Change Your Image
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjQ4MTY5NzU2M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDc5NTgwMTI@._V1_SY100_SX100_.jpg)
caschil
Reviews
Magnolia (1999)
What can you forgive?
Rent "Magnolia".
That's an order.
Finally got off my butt and went to a video store today to grab it, and spent the afternoon watching it. Blew me away. Easily one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life. You have to pay attention to the music -- like an episode of Ally McBeal, the soundtrack is an essential part of the story and not just a track to sell MTV buzz bands. This is never so clear as when Aimee Mann's "Wise Up" kicks in about two thirds of the way through -- what's about to happen is very unusual for a mainstream film, but it's the tearjerking emotional heart of the movie.
The movie begins with a news reel of urban legends we've all heard before -- the scuba diver in the middle of a forest fire, the man who was accidentally killed by his mother while in the process of a suicide attempt that would otherwise have failed because he landed in a safety net. Then, in an anthology style, we watch the lives of several seemingly unconnected people unfold. A man on his deathbed, his distraught wife, an arrogant anti-feminist sex guru, a strung-out cocaine addict, a bland but happy Christian police officer, a game show host who's just learned he's dying of cancer, a hyperintelligent young boy and a middle-aged man who's mysteriously desperate to pay for braces despite appearing to have perfectly straight teeth. Well, you've seen enough Atom Egoyan movies to know that these stories are all connected in very profound ways. (Pay attention to the closing credits on the game show, by the way, or you'll miss one of the connections.)
You have to suspend a bit of disbelief at the climax, but it makes perfect sense in the larger context.
A profound and deeply affecting meditation on life, love, loneliness and the things we do to blot out our pain, Magnolia asks you to walk in another person's shoes before you cast judgement on them. It also offers redemption in some of the strangest places, and dares to ask "What can you forgive?"
And hard as it may be to believe, Tom Cruise will actually make you cry.
Man on the Moon (1999)
blurry lines between reality and fiction
Wow. I don't think I could top the front-page review if I wanted to.
I found the movie entertaining, and definitely worth watching, although I had a bit of a problem with the way Milos Forman handled the re-enactment of scenes from Andy's career. For example, most of the cast of Taxi played themselves, creating a very disjointed effect since most of them look significantly older than they did in the early 1980s when the real show aired. (Okay, so Marilu Henner doesn't appear to have aged a day, but still.)
And the character of Louis De Palma is left out of the "Taxi" scenes entirely because Danny DeVito is already in the movie playing Andy's agent George Shapiro. Ummmm, problem.
David Letterman also looks significantly older than he did in 1982 when Andy and Jerry Lawler appeared on Late Night, creating the same "suspension of disbelief" problem as the Taxi scenes.
Then we see the infamous Fridays sketch, which instead of being reprised by the original participants as most of the other recreated scenes are, is actually performed by comedic actors (Norm MacDonald, Caroline Rhea) who are famous enough in their own right that a viewer unfamiliar with the Andy Kaufman story could be led to believe that they were really involved in the original incident.
So you end up with Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman at more or less the correct age, playing against a lot of people who look the wrong age for the time because they're playing themselves, one person who should be playing himself actually playing somebody else, and two people who are playing other people but are recognizable enough on their own that it interferes with the veracity of the scene.
I really believe Milos Forman should have stuck to one of two approaches: either *all* the original participants in the recreated scenes should have played themselves, or *all* of them should have been played by other actors. Mixing the two actually detracts from the movie.
Buffalo '66 (1998)
the best bad movie I've ever seen
I have a really mixed opinion of this movie. It was absolutely terrible in every way, and yet it just compelled me to keep watching it. Sort of like a slow-motion car accident, I guess. Fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. I've never seen another movie quite like it.
This Hour Has 22 Minutes (1993)
typical sketch comedy - some brilliant bits, some boring ones
Sketch comedy is always hit and miss. This one, the closest Canadian equivalent to Comedy Central's "Daily Show", is no different. Some bits are just boring (headlines, Sandy Campbell, Mrs. Enid, Playboy Grotto, Marg Delahunty and Dakey Dunn as commentators), but others (Rick Mercer's rants, "Talking to Americans", Marg Delahunty and Dakey Dunn as celebrity interviewers, Connie Bloor, Martha Stewart, Babe Bennett, Jerry Boyle, mock ads) are among the best sketch comedy being done in North America today. There's always at least one brilliant bit per episode, and always at least one that makes you wonder what the writers were thinking.
Recently made the American news when Rick Mercer successfully ambushed George W. Bush in a "Talking to Americans" segment. That alone was worth an entire year of lame bits.
Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story (2000)
a success as a movie, but flawed as Anne Part III
An enjoyable and entertaining movie, but it suffers somewhat because Anne is such an iconic and cherished figure that almost any deviation from Montgomery's source novels is bound to disappoint.
In extrapolating Montgomery's characters to an entirely new World War I story, this movie is in fact completely disconnected from anything Montgomery ever wrote. And while I appreciated the story on its own terms, I'm all too aware that many people have already strongly disagreed. The story has a much faster pace than many people expect of Anne, and not everybody accepts the performances as befitting the best-loved characters in the history of Canadian film.
It also features one glaring continuity error -- at Marilla's funeral in the "Road to Avonlea" series (upon the real-life death of Colleen Dewhurst), we were told that Gilbert and Anne were already married. But at the beginning of this movie, several years after Marilla's death, Gilbert and Anne have yet to exchange vows.
If you can accept this film on its own terms, it does have a lot to recommend it (especially the last two hours). It is an undeniably good war movie.
If you believe that a movie should be faithful to its source material, however, you may find yourself throwing things at the screen, because as much as this is how Anne would handle the situations in which she finds herself, in the original novels she never found herself in these situations.