ashcrda Reviews

Personal Shopper (2016)

Slow, but tension building with intriguing loose ends

[16 July 2017]

Although the plot moved slowly and was not always clear on it's direction I found the film entertaining. One thing I appreciated was the loose ends that seemed deliberately not explained at the end of the film. How did Kristen end up with the Cartier jewelry after the murder and where did it eventually go? What was the apparent entity that visited Room 328, then left the hotel as an invisible ghost? Why was Ingo seen leaving from Room 329, adjacent to 328? Why did the spirit reply yes when asked if it was him or just her? Some will decry this as sloppy plot but I think it added to the overall mystery of the film.

The views of Paris were wonderful.

It was frustrating watching her use a great system of public transit, something we will never have in this country until lobbying is brought under control and the general corruption of Congress is cleaned up.

Rough Night (2017)

Awful, Awful, Awful

[1/10 · 25 June 2017]

Take the scripts from "Weekend at Bernie's" and "Hangover." Combine them with a cast that seemingly knows the product stinks and act as though they have a gun to their heads. Voila! You have "Rough Night." This movie was so terrible that we walked out before the halfway point. I normally ignore most of Hollywood, enjoying the occasional blockbusters they produce, and avoiding the local cinema complex the rest of the time. This film exceeds the stink value of nearly any schlock I've ever seen from Hollywood. If I owned a theater I'd be embarrassed to show it.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Exhibit #1 for overdone series

[1/10 · 12 June 2015]

The movie "Earth Girls Are Easy," with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, conveys the feeling it may have been made by Jeff and Geena with gear borrowed from the industry. The first "Mad Max" was like that; the odd camera angles, choppy edits, confused plot lines. "Road Warrior," was the crowning achievement in the epic of Mad Max. "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,"felt so contrived and overwritten, it was hard to watch. Not even Tina Turner could save it.

"Road Warrior" ended on a cautious upbeat note; the narrator remembers him clearly and it looks as though the community may succeed in moving to safer lands.

The overall appearance of the film is rabid excesses in costumes, sets, scenes, and vehicles. It overwhelms the senses with crash after crash, fire and more fire, and tragic misfortunes for individuals.

Having seen this hideous chapter in Mad Max' life leaves me terrified about the upcoming remake of "Blade Runner." They'll ruin that one too and make the first great edition of the film suffer along with it.

I hate do-overs and voice-overs. They suck.

Madam Secretary: The Necessary Art (2015) Season 1, Episode 20

Halves of two movies

[2/10 · 12 April 2015]

Has all creativity been completely expended in television? April 12th, Sunday evening, I watched "Madame Secretary," a show I've enjoyed because Tea Leoni and Tim Daly are likable. When I was first a bachelor sharing a house with another bachelor, he whooped and hollered and was just a nut for Tea Leoni. I thought she looked just a tad anorexic in that era; filled out as a mature adult, she is more alluring. After watching the show I was researching "syncretism,"which from a religious perspective involves the inclusion of varying beliefs and traditions into an overarching theology, usually the dominant force in that society. This episode starts like the movie "Failsafe,"in which a bomber wing receives incorrect instructions to bomb Moscow, a piece of the concept "Mutually Assured Destruction."There's a sub out there, but no one knows why. Its unannounced arrival off the coast of Alaska sets off Defense Department alarms,which immediately advises attack. The Secretary's husband is meeting with the Soviet Premier, conveniently for the plot. It is a meeting of secrets withheld, an inability to exchange thoughts about the widening crisis. The sub, which turns out to be testing a cloaking system, is like the bomber wing; it has set out on its mission and cannot be recalled. Both sides are near panic and yet there continues to be no understanding, each party talking past the other.

Now that "Failsafe"is over we switch to the "Hunt for Red October."Is it legal to so fully plagiarize someone else's fiction? The outcome for surviving members of the submarine is a carbon copy of the crew on Red October. Everyone gets a pass, gets citizenship, and gets treated like gold, in order to prove the superiority of a democratic government. Nuclear crisis over, détente restored, all feel successful, both the youngun's and the old timers.

Is it plagiarism when the director of a foreign film comes to the US and produces another film, vaguely connected to the plot of the foreign film? Director Lina Vertmuller's "The Seduction of Mimi,"a story about young, poor communist activists in Italy, was filmed in an altered version called "Which Way is UP?"a film well filled with the talent of Richard Pryor as a farm worker and faux political activist ala Cesar Chavez, a true labor leader. The vibrator scene is essential for your laugh box.

So, I'm not impressed Madame Secretary. Either get writers or stop letting your crew cut and paste old plots of films for the sake of a TV show. "Outlander," and "DaVinci's Demons" are outshining you easily.

I've

C.O.G. (2013)

Depravity on parade, unprompted, unwanted, not deserved

[10/10 · 20 June 2014]

Beautiful, but difficult view on the experiences of gay people in society. One acquaintance turns out to be, not a homosexual, but a neurotic, possibly psychotic sexual predator. I found him threatening on sight. The next acquaintance wears a veneer of Christian values but proves, if anything, to be more psychotic than the first acquaintance. As chaplain to people with a mental illness I find that my work is divided between offering comfort and assurance through the values of Jesus and working to overcome the damage done to people through religious violence. My final straw was a book given a patient that stated people should ask forgiveness of God for any sexual activity they were in, including incest and rape. I forced that book out of the facility. I also forced out evangelist Joyce Meyer, who proposes that the devil constructs "strongholds" in our minds in order to influence our behavior toward sin. I've met many beautiful people in the Catholic church and gone on mission with them, but the molestation scandals have destroyed any value I can find in the church. I guess my deepest shock was the deep, unrelenting bitterness Sedaris expresses for humanity. I've found him amusing, sarcastic, biting, sardonic; but I've never sensed such depth of despair in his views on humanity. I know many gay ministers of both genders; never have any of them made me uncomfortable. They have always presented as deeply spiritual, loving people with whom I felt secure. I have, however, been attacked by people like Curly, who claim the right to violently impose their Phylis's on others. In a sense I see the film as a description of the gauntlet gay people, including David, must survive to become whole and self-loving. In another sense I fear for the pain gay people must sustain simply to be human. I love David Sedaris' work and it saddens me to examine the Hell he traversed on the path to being himself. When the "Christian" jade worker described his violence in Desert Storm it took my breath away. Not long ago I read a book concerning nurses experiences in Vietnam. One nurse would take every opportunity to join the men triage into the "can't be saved room, which was hidden from everyone. She believed no one should die alone, whether they were conscious or not, esp. thousands of miles from friends and family. She would hold them until they died, pet them and speak soothing words, although all were detached from the world by their wounds. Against that background the rant by the jade cutter very literally sucked the wind out of me. This is one of those films like "Platoon,""Saving Private Ryan," or "Shoah" that must be seen even as it takes you to the heart of Hell. In "Shoah," director Claude Lanzmann interviews a barber as he is cutting hair in a busy shop in contemporary Israel, who was forced to cut the hair off women just before they entered the gas chambers. The poor barber kept saying, "I can't, it's too hard," responded to by Lanzmann by the words, "this is important, I know it's hard, but it must be heard." C.O.G. must be heard as the holocaust visited upon gender choice. I say this with no disrespect toward the true Holocaust of the 1940's.

Brazil (1985)

What we have now and where we're going

[10/10 · 29 April 2014]

Since September 11, 2001 our government has gotten more and more repressive, has taken many liberties, and continues to become more repressive. The constant cry of "terrorists" at the heart of the movie is eerily prescient; we essentially have the same situation. When we're afraid of getting in trouble we export our victims so less reasonable people can torture them. Our information retrieval includes water boarding and other tortures. The continuous collection of data matches our NSA activity. Errors in the system indict people who are otherwise innocent.

Within the horrifying fascist theme I got a kick out of the improvisational scene with Bob Hoskins and his co-actor as they as they attempted to impose their bureaucratic will on his heating and cooling system. And I'll never stop laughing every time I see the pipes switched so that Hoskins and company find themselves in poop filled protective suits. The only scene comparable is the "Come and Get It" scene in "Magic Christian."(1969) The first time I watched "Brazil" an alarm clock set by my daughters as a trick on me went off as the movie ended. Hearing the pulsing electronic buzz it went through my mind that they had come to collect me for information retrieval. Great cognitive dissonance.

You can still occasionally catch this film on TV, but it is an edition heavily edited and transformed by the studio. That version has a sort of "happy ending" that is pretty lame compared to the directors cut.

With "Blade Runner" this is one of my favorite films that accurately skewers our culture and should instill fear in everyone.

The Prince of Tides (1991)

Revelatory Family Drama

[4/10 · 9 June 2013]

First of all, the movie is a Barbara Streisand vehicle and little more. She completely misses the point of the book and may as well glide around without her feet touching the ground. Love the woman, but her interpretation of the novel falls to ego.

I've read the novel repeatedly and it tells a story of family tragedy intermixed with repeated tales of heroics that nourish the soul. Barbara's version takes away most of the message, avoids the subject and meaning of the novel, and merely sets up pretty stage "Sometimes a Great Notion," by Ken Kesey. Superb book that far exceeds his "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest." That one misses the point by having the main character focus on the female lead, a kind of "claim the woman" ending. Nolte's ending utterance, "Lowenstein, Lowenstein," has the same impact. Neither the book nor the movie are about possessing a woman, or about a meaningful affair with someone. If men are going to be defined by their relationship with women it will be as tragic as the woman as property attitude men express.

After seeing the movie and reading the novel repeatedly, I chose Hunting Island, SC for a Fall vacation. As you drive across SC there is a fall point, a descent from the uplands of the western half, down to sea level. You smell the salt marshes before you see them. When you begin driving through them you recognize how accurately they were captured in the story. I remember my heart racing as we entered salt marsh county and the movie's setting came alive all around us. If you leave your car and walk the boardwalks through the marsh you come to realize that this is the heart of life on earth. The fecundity of the marshes, washed by the ocean during high tide, helps you understand the primordial ooze that nurtured our ancient ascent from minuscule sea creature to hominid. See the movie, visit the marshes.

Lincoln (2012)

An American History few know or understand

[10/10 · 25 November 2012]

If you consider the film "Lincoln" boring then you care nothing for the true history of the United States and have no insight into the profound suffering for the sake of the 13th Amendment that continued well into the 1960's. How can one claim to love one's fellow American's and proclaim this film boring? President Lincoln's great moral crusade was demeaned and audaciously rejected by the people. It required two more amendments, the 14th and the 15th, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to finally pry loose a small bit of freedom for the slaves. As late as 1930 black men were lynched in Marion, IN in an effort to continue keeping the former slaves under the control of white people. How many billions of dollars have been wasted by this country for the sake of keeping the freed slaves in a condition as close to slavery as society could dream up? How many men died unnecessarily during WWII because bigots would not let black men, who were willing, fight for their country? W.E.B. DuBois said "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." His words rang true throughout the century, sage advice for the leaders of our country, words that, if heeded, would have made us an even mightier nation than we have been. But if DuBois had tried to get a sandwich at a café he would have literally risked his life.

"Lincoln" is not boring, it is the truth. If you intend to be a useful citizen of the United States it is necessary to see the attitudes present during the struggle for the 13th Amendment, understanding that the fiercest of them lasted well past one hundred years after Lincoln's great moral crusade. Anyone viewing the movie should sit in rapt attention, understanding finally, how deeply and permanently the color line has affected the growth and success of the United States.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Got what I expected

[3 August 2011]

It was a cowboy movie with aliens thrown in for fun. I recognized all the plot lines and thoroughly enjoyed some mindless cinema entertainment. Didn't expect an indie film or a classic. Clearly not a John Ford production. Really enjoyed the corporate cinema as it had true stadium seating and super-great sound that made your seat shake. If I'd had french fries and a chocolate shake it would have been perfect. I first experienced stadium seating in LA near that mall with 350 stores and this is the first theatre in Ohio that measured up to that one. Our local cinema has so-so stadium seating but they insist on showing frothy Hollywood trash that numbs the brain. Every time a decent movie shows up they put it on one of the small screens that aren't stadium equipped.

Shoah (1985)

It's all in the details, all those horrific human details

[10/10 · 17 December 2010]

I first watched this over a three night span on PBS; it made me grateful once again for Public Television. Every time some cretin in Congress talks about defunding PBS I want to run riot. But about the film - it takes an enormous, incomprehensible historic event and distills it down to human actions and decisions. There are two scenes I find gripping: Watching Franz Suchomel, a former administrator at Treblinka describe the operations at Treblinka and then singing the camp guards spirit song which he concludes with, "There's no Jew alive today who knows that."He made my skin crawl in the way that only video of Charles Manson can. I was also taken by the interview with the Polish farmer who worked the fields outside one of the camps, watching discretely what went on. He shows how he would make a throat slitting motion as the Jews went by in cattle cars so they would know they were going to die. If I ever doubted the presence of anti-Semitism that scene brought it back with a vengeance. The film also helped me understand how, as they say, large groups of stupid people can do some astonishing things - not good things but immensely horrific things. I recently read a more detailed account of the American South after Reconstruction and up through most of the 20th century. Nazi Germany didn't have much of a lead on us in horror; ours was just drawn out over a little more time.

Night Catches Us (2010)

The personal cost of late Sixties radicalism

[9/10 · 11 December 2010]

The late Sixties found people in life quandaries they could not have imagined based on how they were raised. As the US government continued to kill thousands in other countries they turned also upon their citizens and sought to dampen dissent through the murder of those on what they defined to be the fringes of society. The Black Panthers, Students for A Democratic Society, the Weather Underground, students at Jackson State, Kent State; members found political commitments tied to life and death decisions. How far does one go to dissent? To what does one commit oneself with all their heart and soul? What price is one willing to pay when the corruption and moral bankruptcy of one's nation is no longer tolerable. "Night Catches Us"illuminates the maze of personal and political commitments necessary for living through those times. People no longer put their lives on the line in quite the same way. The US continues to murder thousands across the globe but the protest is only seen on cable television. Gil Scott Heron could not have realized that in the end the revolution would be televised. It just wouldn't have any real impact or foment real change.

Picket Fences (1992–1996)

Best show about real world problems

[10/10 · 22 June 2010]

I watched this show during its original run and have always looked for it on DVD. As another commenter noted, there's a lot of schlock out there on DVD while this excellent show languishes in the digital files. My favorite actor was Fyvish Finkel; mostly because I read that he had been acting since the days of Yiddish theater in NYC. How's that for tradition? He reminded me of many of the central Europeans I got to know when I lived in Cleveland,Ohio. I was also much taken by Tom Skerrit and have watched for him ever since this show ended. I loved the issues raised by the show because they were real ones that nobody wants to address; nothing is black and white, one or the other in human life. The show had the integrity to say that. In this current time of right wing/left wing, nothing in the center, Picket Fences reruns are soothing and reassuring.

Splice (2009)

Sci-Fi inserted into a talking heads movie.

[4/10 · 12 June 2010]

Thought it might be OK after reading some reviews but it's a Grade B drive-in movie. The way the characters talk so much reminded me of the voice-over in the theatrical release of Blade Runner. Movies should do a plot, not talk a plot. Might make more money if they expanded the sex scenes and distributed it as porn. After watching a season of Ghost Whisperer on TV I became aware of how some characters have a limited set of facial expressions. Brody and Polley were both guilty in this movie, especially Polley. She either looked frightened or like she had just found a puppy and that's it. The only significant shift in her face came in the scene when she had Dren strapped to the "operating" table. If you want a more frightening treatment of the theme I recommend the book Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood. That would make a good movie about genetic manipulation if someone like Ridley Scott made it.