Change Your Image
gail-noyer
Reviews
Dogma (1999)
It's on DOGMA, not religion, folks!
Apart from one kind of juvenile scatological scene, this film is one of my favorite comedies ever! I've seen it half a dozen times at least, and always laugh.
The folks who screamed about religion just don't get that it's about DOGMA, just as the title says - and dogma's an entirely different thing. It's essentially a send-up of complex 'explanations' the Catholic Church invented, that you will find nowhere in the Bible (if you've bothered to read it.) Plus a few inventions of its own, I suspect, in a similar vein. If you grew up with any of that, you'll probably love it! And even if you didn't, it's a hoot!
The Happy Prince (2018)
The most moving insightful film on Wilde ever done
I'm sorry there were no car chases, zombies or whatever it takes to "ignite" whoever wrote the featured review here, but it's exceedingly shallow -and don't believe a word of it. Anyone who's actually knows Oscar Wildes' life and works will be deeply moved by this sensitive brilliant depiction of the man struggling with his demons and his many 'conflicting' loves. Conflicting, that is, in the hypocritical times he lived in that branded him as a monster after worshiping him as a genius. All brilliantly interspersed with his own words. No cookie-cutter Hallmark movie version could've paid him justice and I disagree vehemently with the opinion that "we as passive viewers don't care about Oscar here at all." Let Philistines speak for themselves, of course, but my family was deeply moved. Thank you, Rupert Everett. The only other film that even holds a candle to it is Stephen Fry's.
Bombshell (2019)
I disagree - not hard to follow at all!
Just read the 'featured review" and I really don't why it's featured. "Bombshell" captures the high energy of a daily newscast station like Fox and the intelligence and sparkle of the women who work(ed) there. But it was very easy to follow because it focuses on the main story only as all the best films do. It was frankly perhaps the best film I saw in 2019. No others stand out in my memory as strongly in any case.
I had followed the scandal somewhat in the news but not so closely as this film does, and so I learned a lot. What a story! And so rare to get an intimate portrayal of what the women went through! Not enough publicity though for sure, as usual on these subjects - which says a lot about Hollywood still today, even after the MeToo movement.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Re the Featured Review
The person who wrote this diss of Sorkin and the film sounds very young, utterly unfamiliar with the era and perfectly unable to appreciate the accuracy of the depiction.
Worse than that, his description of the film is in inaccurate in itself. The nuanced shading of the all the characters, good and bad, clearly went right over his or her head.
Indeed, it was a kangeroo court that held the trial, finally discredited by someone in the government who who had the courage to break protocol rules and tell the truth. It was neither the first nor last time that such things have existed in this world, and this film is a brilliant "distant mirror" of too much going on today again.
So why in God's name is this the 'featured review'? I highly recommend this film to anyone who wants to learn some real facts about our history and/or about this famous story.
Citizen Ruth (1996)
A brilliant satire
The perfect portrayal of emotions run wild over a woman they know nothing about, especially on the 'Pro-Life' side where the baby-saving Christian couple throw her out of their house (for understandable reasons), then will stop at nothing to turn her into their "cause". The Pro-Choicers have their hands equally full when they take her in in turn because she's utterly devoid of principles either way and ready to sell out to the highest bidder - besides being utterly naive about her own capacities to end her addiction or take care of a baby, for example. We don't learn how Ruth ends up in the end, but it's easily imagined that Harlan guessed exactly right.
This Changes Everything (2018)
Nothing confusing in the delivery for me, sorry
The content is fantastic! It begins with what everyone "knows", or thinks they do, about women in HW and why that needs to change: Hw provides 80% of the content seen around the world, thus having a huge effect on how women are treated everywhere.
It then goes back to the fact that Hollywood was full of women writers, directors and producers over its first several decades, and examines how and why that changed.
From there, we're shown the incredible battle presently going on to change all that, with the help of actual studies, stats, and the AFLU-CIO, since change has never come from within the industry.
Sorry, !inear would've been boring for people already familiar with some of it. It was thrillingly, brilliantly put-together. And male director or not, it's the highly articulate women from all these fields who make the film a highly welcome searing update on what's going on.
Oh poor me clearly didn't understand a word of it, nor realize who the famous female directors speaking were.
All I See Is You (2016)
A hot mess of mysteries unresolved by the filmmakers
I just watched it a second time. The images all looked familiar enough for me to know that I had seen it, but I could not remember what it was about, so I thought perhaps i had dozed off the first time through. This time I stayed awake, and now realize it's because the film is full of red herrings that lead nowhere and provoke questions never answered. Did she start going blind again b/c her insecure husband messed with her eye-drops? We're led to think so, but then run into a wall. What was the deal with the letter supposedly from the guy who knocked her up? When just a few minutes earlier we see he'd moved away and she had no way of reaching him? Did she write it? Or did some key element end up on the cutting floor? In short, the ending is an incomprehensible mess, which explains why I couldn't remember just what it was about. Apparently, the writers and director never decided, or figured it out either. i hate it when half-baked scripts like this get green it. Producers ought to read them.