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howdie-michel
Reviews
Oh, Ramona! (2019)
Not just bad....
This movie is not just bad, it is karmicly unbalanced. Certainly don't watch if you consider yourself overweight.
Unfortunate for the clearly capable technical crew working on this film.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Who am I: Smart or Sentimental??
Michael Moore thrives as within the complexities of mixed interests, contradictory opinions, strange facts, propaganda, complacency, blatant lies (you will just believe it all as the liars look you straight in the eyes and scare you to death with terror talk...), and much more which still makes it hard to make sense of the scope of things that just did not seem to add up with the Bush administration.
Where Bowling for Columbine seemed so much more like genuine (albeit biased) critique on American culture, with Fahrenheit it's hard to know what to believe, as Michael Moore so clearly has a much more political agenda. You feel the need to stay critical while taking up the presented facts at the start of the film, then do some more digging yourself later to fill the gaps and get a chance to put it together yourself to form an opinion. This is what should be the strong side of such a documentary and aided by Moore's comic style (for those who like it) it starts fine.
But what happens then? Suddenly halfway through, the movie becomes something completely different and is suddenly all about the highly emotional and subjective points of view of war widows and other individuals who have suffered greatly due to Iraq. This is surely an important story that needs to be told, but the sudden change in story telling in the film just ends up making you aware of the film's propaganda intentions, where the sentiments of these heartfelt stories are used to drive the more cerebral arguments from the start of the film home. Clever emotional manipulation?
There are things worth watching in this film, but just beware. The filmmaker did think he was smarter than you when making it, and that's not right.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Perspective is key, but it does not help the plot. Still, if it's your genre, do watch!
Take a situation where a generally unpleasant bunch of extraterrestrials comes to earth to..., well, kill us all. Then consider how to make that into entertainment... again (I lost count on the remakes). There are generally two ways: Using the possibilities of such a plot and build the most outrageous (read exhilarating) action and special effects sequences, to give us the excitement of a roller-coaster ride (I am not a great fan of R. Emmerich's Independence day).
Spielberg chose the other option; try to give the audience an opportunity to empathize with the cast as they go through the horrors of a fictional holocaust. At least as long as you are able to empathize with the cast being scared by tripods mounted with halogen car lights. However, in this the movie does succeed greatly. Spielberg firmly stays with the characters perspective as they live through terrifying events, where the audience knows as little as the actors do as the alien invasion unfolds. And despite this Spielberg is still able to weave in some spectacular special effects, which is quite a feat.
The choice of perspective is a strong directors choice, where many directors (including frequently Spielberg himself lately) tend to forget their character or story to indulge in the temptations of CGI, taking us to watch the story from the perspective of, well god or something else omnipotent.
So far so good, but if the core of your movie's entertainment value is experiencing holocaust, how do you then build a plot which does not violate the core idea of the movie, but still lets the audience go home without too much heaviness. It seems as if the filmmakers completely forgot about the plot until they were halfway through making the movie. It's abrupt, hopelessly Spielberg-sentimental and breaks completely with the tone of the first two-thirds of the movie. Thus the movie completely falls apart in the last act, which is a shame really as it starts so strong.
Lastly I just can't help mentioning... You like Tom Cruise or you don't, and he is not a dreadful actor under the right direction (See Magnolia). But in this movie it is simply the same generic Cruise persona as in so many of his films. You sometimes wonder why they even bother giving the characters in his movies a name other than his own.