Needless to say I disagreed with a couple of assessments, but not most.
Watchmen, highly underrated. The story I saw works absolutely well.
Avatar, very disrespected. The story is not “Pocahontas.” Do they even know the Pocahontas story. This kind of dismissive derision pervades many white male reviews of the film, which assume any “indian” story must be the same. This is veiled racism, really. Avatar is the story of an immoral invasion and resource grab that is repulsed by the indigenous. They win. Not through isolationism, which was their original position, but through cooptation and adaptation, and the Avatar character’s literal melding of the two races. It is as much a political story about the immoral nature of imperialism and conquest as anything else. Avatar is an evolution both in storytelling (the Avatar itself integral to the story) and in technical wizardry. It is high tech, and yet tells a very old injustice, the story of “civilized” nations stealing from those less advanced and murdering these peoples with impunity. But it proceeds to turn that real history around, as the alleged civilized nature of these invaders is discredited by one of their own. The invaders are ejected from this world in a manner not seen before. Cameron didn’t just steal anyone else’s story. He forged a new, unique story based on these elements. It is a petty disservice by hacks to automatically dismiss the story because of its resemblance to indigenous human conflicts. I’s frankly offensive that it happens so often with white, smarmy writers.
And Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula? Piece of shit. Terrible movie and probably the least scary vampire movie I have ever seen. All the suspense and terror of the novel is replaced by overlit, overwrought, VFX heavy noise. Red plastic suits of armor? Were you on drugs, Francis? Any film school chimpanzee could have turned in a better Dracula than that. It is unfathomably bad to the point of raising my blood pressure.
Political Film Blog 