long time. The two female leads take the meaning of “dumb blonde” and “wooden acting” to a whole new level. I’m sure it’ll find its audience, but for me, the sequel of 2001 Maniacs is pure movie evil.

A film that gives you the impression that while you were watching it, you managed to have dinner, take several work calls and watch another film at the same time, because, strictly speaking, Space Odyssey has about 15 minutes of story stretched to two and a half hours. But that’d be a big mistake, because you’ll actually have to give the film at lot more time than its duration. This time, Kubrick didn’t disappoint me, maybe because before the screening I thought I would turn the film off because it’d be boring. I still can’t explain how it could entertain me so much, let alone make me feel like watching it again :) After A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket, I didn’t get Kubrick’s reputation of a genius filmmaker, now I do. That said, I can’t imagine how I could persuade someone who cares less than a lot about cinema to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Kubrick’s 2001 is a work of art that played with the medium in an unprecedented way, Hyam’s 2010 is nothing more than well executed science fiction, which I don’t mind at all. It was thrilling, it was entertaining, the effects are again perfect for its time, I’ve no reason to complain. Thanks to the clearer shifts in the plot, I’m planning to read the literary sequel because I’m curious about how it continues. If a film manages that, it’s a hit :)

Five minutes of fun are always ruined by half an hour of boring and incredibly dull bollocks. Where are the days of Independence Day and Godzilla? They didn’t have such megalomaniac destruction, but their stories held together and they were fun and tense throughout. If we consider the contents, the runtime of 2012 is so excessive that by the end (or rather, the last hour) it was hard for me to refrain from doing something else and leave the film on as background noise. Maybe it’s good for the undemanding audience craving for a CGI orgy, but I’m unable to turn off my brain thoroughly enough to say the same.

This is an example of how an untraditional approach to narration serves only as an effective gimmick to turn a film into something more interesting than it actually is. I’m quite surprised at how many people say that 21 Grams is very emotional, I think it would be almost impossible to deal with a similar topic in a colder way.

After the initial intense feeling of dismay and cringe, the second half brought a satisfactory, four-star worthy experience. If I ever watch it again (which I doubt, it’s more like a snack), maybe the experience will be more fully positive, but until then, I can’t give it more than three stars. In any case, there are tonnes of one-liners, likeable protagonists, and it’s fine overall.