Yiannos
Cinema Addict - 1942 Film Ratings
Member Since: Jul 7, 2014
Bio: I love film and rate according to genre and/or a director's body of work.
Recent Ratings
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| 63 50% | The House That Jack Built (2018) - May 19, 2019
"Not since American Psycho has an artist delved this deeply into the disturbed mind of a complete psychopathic killer. Oddly enough, Von Trier's film is mostly lacking in humour which, when combined with its generic handheld camera work, gives it a dreary one dimensional drabness at times that could have easily been avoided, especially given the visual creativity on display in its epilogue. It's also way too long, but the narration is quite absorbing, and Dillon knocks it out of the park."
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| 73 73% | Shoah: The Four Sisters (2017) - May 18, 2019
"It might seem unfair to criticise it for lacking the ambition of Shoah, which is surely the most comprehensive documentary ever made on the subject. It's clearly an extension of that experience, but it plays like an extra feature rather than a standalone work. Even when taken as part of a larger film, the political act of documenting the traumatic experiences of Holocaust survivors for the ages seems less vital than it did in Shoah, largely because of its reduced scope and sense of repetition."
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| 50 25% | Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) - May 18, 2019
"Lugosi shines as a mad doctor who tries to forge an unholy alliance between man and ape, but when he isn't on screen, the constant narrative gear grinding makes it seem much longer than its brief running time. The acting is mediocre across the board, and while its theme of bestiality was daring for its time, it isn't handled in a particularly effective way. The expressionist touches are fine, but they aren't a patch on either the German or American films it is clearly referencing."
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| 48 19% | Mr. Majestyk (1974) - May 17, 2019
"It's a shame that Bronson made mostly mediocre films because he had more talent than he was generally given credit for in his time, and he was certainly a better actor than the Seagal's of this world. Mr.Majestyk is supposedly one of his better films, but it's really a bog standard run of the mill period actioner with a slow pace and a lack of fireworks; and it's 'gritty' without ever being terribly realistic, which is another hallmark of 70's action films."
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| 60 43% | Rembrandt's J'accuse (2008) - May 09, 2019
"The insistence among the intellectually minded on finding all sorts of 'meanings' in art can reek of insecurity as it's often a sign of disconnect from the aesthetic/sensual part of life, but Greenaway eschews the trendy political readings of the day to explore a highly speculative account of Nightwatch that is certainly entertaining, if not always convincing. His mixed media approach remains rather drab, but he is an engaging narrator that could read out a phone book and still be compelling."
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| 63 50% | Lothringen! (1994) - May 08, 2019
"An examination of identity and resistance in times of political strife. Like many S/H shorts, it compresses a lot of information into its short running time and assumes prior knowledge. Nonetheless, what is communicated clearly is the struggle to maintain one's language and culture under the threat of occupying forces determined to erase all traces of history and locality and the necessity of doing so. It's a very worthy subject, but this viewer wishes the canvas was bigger."
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| 40 7% | Contamination (1980) - May 07, 2019
"Contamination begins semi-promisingly as a c-grade earthbound knockoff of Alien, but when the action moves to South America the viewer is subjected to near interminable stretches of utter tedium where nothing of interest happens. The slo-mo death scenes quickly grow repetitive---it's the same damn gut explosion ad nauseum/infinitum--and the score that accompanies them only adds to the hilarity (unintentionally). The pace picks up in the finale, but not enough to save it."
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| 75 81% | When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) - May 07, 2019
"A sensitive portrayal of the problems of women and the difficult decisions they are often forced to make as a result of their subordinate social position. Naruse uses the life of a middle aged geisha to explore these difficulties and provides what strikes me as a reasonably authentic representation of that world. Takamine communicates her characters burdens and struggles so precisely that even the occasionally overripe dialogue doesn't weaken the force or clarity of her emotional expression."
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| 78 86% | Jaws (1975) - May 06, 2019
"Created the summer blockbuster, which now assaults us in all seasons, but the sheer craftsmanship here is undeniable and a far cry from the event films made today. Spielberg took a junk book and transformed it into a first rate thriller that's aided immeaurably by Williams' menacingly minimalist score, whose insistent pounding really ramps up the tension. Scheider, Dreyfuss and Shaw have great chemistry, and there are a number of suspenseful sequences that rank with the best of their genre."
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| 63 50% | Busting (1974) - May 03, 2019
"Hyams is probably the only director who knew how to use Gould other than Altman, and he puts his laconic charm to good use in Busting, his theatrical feature debut. It suffers from a relatively weak performance by Blake as Gould's partner--imagine if Falk was cast in the role?--and Hyam's plot is purely perfunctory, but it has a scrappy, shaggy dog quality that was central to the appeal of so many New Hollywood films about institutional corruption despite not really excelling in any department."
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