lumpnboy
Cinema Addict
Member Since: 09 Jun 2008
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Recent Ratings
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Cruising (1980) - Rated 23 Feb 2025
"In the case upon which this was partly based, the killer, who Friedkin interviewed in prison, wasn't caught by diligent police work. Police ignored the case. A queer activist who had been writing about entrenched police homophobia was contacted by someone with relevant information making it relatively easy to identify the killer. The activist gave this information to the cops who arrested the guy the next day. The same activist then helped lead the protests against a movie covering for the cops."
The Devil's Well (2018) - Rated 25 Dec 2024
"A reflection on motivated perception and interpretation, from the 'paranormal investigators' and police, in this case, only seeing possibilities determined in advance, actively ignoring anything suggesting anything else, seemingly almost completely even at the end - though the actually final footage of interviews about how they came to be such 'investigators' isn't subtle, it all went over the heads of critics, who, you know, saw what they expected."
Smile 2 (2024) - Rated 24 Dec 2024
"In my head, 60 is a reasonably high score, given what's turned out to be the distribution of my ratings. I don't like the word 'score:, but then again I feel slightly degraded by the act of rating at all. Plus it's scary; who the hell knows what I think? Imagine that last 'I' is in italics. I considered giving it 65 because 60 is what I gave the first one and I think this one might be better. But 65 seems pretty high..."
Bright Falls (2010) - Rated 20 Dec 2024
"Only hints at the game's themes of parasociality in a critical reflection on the history of those who made it, Sam Lake in particular but as the avatar of the collective and company for which he became the figurehead in part because they couldn't afford proper actors and just used his face for Max Payne - a parallel version of whom traps Alan Wake in a similarly reductive space of insistent parasociality. But better than you'd expect."
Smile (2022) - Rated 03 Nov 2024
"A meditation on trauma, and at least a refusal of pop psych/pop culture ideas of what is involved in confronting it."
Civil War (2024) - Rated 07 Jul 2024
"One day we'll discover this as the moment for a new way in which expensive 'serious' film-making process is integrated with the kind of risk-minimising survey-, focus-group- and interview-based assessments I was tangentially involved with as a qualitative analysis guy at a 'strategic communications consultancy', ever-more-finely dividing people into demographics and constituencies and mostly markets, like using Frankfurt School research methods but so you don't piss off too many authoritarians."
Suspiria (2018) - Rated 07 Jul 2024
"I liked this quite a bit more than the movie of which it is ostensibly a remake, certainly."
Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012) - Rated 07 Jul 2024
"A bad cheap movie made by people who seem mostly in film-making as an entirely cynical cash-grab, borderline con-men putting out pretend movies, mockbusters and such, this does nonetheless feature one excellent performance and it's as Lincoln."
Dune: Part Two (2024) - Rated 07 Jul 2024
Dune (2021) - Rated 07 Jul 2024
"Looks quite pretty but I feel like the movie exemplifies the word "portentous" in ways that imply entirely unearned audience responses, just recycling self-consciously "epic" silliness. The best thing is embracing the insect wing flapping air travel technology with a straight face."
