5 posts categorized "Apocalypse"

March 27, 2016

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE

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ColeSmithey.comDan Trachtenberg’s low-budget suspense thriller is one big plot hole. Don’t believe the hype implied by its relatively high score on RottenTomatoes, “Cloverfield 10” is an underdeveloped post apocalyptic dud. Talk about a movie with no personality, this thematically indigent picture doesn’t have any ethical center, much less any political satire to speak of.

Think of it as “Panic Room” without the panic.

Girl-next-door-type Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has just broken up with her boyfriend as she drives at night through rural Louisiana. Michelle loses control of her car and crashes down the side of a ravine. She awakens in an empty, locked, cinder block room strung up to a bag of intravenous fluid. She is locked at the knee to the wall just in case there was any confusion about her status as a hostage or prisoner.

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In walks Howard (John Goodman), a conspiracy-theorist prepper whose time has arrived. Howard informs Michelle of her safety inside his underground bunker since he saved her life after he found her wrecked car. According to Howard, everyone above ground has been killed.

The air is toxic. Aliens are everywhere.

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Naturally, Michelle tries everything she can to escape, but Howard lets her off the hook easily considering how many times she tries some shenanigans. She certainly gets treated better than the bunker’s third wheel Emmett (played by John Gallagher Jr. looking and sounding suspiciously like Dane Cook). Emmett doesn’t know Howard very well even though he spent a few years helping Howard build the bunker before begging to live there with Howard. Nothing adds up.

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The overbearing Howard instructs his confined guests that there is to be no touching, as if that would be enough warning for two hot-blooded youngsters to keep their hands off one another while trapped inside roughly 1000 square feet. The screenwriters could have at least included spit swapping. But this isn’t that kind of movie. It isn’t any kind of movie. Howard seems to have a criminal past involving the disappearance of at least one woman, but he’s not much of pervert around Michelle. He’s too much of a pussycat to give the movie the menace and unpredictability it needs.

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If all suspense thrillers were this boring, audiences would stop going to see them. The worst thing about “Cloverfield 10” is that a lowest common denominator phenomenon has occurred in the hive-mind of critics bending over backwards to champion this indefensible turd. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Rated PG-13. 103 mins.

1 Star

Cozy Cole

Cole Smithey on Patreon

January 12, 2014

OPEN GRAVE

ColeSmithey.com   Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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ColeSmithey.com Stock characters in a poorly plotted zombie-apocalypse storyline jabbed with a ham-fisted musical score, “Open Grave” is an elementary horror movie geared to set the genre back 30 years.

Spanish director Gonzalo López-Gallego oversees the action with an urgent visual style that would work better without Juan Navazo’s invasive musical foundation.

That isn’t fear or anxiety you feel while watching the movie; that’s a headache caused by loud sonic interjections set to make you want to get up and leave the cinema.

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Sharlto Copley takes a pay cut to lead an otherwise unremarkable cast through a series of discoveries about their forgotten identities after he awakens in an open grave where he lies atop a pile of corpses.

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Tedium sets in long before the film’s underwhelming third revelations pretend to make sense of the foundations of more gun-pointing face-offs than you’ve even seen in one movie.

“Open Grave” is visual white noise. Don’t waste your time unless you’re a glutton for punishment.

Rated R. 102 mins.

1 Star

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

June 27, 2012

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

ColeSmithey.com    Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon. Thanks a lot pal! Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

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ColeSmithey.comHampered by a feeble script from writer-director Lorene Scafaria, “Waiting for the End of the World” doesn’t know whether it’s a comedy, tragedy, or romantic drama. The fairly inert movie adds yet more veracity to the reputation of Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” as the best apocalypse film to come along.

As in Lars Von Trier's recent doomsday film “Melancholia,” the end of the planet looms large on the horizon. An asteroid is on a certain collision course with Earth. Impact is due to occur in precisely two weeks time.

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Steve Carell shows a remarkable lack of comic character as Dodge, a sweater wearing — read “nerdy” — insurance salesman whose wife takes off with another man. Lucky for Dodge, his next-door neighbor Penny (Keira Knightly) is on the outs with her own less-than-desirable mate. Dodge and Penny team up more than hook up. The semi-romantically inclined duo set off on a road trip to track down Dodge’s long lost high-school girlfriend Olivia. If the journey happens to forge a reunion with his disenfranchised father (Martin Sheen), it comes as a minor consolation prize.

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Other members of American society are busy looting, rioting, or hunkering down in readymade bunkers. Some of Dodge’s friends host a dinner party aimed at instigating an orgy to enable its participants to get off with whosoever they choose. Naturally, Dodge is too much of a prude to even consider such ribald activity. Too bad, since such messy sexual activity could have injected some much needed energy into the film’s blasé tone.

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Keira Knightly is a fun actress to watch. Even in a movie where the story seems to fall apart around her, Knightly makes things interesting. Apocalypse movies have become a lot more common in the past year. If you’re keeping score, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is at best a guilty pleasure thanks to Keira Knightly’s presence. At worst, it’s a movie that bides its audience’s time on the way to certain death.

Rated R. 100 mins.

2 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

 

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