#miserable screenplay

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/07/20140722-thriller-review-bastards.html

One line summary: Told slowly in noir style, to a harsh conclusion.

Three stars of five

Setup and Plot

Marco is the captain of a supertanker.  He's at sea and life is good.

Pull the chain on that.  Marco's sister Sandra calls him back in desperation: her husband has committed suicide, her daughter Justine is in a tailspin, and the family business is not going well.  Sandra accuses wealthy business man Edouard Laporte as the cause of these ill fortunes.  So Marco, in his own particular way, goes after Edouard.

Marco's fortunes diminish, and he discovers a number of discouraging truths about his family.  This gets more evident when a young man offers to sell Justine back to him for 5000 francs.

Will Marco pull himself and his family out of this downward spiral, or will external forces be too great for that?

Scores

Cinematography: 6/10 For much of the screen time, there was not enough light or too much light, odd choices of camera angles, strange depth of field choices...in other words, much of the noir package.  The filming of the car ride with passengers and drivers high on drugs was quite emblematic of this.  I did not find this helpful or illustrative, even though this is a dark tale.

Sound: 7/10 OK, redeemed by the sound track with the closing credits.

Acting: 6/10

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/04/20140419-scifi-review-big-ass-spider.html

One line summary: The endless badness is almost funny, but not quite.

Two stars of five.

Cinematography: 7/10 Reasonably good.  The creature animation was mostly ordinary, partly stupid beyond belief.

Sound: 6/10 The actors were miked OK, but music was not used well.

Acting: 4/10 Yikes, what are Ray Wise and Patrick Bauchau doing in this debacle?  (The plus four was for Wise and Bauchau.)  Greg Grunberg was unrelentingly not funny and not believable.  I got absolutely no sense of fun or cleverness.  The rest of the actors (notably Clare Kramer) were terribly bad.

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/04/20140412-scifi-review-bermuda-tentacles.html

One line summary: Bad script plus horde of non-actors trump three good actors.

One star of five.

Cinematography: 5/10 Most of it was OK, though not good; the CGI was laughable.

Sound: 4/10 Lots of sound and fury, signifying very little.  Seriously, the music was too blasted loud in spots, to no good effect.  The actors were mostly miked OK.

Acting: 3/10 How did Linda Hamilton, Jamie Kennedy, and John Savage get stuck in this mess?  Compared to everyone else, those three were just excellent, despite the poor lines.  Trevor Donovan, Mya, and Tiffany Pulvino were incredibly bad.  Mya, in particular, was so bad that this film did not even deserve 1/5.  The large cast seemed to be composed mostly of non-actors. 

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/04/20140405-horror-review-germ-z.html

One line summary: Space borne bacteria yield ultra-fast zombies.

One star of five.

Cinematography: 5/10 Occasional exposure mistakes, too many doses of shaky camera, way too much of the idiot biking in the woods while listening to her MP3 player.  Blood effects range from poor to terrible.  A woman barfs inside the deputy's cruiser, mostly onto the inside of the windshield.  In one shot it's yellow; in the next it's blue, but still yellow on her mouth.  The end credits were badly done.

Sound: 4/10 I could hear the dialog; this was a mixed blessing.  The music was very amateurish.  The plus 4 was mostly for the song during the end credits.

Acting: 0/10 Marguerite Sundberg, Michael Flores, and Mark Chiappione were irritating on the one hand, not interesting on the other hand. The actors who played the military were the worst.

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/03/20140324-horror-review-summers-moon.html

One line summary: Ugly Canadian slasher film with incest and bad line reading.

Two stars of five.

Cinematography: 5/10 On the dark side for the interiors, with better than VHS quality, but not by much.  The colour palettes were often ugly to the point of looking like 1970s video shown during late night.  The exteriors, fewer in number, were better, but still had the low-budget look to them.

Sound: 5/10 For a Canadian film done in English, the actors seem to be lip-synching.  Perhaps that's a Netflix problem, sound versus video.  Music did not seem to be an asset.

Acting: 4/10 Peter Michael Hilton and Paul Whitney were just horrible.  Even as little as ten hours practicing reading lines might have helped.  On the other hand, veterans Stephen McHattie and Barbara Niven were very good.  Peter Mooney and Ashley Greene were just all over the map, occasionally believable, usually terrible.

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/03/20140322-drama-review-cargo.html

One line summary: A much better film was Abduction of Eden, 2012.

One star of five.

Cinematography: 7/10 Mostly OK.

Sound: 7/10 I could hear the lines spoken.  Music was mercifully minimal.

Acting: 0/10 I would have liked to have seen some acting in this two-character film.  One might as well have teleprompter messages instead of people mouthing words.  Neither was believable, even when they revealed that they had been lying previously.  Who cares?  This goes beyond the rottenness of the screenplay.  The bit players were almost as bad as the principals.

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/03/20140322-horror-review-buried-alive.html

One line summary: Good visuals, but not much of a story in this teen slasher film.

Two stars of five.

Cinematography: 10/10 Well done, no complaints.

Sound: 5/10 Leveling problems, conversation versus 'music.'  The music during the credits was really hideous.

Acting: 4/10 Germaine Scott Grimes, Steve Sandvoss: useless. Lindsey Scott, Leah Rachel, Erin Reese: not that good.  Terence Jay: almost OK.  Tobin Bell: rather good in an extended cameo.

http://moviessuite92online.blogspot.com/2014/03/20140320-horror-review.html

One line summary: Avoid this ersatz zombie film plus poor action film.

One star of five.

Cinematography: 3/10 Dark.  Poor camera angles.  Colour palettes so reduced as to be only slightly different than greyscale.

Sound: 4/10 Horrible accents.  Background music was not an asset.

Acting: 0/10 Terrible performances.