Posted on July 12th, 2013 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Bling Ring – Sofia Coppola A rarity: a movie without a single genuine emotion throughout its full 90 minutes. The unspeakable ersatz world of celebrity slavishly but pathetically emulated by a bunch of young people descending like a plague of designer-brand locusts to strip celebrity homes of every famous named product […]
Filed under: 1 star, Comedy, Drama, General, Hollywood, Political, Sofia Coppola | No Comments »
Posted on September 14th, 2012 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Lawless – John Hillcoat Stupid men, doing stupid things, in very stupid ways, for pretty stupid reasons. Hillcoat and screenplay writer Nick Cave re-unite after the gratuitously violent The Proposition to delight us with the gratuitously violent Lawless. I wrote this of that first film, much admired by some. “A new genre – […]
Filed under: 1 star, Action, Drama, Gangster, General, Hollywood, John Hillcoat | No Comments »
Posted on May 31st, 2011 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Hangover Part II – Tod Phillips (Twitter Review) Moronic dick-led barfbuddy drunk guys, charming as farts in a lift, lost in Bang Cock. Thai Muffball, Pretty Boy assf**ck. Ho Ho. H2=H1. H3? No. I Beg.
Filed under: 1 star, Comedy, Hollywood, Todd Phillips | No Comments »
Posted on November 13th, 2010 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Skyline – Colin and Greg Stausse Sci-Fa not Sci-Fi: science farce not science fiction. Final score: Latex 10 – Literacy 0. Graphic designers Colin and Greg Strausse (Avatar, Iron Man2, 2012 etc) should have stuck to their day job. As directors, well where should one start? Everything in this movie is derivative and deeply […]
Filed under: 1 star, Action, Colin Strausse, General, Greg Strausse, Humorous, Sci-Fi | No Comments »
Posted on February 4th, 2010 by Zettel Film Reviewer
TweetFilm, performance, screenplay, art Technical, Effects, Art direction Avatar – James Cameron Avatar sucks: the bambification of an aboriginal narrative. A sentimentalised pastiche of a Native American stereotype. The Na’vi sound like Hollywindians and worship an Earth-mother who looks like a fibre-optic willow tree spiritually reified by tinsellated dandelion-seed-like Christmas tree baubles that slo-mo around […]
Filed under: 1 star, Action, Drama, Fantasy, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Sci-Fi | No Comments »
Posted on May 7th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Is Anybody There? – John Cowley Is there a nation on earth more contemptuous or contemptible about the old than the British? Politically and socially we under-resource shamefully large numbers of the elderly literally to the point of starvation; or we freeze them to death. Politicians with a toxic self-serving sentimentality exploit them. We […]
Filed under: 1 star, Comedy, Drama, John Cowley, Philosophical | No Comments »
Posted on April 5th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Surveillance – Jennifer Chambers Lynch A sick movie – in a sick genre. Do not be conned by the publicity for this sleazeball movie: it is not a thriller. It is a horror movie pretending to be a thriller. The essence of the horror movie for me is that the tension, the suspense, arises […]
Filed under: 1 star, Horror, Jennifer C Lynch, Philosophical | No Comments »
Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The New World – Terence Malik Critical response to this movie beggars belief. If he had just made the dullest movie ever (people walked out of my showing), Malik could be forgiven. But this empty, patronising, sentimentalised farrago of historic lies is scandalously ethnocentrically, totally white European. It perpetuates the worst form of a […]
Filed under: 1 star, Drama, General, Historical, Hollywood, Philosophical, Romance, Terence Malik | No Comments »
Posted on October 21st, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Hunted – William Friedkin The Hunted is a nasty little film. Brutal and brutalising. Because it displays considerable mastery of many aesthetic techniques of film-making, the way in which is it bad raises interesting philosophical and aesthetic questions. It is what one might call an aesthetically immoral movie. The attribution of moral concepts […]
Filed under: 1 star, Action, Film Essay, Hollywood, Philosophical, War, William Friedkin | No Comments »
Posted on October 18th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Village – M Night Shyamalan The biggest twist in Village is the way it’s filmed. Cinematically dishonest, it cheats the audience by misusing the ‘grammar’ of film. A ‘cry wolf’ movie: music, shot selection, editing, constantly threatens a fright……then nothing. By the time it does make you jump your adrenaline’s sluggish from false […]
Filed under: 1 star, General, Hollywood, M Night Shyamalan, Thriller | No Comments »