furrycanuck's Reviews

Fuck (2005)

12 December 2006

I was looking forward this, playing to a sold-out house at this year's Calgary International Film Festival. Unfortunately, this is a terrible film. It comprises a lot of lazy vids and such from youtube and the most predictable set of talking heads - Janene Garofalo, that dinosaur known as George Carlin, and the always articulate Ron Jeremy. This is the sort of film that guys who say, "I'm not racist, I love black chicks" will love because their notion of being "liberal" entails being as profane as possible.

I cannot fathom how a movie about F U C K that sells itself as libertine (in the Penthouse Forum sense) can ignore gay commentators (where's Dan Savage??) completely. This is "ribald" crap for straight male morons. I must add that in Canada, we can hear the f-word on regular television, so the whole idea that this is a controversial subject is only true if you live in Jesusland. The whole film is sham liberalism and doesn't even reflect on how irrelevant American standards are.

I hated this film.

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Bollywood/Hollywood (2002)

I really wanted to like this.

6 November 2002

October 6: The closing gala at the Calgary International Film Festival. about 700 people are lined up to see Deepa Mehta's _Bollywood/Hollywood_ and having seen the trailer at other CIFF features, we're all pumped. The crowd is a nice demographic mix if Indians and non-Indians, all portending a crossover hit (not to mention a hit, period) for Mehta, who is in attendance with two of the stars. Too much glamour for Calgary! But the thing is... the movie just wasn't that good. Predictable, too few musical numbers, without the drama and complexity of Monsoon Wedding (a movie to which B/H will unfortunately be compared). B/H felt old. It was telling that the closing sequence, when all the cast members came out onto a stage to dance during the closing credits, felt forced, unjoyous, as if Mehta has a tin ear for this sort of thing. I really wanted to like this movie, displaying as it does the resplendant and massive East Indian community in Toronto (and which is a community that absolutely sets Canadian cities apart from US ones- Toronto's East Indian community is, per capita, more than four times as large as that of New York's; even Calgary and Edmonton eclipse every major US city in this regard), but it needs a better filmmaker.

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The Ring (2002)

10/10

People with no imagination should avoid this film.

18 October 2002

This was a tremendous movie, a compelling, thrilling, chilling piece of work. I'd watched the Japanese original (well, not exactly the "original" but the 1998 version of a film now seeing its fourth remake) twice this past week and what makes Ringu (and now, absolutely, The Ring in its US manifestation) is the way in which it renders ordinary objects in mundane life- especially the telephone and the television of course- malevolent and, frankly, terrifying. I myself have always found a television in an empty room -- a television turned off especially -- to be frightening, something with a potential life of its own, and The Ring speaks to that primordial fear and exploits it. If you have no imagination and you need your horror more literal, then avoid The Ring. I am crazy about this film and actually prefer it to the Japanese version.

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Children Underground (2001)

10/10

Profoundly disturbing.

28 September 2001

I caught this documentary at the Calgary International Film Festival. I had seen Bombay Eunuch a couple of days prior and found it sad, but a sadness tempered with the resiliency of some of subjects in that one. Children Underground had no silver lining. It is unrelentingly sad- scenes where children return home to their families of origin, ones in which the viewer is begging for some semblance of hope, devolve as we see the dysfunctions that drive 8-year-olds to run away. One mother's lament that she was better off under Ceaucescu should not be taken lightly. Children Underground is testament to the horrors experienced by those unlucky persons whose lives were destroyed in the "victory" over communism. Damn this world. I have never felt so powerless as after I saw these poor children. Damn this world.

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Cats & Dogs (2001)

4/10

What a waste.

7 July 2001

Warning: Spoilers

I've been excited about _Cats and Dogs_ since I caught the hilarious trailer months ago. Having now wasted a glorious Saturday afternoon (during Calgary Stampede week no less, when I could have been doing something REALLY enjoyable), I feel immensely cheated. The trailer reveals that the film has some good lines and that it entails an intriguing and pregnant premise. What the trailer doesn't show is the almost non-stop dreck that litters and ruins the rest of the film. I am talking about an unnecessary, distracting, obligatory and unconvincing sentimentality to the whole thing. Three cliched aspects are especially annoying:

1. The dad (Jeff Goldblum, absolutely sleepwalking) is a scientist who, despite the fact that he works at home, is apparently neglectful of his so. We know this because of his inattention to junior's soccer tryouts. This "tension" lends to some appalling "resolution" (sorry for the slight spoiler but if you can't see this coming you lack a pulse) that has nothing at all to do with cats or dogs and is not remotely humourous.

2. Lou the beagle has not only to help save the world from the cats- he also has to earn the love of junior, who (in an unspeakably stupid and unbelievable scene) rejects the dog initially- as if ANY little kid would reject a darling beagle puppy, but the "plot" requires this kind of stuptidity. Why can't the movie focus on the battle at hand instead of attempting this sentimentality, complete with soaring violins? ICK!

3. For no fathomable reason whatsoever, a "stray" voiced by poor Susan Sarandon shows up as the love interest for the grizzled head dog, Lou's mentor. Ah. So the general has a romantic past- WHAT was the POINT of that??

I would add that there were some annoyances typical of a lot of "family" films that most viewers apparently accept uncritically but that set my teeth on edge:

1. The quirky scientist, with no apparent means of financial support and his realtor wife live in a house that is easily worth a million dollars, on a massive lot with impeccably maintained gardens. Doesn't this depiction of social class bother anybody but me?

2. Susan Sarandon's "stray" is clearly a pure-bred- a saluki I think. Oh the idle rich- how dare they abandon a $3000 dog? Do Hollywood writers- who clearly themselves come overwhelmingly from the privileged classes- have any idea how real people live, especially how their purported characters might live?

I have to add as a Canadian (one who recently immigrated here from the US) that I can never live down, or understand, the need for films like this one, shot in Victoria, BC has to be set in America- one of the first scenes shows a USPS letter box and one Russian cat maligns "these American" security systems. NOTHING in the movie hinges on American-ness in any way, so why not just set the damn thing in BC? So producers of these films believe that Americans would refuse to see a movie set where it is actually filmed?

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