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brian-olsen
Reviews
Rent (2005)
If you hate yourself, watch this movie.
This has been one of the worst attack of the senses that I have watched in awhile. I left the television on to see if I can take the pain throughout the movie, and somehow I managed through it.
The musical scores are hokey. The characterizations is dry and undramatic. The characters themselves are worthless people living a worthless life and somehow deriving a drama over people so self-centered, so individualistic, it would make me wish that all the characters would just drop dead in the middle of the movie. Maybe if these beliefs conflicted with a sense of dramatic purpose, a drama where they emerge from their petty nothingness and become something, then maybe this film would be worthy to watch.
But, of course, if this thing had *meaning*, then the original play and the subsequent movie wouldn't be so popular like it has become. Apparently, it shows a lot about a culture based on the entertainment they pursue. In this case, when we uphold the values of people who serve no purpose but to whine and complain and feel that the world entitles them something over those who actually do something to progress, then there is something really wrong here.
I'd give it a zero if there was an option for that, but for what it is worth, a 1 gives it some credit. It does though, to me, have credit. It has to be the humor factor, the factor that people would actually spend a lot of money to create a jarring mess like that and can actually make money off of it. For that, I would then say that this was brilliant.
The Clearing (2004)
Eh ...
This movie had potential. It had a message. But it used that same old plot device to get this idea across. If it was in the context of another plot, maybe the idea would have been better. A businessman, who attains wealth and fortune and a former employee who is disgruntled over the businessman make up the two opposing forces in this kidnapping. Like a contrast between the monied class and the working class, we see each side as flawed, as human beings tend to be. The kidnapper is a weak, brittle man, who invokes little sympathy, because his weakness is not facing his demons appropriately. He instead posits his ills on someone likely more "deserving" for his agony, which happens to be a rich, successful businessman. On the flip side, the hard working businessman and his infidelities demonstrate that all the moral uprightness that he demonstrates in front of the kidnapper, he's weak himself.
I just wish this was executed a bit better.
The Stepford Wives (2004)
Burn The Negatives On This One!
This flick is one of those movies where you wonder why you spent your precious time watching it.
I never read the book and never saw the original movie, but the premise is interesting. But that is where it stopped. Kidman played a network executive, an arrogant feminist stereotype which lacked any dynamism but following boring formulas to lead us into the context of the plot in this flick. Midler plays this arrogant woman archetypal of the type of woman that perfectly resembles an angry old liberal woman. I can't shake that quote out of my head, where she uttered at the 4th of July party, which I will paraphrase: "We are celebrating Independence Day, where are all the African-Americans here?" -- a line as contrived as the whole film tended to be. (If you look, you will see one or two black women, making that quote stick out more.) Now whether it was a contrived political piece to boost of the Hollywood status quo or just mere entertainment, it fails on both accounts. Every character was typically annoying cookie-cutter character constructs that brought nothing to a storyline that could of had substance.
Can someone please take this as well as all those inane teen movies and chuck them in the fire?
Wonderland (1999)
Uninspiring
I saw this movie on cable, crossing my fingers that the channel was not going to put another stupid movie on, since this tends to happen a lot. But after the first few minutes of watching this, noting that this was not some Hollywood disaster, I settled on it a little.
Those movies that try to do character studies, particularly of uninspiring, unheroic, boring people tend to bore me. This film was no exception. The acting was an uninspiring mess, punctuated by the pretentious grainy look, silly speed-ups and the consecutive pace of scenes that didn't feel coherent at all.
After awhile, I just got bored and left the television on just for the sound, and then came here to find that so many people actually enjoyed this, which is quite quizzical to me.