Some Dude Reviews Movies

Johnny Mnemonic  came in a neon orange VHS tape. I remember badly wanting my own copy, because the movie was so COOL! But, that was in the mid-to-late nineties, when I was ten years old. I am 31, now, and I still quite enjoy the movie. If only in the way that people really like watching videos of people getting struck in the groin, or falling down stairs. It's schadenfreude . It's the celebration of someone else's misery. Johnny Mnemonic  is a story of a high tech courier who downloads sensitive information into his own cybernetically enhanced brain. But soon Johnny is on the run from one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and one of the deadliest yakuza gangs. I. A Film of Contradictions There is a lot to like in Johnny Mnemonic . But there is always a flip side, which makes the film hard to truly enjoy. Francois Protat's cinematography is skillful, and even elegant, but then the flimsy CG and practical effects seem to ugly up the proce...

The 1995 film, Hackers , is not on my to-do list because it is necessarily cyberpunk. It is set in the modern day, in fact. But there are a lot of cyberpunk elements rolling around in it: corporate tyranny, socialistic hacker communities, and FASHION. And then there's the fact that the film is a living testament to how people, and Hollywood especially, misunderstood technology and the internet in the 90s. This was one of the films my friends and I bonded over. Not least because you get to see Angelina Jolie's boobs. And yes, that was reason enough for young me. But there was also computers! And skateboards! And teens sticking it to the man! And boobs. Anyway, I sat down as a thirty-one year old man and forced my wife to watch this movie with me. Oh boy. I. Toxic It is hard to ignore the toxic misogyny in this film. Angelina Jolie's character is a talented hacker, and says a few lines about being a radical feminist, but she is ultimately there to be eye c...

I have seen all of the RoboCop  films, with the exception of the 2014 remake (which I may or may not watch as a part of this series), but, if I'm being honest, I don't remember anything about them. Except that hulking, iconic armor design. And Peter Weller's booming, digitally augmented voice. There are three of them. And my Blockbuster had them all. And I watched them. And I realize now, how incredibly inappropriate it was for me, as a child, to watch these movies. I always thought of them as bad action movies. But Paul Verhoeven's work is something of a classic film. It sports an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and even has a Criterion release. When I sat down to hammer out a list of cyberpunk movies, RoboCop kept popping up again and again. So I decided to return to a movie I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and see what all the fuss was about. I. Proto Cyberpunk RoboCop  is not, strictly speaking, a cyberpunk movie. It does, however, feature a lot of...

This month's theme is "Cyberpunk." Over the course of the month of December, I will be viewing and reviewing the following movies, in the following order (hopefully). Follow along, if you'd like: 1. RoboCop  (1987) 2. Hackers (1995) 3. Johnny Mnemonic (1995) 4. Strange Days (1995) 5. Dredd (2012) 6. Elysium (2013) 7. Ghost in the Shell (2017) 8. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 9. Hotel Artemis (2018) 10. Mute (2018) For those not in the know, cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction. Most people use the following words to describe it: "high tech, low life." Cyberpunk is all about the abuse of technology, or the ways that the future leaves people behind, and how they find a way to make that tech work for them. Cyberpunk stories are political and nasty: it's one of the reason it doevtails so nicely with the noir genre. The aesthetic is all over the place, but the true spirit of the sub-genre is a little more specific. Hollywood has, much more often ...

Lynn Ramsay does not make easy films. Her meditation on school shootings,  We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), was compelling, but refused to shy away from the ugliness of the subject matter. I had heard a lot of critical praise for her most recent film, You Were Never Really Here  (which she wrote and directed) and decided that I had to see it. It's the tale of a man, ex-military and ex-law enforcement, who rescues kidnapped and trafficked girls. It sports a lauded lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix. And it streams on Amazon Prime. So I sat down and gave it a whirl. I. Just Ugly The "Sad Hit Man" genre of films has been done to death, at this point. The tropes are worn out and there are only so many stories of a bad man breaking good that you can tell. Where else can you go? Lynn Ramsay decided to go grim dark. She stripped away the fluff and the funny and the charm and gave us the ugly. Joe is a broken man. It takes a broken man to do wha...

I am a fan of the Coen Brothers. I think they are, perhaps, the best American filmmakers working today. Their canon is littered with westerns, throw-backs, thrillers, and strange comedies. They are not a flavor for everyone. But I have been a fan of theirs since I saw O Brother Where Art Thou? in theaters in 2000. Since then I have travelled their entire catalogue, with, admittedly mixed results. I am not a fan of all of their work:  A Serious Man  (2009) still confounds me; I was not impressed with Hail Caesar!  (2016); but they have recorded more hits than misses in my book. When it was announced that they were working on an anthology film for Netflix, I was very excited. When I read that said anthology would be a return to the western genre, I was nearly jumping with glee. If you're reading this, I assume you care what I think. Read on, dear reader, and discover. I. American Icons The Coens are excellent filmmakers. They have worked with the industry's be...

When I was young, I was a serious fantasy reader. I read George R. R. Martin, and Tolkien, and Robin Hobbs. I didn't have time for this children's series. These books about a kid who goes to wizarding school. I scoffed at them. And then I went with my family to see the first movie. And I was hooked. In the intervening years, I have become a Harry Potter convert and super-fan. My wife and I frequently talk about it, still. We've been to the theme park. We have wands. I have a Gilderoy Lockhart Pop Vinyl figure on my desk (as well as a few others). Harry Potter is a big deal in my household. I was always going to see Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald . But, in the wake of a series wave of bad reviews (it currently sports a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes), and having really enjoyed the film myself, this review is going to take a bit of a different tack. It is going to be both a review of the film, and a defense of it. Because I am not entirely sure I think a lot of the ...