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krebs-michelle
Reviews
My Brother (2006)
Two good performances, one awful script.
This was quite honestly the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life. The two gentlemen who play the brothers in the title of the film do quite well with what they have, which is a script which is all over the place, full of implausible story lines, and too much of a dependence on "name" actors, though the filmmaker may have done this to get people to actually see it: people with developmental disabilities are pretty absent on the silver screen, and maybe he was hoping that having Vanessa Williams, Tatum O'Neill might entice more people to see it, but it didn't work.
The men playing Isaiah and James were good. Those are the only good points.
Tatum O'Neill was in the movie in a bizarre subplot (with a total screen time of maybe a few minutes, but she's one of the 'stars,' though she looked awesome) involving the lead character and a terrorism/diamond/Sicilian Mafia thing at a middle eastern embassy which made NO sense at all, and then two days later, Tatum O'Neill is totally in love with this guy and cries and says 'I'm not drunk, I'm tipsy, and I know what I feel, and I feel like garbage' or something like that.
By the end of the movie I was actually screaming at my television for Vanessa Williams to die already. And then all the sudden, just when I thought the Vanessa monster was gone (I think she died three or four times), her big head was floating above the brothers at the beach because they were suddenly and inexplicably children.. because the main character was on a train because he abandoned his brother... because of the diamonds... or something.
There is indeed almost zero presence on the screen of people with special needs, but can't someone do better? And don't get me started on the ethnic stereotypes.
"Three's Company" had more compelling plots and better writing. My ten year old daughter could've rewritten it for the price of a couple of hours of babysitting! After it was over I was SHOCKED to see it was only 90 minutes. I'd rather get root canal with no anaesthesia while having someone attempting to cut my head off with a pair of toenail clippers for ninety minutes. It felt like hours.
Autism Every Day (2006)
Technically poor film-making and one sided story telling.
From a purely technical standpoint, what stood out for me most in this film was the crappy sound.
The kids in the background, who should BE in the background, had their voices overemphasized, with screams meant to jar the audience out of their chairs. There were also a couple of times where I swear that some of the screaming/grunting/whining was looped.
Which leads to my second point.
(paraphrasing) "sometimes I thought of strapping Jodie in the car and driving off the George Washington Bridge... it's only because of Lauren" my "normal" (my word) child...
What is Thierry trying to accomplish, exactly? The first comment on this board says that (paraphrasing) "I know I'm not having kids now." I agree with Correy Lennox. If someone is not familiar with autism this is a dangerous movie.
And if someone is not familiar with good documentary film-making, it's also a dangerous movie.