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ganpier218
Reviews
Bad Words (2013)
Off-color, refreshing, and gutsy
I feel compelled to review this because I believe some took this movie too personally, and thus rated it poorly.
If you are easily offended, you might be shocked or uncomfortable on several occasions. If you understand this is an artistic work of fiction, or if you like dark, sinister comedy, you can laugh at how this movie relentlessly pummels you with awkward moments. My advice is to cast away your moral standings in reality, and try see this movie from another perspective.
To be vague, it turns out there's a method to the madness towards the end. And for me, the underlying message made it worthwhile. Jason Bateman was incredibly convincing in this role!
Lone Survivor (2013)
Simple-minded war porn.
For the first 45-60 minutes, I enjoyed the well-played look and feel of an elite military culture - the compound, the camaraderie, the language all felt realistic and captivated me.
The attempts to humanize the characters were weak and lazy. Tropic Thunder actually came to mind a few times, with the cliché one-liners. There wasn't any attachment to the characters that forced me to cling to the heroes of the movie. Even the anti-heroes, the Afghans, had no soul or objective whatsoever, and I really found it to be pro-American and devoid of any plot depth in that regard. I would cringe in embarrassment at this movie in about 50 years, I'm sure.
I wanted this film to be challenging. It began as though it was going to raise some serious dialogue about war and civilization, but it ended up being a shoot-out action hero sequence that NEVER ENDED.
Do I really even need to tell you how it ended?