rhopkins Reviews

Coastlines (2002)

See this movie

[9/10 · 2 July 2006]

This movie seems to be in commercial release finally, and you should see it. It is a companion to Ruby in Paradise and Yulee's Gold, both by Victor Nunez, and has most of their virtues (and drawbacks, maybe -- for example, I don't like the sound design choices that have been made in any of these movies....).

The languid feel of the coastal towns from Carabelle to Apalachicola (Florida) is well evoked -- though the story could, I suppose, happen most anywhere. The three lead actors are all outstanding.

Many of the locales in which the film is set look very different today, after hurricanes Ivan (2004) and Dennis (2005), not to mention further commercial development.

Quiet Killer (1992 TV Movie)

The epidemiologist as heroine

[8/10 · 9 July 2003]

As an epidemiologist, I say any movie that features an epidemiologist as heroine can't be all bad!

Actually, the disease scenario -- pneumonic plague spread person-to-person in a crowded city after introduction by a traveler just back from California, where she came into contact with a plague-infected ground squirrel -- is not implausible. Indeed this is the kind of scenario that bioterrorism planning is designed to detect, respond to and control. The best scene in the movie is the one in which the mayor's assistant -- this is 1991, mind you -- confidently looks in the city's emergency plan for the section on how to deal with epidemics and finds -- nothing. I like the way the movie shows the public health workers as dedicated, taking personal risks (as so many health care workers did to care for people with SARS), and ethical. What is particularly unrealistic is the way the public health workers can just walk into a hospital and start managing patients.

Also, this is the most wooden performance ever by Jerry Orbach in a minor role.

Before the Rain (1994)

Macedonia and Kosovo

[9/10 · 16 May 1999]

If you want to understand what is going on in Kosovo, this film is worth watching. (It's also worth watching because it is well made.) The conflicts here are between Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanians, in Macedonia, but I am sure differ little from what has been happening across the border in Kosovo (and in Bosnia, and in Montenegro....).

Gal Young Un (1979)

Worth looking for

[9/10 · 3 April 1999]

This movie was shown at a small film festival in Tallahassee (home of Victor Nunez) a year or two ago. It won't be easy to find but it's worth it. The gorgeous North Florida backwoods settings faithfully evoke the look of the 20s, when the story is set. The original story, by Marjorie Rawlings, is just unpredictable enough to be a lot of fun. The production quality is adequate -- I found the sound design occasionally jarring -- but is better than a lot of recent 'independent' films....

Late August at the Hotel Ozone (1967)

A chilling future

[9/10 · 3 April 1999]

It is 25 or so years after a nuclear war, and a few hardy young women, and an older leader, are wandering (in Czechoslovakia?) in search of canned food from before the war that can be safely eaten. No men apparently survive, being less resistant to radiation. They come across a mountain resort hotel, the Hotel Ozone, where an old man lives alone with a wind-up record player and old books and magazines. The young women, raised as barbarians, act the part. The person who introduced me to this chilling movie pointed out that science fiction movies were supposed to have monsters, and suggested looking for the monsters in this one. The B&W cinematography is great, especially in scenes of the women practicing their horseback riding skills and exploring a ruined town. You'll never be able to hear the tune "Roll Out the Barrel" the same way again.