IanGabrielG

I saw two movies last night. One is the ridiculously good 'Rebel Ridge' (it has a 6.8. It should be a 10) and the other was Havoc. Let's talk about Havoc --

The good -- The script was pretty decent and fast paced, good performances, pretty good cinematography (whenever they weren't using excessive CGI), and decently staged action sequences with plenty of gore and violence, which is what this type of film is about.

The bad -- excessive use of poorly done CGI in order to cut down on on-location filming. The CGI was a video game quality stuff. There was no photorealism whatsoever, and it was overused. The other thing, and this is my main gripe, the use of shaky cam. It was almost impossible to enjoy some of the action sequences because of the excessive use of shaky cam. It truly was need-less and it brought down the quality of the film.

Overall watchable but could've been a hell of a lot better!

And I know why the film has the rating it has. It's really complex and layered. You're fed quite a bit of information, almost too much to keep track of.

Cuckoo is so complicated I had to look up a YouTube video after watching the film so I could fill in the gaps. Now, I shouldn't need to do that to fully understand a movie, that much is true, but it also doesn't necessarily make it a bad film. It is very unique and very different from most of the horror out there.

So, to some extend the complexity of the film is both it's forte and damnation; other than that, the acting, the cinematography, pacing are all great.

That's not to say Nosferatu is a bad film. Everything about it is top notch. It is very atmospheric, a little sensual, and had a couple of really good scenes (loved the pigeon scene) but it also drags quite a bit. Coppola's version had more WTF moments. It was more grotesque, more sensual, more messed up, and it even had bestiality in it, which is crazy.

I liked the Anthony Hopkins character more than Willem Dafoe's, but more importantly I liked Gary Oldman as Dracula far more than I liked Bill Skardgard. Nosferatu's Dracula felt 2-dimentional and mostly constipated. Eggers tried to make him more ominous, I get it, but I still liked Coppola's version better. Oh, and I sorely missed Dracula's wives. They were ridiculous in Coppola's film.

If you've never seen Coppola's Dracula, you owe to yourself to watch that before you watch Nosferatu.