Reviews

I'm reminded of the immortal words from Diff'rent Strokes: 'Now the world don't move to the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you, may not be right for some'.

A tale of various suburbanites and their sex lives coalesce into a hilarious comedy that was not only interesting, but very funny. From a woman with a rape fantasy, to a husband drugging his wife in order to be close to her again, to a woman who gets off on her husband's tears, each "bizarre" sexual fantasy is shown so nonchalantly. The tone of the movie isn't to show these people as deviant, but as everyday people trying to live their lives with different sexual appetites. And therein lies the comedy. Taking what on paper reads as deviant, but showing it in a way that appears normal. At least normal to the person with the fetish.

These characters don't try to fix or adjust there fantasy for the sake of their relationship, they accept themselves wholeheartedly. They're so consumed by their sexual fantasies and problems that they're even oblivious to a sex offender handing out sweets and saying he's moved into the neighborhood. We never find out what he ever did or go into his character with any depth. But that doesn't matter. He's only there to show how all encompassing there sexual compulsions are, who cares let alone has time to worry about the sex offender who's moved in next door.

Open a bottle of wine and watch this film for a date night. It's funny, sometimes sad, and left me with a smile on my face. Enjoy!

An actor (Pacino) suffers a mid-life crisis at the end of his acting career. He loses hope and any passion to act, opting for a foolish attempt at suicide on the theater stage. Now retired and in therapy, a young girl from his past visits him at home and his passion reignites. And don't forget to add a friend from rehab who wants him to kill her husband (the only mildly interesting thing which of course goes nowhere).

The movie is ultimately a failure to be a drama or a comedy. The passion fizzles out very quickly and turns into a ridiculous farce. Pacino spends a good portion of every scene talking to his shrink over the computer or on the phone. Instead of the viewer experiencing the movie first hand, Pacino spends seemingly every scene narrating how he feels. Instead of feeling the actors emotions, seeing the characters develop, I felt spoon fed from scene to scene during ridiculous talks on the phone.

Long stretches of boring dialogue, sleepy music, characters devoid of any passion or pathos, long story short (my only wish while watching), this movie stinks. Pacino stumbles around the room uttering idiotic dialogue, falls down constantly while moaning, and goes through ridiculous situations with the lesbian. OH yeah, the girl's a lesbian. How risqué! Devoid of anything funny or remotely interesting, I urge you to avoid this movie. The story reminded me a little about Birdman. Actor in crisis on the stage, feelings of suicide, young spitfire girl, etc. Although I hate to compare two movies instead of judging them solely on their own merit, I'd watch Birdman instead. Way better movie.

Break out a pen and paper cause so much is going on it's hard to follow watching this for the first time. So many characters, so many plots surrounding sub-plots surrounding plots, you could easily lose your place if your attention wavers in the slightest. I felt like I needed to make an outline to make sense of it all. The movie is very hard to follow and needs a second viewing to fully grasp the whole thing.

My first impression is much like Joaquin Phoenix's character, a hazy pot soaked mind looking for a murderer with Bigfoot's help. No, no, he's looking for someone who was kidnapped by the Golden Fang Consortium of Nazi Heroin Smugglers led by dentist cokehead Martin Short. Or was he looking for Bigfoot's partner Littlefoot? I don't know nor do I care. One scene seemingly does not follow from the next and the whole movie became a big jumble I had no interest in solving.

All I have left in my brain are foggy recollections of details to what felt like an infinity of plots and characters. While some scenes have 'A Big Lebowski' vibe to them and were entertaining, they're sadly not enough to make me sit through this a second time. And I'm afraid without that second viewing, I'll have to live with just a brief glimpse of what might or might not be a good film. But if you have the 2h:22m to do it all again, muster up some patience, make a pot of coffee, and take good notes (some help at 1h25m). And for you truly bold viewers out there, reading the book might help.

I'll spare you the details about why pot should be legal. If you've found this movie then you probably already know. And that's where this documentary has been such a delight to view. It briefly goes into those details and focuses more on the big picture. It posits the question, why did our culture make it illegal in the first place and more importantly why does it continue to keep it illegal by waging a "drug war" that is a clear failure.

From politics, to the media, to the prison industry/asset forfeitures, to drug cartels, to pharmaceuticals, to big corporations, it all boils down to making money. Each has a stake in keeping the status quo and in keeping marijuana illegal. And that's where this documentary is so much more different than so many other legalize pot docs. It looks at our society as a whole and asks those big questions in an objective manner in spite of its advocacy to legalize pot. Instead of preaching about why pot is so groovy, it focuses on how money corrupts our culture's institutions and how people are controlled to think a certain way.

Irregardless of the hopelessness and powerlessness one feels when watching how money corrupts almost every aspect of our society, this documentary at the end left me with some feeling of hope that things just might change. Not just in regards to legalizing pot nationally, but that the internet and the flow of information might some day open more doors than those in power keep trying to close. That our society and the world can become a better place.

Rather then get more preachy I'll just say this, in my humble opinion I would rank this as one of, if not the best documentary on legalizing pot. It's an all encompassing informative documentary on the topic well worth two hours of your time.

Prepare to dive into an interactive new form of art. The creators describes it as an "urban playground movement" or "alternate reality game". It's essentially a mix of art, video, and elaborate clues that lead curious citizens of San Fransisco to explore their city all the while immersing themselves into a bizarre story.

It's all created by Jeff Hull who's main theme is on seeing things in a nonchalant way. By nonchalance, it's described as a cartoon where the unconscious character goes around a city and seemingly avoids dangerous situations through extraordinary luck; a way of exploring using your unconscious mind. The goal is to go elsewhere, to go somewhere between here and there. Basically a place you may or may not have gone before and enter a storybook world of imagination that exists hidden in the world around us.

It sounds crazy typing it out and reading it back to myself, so no doubt it must sound absurd to you the reader. Nevertheless, the movie gave me a sense of awe and joy as I followed each participant down the rabbit hole, all the while, surrounded by these all immersing elaborate clues that create this tension between reality and fiction. Watching how each participant was effected by these clues and how it changed them is what makes this a great film. This movie and the artist transformed the ordinary world into a place full of potential and mystery. And isn't that what makes art, isn't that what makes a movie a magical experience. And as such, I humbly recommend you watch this film and take a glimpse into the elsewhere.

Speaking as a person who's never seen the original, Maniac is an interesting slasher movie with good first person cinematography and a cool 80's like soundtrack.

A young man who owns a restoration mannequin shop goes around town slashing womens scalps to be placed on mannequins that later come to life in his mind. What sets this apart from other horror movies is that most of the film is shot solely from the maniacs perspective. The audience experiences everything from his point of view. What lacks in this film is the motivation for the killer. He's supposed to be motivated by some childhood trauma, but the traumas presented in the movie lacked any real sense that they would someday create a maniac. There was no real transition from the trauma to a maniac. A more detailed flashback of a more serous trauma would have made the maniacs motivation more real for the viewer.

Overall it's a cool looking piece of cinema. The acting is nothing spectacular. Nora Arnezeder as Anna, the maniacs obsession, was more eye candy than anyone of substance. Elijah Wood played a decent maniac from what little camera time he got on reflective surfaces. The way it was directed more than anything makes it worthwhile and unique. Not to mention if your a child of the 80's, you'll enjoy the trippy soundtrack.

A car slowly but surely comes out of a tight parallel parking spot as it bumps each car over and over again. This opening scene foretells the movie in a nutshell.

A father and son reunite together unexpectedly for the weekend along with their significant others. Dad's a lawyer, son's a musician. The setting is an old family cabin in the woods where the past becomes present. The movie attempts to create tension between the two family members who haven't seen each other in quite awhile. Don't forget to mix in the lady's problems, one wanting to start a family, the other dealing with a sick mother (both issues barely explored). The tension between the males supposedly spills over into their female relationships.

Let the conflict resolution begin.

Brief uncomfortable silences pock marked with shouting and melodrama do not a good movie make. Shouting & melodrama by the way that comes in the form of a neat freak yelling at his son over an old messy coffee table. I found myself bored and inattentive to what were supposedly serious moments. In spite of the good acting, the story never really drew me in. Zach Gilford was the least interesting character who held his emotions in so deep it was like he didn't have any to begin with. He delivered his lines with a carefree boredom second only to my own. He didn't even try to act. John Slattery & Jena Malone did the best they could with what little good dialog they were given. I applaud their effort.

Good movies capture something personal in the audience member and try to connect to that. Unfortunately this movie resolved nothing and didn't really connect with me. To solve a problem you have to explore it, an exploration that never really took place. There's no meat on the bone, just a foundation for drama with no real emotional bite to it. The father son relationship is strained because dad thinks he's too messy. That's about as much meat you're gonna get. Neat freak dad versus grungy vegan musician son not enough of a meal for me. I cannot recommend this movie when they're clearly far superior dramas that have parallel themes.

An opera singer calmly walks thru a large room inside a beautiful piece of architecture, a deserted and dilapidated building being devoured by nature. His beautiful song bounces off walls littered with graffiti. Broken windows, piles of rubble, lost jobs, a city in decay, nowhere to go but up, welcome to Detropia.

This movie briefly takes us around Detroit and into the hearts & minds of its sparse population. We see that the only thing surviving and thriving is the indomitable spirit of its citizens. Most documentaries take the approach of inundating us with information. Don't expect to talk to economic experts or politicians, we talk to the ordinary citizen. We watch them live with their difficult day to day existence as they watch the city decay around them, all the while trying to understand complex causes to a complex problem. Solutions seems so distant all they can hope for is a miracle.

Detropia shows the viewer a microcosm of the human condition through conversations with ordinary folks amidst a sea of ruins. The lovely cinematography continuously compares and contrasts beauty with ugliness, despair with hope. We see small flowers growing among the rubble, a bird rests upon a heap of garbage, people smiling and clinging to what little joy they have as they struggle to make ends meet.

This is a wonderful and calm film that will require the viewer to have patience and be in a sombre mood. Expect sadness tinged with brief glimpses of hope and the answer to the question of whether your cup is half full or empty. I'm left with the feeling that the spirit may be strong in Detroit's citizens, but the realities of the world are slowly crushing them. Let us hope the spirit conquers all.

Children who live in poverty and wretched conditions climb on to freight trains bound for the U.S. in hopes of a better life. When they talk of the U.S. they dream of television realities, tall buildings, beautiful people, the land of plenty, smiles all the while on their faces. But on the inside these kids are filled with pain. To reach that dream, they go through hell. Burglarized and beaten all the while hungry with the potential of being raped and murdered, all for the sake of trying to get a job in the U.S. to feed their family or go to school. This 16 year old boy talks about witnessing a mother and daughter being raped by 15 men and there's this tear in his eye that can't quite drop. His pain is suppressed. All these children attempt to drown their pain, to bury it, all the while hoping, praying, for that one chance that they may have a better life. It's hard to review this movie and not want to talk about immigration policy. But I won't, I'll let the movie do that for me and hopefully people will begin to open their eyes to some of the harsh realities the U.S. immigration policy creates. Here's hoping for a better tomorrow.

For me this movie is a hit or miss. The pitch is coming towards the hitter and anything is possible.

Ed Harris plays the father of two boys who grow up with major league baseball dreams, only to have them crushed by their father who's alcohol problem seems to stem from, well, I don't know, it's never really dealt with. The boys are inexorably tied up with their father's problems. But what those problems stem from is anybody's guess. There's no big speech, no big explanation, no big scene which is standard in drama's like these where the characters come together, yell, and either sort things out for the better or make them worse.

If the directors/writers/producers, who are two brothers who have some personal and family stake in the film, since they dedicated it to their father, if they just went into a little more depth with the Harris character and use his acting abilities even more, maybe deal with the psychological problems that make him drink, then this movie would have been substantially better. Instead, all we see him do is drink, then not drink for awhile, then drink some more, without any rhyme or reason as to the cause.

Things go well for the boys for awhile, then bad, good again, then bad, were perpetually going back and forth from balls to strikes with no in depth pitch to drive the audience home. Were left with a full count, the pitch heading towards the batter, is he gonna hit it, is he gonna miss, and then..........the end. How we got to that point in the game, the hit, runs, errors, everything before and in between that all led us to this movie, were just not told. Watching just the end of a game is not as exciting as watching it all the way through.

Accomplishment and smiling faces all around stand in for the misery that is life in this world of Mad Men. The structured facade of accomplishment is so fragile under the stress of the stable illusion these characters try to maintain. The simplest crack in this hollow suit of armor cannot be mended by a shot of booze. It remains, choking on the fumes of cigarettes and how do you do's. These characters walk on in their daily lives trying to maintain some semblance of sanity. What we see is that the innocence of this time in our history was not innocent at all, merely more adept at keeping the demons from creeping into the light, misery buried & depression sedated. The human condition, whether in ancient, medieval, or modern times, struggles to understand itself, struggles to gather some meaning behind it all, behind our jobs, our family, our existence. Who am I? Just a pandering ad man trying to sell shaving cream in order to pay the bills? Or am I more? Those stares off into the distance we see these characters so often indulge in, is a hand reaching out for meaning, an attempt to make some sense of it all. Can they find it? Can anybody?

A warm hearted small town girl played by Paltrow is a wannabe stewardess.Paltrow's character (if you could call it such) struggles to get to the top in the fast paced world of stewardess school.Oh my,what excitement.Mixed in but utterly insignificant is a love interest (Mark Ruffalo), comic relief provided by Mike Myers (a.k.a. Austin Powers), a jealous friend (Christina Applegate), & Candice Bergen as Paltrows mentor.

This movie is filled with cheap cliches that encompass all other cheap cliched movies.Don't waste your time unless you want to see a short cat fight between Paltrow & Applegate (sorry boys,no clothes ripped off or sweats broken).

Stewardess School from 1986 had more entertainment value then this crap,at least I could mock that movie.This movie was sad for the wasted talent it used.