Review: HANCOCK
Jul. 4th, 2008 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuMy GOD that was awful!
[sound of crickets chirping]
I repeat, great googly-moogly--that was awful!
Not the story, really--though it had definite problems*. But Expletive Deleted! The director of photography needs to be taken out back of the barn, beaten until he'll never walk, talk or feed himself again without help, and then dumped at a third-rate hospital in some desolate backwater of the world.
The unnecessary, intrusive, off-putting and (for my wife) nausea-inducing SHAKY-CAM effects were...unnecessary, intrusive and off-putting. And not just in violent action scenes. Not just in outdoor scenes of people walking. I'm talking about sedate scenes like one in a boardroom, where we're focused on a man SITTING IN A CHAIR, LISTENING to someone else speak. And the camera is jittering and shaking and doing minor zooms as if some spastic retard was holding the camera. It was like that through the whole ******* movie (with the rare and all-too-brief exception of occasional establishing shots).
This was NOT "The Blair Witch Project" or "Cloverfield", where at least there was some in-story rationale for this crap. It was the sort of "art for art's sake" ******** that prompted Steve Jackson years ago to opine that when designing covers for GURPS books, the first thing one should do is shoot the Art Director.
This is one movie I won't see again. I also have absolutely no interest in owning it. If not for the arrogantly, aggressively, abysmally stupid camerawork, I might be interested. But as it stands? **** no.
And I'll say as much to anyone and everyone I discuss this film with.
*About which I may have something to say later. But not right now. Right now I'm still too focused on the shaky-cam travesty.
[sound of crickets chirping]
I repeat, great googly-moogly--that was awful!
Not the story, really--though it had definite problems*. But Expletive Deleted! The director of photography needs to be taken out back of the barn, beaten until he'll never walk, talk or feed himself again without help, and then dumped at a third-rate hospital in some desolate backwater of the world.
The unnecessary, intrusive, off-putting and (for my wife) nausea-inducing SHAKY-CAM effects were...unnecessary, intrusive and off-putting. And not just in violent action scenes. Not just in outdoor scenes of people walking. I'm talking about sedate scenes like one in a boardroom, where we're focused on a man SITTING IN A CHAIR, LISTENING to someone else speak. And the camera is jittering and shaking and doing minor zooms as if some spastic retard was holding the camera. It was like that through the whole ******* movie (with the rare and all-too-brief exception of occasional establishing shots).
This was NOT "The Blair Witch Project" or "Cloverfield", where at least there was some in-story rationale for this crap. It was the sort of "art for art's sake" ******** that prompted Steve Jackson years ago to opine that when designing covers for GURPS books, the first thing one should do is shoot the Art Director.
This is one movie I won't see again. I also have absolutely no interest in owning it. If not for the arrogantly, aggressively, abysmally stupid camerawork, I might be interested. But as it stands? **** no.
And I'll say as much to anyone and everyone I discuss this film with.
*About which I may have something to say later. But not right now. Right now I'm still too focused on the shaky-cam travesty.
