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Reviews
It Follows (2014)
Disappointed
We walked in with high expectations based on the reviews. With about ten minutes left in the film, my wife said "I'm about two seconds away from walking out of this movie" . We went the distance and walked out with so many questions about the film including what happened at the beginning and what happened in the middle and what happened at the end. These are not good questions to leave the theater with. I suppose someone can and will supply those answers but I'd kinda like to have had a grasp on them during the movie rather than when I'm home hearing somebody explain this stuff to me while I nod and go "uh huh". The movie's eeerie for and I tried to appreciate it as a sort of Carnival of Souls but that's giving it much too much credit.
Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)
Poor Pretty Shelley
Shelley Winters is one of the great film actresses of the late twentieth century. Her work in Night of the Hunter, Lolita and A Place in the Sun establish her as one of the best of the era.
This movie is a sad piece of junk and Shelley certainly appears to be washed up like the character she plays in the film. Still, enough of Shelley's great talent remains as to keep me barely awake during all the ugliness of the plot.....sort of like Roots meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre without the Chainsaw.
How can anyone not be interested in a film that features not only Shelley but also Leslie Uggams, Ted Cassisdy and Slim Pickens. Put them all together, subtract most of their talent, increase their stereotypical imagery and call it this mess.
[Rec] (2007)
Truly a Gripping and horrifying film
We got this video by mistake and when I read the cover blurb, I recognized it as the source for the American film quarantine. I saw that film and neither liked it nor disliked it. In other words I had forgotten all about seeing it. I was a little reluctant to watch the source material for a forgettable film but I had nothing better to do, so I decided to join my wife and daughter and watch REC.
WOW.
Soooomuch better than the forgettable American rip off. Very real, very perplexing, very Blair Witch except where Blair Witch was all menace and little true horror, REC is menace and horror. I'm still trying to get over it and figure the whole thing out. I'm not gonna forget this one.
The Reaping (2007)
Spanking Swank
I thought The Reaping was pretty good. I just looked up it's tomato rating score and it is an abysmal 9 out of 100. The movie is not that bad. Matter of fact, it's kind of perplexing in the end, with the denouement up for grabs according to the interpretation of each individual viewer. I've already heard three distinct interpretations about the little girl ranging from Satan to Jesus Christ. Always nice to have a movie in which the protagonist endures an intense inner conflict only to do the wrong thing ( or maybe not) Swank does a good job in the film but I believe that the venomous reviews are part of the backlash that usually trashes Academy Award Winners and the follow up films they choose to do.
Swank has been spanked before after her first Oscar but she will rise again.
The Happening (2008)
an improvement
This director's films have been getting worse and worse...on the same slope as Elvis movies. I didn't think any movie could get worse than Lady in the Water, which ranks with Striptease and Exit to Eden amongst the worst films I have had the displeasure of viewing. At least I was smart enough not to waste my money at the theater for this goofy film.
This reminds me of an old Irish story about the priest asking for someone to say something nice about the deceased in his coffin before burial. A long silence followed before someone said "his brother was worse".
That's about the best I can say for the happening. It's slightly better than the last piece of condescending trash that this director foisted on the American public.
Can we just say good night to Night.
I see dead directing people.
This movie is infuriatingly bad.
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Ugly, depressing and unsettling which is I guess what life is supposed to be
At least forty five minutes too long and carrying at least three extra layers, Synecdoche is a major disappointment.
Let's start with the title...what's up wid dat? Every once in awhile, I'll run into someone bragging about how they are a member of Mensa. I guess this means I'm supposed to think they are intelligent and everything that they do is clothed in wisdom beyond the reckoning of chumps like me but yet I'm supposed to be reverent about their platitudes and melancholy.
Hello Synecdoche or whatever this thing is called.
In other words, a movie that tries this hard to be intelligent comes across as pretentious and ironically shallow.
Give me tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow or what a piece of work is man and let's leave it at that.