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Syntheseizur

syntheseizur
Cinema Addict
# Film Ratings: 1451
Member Since: 03 Aug 2010

Recent Ratings

77 51%
Olympia 2. Teil - Fest der Schönheit (1938) - Rated 09 Apr 2019
Favorite events: horseback riding, biking. Europeans from the '30s really know how to fall on their asses. Least favorite event: Nazi sailors, fuck off. Also, you know the music's bad when it's a relief to hear "The Star Spangled Banner."
76 47%
Suspiria (2018) - Rated 16 Jan 2019
Impossible for me to unpack after a single viewing. It's a movie that calls on 21st century traumas as forcefully as it channels '70s film aesthetics, one which finds ties between gore, atmosphere, and psychological horror, and one which intensely analyzes processes of movement and the body while reaching into the deep recesses of the mind, toward repressed guilt and malice. It's impossibly dense, and it doesn't really seem to make sense, but I also want to work the puzzle in my mind so badly.
71 31%
Grizzly Man (2005) - Rated 15 Jan 2019
As far as personality-focused documentaries go, the methodology of this one and its effort to explore the philosophy of its subject as much as his idiosyncrasies is far more palatable than others. I appreciate Herzog's deep interest in the subject, even if it feels slightly objectifying, but his ideological interest in the story shows through and reveals something about obsession, nature, and modernity that might've remained buried in the story and its sensationalist retellings otherwise.
41 5%
Excalibur (1981) - Rated 15 Jan 2019
A shallow if visually poetic retelling of an already overexposed mythology with some mad TV movie energy. The Holy Grail section is a good mix of fantastic imagery and nuanced storytelling, but the rest is alternatingly over-the-top and dry with stop-start pacing, meager attempts at characterization, and dialogue that tries way too hard.
16 1%
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) - Rated 15 Jan 2019
"We're not like other bands," the movie insists as it shuffles through endless biopic clichés. It's a tedious circlejerk, a movie that never stops saying how great Queen is, for people who already think Queen is great, all so fans can congratulate themselves and surviving band members can revise history so that Freddie was the sole source of strife in the band. It's a movie to make you feel good for liking Queen, even though it completely falsifies their legacy. Is that really worth celebrating
82 70%
Phantom Thread (2017) - Rated 13 Jan 2019
Even past the complex web of associations it makes between artistry, ego, love, sacrifice, and purpose, Phantom Thread is primarily about both the impossibility and necessity of communication and communion and an elegant vision of the recklessness of romance. Aesthetically intimate but emotionally cold, the movie dismantles love in a way I've never seen, illustrating the self-destruction and psychological violence of romantic compromise in brutally snippy encounters.
74 39%
Paddington 2 (2017) - Rated 28 Dec 2018
Just delightful.
79 56%
Revenge (2018) - Rated 13 Dec 2018
A ruthlessly blunt satire of the male gaze with a psychedelic Mad Max aesthetic and an insane, brilliant ending that really emphasizes the movie's feminist perspective. In some senses, it's much larger than the typical rape revenge narrative it's been accused of being, but if it weren't so focused on sticking to the structural components of the genre, it could've made a far more robust and singular statement. Of course, then it may not have been so perfectly subversive in the same way.
77 51%
Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018) - Rated 13 Dec 2018
This movie illustrates in clear terms the deep thirst for compassion in society, and it certainly does feel like a critical message for this era of American discord. It allows us a glimpse at the cracks in the Mr. Rogers persona and returns him to humanity, reminding us that there was nothing supernaturally good about him. Ultimately, the movie has a simple message that it tells simply, just as Mr. Rogers did, but it comes off as profound because we forget how to act with empathy at all times.
74 39%
Morvern Callar (2002) - Rated 12 Dec 2018
The opening scenes are so perfectly realized in every way, intensely emotional without being at all overstated, as Ramsay does so well, but the thread of relatability I was so closely attracted to in the beginning begins to flicker in and out in the cold idosyncracies of the second half. That said, I'd love to see the movie again with a better transfer and especially higher fidelity audio (I watched on Prime Video) to better appreciate the minor moments that comprise the whole of the atmosphere.