Weird, this 12 minute short is up on Netflix as a film and as a two episode mini series, but both episodes are the same.
“Meridian” is a film noire style film in which a police officer is sent out to find a mysterious woman who may have witnessed the disappearance of a man. The film is moody and interesting and then suddenly stops as if it was a pilot for a series to come.
Carter wakes up in the bed of a girl he apparently picked up the night before. On leaving the apartment building, he gets picked up over a triviality, gets into a fight with the cop and dies on the spot. Immediately he wakes up again in the same bed.
The concept of reliving a day is not new in film. Just as in other films, Carter tries to evade his destiny by running, not leaving the door, taking other routes, talk to the cop in question, but every time he ends up dead. No matter what he does, the white cop intents to kill the black man. This is exactly the message of this short film (32 min) film, which ends with a long list of black people killed by white cops.
Both a Chinese and an American nuclear power plant are attacked by computer hackers. Americans and Chinese work together trying to catch the persons behind the hack and an imprisoned hacker (Chris Hemsworth) is taken aboard the team.
In a descent thriller, hackers are chasing hackers, but of course in the end it are not computer nerds who are after the entire scheme. There are some elements and explanations of which I cannot say if they are credible, but overall “Blackhat” seems like an alright computer thriller. Perhaps the IMdB rating (5.5) that the story and details are not, or no longer, credible.
A new book in the Millenium series put to film, this time immediately as an American film. ‘The girl with the dragon tatoo’ is now played by Claire Foy.
It seems that we are now a few years down the line Lisbeth Salander has become a famous and notorious hacker and one-girl army for hire, hiding in plain sight. She is hired to steal a dangerous piece of software which -if fallen in the wrong hands- could cause a world war.
Of course there are more people after the software and Lisbeth’s past also catches up with her. The story of film are alright.
Like “Dolomite Is My Name” (2019), this is (basically) a modern day “blaxploitation”. All actors are black, except an occasional bad guy (Kiefer Sutherland), the film plays in a black, American community, addressing the problems of that community (also being critical towards itself). The characters are stereotypical and there is a lot of humor.
A drugdealer, a prostitute and her employer investigate the death of the drug dealer. No, I did not make a typo there. The three run into a massive and shady conspiracy, created to keep the black community in check.
The film is not as funny as the info has it, but “They Cloned Tyrone” is an amusing ‘thriller comedy’.
Apparently playing before the American Civil War (antebellum) in the time of Confederation and in the present time, we follow Eden/Veronica as a slave on a cotton farm and as a successful author and speaker for black women rights.
The antebellum scenes show the brutality with which the white man ruled over the black. In the present day scenes we see a well off black woman, but in the background racism always plays. Obviously the makers of the film tried to connect the present to the past.
Presented as a horror, I find the film more of a drama with some thriller elements. Even though the antebellum scenes are certainly uncomfortable, over all I do not find the film particularly good.
The nerd Oliver Quick is a poor student who can go to Oxford on a scholarship. Circumstances make that he befriends the most popular guy at the university, Felix. In spite the odds, Felix really seems to like Oliver and he even invites him to the family castle to spend the summer.
The film begins with an amusing Victorian-pop style. The story soon starts to get too obvious Mr. Ripley elements. Oliver is not as nerdy as he seems to be. The excessive livestyle of Felix’ family is somewhat funny, the but movie is starting to begin to be predictable and the style wears off a bit.
The film is not bad, but not exactly great either.
So this 2018 “Suspiria” does have something to do with the 1977 classic of Argento. It is based on, or inspired by it. Watching the 2018 I don’t recognise much of Argento’s film, or anything really.
The young, American dancer Patricia travels to Berlin in the time of the Rote Armee Faktion terror to try to join the prestigious school of Dr. Klemperer (Tilda Swinton). The school has a building in which the dancers live and where they can also perform and receive an audience.
There is a vacancy, as one of the girls disappeared and soon another does as well. It quickly becomes clear that there is something sinister going on. The group of women working for the school appear to form some sort of witches coven.
The film is alright. There are some weird scenes and some contemporary horror, but overall there is mostly a dance school with a dense atmosphere.
In 2015 i watched both seasons (2013 and 2014) of the British series “Utopia“. On Amazon Prime I ran into a series with the same title. When I started to watch it, the Amazon “Utopia” appeared to be a remake of the British series. Or would both series be based on the same (graphic) novel?
The original series is an interesting watch. Bright colours, interesting camera work, violently weird situations. The Amazon version is a fairly normal kid’s thriller series. Both series appear to have about the same story.
Some nerds know about an elusive comic (“graphic novel” in the British series) called “Utopia” which would not only predict past and future pandemics, but also present their cures. When a copy surfaces, the group sets out (meeting each other for the first time) to get hold of the copy. They are not the only people after the book though.
Followed by a similarly cold killer in both series, the group tries to find the main character of the comic book in which they eventually succeed. Together they try to prevent the world-ending events to come.
The British series use two seasons to tell the story (12 episodes), the American version one (8 episodes). The American version is much more explanatory, especially towards the end. Both have an open end. This may be due to the fact that originally there would have been a third season, but the project was dropped, so the creator (and author) of the original series (Dennis Kelly) simply did not write more. According to Wikipedia first HBO bought the rights, but when their project fell through, the rights went to Amazon. They made an adapted version of the original series.
The original is better in every regard. Not that the Amazon version is bad or boring though.
Ben and Chon are high school buddies. They start to grow weed and after a tour in Afghanistan Chon returns with the best seeds. After some experimentation Ben and Chon created the best weed in the world. Their fame and finances grow rapidly and the two buy a big house at the beach where they live together with their shared girlfriend O.
A Mexican cartel decides to take over their business by force and the paradisal life of Ben, Chon and O rapidly changes into a nightmare. They try to think of way to get out of the situation, but the Mexicans do not take ‘no’ for an answer.
Stone made a decent thriller about a drug that is (ironically) legal nowadays in several countries and states. The underlying message is clear though: since there is a lot of money to be made in drug traficking, the most brutal of organisations try to use the trade to get rich.