mercuryix2003's Reviews

The Swan Song (1971)

10/10

21 April 2015

I saw this short when I was in college for a theater class, and I've never forgotten. It is very simply a filmed version of Chekhov's Swan Song play, featuring two men, one of them a recently retired veteran stage actor, and the other the Theater Prompter played by none other than Michael Dunn, known for playing Dr. Loveless on the old Wild Wild West show. (A theater prompter had the thankless job of standing in a hole below the stage, and prompting the actors if they forgot their lines).

The entire 22 minute short involves the Theater Prompter listening to the retired actor talk about his lifelong experience as an actor in the theater. That's it. There are no explosions, gun battles, car chases, nudity, sex, stabbings, beheadings, or a single chain saw. In other words, absolutely nothing for today's American audiences.

However, if you are a throwback of nature who actually cares about believable acting and human emotion, this is a must-see if you can find it. The older actor does a superb job playing a retired actor whose real emotions fight through his natural dramatic personality, and Michael Dunn holds his own as a down-on-his luck theater prompter who knows every word of every play ever written by heart, but who will never get the chance to act onstage.

I remember this short piece vividly, long after forgetting hundreds of other films, and that is the highest recommendation I can give it.

It's both a shame and a crime that it hasn't been seen by everyone who cares about real acting or even reviewed, until now. I hope whoever reads this will seek it out and watch it; both actors are long dead, but the emotions they play out are timeless; and will stay with you for life.

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Last Days (2005)

1/10

Who Cares?

4 August 2014

......are the only two words that apply to this film. It can only be called a film because that was the medium it was shot in. We will never know what was in Gus Van Sant's mind when he made this movie, and that may be his private joke; because he may very well have had nothing in mind when he made it. The film is a detached view of the last days of a self-indulgent, unaware drug addict, so detached that it might have been shot with a security camera affixed to the wall as it watches a man stumble around, ignore his friends, stumble around, ignore his family, stumble around, listen to a Jehova's Witness try to convert him as he sits there totally tuned out, stumble around, hide from a detective trying to find him, stumble around, wander into a potting shed, stumble around, and die. I have just given you the entire plot of Last Days, but did not give a "spoiler alert", as there is no plot, action or dialog to spoil. If a friend wanted to show you a security video of the last eight hours of a homeless drug addict's life in an alley before he slowly dies in front of you, would you watch it? I actually would, rather than watch this again. Because at least I would be watching a real life and death event, without the suffocating pretentiousness of this film.

On top of that, we can't forget that we are watching the pointless and self-indulgent destruction of a millionaire who had far more success than he deserved, was overrated to an embarrassing degree, was more narcissistic than was previously thought humanly possible, and had friends, family and a wife who loved him far more than he deserved. In his own suicide note, Cobain referred to himself as a big baby. At least he was self aware to that degree. His mother after his death said "now he's gone and joined that stupid club". (Referring to the death of Jimmy Hendrix and Joplin by drug overdose, at age 28). His mother had more meaning, depth and insight in her life than her son ever did. Who cares about his life, he wasted it, and who cares about his death, as he didn't care about whoever cared about him? That is the feeling this film leaves in you; though I'm not sure Gus Van Sant cared about any meaning or effect this film had. Finally, who cares about this film? Its subject had no meaning and nothing to say, and neither does this. If you somehow think Kurt Cobain was a "genius" of some kind, and that his death at a young age had some kind of deep meaning, please, please consider a better role model. (And no, Marilyn Manson is not a better role model. At least Cobain wasn't That pathetic.....)

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Seconds (1966)

9/10

Disturbing and Brilliant, Difficult to Watch

29 June 2014

There are far too many reviews about this film that discuss the plot, acting, and directing in-depth for mine to add anything, so this is more of a comment about how this film affected me when I watched it many years ago.

This is one of the most difficult films I have ever watched. A slasher film marathon with in-your-face gore would be easier to sit through than this, because they don't affect you on a personal level like this film does. You can laugh off the blood and fake violence in a slasher flick, but there is nothing to laugh at in this film. It brings up disturbing feelings, hopelessness, claustrophobia, the feeling that no matter what you do, even if given a second chance at life, you are still trapped by the decisions you made in your first one, or will make the exact same choices you did in your first life, bringing you to the same point again. I hope the message of this film isn't "you're doomed to make the same mistakes and decisions over and over again no matter what you do, so don't even try". If there is a message in this film, or a statement it makes, it's "don't pretend your past didn't happen, and walk away from it, thinking you can start over with a new life and new lessons. Instead, embrace what happened to you, good and bad, and that you learned a lot from it, good and bad. Then go on with the rest of your life with those lessons that your life, including your mistakes, taught you". It's one thing to move to a new place and to a new career and even a new family; it's another to abandon everything you learned up to that point, which is your identity. That's the cautionary moral this movie seems to make.

At least, I hope it does. The movie is so bleak and so stark in its presentation, it leaves it entirely up to the audience whether there's a statement there at all.

I think this is just the kind of movie that Roger Ebert liked and would have recommended. I'd like to know what he thought of it.....

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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976)

2/10

The Film that Deserved to Fall into the Sea, and be Forgotten....

1 March 2014

Sarah Miles deserved far, far better than this film. Her performance is head and shoulders above any others in the movie, and this becomes evident 15 minutes into it. Her performance is the only reason I can give this film a rating higher than one star. Kris Kristofferson plays her love interest, in a performance that redefines the words laconic and listless.

Possible Spoilers: Miles plays a lonely widow whose husband who died after a long illness, with a troubled, sullen teen son (naturally). She meets Kris Kristofferson, playing a sailor with no sense that he is one, and instantly drops all of her British reserve to fall in lust with an American stranger who is completely passive and has absolutely no personality. Sarah Miles literally carries every scene between her and Kristofferson on her own shoulders; it's like watching a champion dancer dance with a mannequin, except that you can at least prop up and pose a mannequin. For some bizarre reason, Kristofferson, who underplays every role he has, decided to underplay this performance even more, as if that would give him some sort of quiet American strength. Instead, it gives him a quiet lethargy that puts the energy right through the floor. I have to wonder if Miles actually said to Kristofferson at some point during rehearsals: "Kris, you are going to give me more energy than that during the take, aren't you?" If the director actually said to Kristofferson "less energy, be more subtle", that was the Wrong direction for Kristofferson. It's like saying to Robin Williams "Robin! Be more manic, and much higher energy!" Naturally, the woman's son resents the hell out of Kristofferson, and like most movie children of single mothers, is under the influence of the worst element he can find, a hateful little psychopath that likes blowing seagulls' heads off with firecrackers, mutilating cats, etc, without adults around them ever noticing. Without a strong father figure around, the movie argues, male children will immediately fall into gangs or worse.

The end of the movie is out of a Stephen King novel, and does not fit in with the rest of the story at all. There seems to be no moral or statement to the film that I could find. In fact, it seems to go out of its way to avoid one. If you had to find a "moral" in it, it would seem to be, stay in the Navy and never retire, or you will deserve to be cut into tiny pieces in short order, as your just punishment. Why? I have no idea. I guess the sea is a jealous mistress. Like, Fatal Attraction jealous.

Which is especially odd, as there are No Sea Metaphors or allusions to the sea in this film!

(This IS adapted from a Japanese story by a famous but rather disturbed author, who committed suicide as a protest against modern society, but even in terms of the Samuri tradition, the film makes no coherent statement; even one that we could disagree with.) The film left me with a feeling that I had been subjected to three levels of abuse: one, a slow-moving (and I mean, Slow-Moving) morality tale with no moral at the end, two, Kris Kristofferson's energy-sucking performance that seemed to suck the vitality out of me as I watched it, and lastly, the abuse of Sarah Miles, who gave an Oscar-worthy performance in a film that was not worthy of her, and gave her no energy to work with; which means her work was twice-heroic. If she was not in this film, no-one would remember it on any level; and out of respect for her, no-one should.

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The Christmas Tree (1991 TV Movie)

1/10

So bad it's never been reviewed

2 January 2014

POSSIBLE SPOILERS, NOT THAT ANYONE WILL READ THIS REVIEW OR SEE THIS FILM:

I just saw The Nostalgia Critic's review of this made-for-TV animated "Christmas" movie, just published on Christmas day, 2013! It is probably the one and only review this "Christmas" movie ever got. I put "Christmas" in quotations in that, except for a brief fly-over by Santa Claus where he nearly electrocutes the bad guy and magically gives orphans new clothes (all of which takes less than 30 seconds), Christmas is never mentioned. There was an army of animators for this film, which is curious because it is so badly done, and the script (if you can call it that) absolutely did not merit the time and effort it took to make this. I have no doubt the TV stations that aired it were angry about what it must have done to their ratings. It completely misses the spirit of Christmas, and desperate to wrap things up at the end, the narrator says "and so as you can see, you always win when you're good". Uh, what? There's about 2,000 years of history to contradict that.

I feel bad for the animators that put so much effort into producing something so forgettable and irrelevant; I wonder what they thought about it? We will never know, as there are no other reviews for it, and no information about it is available. You will be wasting your time and inflicting considerable pain on yourself if you see this 45 minute film, but you will at least have fun watching The Nostalgia Critic tear it apart. There is so much wrong with this film, that it took him over 30 minutes just to point it all out, which is almost as long as the film! If you want a Christmas animated special, "The Christmas Tree" isn't it. Not that it matters, as it isn't available anywhere; which is perhaps how it should be (alright, you can find it on YouTube; which is probably the only thing saving it from extinction).

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Religulous (2008)

5/10

Bill Maher's documentary could have been so much better without his attitude

18 November 2013

I saw this documentary again after seeing it in theaters when it first came out. It doesn't hold up nearly as well as I remember it.

Even when I first saw it, I thought it was a good effort, but that Bill Maher was way too sarcastic to the people he interviewed, and brought up graphic sex references (including the word pussy several times without a particular need for it), for no real purpose; then laughed at his own wit. Which he does an awful lot in this documentary; as in, continuously. Meanwhile, as Roger Ebert noted in his own review, the subjects of his ridicule show remarkable forbearance and patience in dealing with Bill Maher's sarcasm and smugness. He's not being smarter than them as he laughs; they are being patient and respectful with him, and he mistakes their silence for his own answerable cleverness. They could easily respond on his level, but they choose not to.

Bill Maher doesn't realize that by doing that, he completely undercuts the premise of his own documentary, and loses the argument, without his opponents doing anything but enduring his sarcastic and often juvenile language (as in his unnecessary references to anal sex and blowjobs to a couple of gay activists, who seem quietly repelled by his behavior).

This is the central weakness of his film. It really can't be called a documentary, as he really doesn't go into detail about the different religions, so we don't learn any more about them than we already know. Instead, it is a long series of interviews, where Bill Maher sets up and delivers the punch line at his subjects' expense, congratulates himself with his own laughter, and is edited to make Maher look clever, and his subjects look stupid. Except that, even with the editing, Maher's smugness and disrespect domes through, making him look worse than the religious he is interviewing. Christopher Hitchens states that religion often makes people behave worse, not better, but here Maher achieves the opposite: by being a smug, cynical, disrespectful jerk who makes continual sexual references while not doing an honest interview, he makes religion look better; because his religious subjects don't match his behavior.

I am an atheist myself and enjoy Bill Maher's show Real Time; it is very strange to me that I should find myself on the side of the religious. In that sense, Bill Maher's film fails as both a documentary and as an argument for his point. He should either have left the sarcastic attitude at home, or chosen a more objective interviewer to do the project. It's as if he thought his film had to be funny, or people would not watch it. Unfortunately he chose to insert insulting jokes at the expense of his subjects (including degrading sexual references), instead of letting the humor come out of the illogic of the religions, by letting it speak for itself.

This film could have been and should have been so much more than it was; an actual documentary on the dangers of religion.

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The Obama Deception (2009 Video)

2/10

Not even worthy of the dustbin of history

23 September 2012

I tried very hard to get through this (ahem) docu.... sorry I can't even say it in quotations. This... project makes "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" look like a Cannes contender for best documentary. I have no idea what budget Jones was working with to make this attempted hatchet job on Obama, but it becomes apparent that not only was there no real budget, but Jones created it inside a vacuum, with no objective input. He starts off with disjointed clips from Obama's speeches, cut off before we can become infected by an inspiring phrase, then abruptly cuts to the most obnoxious rap artist interview he can find, comparing government bureaucracy to complaining to Burger King about a bad meal, and that Obama is just a "globally backed" puppet.

It's here that this "documentary" becomes deranged; Jones starts inserting clips to try to prove there is a global conspiracy to start a secret New World Order, and that Obama is just part of that plan.

All of the accusations that are made towards Obama could much more easily have been made during Bush during the two wars he declared, where Bush both forbade public protests within two miles of his appearances, while blacking out media coverage of coffins returning from Iraq; a disgrace to the servicemens' families. You would expect a leftist lunatic directing this at Bush and Cheney, but instead it's Jones directing it at Obama.

I got about halfway through this before I had to skip ahead, and finally got to the ending that redefines paranoid delusion. I couldn't even understand what convoluted statement Jones was trying to make, and I think it is fair to conjecture that neither could he.

This undefinable mess (it can't be called a documentary or even a film), will not even be an oddity in the dustbin of history, because it makes no coherent statement, and has garnered attention only from the extreme fringe. I give it 2 stars, because there was a lot of editing involved; dizzying, disjointed editing that undermined whatever he was trying to say and induced a migraine, but editing nonetheless.

I should have checked out "Splash" instead..... Yes, it's that bad.

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Bridesmaids (I) (2011)

2/10

Great Comediennes, Excruciating Movie

7 July 2012

What do Bridesmaids and the Passion of the Christ have in common? Actually, quite a lot:

They are both wildly successful. They are both extremely painful to watch. And finally, neither is really a movie, for different reasons. Passion is a slow-motion torture of Jesus Christ, filmed from every possible angle, as the basis and justification for why you should believe in Christianity. Which to my mind misses the whole point of Jesus' message, as does Mel Gibson apparently, based on his behavior.

Bridesmaids really can't be described as a film either, at least in the sense of structure, plot, and acting. I am not being facetious. Watching this film, I started getting the very depressed feeling that I had seen its style before. And then it hit me that I had; in every Will Ferrell movie. Ferrell's movies aren't written; they're improvised. And Ferrell doesn't act; he improvises. Which is why I can never see another of his films until he changes. I wasn't surprised when I saw the outtakes of Bridesmaids: Outtake after outtake of unused improvised scenes, exactly like every Will Ferrell movie. Why should I sit down and write out a screenplay with characters, plot and dialog, and then to create a believable character, when I can improvise it in five minutes? Unfortunately this trend is spreading. Watching this film, I recognized many "improv exercise" scenes I used to see and perform in theaters: especially the "top this" exercise, which makes up the majority of scenes in this movie, which go on and on until it becomes torture. When you see them live at a theater, they can be funny if forgettable. In a movie, it falls flat and is painful. I felt relieved at the end of the film, not anything else. I had to go do something fun after-wards. I have seen Kristen Wiig do some very funny things live, so I know she can perform. Whether she can create a complex and believable character based on an actual script, and not an improvisation, is yet to be seen. I hope I do see it, because I think she can.

But I hope I never, ever see another "improvised movie" again. Unfortunately, since audiences to go see them and they are much easier to make than an actual scripted film that is acted, there will be more of them. Too bad...

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Marjoe (1972)

8/10

Award-Winning Documentary that Had No Effect on Americans

2 April 2012

Watching this documentary was painful; despite that fact that the audience wanted to be taken in, was only too willing to be credulous, it was no less painful watching them give away their intelligence and self-respect along with their money to believe the outrageous things that Marjoe does to demonstrate evangelistic hucksterism.

Marjoe's personal story is even more painful; his early childhood literally stolen from him by his cynical and cold-blooded parents, who used to smother him with a pillow or drown him under tap water until he agreed to do their bidding (they used this form of torture because it left no marks on him). He finally got away from them at age 17. His parents kept all of the money he made for them, by the way; it didn't go to charity or even to the church.

Marjoe courageously faces all of his demons, and recreates all the tricks he was taught as a child, to drive the all-too-willing audience into a frenzy of mindlessness as they throw their money at him in hopes of a personal miracle.

And what was the result of exposing the fraud? Nothing. Not one thing changed as the result of this fearless documentary. Evangalism continued to grow even bigger, its stars grew bigger, and when they were finally brought down by their own excesses, instantly replaced. The distributors didn't show it in the South because they were afraid of the outrage. Nice courage there, guys. They should have Especially shown it in the South. Maybe a few people's eyes would have been opened.

People want to believe so badly that there is a quick answer for them, that they will continue to throw money at fraud after fraud, despite being shown exactly how they are being bilked. So are the hucksters the only ones to blame?

Hmm... how do you do that "cross" trick again? Can I get an "Amen!"? How about your Visa number?

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Everything Must Go (2010)

2/10

Still Waiting for a Will Ferrell Movie

3 February 2012

Warning: Spoilers

Impossible Spoilers Ahead:

It is impossible to write a spoiler for this film, because it is exactly like every other Will Ferrell project: Improvised, not acted, without a particular plot or structure that is relevant to the premise.

This film should have been titled "Waiting for a Film", because that is exactly what happens: Mr. Ferrell sits in a lawn chair. For the whole film. He is sitting in the lawn chair, because he has nowhere else to go. His drinking has gotten him fired, and his wife has locked him out of the house. I can hear the director now: "Ok, that's your setup, Will! Roll film! ACTION!!! Keep rolling for two hours!"

Will Ferrell, like many performers who have grown up with comedy improv, apparently made the decision long ago that building a character, creating a role, etc., are all too much work (and time-consuming) when you can take the suggestion of a time, place, and character, and do the same job in seconds. We saw this in Step-Brothers, and particularly the out-takes of dozens of scenes that were never used, in which he improvised all of the scenes, and used the ones that worked. The problem with this is that if you invest seconds in your acting, that is the quality of your result.

Imagine if My Fair Lady, Citizen Kane, et al had been made this way. When you see improv comedy in the theater, it's fun, but you don't remember it an hour later. Certainly not years later. Everyone can quote lines from their favorite classic film, because of the care, direction, writing, and not least, acting preparation that went into them. I can't call Everything Must Go a film in that sense; it's a collection of static, disconnected scenes, as Ferrell improvs his way through a variety of the same scenario, and the result is instantly forgettable, and we have no connection or interest in this character.

Unfortunately, other movies are following suit (Bridesmaids comes to mind), in which very funny actors and actresses are wasted in improvising scenes, instead of acting scripted ones.

A friend of mine dragged me to this film, which felt like slow torture in a lawn chair. If Mr. Ferrell ever decides to act in an actual scripted movie, I'll watch it, just to see if he can build a character and create a role; in other words, act.

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Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Defies Description - in its Pointlessness

18 October 2011

"Jeremia Johnson took his horse up to the mountain.... Jeremia Johnson took his horse up to the mountain"...

That is the theme song of this movie, and the entire plot, so I should have included a "Spoiler Alert"... except there's really nothing there to spoil.

This is a movie about a man who is an apparent former soldier, who decides to leave society and live in solitude for the rest of his life in the mountains. It is not explained who he is, why he came to this decision, or anything else about him. We learn absolutely nothing about him in two hours of silence in this film. We do learn that Indians don't like him. Maybe it's the beard. Maybe it's because an Indian woman decides she wants to sleep with and live with the first white man she's ever seen, despite the fact he can't communicate with her, hasn't had a bath in a year and has a long scratchy beard.

Of course, civilization won't leave him alone. Random people wander into his life, call him "pilgrim", and wander out again for years at a time. He adopts an orphan boy he calls "boy". Of course, just when he has something of a family again, the Indians decide to show up and wipe them out. This cliché of killin' the missus and the young'un sets up Redford's vendetta against the Indians. They show up, one at a time, week after week, to prove their manhood by killing him. Of course, this earns them a one way ticket to the Happy Hunting Ground, as Redford dispatches brave after brave, despite their size, speed or fighting skills. Redford is completely non-credible as a "mountain man". He looks and acts like he just got out of makeup, despite the gnarly beard. He never for one moment looks happy with the solitude he sought. He lives alone, avoiding people, waiting for the next Indian to try to kill him. The movie to me felt like a long, slow exercise in masochism by Redford's character. I felt like I was engaging in the same masochism by sitting through it. Finally, his ol' buddy wanders back by after three years and Redford asks him if he knows what month it is; March, April? The old man replies "March...maybe. April, I don't think so. Well, take care, Pilgrim". He then leaves. That is their entire conversation. There is time for one more fight with a random Indian at the end which Redford butchers, of course, then the credits roll. That is the movie.

It is as if Sydney Pollack deliberately wanted to make a movie as devoid of dialogue, structure, plot, purpose or meaning as he could, and as if doing that would impart meaning on this film. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to. He only succeeds in the former. I have to wonder if even Robert Redford understood what the point to the film was, if any. You feel a lot of time passing in the movie, and you feel a lot of your own life has as well watching it.

At the end of the credits, we hear the same lone singer we heard at the beginning: "Jeremiah Johnson, took his horse up to the mount-ain, Jeremia Johnson, took his horse up to the mount-ain". (I always felt sorry for that poor horse).

"And some folks say... he's up there still". ....Yes? And? The man wanted to be left alone. You should've respected his wishes, and not filmed him to begin with.

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Gardens of Stone (1987)

3/10

Waiting for Godot - II

18 March 2011

Warning: Spoilers

I saw Coppola's film twice, once because of his reputation, and the second time to see if I was missing anything. It was a very long two hours to discover that I hadn't.

The film is beautifully shot, the script looks like it is going somewhere, and we wait for something to happen. And we wait.

The film feels exactly like Waiting for Godot. In both the play and the film, nothing happens. Two major differences between them is that in the play, the author (and the audience) knows nothing is going to happen, and the film doesn't know this. The other huge difference is that "nothing happens" in the play in a fun and entertaining way, while the film...doesn't.

James Caan tries very hard playing a military man, but he looks and sounds like James Caan wearing a uniform. I never got the sense that I was looking at an actual soldier. His character is quiet and distant, and we are supposed to relate to him on an emotional level, as he is the core of the film.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Unfortunately, we can't, despite the fact that the film tries to build a relationship between him and a peace activist (we know how many soldier/peace activist relationships there were then), Angelica Huston, who seems as convincing an activist as Caan is a soldier. So what are we left with? That is the question that haunted me throughout the film.

There is the obligatory confrontation between the stereotypical long-haired unappreciative liberal and James Caan at a party. The liberal attacks Caan verbally, then lays his hands on him (peaceniks are like that). Caan responds by punching him several times in the throat, then while the hippie liberal is lying face down in the dirt gasping, grinds his face into the dirt with his shoe in the back of the guy's head, as if he is putting out a cigarette. Someone has to pull him off the guy.

This scene was carefully set up as a central moment in the film. What was the point of it? I guess (and I found myself guessing at a lot of the deeper meaning of some of the dialogue and scenes), it is to show that Caan is a soldier who has seen too much war, is in a place he doesn't want to be in (burying young dead soldier's whose sacrifice is scorned) when he would rather be fighting, and is surrounded a nation hostile to the war and the soldiers who fight it.

However, if Coppola wanted to present that, he should have presented it differently than this. The effect of the scene is to make us either want to call a cop and have him taken away, or to get the hell away from him to avoid brushing into him accidentally and having the same thing happen to us.

In the end, Caan tells his peace activist girlfriend that he has decided to sign on for another tour of duty as an "errand of mercy" to try to save more young lives from being senselessly wasted.

The movie ends shortly thereafter, with Caan saluting a dead soldier's coffin at a funeral.

But let's back up here for a moment to the poignant moment when Caan tells Huston he is going back to 'Nam, to save young men's lives.

Caan knows this is a losing war. He is at a critical juncture in his life; he can do something truly difficult and brave at this point, and at a personal cost much higher than going back to war: he could, as a soldier, publicly speak out against the war and its senselessness, and the horrors he has seen; the deaths of his soldiers, and the slaughter of Vietnamese citizens by troops. He would be seen as a traitor to the military of course, but he would be speaking his mind, truthfully, (as he has privately to his girlfriend and his friend James Earl Jones), could testify before Congress, and could join the cause to end the war. If his efforts helped to shorten the war by even a few days, that would have saved hundreds of lives, more than the few he hopes to save.

His offering to return to Vietnam sounds very noble, but is comparable to a Southern officer in the Civil War offering to return to the front lines; to what point? To die along with the rest of the men in a losing war? There is no flavor, let alone poignancy, to this statement by Caan. And at the end, that is reflected in his salute to the dead soldier's coffin, whom he may be joining soon; and just as senselessly.

Not a good or profound statement by Mr. Coppola, if he was trying to make one.

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Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008)

1/10

"Well, I have a Thing for Young Girls, What Can I Say?"

30 September 2009

So speaks Roman Polanski in an interview given in 1969.

In 1979, a year after he was on the run after being convicted of drugging and raping a child, he gave this far more graphic interview to novelist Martin Amis:

"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!"

This interview, nor his penchant for "young girls", makes it into this extremely biased "documentary". Even the title is dishonest "Polanski: Wanted and Desired". By who? It almost seems to imply that his victim actually "wanted him". I watched this, actually believing I was going to watch a documentary. Instead, I watched an hour and a half PR campaign about what a brilliant filmmaker Polanski is, along with long clips of his work (which has nothing to do with his case) and other people gushing over him. A long section of it is devoted to his tragic childhood and life. Finally, we reach the point where he is charged with drugging and raping a 13 year-old girl. The 13 year-old victim, and what he did to her (which I can't print here on IMDb), is diminished and devalued as much as possible. The filmmaker goes into great length about possible misconduct on the part of the prosecution and the judge (strangely, she doesn't talk about the nature of the sleazy plea bargain offered to the victim's family, or the fact that the child only agreed to it because she didn't want to be humiliated by talking about it in court. She also didn't want the stigma of being identified as a victim of rape.)

This film comes across as a disturbed fan-pic made by a devotee of Polanski, who has total empathy for the victimizer she adores, and no empathy for the victim she disregards.

I give this film one star, because it lies about what it is; it is not a documentary (which is supposed to report facts and be neutral) in any sense of the word. Instead, it comes across as a distorted valentine by a disturbed fan, justifying the actions of a disturbed individual. Its overall effect when you step back and look at it is frankly creepy.

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Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)

Lying For God

17 September 2009

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: This film for me sums up the mentality of people like Ben Stein and the Christian Right: The Ends Justify The Means. Which is ironic, considering they have the nerve to show evolutionists intercut with Nazi death camps! Dishonesty, half-hidden false accusations, unfair comparisons, it's all fair game to the Christian filmmakers.

If there is someone who is more grating or unctuous in his insincere sincerity than Ben Stein, I don't know who it is. The only way I could watch this movie is to watch it as a comedy. Otherwise, if you are given to occasional rational thought, it will make your head explode. It expects you to take faith-based attacks against rationality as rational thinking. Its cartoon of how a cell works reveals more about the mentality of the filmmakers than I think they are aware.

The funniest thing about this film is its rating, which presently is 3.8. I went to the "loved it" section to see who rated it highly. Not surprisingly, it was given ten stars by a number of people whose reviews were suspiciously similar. Hmm... They wouldn't be doing something dishonest to help the cause of religion (I mean, Intelligent Design), would they? Without all of these attempts to jack up the rating for this film, it might actually reach the number 1 bottom position, beating out Battlefield Earth, Santa With Muscles, and Manos: The Hands of Fate.

They didn't help the cause of religion (at least as a positive force), and they certainly didn't help the cause of any benevolent God, with this "documentary".

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Diary of a Tired Black Man (2008)

No Bad Reviews?

7 June 2009

I looked at the external reviews for this film; all of them were positive. That's pretty amazing, as very few films ever made have received only good reviews. Then I noticed that the IMDb rating is only 2.9 out of 10, one of the lowest ratings on IMDb.

It's also peculiar that out of 80 ratings, not one person wrote a review. These facts don't seem to add up.

The maker of the film didn't choose only the good reviews and exclude all of the bad ones, did he? That would be rather biased. However, almost all of the external reviews I read, even though they rated the film highly, said the filmmaker was very biased in his presentation of black men being mistreated by their unappreciative black women.

I really don't know what the rules of IMDb are as far as what external reviews are included or not; whether the filmmakers have control over what is posted regarding their films.

It just seems something rather skewed is going on; a film highly rated by certain critics I hadn't heard of before, but yet with one of the lowest ratings on IMDb.

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Sybil (1976)

7/10

Jessamine Milner, the "Grandma"

27 February 2008

This was a deeply harrowing movie to watch, and unbelievably so when it came out in 1976. A small child in the grip of her homicidally insane mother, who inflicted sadistic torture on her, while her ineffective husband looked the other way when the signs of abuse were obvious.

There's a small performance in this movie that haunted me more than almost anything else in the film; the part of the grandmother, played by Jessamine Milner, who was as much a victim and prisoner in the home of her psychotic daughter as Sybil was. The difference was she was aware of the extent of her daughter's insanity.

What must it be like to be a prisoner in your own adult child's home, knowing she is inflicting abuse on your grandchild and will do the same to you if you speak? That kind of helplessness must be sheer hell to live with. She could have told her son-in-law or the police at any time (if she was able to get out of the house), but would they have done anything? Or turned a blind eye, considering the time?

Jessamine Milner's performance was so honest and affecting, it stands out as one of the most painful parts of the film, and she is in only two minutes of it! She was born in 1894, and was almost 80 when she made the film. She apparently was in her mid-seventies when she went into film! She's a mystery, and other than her few TV appearances in the late 70s, nothing apparently is known about her. However, she deserves a mention somewhere because of her performance in this difficult to watch film.

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Batman Begins (2005)

7/10

The Best Batman Movie

26 February 2007

Including the original, in which the Joker dominated the film, and Batman was relegated to a supporting role.

Batman Begins does what none of the other movies did; it gives us a living, breathing Bruce Wayne, the man who becomes Batman. It understands that the audience has to care about the person first before he does something bizarre like put on a silly costume, and still expect us to care about him.

In this film, Batman makes mistakes, almost gets himself fried through stupidity, and uses his brain to survive more than his gimmicks.

This is far from a perfect movie (I didn't find the Scarecrow villain particularly scary or intimidating; basically, if you wear a gas mask, he's harmless, and should have been no real threat to Batman). However, compared to the Batman travesties, particularly Batman Returns (Penguin riding a giant motorized rubber ducky), and Batman and Robin (every moment was incoherent and insulting), this deserves high marks, for simply making us even look at the character again half seriously.

The directing, the acting, and most importantly, the writing are all there. If you have written off the franchise because of the earlier films, check this one out, and watch it on the biggest plasma t.v. you can find. Visually, it is excellent, not a live-action cartoon. My only quibble is that it wraps up Bruce Wayne's war against his former allies, The League of Shadows, much too neatly and easily, particularly considering how unstoppable they have been before (and having them do rather stupid things with explosives that leads to their downfall). Other than that, it is an excellent picture that you can take seriously. That is, as seriously as you can take a character named "Batman".

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Deliverance (1972)

8/10

Roger Ebert, Once Again, Out to Lunch

25 February 2007

Warning: Spoilers

Roger Ebert, the film critic most palpably in love with his sense of perceived intellect, once again proves the phoniness of his objectivity as a reviewer by slamming movies like this one. There are some film critics like Ebert that when they are made uncomfortable by a movie, dismiss it without examining it, and call it sensationalistic. Mr. Ebert has done this with this one, which means this movie has done its job. The critic is too uncomfortable to examine the emotions this movie evokes, and uses pseudo-intellectualism to insulate himself from it. (Particularly in his hackneyed statement that the writer of the book made up contrived "statements" in the movie, instead of being real ones.)

POSSIBLE SPOILERS:

The premise is simple; four businessmen leave the safety of their urban environment to go water rafting; they encounter a world outside their safe haven, that they cannot control. They eventually run into the wrong people, who despise them for simply existing and invading their territory, and their journey becomes a nightmare.

The movie is a study in how alienated man can become from his own species, how superficial the trappings of civilization are, and how civilized behavior will not help you survive when encountering simple animalistic behavior. The moral of the movie seems to be, there is no morality in survival, there is only survival. The men are graphically tortured, one raped, one murdered apparently by a hillbilly sniper trying to cover their tracks, and forced to commit murder to simply survive. Or is it simple self defense? They then realize that if they are honest and report the attacks that were made on them, they will be tried and executed simply for defending themselves.

They are therefore forced to lie, cover up and hide their experiences for life, even from their own families if they are to survive in the artificial "civilized" world they return to.

The movie places the characters in unfair circumstances they must survive in, and then further unfair circumstances as they must hide what happened to them to escape a place that will execute them if they tell the truth about defending themselves.

The unspoken message "stay in your own backyard or you'll be killed" is very depressing. But then, there are residents in Los Angeles that cannot even go into a different neighborhood without gangs targeting and killing them for no reason.

When a critic like Roger Ebert is too afraid to really examine the dark statements this movie makes emotionally, you know you have a movie that will move you and disturb you. The ironic thing is that now we have movies like Chain Saw Massacre III, Devil's Rejects, Friday the13th 1-9, etc, that make this movie's violence seem mild. However, the hatred, alienation and cruelty it examines will haunt and disturb you for years afterwards, long after meaningless drivel like the other movies mentioned are forgotten. In this day and age, that is no small accomplishment. Eight stars for me.

(cue banjo music....)

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The Outer Limits: The Sixth Finger (1963)

Season 1, Episode 5

10/10

"Need I remind you, that everything is relative?"

18 February 2007

Warning: Spoilers

I agree with the other users' comments that this episode stands out as the very best of all of the Outer Limits episodes. Ellis St. Joseph wrote this story, and deserved to win the Hugo and Nebula awards for his screenplay. I don't know what awards if any he won for it.

The writer doesn't miss a single facet to explore in this man's accelerated evolution; will man lose his emotions, or will they always be in control of us? Will he evolve beyond violence and prejudice, only to also lose his humanity? The story has many memorable lines, the music supports the tension and emotions, and the 1950s technology lends the story a charm that modern technoglitz wouldn't.

If you love sci fi, check this out if you haven't seen it. This episode (and the whole original Outer Limits series) is far out of the league of the stomach-churning and inane new series that wasn't even a pale copy of it. The main reason: the original series provoked thought, while the new one didn't; instead relying on special effects. The new series put fancy (and meaningless) special effects first in importance. I can hear the producers now pitching the idea: "With today's technology and sfx, we'll do things the old series couldn't dream of!" Sorry, guys.... the old series did things you couldn't dream of, because you missed the three most important things that made the original great; first and foremost the writing, but also the great cinematography and great actors. I remember the old episodes vividly after 20 years; who can say they remember one single episode of the new series?

I give this episode 10 out of 10. It doesn't get any better than this for sci fi - no matter when it was made.

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Click (2006)

"Click" Clicks, and the Critics are Idiots

10 July 2006

Any movie that disturbs Roger Ebert into saying "this isn't funny" and gives it a low rating based not on how bad it is but on how much it disturbs him, is a success.

I was expecting low-grade disgusting humor all through this movie, and there is some (especially an unnecessary fart joke that is not funny, but then are fart jokes ever necessary?) that should have been left out, but this movie surprised me. It's funny in some ways, very tragic in others. In other words it's (yes, you heard right) a multidimensional movie, which is not just odd for Adam Sandler, but odd for most American movies these days.

Sandler's performance is better than usual, which means for me I could actually stand watching him, Christopher Walken is Christopher Walken, except intensified (which means you must see this film if just for him), and the supporting characters are all solid, not just cartoon props.

This movie is not really a comedy; it's mostly a tragedy masquerading as a comedy that slowly reveals itself.

Without giving anything away, Adam Sandler gets hold of a "Universal remote" that really is Universal; at least in controlling his own life. Stupid critics have compared it to Bruce Allmighty, but it's the opposite. Jim Carey controlled everything around him within a limited sphere; the Universal Remote only allows Sandler to control (or so he thinks) certain aspects of his own life, but without the ability to really change anything.

Yes, it's a combo of Scrooge and It's a Wonderful Life at the end, but if every movie plot ever made had to be avoided, there would be no new movies (and maybe there haven't been for the past 20 years).

The movie works, it will affect you, disturb you and stay with you after you leave the theater; what other movie can you say that about lately?

By the way, most critics hate this movie, for the same reason Ebert hated it; it disturbs them (poor guys), and is "overly-sentimental". Considering the warm, fuzzy personality of most critics, this is an endorsement to see it you can't ignore. Seven Stars. It would have been eight without the fart jokes and other crude humor.

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Head (1968)

10/10

A Movie Apart

7 February 2006

If I could select one movie that seems out of place, out of time, and out of any category it could be placed in, it would be Head.

But then that is the entire point of Head, as much as I am able to understand it. The "boys" (the Monkees) were continually trying to break out of the box they had been placed in, by the studios, their fans, their relentless critics and everyone else - only to find themselves stuffed back into the box again. The movie is like a metaphor of their entire experience with the show and their identity.

The problem is that no-one understood the inside story of their struggle, or much cared. The movie baffled and angered audiences.

But the movie didn't stop there. After shredding their own manufactured image in a sharply cynical and extremely funny way, the group proceeds to demolish everything else phony about America in the 60s; it's grasping materialism, our obsession with security, our identity with name brands (literally blown up in the movie), the country's need to be insulated from the world despite the ongoing war and protests at home, and the deepening cynicism the average American had towards just about everything at the end of the 60s.

The movie was inaccessible to its young fans because it was rated R (probably because of violent images edited in from the war), who would have hated it if they saw it because it made fun of their heroes. It was equally inaccessible to older audiences who weren't fans and didn't understand the Monkees or their history. The only ones who "got" the movie were the ones who made it! And eventually, the next generation who stumbled across it and saw it in the context of the 60s. There were to be fair a few people at the time who saw it and understood its brilliant lampooning of the times, but those few people were probably from the counterculture and weren't films critics.

The movie is at once a distorted reflection of the 60s and the 60s itself.

I do have one quibble with the director, Bob Rafelson, who also produced the t.v. series: After the movie bombed, he has repeatedly stated (I am paraphrasing) that he made the movie to 'bury the Monkees". He wasn't talking about their image, he was talking about the performers themselves. By this point, the honeymoon (if there ever was one) between him and the Monkees was over. He actually stated that he intended the movie to bomb so it would bury their career. Really? Bob Rafelson was not a pleasant man to work with, as many performers (including the Monkees) have attested to many times. However, he was a shrewd producer, and went on to be very successful. Would he really put his name on something he planned to not just fail, but bomb? I don't think so. It was his way of covering his professional rear when the movie tanked. However, despite his demeanor, Rafelson produced a success, not a failure. Its problem is that it was too successful, and ten years ahead of its time.

The movie is not a coherent storyline; it's a collage of images, sounds and feelings from the 60s, both innocent and deeply bitter, dark and cynical. It is a real oddity out of time, space, and cannot be categorized. The ending leaves me feeling strangely sad, probably because of the comments it makes, and because of the promise left unfulfilled of four very funny, very talented performers and musicians. Who knows how far they could have gone?

Ten stars, as it is in a category by itself..

"Oh no! We're back in the box!"

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Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She (2005 TV Movie)

10/10

No matter how much you know, you'll learn something

23 January 2006

This short documentary packs a lot of exhaustive research and information on differing sexuality, tolerance and intolerance around the world. The documentarians literally went around the world and interviewed everyone from "ladieboys" in Thailand to gay boys and men in intolerant India. It explores the fascination the repressed, so-called "modern" West has with the acceptance of the transgendered in the socially more advanced Eastern cultures, and even interviews Dutch physicians who undertook a long, in-depth study of the differing brain structures of men, woman, transsexual men and women, and all the variations, proving an actual physical difference in the brain structures depending on the individual's sexual preference: a study our "advanced" Western culture never bothered to undertake.

The documentary is fascinating and at times a very painful study, as it also shows how much people are made to suffer by their society (up to and including murder), because of a sexuality they were born with.

No matter how much you think you understand human sexuality, you will learn something you didn't know before. You may even find yourself losing some of your prejudices and discomfort with others' sexual identities. A documentary that should have been made 30 years ago, if the American public could have handled it.

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Boxing Helena (1993)

2/10

A New Standard For Bad

13 June 2004

"Yes, you WILL call me!" (Helena's soon ex-boyfriend).

There are two movies that set a new standard for how bad a movie can be;

Battlefield Earth, and Boxing Helena. They could not be more different than each other, but each one instills a unique combination of disbelief and anger that the industry could greenlight them, spend a Lot of money on them, and then subject the viewer to them.

Watching Boxing Helena is like paying someone to inflict abuse on you. The movie is a mystery without trying to be: how did it get approval to be made? What was Lynch's daughter trying to say in this movie, if anything? That men are pathetic drooling pigs and that beautiful women by default are bitches? The biggest mystery to me in watching this movie was in trying to figure out which gender she is the most angry with, which never gets resolved, nor does anything else.

Helena is a bad beautiful girl whose narcissism is pathological. She seems to be Lynch's projection of what all such girls must be like. The character has absolutely no motivation to be like she is. She runs hot and cold, charming and bitchy, with no explanation. She just is, because Lynch has written to her to be that way, which makes her a one-dimensional caricature.

Julia Sands, who plays the obsessed doctor, is obsessed with her for no other reason than her appearance. An angry woman's indictment of men if ever there was one. There is no explanation for his motivations either, which also makes him a hollow character. (Also, bizarrely, take a look at Sand's wife, and tell me if she isn't much more attractive than Helena is! And no, this was - not - an intentional choice by Lynch).

There are two scenes that stand out for me in terms of representing Lynch's abilities: the "fountain" scene in which Helena (having spent about four hours and a fortune in makeup to look perfect), becomes hypnotized by an enchanting fountain at the doctor's party and walks into it with childlike innocence, getting drenched, while other doctors at the party watch her do it as if she is doing something transcendent beyond their understanding, all filmed in slow motion. Which, in case the audience is too bone-headed to get it, makes it deep, see? As opposed to an adult with the development of a three year-old doing something rather juvenile. One wonders where Lynch learned to hit the "slo-mo" button on the camera?

The other scene shows Lynch's writing powers: in a scene with her pseudo- European boyfriend early on, Helena decides to do another personality switch without reason or motivation and decides to get dressed and kick him out. He says "you WILL be calling me, Helena". "Oh no I won't". "Yes, wait and see. You WILL be calling me". "No. I won't". "Oh yes! You WILL be calling me, Helena!". This consists of their entire dialogue and demonstrates Lynch's dialogue and character abilities. If you don't believe me, rent it yourself . This is one of the *better* written scenes in the movie, and you WILL be heading for the Maalox when you see it.

After the fiasco of the over-rated Twin Peaks in which the audience finally caught on to how they were being jerked around by Lynch, I hope it will be a long, long time until we are "Lynched" again by either father or daughter.

However, it is the producers who pay these two to inflict this on us that deserve to get lynched. You can't blame Lynch for being a presumptuous, incoherent hack. Like Helena, she just "is". However, if there is a movie called "Boxing the producers of Helena", I will be there.

Two stars, because at least the camera was in focus.

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