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Reviews
Cosmopolis (2012)
Genius
I recently saw this movie and loved it, I came onto to IMDb and was surprised to see it had some very unflattering reviews, I think that's because some people just didn't get it.
Yes the dialogue is contrived and strange, until you realise why.
The whole movie sounds like a poem because it is, the characters are inside out, instead of hearing their boasts we hear their thoughts and if you don't get that point, I can see how you would think this is a bad movie.
However when when you see the genius behind this creative device it all starts to make sense, thats why I'm giving this a decent score.
All in all the movie itself could be any other like it, the underlying theme rather wreaks of 'Collateral' but the turning of the whole movie into a poem and the way the characters introversions are extroverted, genius.
I liked it for that alone, it was a refreshing break from the staleness of forumlaic sensory diversion.
I didn't know it was a Cronenberg until I saw the credits at the end but when I saw that name, it made sense, he always had a thing for the weird and twisting the boundaries of perception.
In this he truly succeeded, even if the storyline itself doesn't stand up to scrutiny, the creativity of the concept has to be admired.
Second in Command (2006)
Blood Awful
Another reviewer commented that this was "the second best JCVD direct to DVD" which I think sums it up nicely.
I am "the third most powerful person... in the South Croydon model railway society" don't you know.
The first thing that put me off this movie was the obvious political angle, then the shaky camera-work started.. Get this straight all you director types out there, shaky camera work does not 'add tension', it makes it look like you spent a tenth of your $10 budget on cheap equipment and staff with Parkinson's disease.
Next up is the 'in your face' plot, I like a bit of a plot but I don't like it in the dialogue. Remember that original cut of Bladerunner? Where they added the commentary? Someone obviously said post production that this movie is too hard to understand, so they added the narration to make it more accessible. Well it seems that these days, some producers assume their audience are idiots up-front and write the narration into the script.
Then there is JC's wooden performance, I got so sick of this I actually turned on my radio scanner and listened to the local airport traffic whilst staring into space at my mahogany desk... because between the two of them the script and performance were better.
The same reviewer who rated this "the second best JCVD direct to DVD" also proclaimed that people who didn't like it where "haters", its just not like that. This sort of fanatical attitude is going to rot your brain as you force yourself to watch movies which you don't even find entertaining.
Yes, I watched it because it had JCVD in it but that is because I remember some of his better films... nothing against JC, someone pays you to do a movie you take the job, you need the money! However just having Van Damme in it does not make it a good movie.
The only reason JCVD got away with Universal Soldier was because the part actually called for him to play a corpse.
In short, there is a reason this production went straight to DVD. Bad writing, bad direction, poor camera-work, forced plot and the wrong actor for the role. (Or perhaps the wrong role for this actor.)
JCVD is great when he high kicks a lot of people in the face and goes "ARRGGHH" for very simple reasons. I spend all day working in laboratories with computers and numbers and watched this because I thought "Ahh, a JCVD movie, I can switch off... its all action and nothing complicated." Instead I found this movie unbearable not for its lack of action but for its lack of absolutely everything else you need to make a good movie.