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jody-ann
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The Town (2010)
Short of memorable
Despite it's great reviews, Ben Affleck's The Town falls short of memorable. Affleck plays Doug McRay, a notorious bank robber from Charleston, Massachusuetts, who was forced into the business following the imprisonment of his father, also a noted bank robber. McRay grows up learning the ropes with his nominal brother James Coughlin, played by Jeremy Renner, a belligerent, unruly ex-con who has become completely hardened by his life of crime and his stint in prison. The film begins with an intense, chaotic opening scene. McRay and several accomplices run a heist on a bank, kidnap one of the bank tellers, Claire Keesey , played by Rebecca Hall, and release her later with the admonition to keep her mouth shut or they will find her and kill her. Coughlin, not entirely convinced that Keesey will cooperate, suggests to McRay that he follow her around to make sure she doesn't give incriminating information to the feds. Knowing Coughlin's whimsical nature, and believing that he will probably kill Keesey, McRay suggests that he watch her instead.
What unfolds from here is part love story, part crime-drama. While the scenes are full of action and violence, the storyline is predictable and one dimensional. Affleck's performance in his star role is good, but the film would benefit greatly from further character development to provide greater intellectual stimulation, or perhaps an interesting twist at he end. Overall, I am not a big fan of The Town, but I still have hope that Affleck's future films will get better as he continues to grow as a director.
Deliver Us from Evil (2006)
Raw and real
Deliver Us from Evil recounts the life of former Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady as a serial child molester in Northern California from 1973 until his conviction in 1993. During this period, O'Grady sexually abused twenty five children while prominent leaders of the church failed to ensure basic legal protections for the victims despite knowledge of the abuse.
The emotions in this grim documentary are raw and real. Director Amy Berg uses on camera interviews with the now exiled O'Grady and several of his victims to present a compelling moral indictment against the Roman Catholic Church for their blind engagement and silencing of decades of sexual abuse.
The sobering stories of the victims give us a full grasp of the psychological ramifications of childhood sexual abuse, the stunted emotional growth, and the persistent pain and shame that clings throughout the entirety of a victims life. O'Grady's appearances, being equally poignant, provide an intimate glimpse into a child molester's psyche. However, his candor and seemingly cavalier attitude towards the casualties of his heinous acts, is difficult to grasp. The former priest appears unmoved by his wrongdoings and does not express genuine remorse nor shy away from discussing his lewd, pedophillic urges.
Towards the end of the film we learn that O'Grady himself had been abused as a child by a member of the clergy and his older brother. With this revelation, it becomes clearer why O'Grady is the monster that he is.
Caché (2005)
Subtle and frigid
Cache is a film that is drenched in subtlety. Director Michael Haneke paces us through an intense mind-bender which requires us to consider the implications of every shot all the way to the very end. The film focuses on Georges, an affluent French literary critic, whose life takes a dramatic decline when he is forced to confront buried truths about his past. Someone has been videotaping him with a hidden camera and sending the tapes to his house and work place. The tapes are wrapped in white paper featuring an image drawn in a child like manner of a man with a violent splatter of blood pouring from his throat. The intensity of the film builds from Georges desire to figure out who is responsible. He finally has a "hunch" and decides to visit an apartment featured in one of the tapes, which ends up belonging to Ajid, an Algerian man with whom Georges had shared a small portion of his childhood. Ajid's character is blank and deliberately impenetrable. We do not know if he is lying or telling the truth, although Georges believes he has been sending the tapes. The viewer only knows that Georges had supposedly caused irreparable damage in Ajid's life, but the details about what Georges actually did remain unclear.
With the introduction of Ajid's character, Cache takes on a new complexity. The film becomes a portrait of class guilt and buried secrets. We see the parallelism between Georges' relationship with Ajid's and the contentious relations between the white French and Maghreb people. Several scenes and dialogues throughout the film add weight to this political dimension. They suggest that there is a pervading state of paranoia amongst the wealthy in France. The Maghreb people are invading their space. The Maghreb people are threatening their lives. But, what is the real threat and who is the real victim? Ajid or Georges? Throughout the movie, a void remains where sympathy should fill. It is difficult to take sides and the viewer cannot help but remain emotionally frigid.
Das Leben der Anderen (2006)
Must see film, Oscar well-deserved.
The Lives of Others stands out as a strong, moving, well-intentioned film. It has a lot to say about government corruption, about the perils of absolute power and about the complete carelessness of human life under repressive political systems. The main hero is a man named Gerd Weisler, a member of East Germany's notorious Stasi (secret police), and master interrogator who determines the specificity and overall direction of the film. Weisler doesn't start the movie out as a hero, however. In the first few scenes, he is portrayed as a typical Stasi, brutally evil and shamelessly sadistic. At the behest of the party boss, whose motives are shady and diabolical, he teams up with a fellow Stasi to spy on a prominent artist, Georg Dreyman, and his girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland. His purpose is to glean information intended to disprove Dreyman's loyalty to the DDR, East Germany's socialist republic. However, during the course of this surreptitious surveillance, we see Weisler reach a moral turning point as he comes to realize the cruel and corrupt nature of the Stasi cult, and begins to empathize not only with Dreyman and his girlfriend, but with all who suffer at the hands of a government with absolute power that is spiraling out of control. Weisler develops a conscience. Once a complex man driven by a mix of hatred and selfishness, he becomes simplified towards the end: a compassionate man who has learned the price of human life. The film, overall, maintains a sense of realism by not being overly sentimental nor overly exaggerated. The ending is quite moving yet leaves you wondering, to whom is this dedicated? Perhaps it's for the Weislers of that time who were able to show defiance in face of a powerful unrelenting system, or to men like Dreyman who made great leaps and put their lives on the line to fight for the overhaul of an unjust regime. Either way, the Lives of Others is a monument to the triumph of the human spirit. It is a must see film, Oscar well-deserved.