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mrnaturalsez
Reviews
The Tenants (2005)
A Fairly Interesting Film
Just finished watching "The Tenants" last night, and thought I'd make a couple of comments, as of this date, there really hasn't been much info or opinions given about it yet. In general, I thought it was a pretty decent movie, being similar to "Barton Fink," and it held my interest throughout the film. There wasn't a very involved plot, but the main characters were interesting, as was the character development.
One of the central themes of this film was racism. Both of the male leads were racist. "Mr. Dogg's" character was outwardly so, but, for Lessor, it took some time to see that, deep down, many of his views about blacks were based on "facts," or stereotypical ideas us white folk pick up when young, or somewhere along life's way. I had started to like Lessor, as he was a quirky character, who was living his life as he wanted, irregardless of whether it was along society's guidelines or not, but as these came out, along with my impression of him coming off as a know-it-all, I found myself, little by little, losing any affinity I had felt towards him, and by the last parts of the film, I was actually hoping for something nasty to happen to him. I must add that, although I am leaning on the side that this is what he wanted, I am not sure if these impressions of Lessor were, indeed, what the filmmaker was trying to have the audience see, or if these were just my own personal thoughts.
I saw some comments in the message boards on the question of whether Snoop Dogg could act in a serious role. For my two cents, I thought he did a pretty decent job. I'm not sure I'm ready to start comparing him to Marlon Brando or Dustin Hoffman just yet, but this type of role is kind of new for him, so he's still got time yet. In his previous roles, the films revolve around and utilize his skills as a rapper, a "player," and all-around slick guy, and he has been at, or near, the top of his profession for many years. I think it takes some courage on his part to risk failure, to try a different venue where he's trying something new, and where he isn't considered some kind of "God."
It makes me wonder though, how someone with the unbelievable life he appears to have, would still want more. I guess it just goes to show you that we can get accustom to, and even bored with, just about anything. Yeah, I suppose all that money, and the women, and the adoration from everyone you meet, can just get old after a while, huh?
Free Zone (2005)
Waste of Time
I am going to have to agree with the only other poster in the "user comments" section at this date, "yediotm," and his comment of "bad cinema." I would much rather be saying something favorable, rather than negative, but in this case I feel compelled to do so for some reason -probably because I am getting sick of wasting a good chunk of time watching/dealing with another crap film. I try to spot the junk beforehand, in particular, the myriad of mindless action films that are being released today, but this one didn't have much info on it. It's not that I am hard to please, or have an aversion to foreign films, or something. I actually can find interest in a wide variety of films, and enjoy foreign pictures, having installed English subtitle files to over 200 of them in order to watch and understand them.
That was one of the major problems here - the language. There was some confusion as to what language this film was in, and after searching the web, didn't really learn much more, although it did appear it was in English. The film did have a lot of it in English, maybe close to half, but the rest of it was in Hebrew, or something else, and depending on the scene, kept switching back and forth between languages. Unless you speak that language, you will not understand 1/2 of the conversations and things spoken in the film.
That's not all of it though - by far, as evidenced by yediotm, who is from Israel, and most likely speaks the film's language, and "not understanding what they are saying" is not a major drawback. For me, a good plot is probably the most important factor in a film, and can overcome other inadequacies. There really wasn't much of a plot, and what there was of one, didn't really become apparent until about 45 mins. into the film, and then, it never did play itself out, with the film ending about half-way into it. I may have missed some "messages," or other things the filmmaker was trying to say, but there seemed to be a lot of wasted footage, or filming of little things with no apparent relevancy to anything. One example of wasted footage was the annoying beginning of the film. This was a young lady sitting as a passenger in a car and crying. I think that, after a minute or so of the crying, we would have got it that she was quite unhappy or sad about something. But no, we had to endure this off and on crying for 6 minutes. At least once, I had to verbally respond to the TV with "Alright already, enough with the crying! We got the picture." It was over 7 mins. (including approx. a minute of opening credits) before the film finally started, or started moving along.
Maybe someone else may find something interesting about this film, although I can't imagine what. Again though, maybe there's something I don't understand. About all I found halfway interesting at all, was seeing what some of the Jordan countryside would look like - err ..., or that is, the sights you would see out the window while driving down a highway.
Crutch (2004)
A Tale of a Sexual Predator
MAY BE SPOILERS - I guess if I would have known more about this movie, I probably wouldn't have watched it. Even though I believe that, as adults, we should have the right, without fear of retribution, to experiment with, or get involved in, whatever lifestyles or sundry aspects of life we desire, even when others may regard this behavior as sordid, or however distasteful to them. Of course this is dependent on this behavior being by, and between, consenting adults of sound mind, and that no other persons, animals, etc. are harmed, burdened, or unduly subjected to it. Given this, it does not mean that I have to personally like it or want to view it (hence, the "I probably wouldn't have watched it" comment). This film would probably be characterized as a gay-themed film, although it was more than that, and touched on a variety of issues. Again, what consenting adults do is their own business, but this situation was quite a bit different. The main character is a very confused 16-year-old boy, who is preyed upon by a 30-year-old male teacher of an acting class the boy takes. The boy, whose parents are too self-absorbed in their own problems, is in desperate need of someone he can talk to and confide in about his awful home situation - and about life in general for someone evolving through, what are possibly, the most confusing, emotional, and important formative years in one's life. Unfortunately, the teacher is only concerned with his own agenda (as we see is the case of all the characters in this film), which is seducing the boy. Little by little, the teacher works on this seduction until it evolves into David (the youth) being a regular visitor at his apartment, where the minor is plied with plenty of alcohol and marijuana, and eventually he turns the boy, and Kenny (the teacher) and David are seen spending most of their time together getting loaded and engaging in sex. It gets progressively worse for David. The teacher is also a heavy cocaine user. One day, while snooping around in his bathroom, David finds a healthy bag of the powdered form of the drug, and steals it (Apparently Kenny must have had quite a stash, as he never even misses the 1-2 gram bag). With all of David's difficulties, the cocaine looks like something to alleviate his mental anguish. Unfortunately, it's just another "crutch," and what looks like a temporary solution, inevitably develops into just one more problem.
I won't go into the whole story here, but with all the problems and pressures in David's life - the very dysfunctional home life; his use of drugs and alcohol; his confusion over his sexual identity and unhealthy "relationship" with his teacher; and the fact that he's just a teenager in the first place, and sorely equipped to logically deal with his condition; his mental state gets worse.
Maybe I'm getting old, and more responsible, but I had a problem with this film, and that was that the filmmakers didn't really seem to see anything wrong with a 30-year-old sexual predator, in the role of a teacher, taking advantage of a very vulnerable and mixed up kid of 16. Nothing seems to ever have been done about Kenny, and even at the end of the film, they mentioned something on the order of "his whereabouts is unknown, may be teaching somewhere else." How many people out there would want this character as a teacher for their children? It doesn't take a genius to figure out how all but a very few would answer.
Whether I agree with all of them or not, this guy has broken a whole raft of serious laws, and he needs to spend a few years behind bars. I don't know how accurate this portrayal was, but, supposedly, this was an autobiographical film based on the life of this picture's writer/director, Rob Moretti (his first). As is the case with most of us, we might be able to come up with solutions, or otherwise advise and help others with their problems, but when it comes to stepping back and taking an objective assessment of our own difficulties, we quite often are unable to do a very good job. Perhaps this is what happened here with Mr. Moretti. Do society a favor, Mr. Moretti. If this guy is for real, find this monster and have him arrested - before he works his evil on more troubled and impressionable youths.
Moebius 17 (2005)
Boring and Difficult to Make Any Sense Out Of
I can be entertained or interested in a wide variety of films, and I try not to be negative - BUT, this one, to me, was really a stinker. I'd have to estimate that close to half of the film footage was that of viewing the occupants of a train car sitting there doing nothing, people walking through a train station, or the view outside the window of a train as it traveled. Mind you these scenes weren't of interesting people, occurrences, or scenery, but more like the type that one would encounter as they traveled to work for about the 100th time along the same route - boring. The plot was something that very few would probably understand. It revolved around a train, that a group of young taggers spray-painted, somehow completely disappearing. One of the taggers was a quantum physics buff (yeah right - a teenage quantum physics expert) who had come up with an explanation for the train's disappearance based on some quantum physics theory. The normal film part ends quite abruptly after about an hour, and is followed by some type of cartoon that might try and explain more of the preceding film. It was so confusing, disjointed, and difficult to understand, that I could see no more reason to continue watching it, and bailed out a few minutes before the end. I don't know how I lasted that long, but I guess I was waiting for some answers or explanation of what I had been watching. I can't imagine anyone but a few that would be entertained by this or make any sense of it. I'm sure there's going to be someone that will tell me how I failed to understand this or that, and that very well could be true, but I'm going to stick to my claim that there would be very few that would enjoy Moebius 17.
She Hate Me (2004)
This film simulates Mr. Lee's career.
I've enjoyed a lot of Spike Lee's films, but, unfortunately, this wasn't one of them. In a way, this film imitated his movie career: it started out fairly strong, but then had some difficulty being entertaining. This film grabbed my interest early on, and it looked like it had the possibility of being an engaging flick. To my surprise though, about a half hour into it, the story completely changed, and became this drivel about the main character selling his stud services to impregnate successful lesbians for $10,000 a pop. To me, the plot turned into one with about the depth of a porn flick. I tried to hang with it for awhile, but it was such shallow nonsense that I had to turn if off. I did take a couple peeks into the latter part of the film, and saw that it did return, somewhat, to the original plot, but there wasn't anything there that that looked too interesting to me. Maybe there are some who might be entertained by this, but I'm looking for something else, something that comments on our society or us as human beings, something that might stimulate me to examine my own values or views, or at least elicit some laughter or other emotion from me. I know Spike Lee is capable of this, but I didn't see much of anything along those lines in this film.