The main character of the film Whip It!, Bliss is 17 years old and lives in Bodeen, Texas (which she thinks is a pretty lousy place) and works at the Oink Joint. Is it any wonder she wants to escape?! I don’t know. My mom never pushed me to participate in beauty pageants, and that’s a significant difference.
But listen, everything changes when Bliss finds a flyer advertising a roller derby league for girls.
From here, we find out that “Whip It!” is a really CUTE movie, but not much more than that. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, not dramatic enough to be a drama, and as a sports film, it’s pretty thin (though it works best in this category). It gets bonus points for avoiding the biggest clichés of sports movies. As a coming-of-age story, it doesn’t quite hold up either, because every conflict is ridiculously clichéd and we’ve seen them all a thousand times before. Plus, in this movie, it turns out every character, even the nastiest roller girl, has a heart of gold.
As for Bliss… well, her rebellion against her parents is pretty mild. Her best friend, for instance, is a NERD.
The weakest part of all is the romantic subplot. Bliss’s love interest is less appealing than Birdman, the loser from the Oink Joint. So what’s the deal?
It starts off well, I must say, the first 20 minutes of Ready Player One, even with significant changes, capture the spirit of the novel. And the moment when Wade Watts’ name first appears on the Oasis leaderboard is ALMOST as impactful as it is in the novel.
The story unfolds in a near, dystopian future where life revolves around obtaining the hidden, inheritable key of a virtual reality that dominates every aspect of life (education, work, entertainment). However, the changes, which were obviously necessary for the story to work as a film, and even more so as a visually stunning one, gradually overshadow the narrative.
From the overwhelming computer animation that makes up 99-100% of Ready Player One, your head soon starts to buzz, and you feel like you’ve sunk into a Japanese role-playing game filled with manga characters, watching with increasing boredom from the sidelines as the avatars of other characters duke it out.
It’s like being in one of those muddled Transformers movies.
The youth-level black-and-white characters and childish humor don’t help much, nor does the shivery programmer god, Halliday, who seems to look like he’s pooped his pants at every appearance. But the worst is clearly the ultra-lame main antagonist.
If you haven’t seen the 1978 first installment of the film series, where old Max (Mel Gibson) zeroes out a motorcycle gang due to the murder of his family, it won’t be easy to identify with this new Max (Tom Hardy). This new Mad Max is mostly just some random dude, whom Immortan Joe’s somewhat anemic-looking subordinates drag out of his car and reclassify as a pedestrian in the first few minutes of the film. Might as well call him Jimmy the Pisser. Okay, the new Max is still a tad more than your average Jimmy constantly wetting himself, having developed parkour and acrobatic skills in the INFINITE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK, which come in handy as he’s forced to jump around on various speeding vehicles for the remainder of the film.
And this new Mad Max falls short of the old Max (and Jimmy) in that he’s a jerk.
After realizing they’re in the same (motor)boat with Furiosa (Charlize Theron), Immortan Joe’s silently departing, disgruntled employee, and his former girlfriends, instead of giving them a nod and saying, “Hey ladies, what’s up? Let’s be best buddies from now on,” he pulls a gun on them, robs them, and lets them beat him senseless.
Not that Furiosa is much of a thoughtful personality either: after all, she drags Joe’s supermodel-like concubines out of their comfort zone into the ENDLESS AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK – and the foolish geese blindly follow; when all they should be doing is lounging around in the only remaining habitable place amidst the apocalypse, looking stunning, and occasionally delighting the grateful Immortan Joe (the poor man’s Darth Vader) with a new offspring. Joe, okay, really isn’t the most charming gentleman, but still isn’t lacking in charisma; and after all, they could easily end up with someone a hundred times worse after judgment day.
Immortan Joe
The film’s main merit, the visual world, is okay, and mostly thanks to the former, the film’s atmosphere is as well: Desert, Sunshine, Apocalypse, although Little “M” angrily resented the excessive use of blue filters in the night scenes.
However, the action scenes are very hard to follow, the cuts are too fast, and the camera shakes as if there’s no tomorrow (or yesterday). You might find this especially problematic because the film “Mad Max” consists EXCLUSIVELY of action. If there’s an occasional brief break, it’s used to push you even deeper into boredom with sappy and sensationalist dialogues. And that’s the biggest problem with this film: after about half an hour, the constant action becomes deadly dull, and you can’t wait to finally be done with it.
George Miller couldn’t resist including the biggest cliché of the lonely and tough hero at the end of the film: Max, accompanied by Furiosa’s beseeching gaze, turns his back on his new friends and sets off into the sunset. But you know it’s all just a show, a projection, plain screwing around, because after just 27 minutes of wandering, Max will have to recognize that he’s in the last habitable place in the INFINITE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK, so he’ll have to turn around and walk back to Furiosa, who, after pulling him close, whispers in her ear:
6/10
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) (IMDb) Director: George Miller, Stars: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron
Colonel Ludlow, weary of the Indian massacres, settles down in the remote Montana long-long ago, three sons are born, and so on. And when the youngest brings his bride, the STUNNING Suzannah, even the other two boys start to drool over her. As if that wasn’t enough, World War I breaks out just then.
And what’s the point? It’s not good to throw around big words, but there’s nothing to be done when this is the situation. Now listen: the film drama “Legends of the Fall” teaches you that no matter how diligently you obey all laws of God and man, you can still end up with EVERYONE loving someone else who outrightly flouts these laws. Can you do anything about it? Nothing, you just got screwed. Thanks a lot!
At most, you can toughen up your soul, because this film is shamelessly and unabashedly manipulative, every effort aimed at bringing tears to your eyes.
Little “M” for example, kept watering the mice, so eventually I had to keep a list, and in the end, it turned out that Edward Zwick’s esteemed masterpiece brought tears to the little one’s eyes precisely a dozen times during viewing. Quite an achievement!
This goddamn film affects the viewer like this, even if you know exactly that most of the characters’ troubles – alongside the damn scriptwriters – are caused by stubbornness bordering on stupidity or incomprehensible self-will, and they wouldn’t get into such a mess if they showed a little more empathy or at least some PATIENCE towards each other.
So if you feel as tough as nails, but just to be on the safe side, you want to check, watch “Legends of the Fall.” And if your eyes don’t well up once during it, well then you really are!
8/10
Legends of the Fall (1994) (IMDb) Director: Edward Zwick, Stars: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond
Ridley Scott’s 2010 work is undoubtedly the most perplexing Robin Hood film ever made (even if you count “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” among them), which, after a decently executed opening battle scene, devolves into a bizarre, multi-stranded mess:
Warning, serious spoilers ahead! But don’t worry about it!
Robin Hood, the SIMPLE ARCHER, under the alias Sir Loxley, casually hands over King Richard’s crown to the Queen Mother (but only by accident, as he gets wasted with his buddies while boating and forgets to hightail).
After that, Robin Hood, the SIMPLE ARCHER under the alias Sir Loxley, infiltrates the Loxley family, and the story here turns into “The Taming of the Shrew” with the understandably hesitant Lady Marion (who, by the way, spends her free time farming with the peasants and feels an irresistible urge to personally rescue the peasants’ goats from the swamp).
Secretly, Robin Hood, the SIMPLE ARCHER, in the DEAD OF NIGHT, plants the grain extorted from Friar Tuck.
The starving village kids (aged 7 to 14) had already moved into Sherwood Forest and self-taught themselves the mysterious art of ninjutsu. They use this mystical method to raid their own village at night and have their elite squad of 5- to 7-year-olds capture Robin Hood hunting in the forest. The beefed-up, terribly HEAVY Robin is, for an unknown reason, transported to their camp Ewok-style. Lucky for him, Lady Marion, the kids’ bestie, happens to be hanging out with them and saves him.
Robin Hood’s soldier buddies serve as a constant source of humor throughout the film, partying without end in STARVING Nottingham. These cheerful, IRRESISTIBLY humorous scenes also feature the film’s most hilarious, usually sexually charged jokes. See “Little” John.
Now, all these are already wonderful things in themselves, but the damn French keep stealing the spotlight from Robin. Two hundred frog-eaters—disguised as English tax collectors—ride around North Anglia trying to stir up the country against the English king. Their cunning plan succeeds because no one notices that they can’t speak a word of English and there are FAR FEWER of them than the entire army of North Anglia’s nobles…
Blake, a hitman, decides—for reasons that are as baffling to himself as they are to everyone else—that he’s going to kill Gunther, the coolest assassin in the game. To pull off this major job, he assembles a ragtag crew of fellow assassins. Oh, and he also ropes in a documentary film crew—obviously, just to ensure his failure is recorded for posterity. Featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger among the cast, Killing Gunther not only parodies the action-movie genre with its icy-cold, badass killers but also hilariously mocks itself in the process.
Budget Hitmen for a Bargain
The problem? Everyone in Blake’s team is an idiot. Or a loser. Or both an idiot and a loser. And not the funny kind, mind you—just lame. And painfully dull. Watching this sorry excuse for a crew bumble through their mission, you can’t help but think that if you ever needed to take someone out, you’d be far better off doing it yourself.
Taran Killam’s action-comedy never takes itself seriously, which isn’t necessarily a strength in a film about assassins. Especially during scenes where, you know, they’re supposed to be killing someone. In Killing Gunther, they’re always trying to kill someone—and that someone is, of course, Gunther.
As we all know, Marvel movies are like theme parks. And Doctor Strange (2016) is no exception to Martin Scorsese’s fundamental critique: colorful, dazzling, magical—but still riddled with plenty of holes.
The good Doctor Strange is forced into a career change due to a car accident (and it can’t be stressed enough: DON’T USE YOUR PHONE WHILE DRIVING!). From hotshot surgeon to sorcerer. Of course, it’s not quite that simple. For one, like the majority of Marvel movies, this one’s an origin story. And two, becoming a sorcerer isn’t exactly an overnight process.
Meanwhile, the main character, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, doesn’t do much to win our sympathy. After all, who actually likes a smug, egotistical, materialistic, narcissistic, and arrogant surgeon? No one. Except, maybe, if you need that person to perform your appendectomy. In that case, you might be a bit more forgiving…
Career Crash and Redemption
If you have a body part that’s vital to your work, losing its functionality can turn your whole life upside down. No wonder Dr. Stephen Strange struggles to deal with the situation. What would you do in his shoes? Would you say, “Time heals all wounds!” and patiently go through your physical therapy sessions while casually earning a dermatology certificate on the side?