jafdip Reviews

Sausage Party (2016)

Wurst movie ever made

[1/10 · 24 November 2021]

This movie should have been buried quietly where it could do no harm but unfortunately it was something of a success. It manages to be nastily offensive to just about everybody without ever once being funny, and the scenes of violence, rape and fornication amongst food products make it horror rather than comedy. Watching the whole abomination will cause PTSD in any normal person.

Tomb Raider (2018)

Kind of boring for an action movie

[3/10 · 24 June 2018]

Lara Croft is an entitled brat who rejects her inheritance, preferring to rip off those around her. Her missing father would rather be with his dead wife in the spirit realm than with his living daughter. The problem for me was I hated all the characters and found the CGI terrible, and it was pretty slow. Tedious.

Jurassic World (2015)

The worst

[1/10 · 19 March 2017]

This movie is notable for being by far the worst of the series. The miscasting of the central characters is hilarious, and the screenplay is pretty much a lesson in how not to write a script. Bryce Dallas Howard is utterly wasted as Claire Dearing, a wickedly self indulgent and criminally irresponsible character who aroused such a sense of revulsion in me that I spent the rest of the movie hoping something scaly would chew her head off. It was not to be - but more than that, she triumphs, the lesson being that psychopathic bad behavior carries no consequences. There is also a farcical attempt to make her the love interest, again utterly at odds with her character. And as the for the rest, occasionally some good action sequences, too many people who looked like they just time warped out of the 70's, and generally a sour feeling at the end that I just wasted a couple of hours out of my life that will never be reclaimed. See it, but understand it for what it is - second rate garbage.

Wetlands (2013)

Ghastly

[1/10 · 6 January 2015]

At the beginning of the movie a comment somebody placed on "Bild Online' said in German that this movies is so revolting and tragic it should never have been made. Although I think the intention was to mock the person who said this, having seen the movie I think that person was right. I like to think I have a pretty strong stomach but at the end of this I felt an overwhelming sense of despair and revulsion. If the purpose of the movie is to cause people to cut their wrists then I think it is a run away success.

The story is about a girl who was raised by a cold hearted psychopathic and (as it turns out downright evil) mother and an imbecilic father. In reaction to her mothers obsessive cleanliness she becomes as unhygienic as possible. She is probably meant to be portrayed as some kind of free spirit, but she comes across as a completely self absorbed and quite repulsive person, entirely devoid of any kind of morals or principles. As the movie progressed I ceased making excuses for her and came to loathe her character.

At the finale the reason for much of her behavior is revealed, but it doesn't provide closure because this is such a devastating and bleak study of the futility of life, or these peoples lives at any rate. This is a corrosive movie that you will not be better for watching, and I seriously recommend sensitive or depressed people avoid it.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Great action but too long

[7/10 · 29 December 2014]

At least some of the magic of Lord of the Rings series is recaptured in the final of the Hobbit trilogy but its length meant we were in the cinema nearly three hours. At least 30 minutes of forbidden elf-dwarf love and weeping over dying dwarfs could have quite easily been edited out, and it would have been a better movie for it. No doubt Peter Jackson was told, "Yes, its awful, but we Have to Appeal to a Female Audience". Which is why the last two Hobbit movies are stuffed with Hollywood schlock. And there is some serious miscasting of the characters involved in the elf-dwarf love sub-plot, which left me totally unconvinced. And was it really necessary to kill so many characters> And what was with those worms anyway? If the producers had stuck more to the book and not tried to pad it out with silly love stories what is merely an interesting movie could have been a classic.

Chef (2014)

Started well, finished badly

[3/10 · 10 December 2014]

This starts out as fast moving clever film about a chef whose creativity is stifled by a dictatorial and delusional boss. After a bad review he gets into a conflict with the critic that goes viral, quits his job and sets out to rebuild his life and career. So far so good. But at about this point it is as though a different writer took over. The film loses its momentum and becomes bogged down in a long and tedious study of the relationships between our chef and his son and ex wife. I know it is sexist to use the expression 'chick flick' but it seems most apt for this rather boring examination of feelings and emotions.