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vagrarian
Reviews
It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown! (1997)
One of the Worst of the Peanuts Canon
Watching this became a chore. The rollerblading scenes go on WAY too long and felt like padding. There's two party scenes that looked identical and were confusing. The plot is tissue-thin and there's nothing deeper about it. At their best, the Peanuts specials were ABOUT something more but this isn't about anything at all. Linus is smitten with a girl who's improbably brilliant and talented, invites her to his birthday party, and suddenly spends an inordinate amount of time fretting that she won't come. I came away from this feeling that those who made it had grown tired of the material and that their hearts weren't in it anymore.
Pay no attention to the one who gushes about how wonderful this is...I have no issue with them liking it but to insult the people who don't shows a serious lack of class and manners.
Rundskop (2011)
More compelling than it has any right to be
You'd think a movie about illegal bovine hormones would be a snore. Think again.
Matthias Schoenaerts plays Jackie, a lonely, edgy hulk of a guy who, in any other movie, would be an action hero with women throwing themselves at him. He's lured into a scheme involving illegal hormones to use on his farm, when he's reunited with childhood friend Diederik who awakens painful memories for Jacky...
And now we're in spoiler space.
When Jacky was a child, his testicles were destroyed by a psychotic bully. Dosed on hormones so he can achieve puberty, the bully goes unpunished (thanks to his shady father) which has resulted in Jacky, now in his 30s, constantly dosing with hormones and steroids. Diederik, his best friend, succumbed to parental pressure to not tell the police, even though he tries.
Diederik is one of the hormone mafia ring, but surprise! He's actually a police informant, posing as the lover of a no-nonsense police woman....but Diederik, as we find out, is infatuated with her male partner.
Both men are inhabitants of a rural area where Jacky is mocked for not being married, and Diederik is terrified of openly being his true self.
What struck me was how we have two men who wouldn't be seen as "manly" enough to exist in their environments. Jacky is a hulking brute but he's awkward. Brooding, and despite his obvious sex appeal regards himself as an undesirable freak. Diederik is hiding who he is, even denies when asked, but obviously wants intimacy and love. (Irony...in flashbacks to their childhood, Diederik is the bigger of the two, but that has reversed in adulthood.)
Schoenaerts is the real star here, bringing Jacky's haunted trauma to vivid life. This is a man who was abused and traumatized horribly, so you feel some sympathy, but in the course of the film he also does some horrible things that, you can see, are the result of his trauma. Things do not end well (I won't spoil that part) but you can see it's a road he was set out on and didn't get the help he needed to make different choices.
An excellent film, worth seeing.
The Christmas Note (2015)
Absurdly contrived and far-fetched
Even by Hallmark standards, this has problems. It's got some good points, mainly an amiable cast and, refreshingly, more a story of friendship than romance, which makes it very different from the usual Hallmark fare.
The BIG problem is that major character information is kept hidden until the Big Dramatic Moment to reveal it, and it often makes no sense to hide it. For instance, at the beginning every indication is given that the main character's husband is dead, but halfway through we find out he's alive but in a military hospital. OK, but there were LOTS of times when it would have made sense for characters to say that to others.
And...the main crux of the story is Melissa finding out she has a sibling her mother gave up for adoption...and it' not until the very end that a major character reveals that THEY were adopted, despite the many many many times it would have made sense to foreshadow that twist! Oh, and her long-lost sibling just happens to be her new next-door neighbor who has become her best friend and has declared her part of the family!
Both these revelations come out of the blue (but are also not surprising) and just end up being eye-rolling and cringey. It's too bad, it's nice to see a movie focus more on friendship. I hope they do more along those lines but with better story structure and avoiding cheap revelations.