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Mars Attacks! (1996)
Mars Attacks! (1996)
1996 | Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Lavishly camp black-comedy sci-fi extravaganza. Motivated largely by their innate gittishness, Martians attack the Earth (the clue is in the title), and various people naturally respond in their own personal ways. Much property damage and rather dated mid-90s CGI result.

One of those bizarre mutants that should never really have got past the script stage, let alone received a $70m budget: the release schedule inevitably resulted in it being hailed as a spoof of Independence Day (hard to spoof something that wasn't meant to be taken seriously in the first place), but this is much more a send-up of classic 50s sci-fi B-movies (various spot-on parodies), as well as being a startlingly subversive black comedy. You can also sense Burton trying to do his version of Dr Strangelove, with Nicholson in a multiple role, but it doesn't have anything like the same sharpness or impact. A bit patchy overall - some laugh-out-loud moments and game performances, but also a lot of dead wood and characters and jokes that just don't work. On the whole, though, the fact that films like this still get made suggests hope is not yet lost for the world.
  
Zero Dark Thirty (2013)
Zero Dark Thirty (2013)
2013 | Drama
So I have been putting off seeing this movie since it was released. Well, not really. I just never made it a priority. There was always something else to watch or capture my time. I wish I wouldn't have waited so long to see it.

I was under the false impression that Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt would be primary characters in the story line. They played their roles, but the true ownership of the script has to go to Jessica Chastain (whom I have a newfound respect for) with a side of Jason Clarke. To be honest, I hadn't read much about the movie either. Mainly just had an idea of it being about the assault on Bin Laden.

There is a level of mental anguish during the movie that I didn't expect. You come to terms with the reality that these people are living trying to fulfill their duty while being able to sleep at night and having a need to protect their families and loved ones.

Zero Dark Thirty isn't an outright action movie as expected. There are some action sequences and those are done well, but the real strength of the movie is the mental gymnastics endured by all involved.
  
    Victim

    Victim

    John Coldstream

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    Book

    ?Victim (1961) was a landmark in the history both of the cinema and of British society. This modest...

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
2014 | Comedy, Drama

"I’m a fan of Ed Norton. He had quite an amazing double act this year with Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel. I remember I read the script of Birdman at one point and I thought it was brilliant, but then when I saw his performance… I mean, it’s wonderful when you’ve read something and when you then see the performance, you go, “There’s no way anyone else could have done that but Ed Norton.” I thought he was very, very good.What I love about Birdman is that most movies — when I see movies and television shows — dramatic things happen, and then people act dramatically, and sometimes you go, “Would you really do that?” Horrible things happen all our lives; we all experience loss and death and trauma. Usually, most people, I think, we just get on with it. We don’t have a whole soliloquy in the middle of something. [laughs] You just deal with life, right? But then when you see Birdman, one of the places where it actually works is in the theater, because people are so dramatic. That’s just the way it is. So it was very true in that movie. Of course, on a technical level, that movie was just insane."

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