jjmfe Reviews

Eat Locals (2017)

Eat locals tongue in cheek fun

[6/10 · 27 July 2019]

First of all I enjoy decent horror flicks as much as the next. But having seen enough of them it's great when something that is self confident enough to poke fun at the genre comes out

spoiler alert: Lots of surprises over the course of the film and our initially rejected potential novice to the clan becomes "the Renfield."

There are all kinds of bad guys and girls in this flick coming from the most surprising places. There's enough understated droll English wit to engage the casual Anglophile.

I do hope the promised sequel "eat global" makes its appearance sooner rather than later.

Again This is not a serious flick this was intended to be a bit "camp," and just for fun low-budget horror comedy. It accomplishes that quite well. Think of it as a few of your college friends getting together to make a clever film for a class, and purposely using lots of gimmicks, for the sake the class requirements, and putting in practice the tools they've been taught.

Land of the Blind (2006)

Disappointment with "Land of the Blind"

[3/10 · 22 April 2007]

I was very disappointed in this film. The story and the point of the author is presented in a heavy-handed, and cliché manner. The author's hyperbole denies the possibility of balance. He argues against change, and allows that only extremes in the swing of the pendulum of social change are possible. He makes his point unapologetically without subtlety.

His indelicate way of making this point is a little like writing into a story too many soliloquies to describing the feelings of the principal characters without just showing those things, and letting the audience figure it out. He over tells his story. He's taken too big a picture in too short a span of time, and indelicately made his transitions. The filmmaker says to his audience, "I'm not a good enough filmmaker to make my point subtly, or you're is just too stupid to get my point unless I explicitly tell you.

Its good casting, they're good actors but Sutherland plays his part a little too smug too self-righteous to be believable, rather like his thief in the "Italian Job." Not the best work in either place of a normally good actor. The characters are waterfront artist's caricatures.

Whose story is he telling? Is it Cuba, South Africa, Haiti, WW2 Germany, or Romania? He's hyperbolized elements of all those places into one. The story could have been very good, and a more effective political statement with a lot less. It tries to hard, and fails to be an effective vehicle as a political statement, or a good story. Skip this movie. Don't waste your time or money.