djross
Criticker Zealot - 5316 Film Ratings
Member Since: 16 Apr 2006
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Age: 53
TCI: not enough ratings
Films in Common: 0
Not in Your Top 1000 TCIs
Bio: Films receiving a score between 91 and 100 are considered to be a masterpiece.
Longer reviews: https://www.criticker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5869
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DJRoss70
See also: https://www.academia.edu/94550175/Moving_Images_A_Personal_Record
Longer reviews: https://www.criticker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5869
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DJRoss70
See also: https://www.academia.edu/94550175/Moving_Images_A_Personal_Record
Recent Ratings
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50 43% | Ford v Ferrari (2019) - Rated 17 Mar 2024
"A couple of plucky and determined friends battle conformism and hierarchy in an attempt to win against the odds. Above average for this type of thing."
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55 53% | The Gentlemen (2024) - Rated 16 Mar 2024
"As stated, this concerns those who live in the zoo but hunt in the jungle, and the struggle to compose the two. Perhaps less obvious is the bargain with the audience this entails – “please accept an aristocratic protagonist who increasingly gives in to his taste for murderous violence committed in the name of survival and family, and in return we’ll at least keep him more or less chaste”. Amusing and well-made, even if it’s all really just a tale of rich folk behaving badly and enjoying it."
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74 84% | Asteroid City (2023) - Rated 15 Mar 2024
"Principal theme: “you can’t wake up if you don’t go to sleep”. Reason is not the opposite of delusion but the potential that opens up only on the basis of those dreams that give to the understanding its reasons. Only by letting go of consciousness can we enter the mysteries that grant the possibility of orientation and desire. Instead of objecting to the apparently frivolous nature of his storytelling, we should ask whether his dry tales might in fact be initiating us into a cinematic mystagogy."
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55 53% | Qiu Jue (1972) - Rated 10 Mar 2024
"Summary: A grandmother who feels guilty over having failed to heed the “spare the rod…” saying worries even more about its consequences for the “family line”, and for that reason forces her adoptive granddaughter to get together with her spoiled grandson, but matters improve somewhat because it turns out that there’s nothing like setting a date on one’s mortality to focus attention on the things that really count in life. An unusual story, told in a fairly entertaining way."
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35 19% | The Signal (2024) - Rated 09 Mar 2024
"Everything is done in quite a mediocre and at times poor way, but there's something a bit interesting about the ending, which suggests that where our chance really lies is not in a new signal coming from elsewhere but rather from old signals coming back, making it possible to hear them in a new way – that is, reinterpreting them. The inclusion of a giant space spider (episode 1 at 40:45 to 40:55), à la SPACEMAN, with no further reference, is odd and unexplained, hallucinations notwithstanding."
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60 62% | The Death of Stalin (2017) - Rated 07 Mar 2024
"Despite huge differences in style, humour, ambition and intent, this could really form the second half of a Beria double feature, to be screened after KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR!. The approach to casting is pretty great, and it does contain quite a few good lines."
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45 34% | Spaceman (2024) - Rated 05 Mar 2024
"AD ASTRA but about a guy who neglects his role as husband rather than father. Strange to use long-distance space travel just to say: a man should make his woman the absolute centre and abandon all other dreams. Has this ideology arisen because women have demanded it or because men want to legitimize their cowardice and laziness in the face of their own dreams? In some ways an aesthetic improvement over Gray’s film, but all in the service of a trite conception of human relations that I reject."
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30 12% | The Equalizer 2 (2018) - Rated 03 Mar 2024
"Denzel Washington equalizing stuff all over the place, but in this instance he just seems blank rather than grim and determined, the story offers little, and it doesn’t have the benefit of Zack Hemsey’s “Vengeance” to get us all in the mood for some equalizing."
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55 53% | Detachment (2011) - Rated 01 Mar 2024
"A highly uneven, rather hysterical screenplay (by a former teacher) is brought to life by complicated but uneven direction featuring uneven performances. Parts of it are downright bad, but a few of the speeches hit the target. Despite its weaknesses and its generally exaggerated style, and a narrative built on clichés, somehow it does still manage to generate a bit of affective power."
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30 12% | The Kitchen (2023) - Rated 29 Feb 2024
"A boy and his long lost father get to know one another, while both face the trials and difficult choices that come with inequality and oppression. One imagines the filmmakers felt they were confronting the audience with important issues yet the slow-moving narrative mainly gives the feeling of conforming to the imperatives of a Hollywood screenwriting textbook. Generous viewers might say that the temperature is gradually raised to boiling point. Contains no female characters of any significance."
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