djross

Criticker Zealot - 5252 Film Ratings

Member Since: 16 Apr 2006

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Age: 52

Recent Ratings

Check out djross's...

Watch Journal

Most Popular Mini Reviews

Favorites

Least Favorites

Submissions

Full Ratings List

45 T4

EO (2022) - 04 Dec 2023 "Vegetarian movie in the guise of a fancily filmed and edited AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, but with a rather superficial way of “raising issues” (sudden appearance of wind farms, a robot dog, Isabelle Huppert, etc.)."

45 T4

Johnny Guitar (1954) - 04 Dec 2023 "The fury of a repressed woman scorned leads to the hell that such witches bring – the witchhunt, that is, crowd psychology and mob justice, replete with scenes of naming names. No doubt ripe for analysis, but overly ripe also in the sense of being excessively melodramatic, with dialogue and performances that often seem like low-grade but enthusiastic high school theatrics, filled with political and sexual symbolism, yet whose protagonists are somehow still unpleasantly impotent and infertile."

55 T6

Black Christmas (1974) - 03 Dec 2023 "Variable dialogue and performances, shifting continuously from wooden to lively, but really quite well made, looks good in that 1974 kind of a way, does interesting things with sound, and generally gets better as it goes along, even though the standout performer (Kidder) mainly features in the first half. Finally a film that shows the viewer exactly why, if you want to locate the source of a call to a tapped phone, the receiver needs to keep the caller on the line for a certain amount of time."

50 T5

7 Days in Entebbe (2018) - 30 Nov 2023 "Characterisation and dialogue are a little weak (not easy to turn politicians and terrorists into plausible human beings), but a bit better than its reputation. The use of dance is good and it is unusual that the raid itself only takes up a small amount of the running time. Watching less than two months after 7 October 2023, the issues probably resonate more strongly than when the film was released. I don’t think I realised previously that the only Israeli soldier killed was Netanyahu’s brother."

50 T5

Life on Our Planet (2023) - 30 Nov 2023 "Not exactly jam-packed with information, there’s too much focus on the rise and fall of “dynasties”, too great a reliance on CGI that isn’t completely convincing (but there’s an argument to say that it’s better for viewers to be able to clearly distinguish this from actual video of wildlife), and, unlike Attenborough documentaries, the narrator never indicates that there are any unanswered questions, scientific uncertainties, unproven hypotheses, etc. Still, not a bad introduction for children."

60 T7

A Wife Confesses (1961) - 27 Nov 2023 "Double Indemnity Japanese-Style, and as a courtroom drama. Quite a good idea, really, and quite nicely assembled. Ultimately about the virtues of courage and desire, and the fear they can so easily provoke."

35 T2

The World of Henry Orient (1964) - 27 Nov 2023 "Ode to the onset of female adolescence, when girlish silliness begins to discover the pangs of desire but without the libidinal economy having yet been rearranged. But another theme also gradually reveals itself: a man grows tired of his wife’s taste for adultery, so decides to instead take his 14-year-old daughter as his new girlfriend, for as long as she’ll have him. Sounds interesting and charming, perhaps, but the story and characterisation are inadequate, and the humour is nonexistent."

45 T4

The Mind Snatchers (1972) - 20 Nov 2023 "The aims and practice of medical experimentation and neurotechnology are distorted by military ends, in the pursuit of fearless soldiers and in a way that eliminates psychic singularity. A bit stagey, with variable performances and fairly basic direction, but Christopher Walken makes a strong impression in his first starring role."

40 T3

The Accountant (2016) - 14 Nov 2023 "Ode to (in this case, autistic) “difference”, and yet another film focused on a fastidious and uncommunicative killer: I guess the template was set with LE SAMOURAÏ. Also: brothers work it out, a theme repeated from the director's earlier effort, WARRIOR, and one that here supplies what are probably the most ridiculous scenes in a movie generally unconstrained by the avoidance of ridiculousness. Nevertheless, has its charms, including Anna Kendrick as the cute girl."

40 T3

The Killer (2023) - 13 Nov 2023 "On the gap between aiming for perfect (mechanical) discipline and the reality of having to adjust (improvise) to inevitable imperfection, the twist being that those who live in a truly machine-like way are the ones who really embody “the system” at its top, not just its employees, and that the latter have a chance against the former precisely insofar as they are capable of such creative “adjustments”. Mildly amusing, but hardly funny, and while it is slick, there’s not much to hold onto here."

Show More