frick knows/10
老无所惧 (2019) 豆瓣 TMDB
Too Old to Die Young Season 1 所属 电视剧集: 老无所惧
7.7 (13 个评分) 导演: 尼古拉斯·温丁·雷弗恩 演员: 迈尔斯·特勒 / 吉娜·马隆
迈尔斯·特勒加盟亚马逊漫改新剧《老无所惧》,该剧将由尼古拉斯·温丁·雷弗恩自编自导整季(10集)。于此同时,原著漫画作者艾德·布鲁贝克也将参与到剧本创作之中。剧中泰勒将扮演警察马丁,他深入洛杉矶犯罪组织,和来自日本、墨西哥、俄罗斯的黑帮斡旋。
2022年10月6日 看过
2022年10月6日 评论 a review of 老无所惧 - My first Nicolas Winding Refn work. Right from the second it begins you can tell this is the product of an auteur by its one of a kind sense of style. Scenes are bathed in neon light, clothes are lavish and flamboyant, the key performances are moody to fit the grim nature of the content, actors (particularly the extras) spend a lot of time cool posing in frame, and trucking shots seem to be the director's (of all 10 episodes btw) calling card. Visually it lacks for nothing. Narratively on the other hand... Well, that will be dependent on the viewer I suppose. Following the death of his partner and being forced into serving as a hitman for an underground crime gang, a corrupt sociopathic cop starts having an existential crisis and begins to search for a way of using his murderous tendencies for good. Becoming a sort of vigilante who targets rapists, pedophiles, and the rest of the worst humanity has to offer. It's a bleak, dark tale filled with depravity. Hyper violent and gruesome, with stuff like our leading man even being engaged in a sexual relationship with a teenager. Refn co-created this with Ed Brubaker of comic book fame. As such, you can really feel the influence that other medium has. There are countless, regularly released limited series runs that try to get by on edgy, or I'm sorry, "mature" material in the form of graphic portrayals of gore, sexuality, and nudity presented through a unique art style and not much else. Because nothing says thoughtful adult reading like throwing a penis, titty, or some heavy profanity in a panel and calling it a day. A degree of that same mentality can be found here as you'll be subjected to a near-constant array of explicitly portrayed brutality and fetishistic sex acts, all of which could be construed as occuring without any sort of intended meaning. I think when presented with some perverse piece of artistic expression like this we try our best to justify our enjoyment of it by interpreting or even imposing a theme/message from its creator on it. You can easily come up with an endless number of theories about what Refn and Brubaker were trying to convey here. Be it a moral critique of humanity's penchant for savagery, a meta-commentary on how we the viewers crave watching degeneracy whether it has a point or not supported by our continued viewing of the show, or some pretentious crap about it being so "style over substance" that its nihilistic lack of depth is actually why its deep. As you might have guessed I played around with a few ideas in my head as to the intentions behind the project, if there were any, but eventually gave up near the middle of the series because it seemed like the story kind of continuously gets off track with filler. Likely in no small part due to it's length (but more on that in a bit...). I applaud Refn and crew for taking full advantage of the apparently wide range of freedom they were granted by throwing whatever they wanted to onscreen. The emphasis on quantity does effect the quality however, with the proceedings tending to meander about for a while without focus before finally deciding to deliver the next significant plot beat. Leading to bizarre tonal shifts, sometimes comedic, that don't fit the rest of the subject matter. Like whatever the heck is going on with the detective precinct or William Baldwin's character. These distractions never prevent the experience from being any less inexplicably entrancing in the moment, but you can't help wondering by the end if those stretches wouldn't have been better spent developing the overarching storyline which remains painfully unfinished. It's unclear if this was always meant to be a miniseries or if Amazon cancelled their second season plans pre-release after watching it for themselves. The information I've found online has been very vague and somewhat conflicting on that front. My personal belief is that the latter is true, but if I'm wrong and it's the former everyone involved should be ashamed. A classic bait-and-switch is pulled where a big name actor is used to pull you in until the makers can usher them out to tell the tale they want to with the supporting cast once you're invested. They introduce a stronger element of the supernatural and set up a massive conflict by the conclusion that will never be resolved. This isn't just unfulfilling, but frustrating as well thanks to what a huge commitment reaching that point is. Every episode except the last is a difficult to binge, roughly hour-and-a-half in length meaning you're basically sitting down to watch nine feature-length movies in a row. Every second is undeniably beautiful and mesmerizing, but to make it through all of that and find no sense of closure ultimately leaves that time feeling like it was spent for naught.
frick knows/10
地狱男爵:血皇后崛起 (2019) IMDb 豆瓣 TMDB Eggplant.place 维基数据
Hellboy
5.6 (151 个评分) 导演: 尼尔·马歇尔 演员: 大卫·哈伯 / 米拉·乔沃维奇
其它标题: Hellboy / Hellboy - Call of Darkness
地狱男爵(大卫·哈伯 David Harbour 饰)本是作为生物武器被纳粹召唤出来的怪物,却幸运得到了布鲁姆教授(伊恩·麦柯肖恩 Ian McShane 饰)的营救和帮助,在教授的教导和训练之下,地狱男爵渐渐长大,之后加入了超自然调查防御局,成为了局里的王牌战将。
某日,被镇压了千年的女巫血皇后(米拉·乔沃维奇 Milla Jovovich 饰)突破了收容,为了报复人类,她从地狱里召唤来一批可怕的怪兽,攻陷了伦敦。有能力和血皇后对抗的,只有地狱男爵一人,在通灵少女爱丽丝(萨莎·莱恩 Sasha Lane 饰)和上校本(金大贤 饰)的帮助下,一场艰苦且旷日持久的战斗开始了。
2019年8月3日 看过
2019年8月3日 评论 a review of 地狱男爵:血皇后崛起 - Will we ever have a true successor to the 2004 film? Call me crazy, but I don't think fantasy and folklore are a good fit for this character. Or at least they haven't proven to be onscreen. As much love as The Golden Army gets, I'm personally not a fan of it. While Guillermo del Toro did a wonderful job putting that sequel together, the lack of demonology or the supernatural and the increased amount of goofy humor ultimately left me very disappointed with Hellboy II . Unfortunately, that proves to be the movie this reboot took the most inspiration from. The writing is really uneven, especially in the beginning. Things get off to an awkward start thanks to an exposition heavy (and poorly acted) opening that tries to cram together fragmented adaptations of several different Hellboy comics with results that aren't exactly cohesive. I appreciate the attempts at fanservice, but it kind of crosses the line with how much material it pulls from across the character's long history on page. Especially since a lot of it was only taken to help setup potential sequels rather than naturally fitting into the core plot of Hellboy's fight against the blood queen Nimue. It's sense of humor might be the film's biggest failing however. Like every big franchise wannabe it follows the modern blockbuster trend of trying to make us laugh for most of its running time. That just doesn't work. Hellboy has always been a sarcastic character ready to crack wise in the face of danger, but whereas the source material is sardonic this is just corny. There are moments where the movie almost succeeds at capturing the same moody noir tone of the comics only to undermine itself with the next stupid joke it had waiting around the corner. It still came closer to obtaining that atmosphere than either of the del Toro films did though, so I have to give it credit for that. Other flaws include Milla Jovovich and Sasha Lane turning in some truly terrible performances. The former I think is intentionally hamming it up, but the latter just seems like a bad actress. I don't know though, I haven't really seen her in anything else. The CGI is also pretty meh. You can tell Neil Marshall did his darndest to make the action scenes look good in spite of this, but ultimately I think his efforts only made things worse. The jittery camera was just too obvious of an attempt to cover things up. This is still my second favorite Hellboy movie though. It's a train wreck, but an entertaining one. And when it's leaning on the horror it's even a little good . There's some really nasty stuff and I love the liberal use of blood and gore even if it is CGI. The whole thing is so vulgar and excessive that it's actually a lot of stupid fun despite not being a quality film by any stretch of the imagination. So in the end I kind of, I don't know.... liked it? The whole Baba Yaga sequence is inspired and the practical effects used there rival the best work done by del Toro in his two Hellboy flicks. David Harbour does a great job in the lead role in spite of the material he was given. I'm so conflicted with over how I feel about this movie despite all that's wrong with it that I'm not going to be able to give it a rating. I simply don't know how to.
frick knows/10