Neonman
Celluloid Junkie
Member Since: 29 Sep 2008
Location: Australia
Age: 34
Bio: Hey.
Recent Ratings
Check out Neonman's...
Ocean (2025) - Rated 16 Aug 2025
"This doco is really stuck in an existential rut -- it initially shows off a bunch of wondrous-looking specimens of the ocean, yet then shows the destruction of these specimens and their inhabitants due to the fishing industry. Is this meant to be an ocean activist warning, or merely another good-looking nature doco from Attenborough and co.? Compared to docos you can watch on YouTube, Ocean has very little and not very illuminating arguments and conclusions to make."
Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) - Rated 16 Aug 2025
"I've never been autistic enough to ever get into Sonic and co., but if I were, I'd probably be even more troubled than I was by the decision to adapt the tale of this fast-moving creature as a road movie. It's a highly questionable creative decision, but it's also the only creative decision in this otherwise CG-slopfest of a kids film, with Jim Carey playing his usual annoying self rather than actually adapt the Robotnik character. I'd rather watch Sonichu The Animated Series again."
Music Jamboree (2002) - Rated 09 Aug 2025
"If you have any kind of interest in popular music, how could you not like this? The inquisitions, musings, and dissections of stories and rumors in the music world are fascinating and often hilarious across all the different skits. Some go on too long (particularly out-in-the-street skits), but Safran has such a gonzo-esque journalist-comedian screen presence, the way he scribes and performs his rants are hilarious and inspiring. The song covers featuring world instruments are ALL awesome."
Weapons (2025) - Rated 09 Aug 2025
"Unlike Barbarian's very lame 'spooky house' set-up, Weapons has a far more intriguing set-up, a mystery that I wish included a little more of the mob shitting on Julia Garner. This is well paced due to seeing each character's viewpoint, which satisfyingly solves this mystery in such an entertaining and sometimes scary way -- but once you start leaving the cinema, all those "why didn't they...?" questions start arising about this not entirely convincing climax."
The Naked Gun (2025) - Rated 09 Aug 2025
"About as good as a modern day remake of the Naked Gun could be, which is encouraging, given I thought this scattershot array of all styles of humor had gone extinct. Liam Neeson fits like a glove (get the reference?) in the dead-pan lead role, showing more than just stunt casting. There's almost non-stop jokes, so they can't all be winners (even the extended sequences), but if you don't laugh just once during this, I don't know, you might be dead."
The Iron Claw (2023) - Rated 09 Aug 2025
"Its portrayal of wrestling is cinematically brilliant, with intense performances, cinematography, and especially sound design really putting across the brutish physicality of wrestling, which can be felt even in the non-wrestling scenes. So it's entertaining to watch, but doesn't build up to a whole lot, with Holt being wasted in this role where he's not enough of an asshole. I suppose if I married Lily James, I wouldn't kill myself either."
Munich (2005) - Rated 09 Aug 2025
"Terrific political thriller, that hits a fine line between respectable portrayal of these events and the embellishment of the thrills and action. All the while, it feels like a genuine conversation about vengeance, particularly when there's political, cultural, and religious pressures to do so. Some of these are presented very convincingly, yet don't make up the film's message, just a part of this conversation. Some claim this is Spielberg's best -- the early to mid '00s were certainly his peak."
The County (2019) - Rated 31 Jul 2025
"This film shows the battles against this kind of local inhuman authoritarianism, though doesn’t present enough back-and-forth conflict to make this struggle hugely compelling. It can portray an ominous attitude with its building up of dread, but that becomes alleviated as the film takes a much more streamlined and linear approach to conflict, showing how easily Inga takes on this evil entity."
Antoinette dans les Cévennes (2020) - Rated 27 Jul 2025
"The mood of the film is appropriate, matching the vague emptiness of its main character and her own shallow exploits. It’s hard to get comfortable with Antoinette as a leading character, when she seems like a wholly self-absorbed character without much to redeem her or to make her seem worthy of this character study in romance. And it doesn’t seem like the film knows that she’s like this, as it instead treats her with too much whimsy."
Eddington (2025) - Rated 27 Jul 2025
"Oh boy, it's so great to be back in May 2020. It's quite fortunate that Aster hasn't made this a directly political film with either a red or blue message, but simply an examination of this extraordinarily testy time, and a very entertaining and surprising one at that. A bit more back-story, or at least understanding motivations, may've nudged my appreciation a little more, and some scenes break the satire when they get too unrealistically ridiculous, but it still succeeds with dangerous topics."
