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The Expanse: Babylon's Ashes (2022)
Awful conclusion to a declining show
So the fate of humanity is left in the hands of a sarcastic petulant immature space pirate who doesn't know how to talk about politics except by reciting lists of grievances ad whataboutisms. The Belters, most of whom are virulent racists who are okay with genocide, are gifted everything on a silver platter despite their battle fleet being destroyed and their economy being in shambles.
How disappointing. Holden and Avasarala really dropped the ball, what an embarrassment.
In retrospect everything done to the belt was justified. Exploiting the belt, putting Belters on hooks, all of it was justified, the only problem was they didn't do enough to cut down Marco Inaros before he grew tall. Since Drummer showed that working with even the "good" Belters is impossible as they will always act like rapacious idiots and grasp for ever more power. Wasn't this show supposed to teach something about how humanity needs to work together and cooperate? At the end of the day it showed that working together with Belters was impossible and they ought to be militarily crushed.
Hotaru no haka (1988)
Not a compelling story
I am a sap for tragic war stories so I had high hopes for this one, only to be a bit disappointed. The story was simplistic, it basically just follows one character's actions, and his irresponsibility - while understandable since he is a child - makes it a little difficult to empathize with him. It's not a big story about the devastation in Japan, it's mostly just a tale of a child who can't afford any food. There were nice elements as other people say but the story just didn't bite.
Agree with the content of Galcian's review (although he only gave it a 3), go check it out, I especially agree that it's silly to call this an anti-war movie. For a movie to have a genuine anti-war message it has to do something more than merely show a tragic event that is the consequence of a war. This movie does nothing to interrogate or even acknowledge the motivations and moral choices made by anybody involved in the Japanese and Allied war efforts, it just presents a snapshot of the end result. "Sometimes war leads to starving children and that's very sad" is not a novel political message, it's a basic fact that people have known for thousands of years.
I mostly liked it because I still like sappy tragedy movies and as other reviews have said, there are nice elements to this one. If you don't like sappy movies, I'd say don't bother watching it.
Alatriste (2006)
Good visuals and battles at least
Concur with other reviews about the plot and characters, but the cinematography is nice and some of the fighting is very good - gritty, scary, coherent, and accurate to the time period.
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966)
Grating sound, unrealistic guns, bad character logic
Yes everyone likes Morricone's composition but I have never been so distracted by poor sound quality, the audio quality is generally poor and the sound effect used for gunshots is particularly grating. I don't know why so many Western movies use this ridiculous pinging/whistling sound which is nothing like a real gun. Also, shooting a revolver from inside the water in a bathtub? Absurd.
Additionally Blondie is unrealistically accurate with his rifle, which makes crucial elements of the plot hard to believe. The cartridges of early repeating rifles were weak so he couldn't possibly have hit that far shot to save Tuco at the end, especially from a standing position. And even at close range, shooting a rope is extremely hard, yet we have to believe that he's done it reliably time and again with moments to spare before Tuco chokes out or a sheriff shoots back.
The Civil War battle scene was silly, starting with the gratuitous use of excessively large artillery which wouldn't have a place at a New Mexico river crossing and whose practical effects were equally unconvincing. And of course all the cannon shells exploded on impact, no realistic fuses or canister shot, and I don't recall a single shot of a cannon actually being reloaded - all bad movie tropes which make the scene hard to believe. I got the sense that the director was (consciously or otherwise) trying to portray Civil War New Mexico with the zeitgeist surrounding WWI on the Western Front: ruinous, explosive artillery bombardment in the trenches followed by pointless charges over the top to please the higher command. That inappropriate transposition of themes made the battle scene feel uncreative and disconnected from the historical period.
Additionally, the practice of two sides simultaneously charging into the bridge at each other was completely illogical, it would clearly be better to sit in the trenches and defend while the enemy bottlenecks through the bridge. I know that part of the vision of the film was to communicate the senselessness of war, but portraying both armies as having implausibly stupid leadership isn't a good way achieve that.
The famous final scene was very cool with the running through the graves but then it went off the rails. First, I was able to deduce the truth about the treasure after Arch Stanton's grave turned up empty. The only way that Blondie could know that there was a grave for "Arch Stanton" would be that the treasure clue said something about Arch Stanton, he couldn't have just made up a name that coincidentally belonged to someone at that cemetery. So the clue would have to mention Stanton's grave, and an unmarked grave right next to it would be the obvious answer. Tuco or Angel Eyes should have been able to figure this out and then realize that they didn't need to keep Blondie alive anymore. Or Blondie should have been smart enough to foresee this problem and not try that plan in the first place.
Additionally, it doesn't make any sense why Blondie pretended to write the real name onto the rock, nor does it make sense why he got the three of them into that standoff. Actions which did nothing but increase his disposability in the eyes of the other two, putting him in greater danger of being killed.
I think Blondie is meant to be a moral or spiritual character who does things to serve a bigger purpose beyond himself, to provide some kind of lesson or poetic justice to Tuco and Angel Eyes. Yet the details of such a characterization and how it might explain his actions are totally unintelligible to me at least from a first watch.
By far the most obvious explanation is that the director imagined it would be really cool to have this three-way standoff scene so he just had the main character do something to make it happen, without regard for actual logic and characterization. And once you notice that, the scene isn't so cool anymore.
The movie is too long, it's a relatively simple plot with too many filler scenes which are not efficient at characterizing the trio. The Tuco-Blondie dynamic was good at least. One odd thing is that the movie makes a big deal in the beginning about Angel Eyes always following contracts, yet it never reincorporates that later in the film.
Potop (1974)
The good old days of epic practical effects
The great thing about this movie is the big armies of extras in period gear, and they don't do it just for one big battle but over and over throughout the movie to the point of being gratuitous (in a good way). Way better than CGI of course. Plus the details of weapons, armor, horse riding and locations all look nice. So it's a satisfying exploration of the historical setting.
There are several moments where the development of battles doesn't make sense, and the battles sometimes turn into confused mass melees just like Hollywood depictions. And the cannon practical effects are not very good, but at least they are not as bad as in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
The movie is only average at trying to communicate the brutality of hand to hand warfare. Nor does it communicate the severity of the tragedy that befell Poland at this time. It's supposed to be a nationalist story about one of the most terrible episodes of Polish history yet it mostly depicts it like a PG-13 fantasy adventure. There is a little bit of (rather mild) atrocity/brutality but not enough for a 4.5 hour movie and, bizarrely, it is only ever done by Poles.
The main character starts off fairly unlikeable, and while things improve when the plot gets going the slow development is a problem for such a long movie. The only character who stands out as enjoyable is Colonel Zagloba.
There is a confusing moment where a character, last seen alive and well, suddenly turns up wounded and unconscious being pulled on a sled. It's a colossal screwup that the writers apparently couldn't find time to work such a pivotal event into a 4.5 hour movie. Anyway just know before you watch that when the character turns up wounded, it's from an offscreen event and not some sort of flashback or whatever.
Mimino (1977)
Poor screenplay
There are things to like with this movie but the plot is disjointed and confusing, there are deus ex machina elements, and the main character's actions aren't fully justified.
Stalingrad (1993)
The War Machine
It is my favorite war movie because it puts the soldiers in true context. It doesn't just tell a tragic story of a platoon being attacked by the enemy and the environment; it shows them violently grabbed and swept up by a sprawling, swirling war machine. You get just enough glimpses through the eyes of the soldiers to see how the collective actions of thousands and thousands of Germans are creating an operational monster with a mind of its own, tearing everything in its path.