Obviously, loads of people loved this film, but I wasn't one of them. I'm sure they thought that shooting the film in black and white, in a 4 to 3 aspect ratio, with almost every scene dark and dreary was very arty, but I just found it boring. I'm sure that many viewers found it thrilling to watch Pattinson schlepping coal in a wheelbarrow and then shoveling it into a boiler fascinating, but I found it pointless. I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that the whole plot could be summed up by saying two unpleasant characters, stranding in a remote and unpleasant place tediously descend into madness. I'm sure that many people found this descent to be fascinating, but I found it totally unconvincing. The Dafoe character spouts long, meaningless sentences in a very high-blown, pseudo-classical style that I'm sure many fans thought 'what an interesting character", but my reaction was "what a load of crap" Maybe the Dafoe character is supposed to symbolize something, but to me he only symbolized a wasted afternoon and $9 down the drain.
Reviews
11 Reviews
The Greatest Showman
(2017)
The Critics are Right! Quelle Dreck!
22 January 2018
I see about a hundred movies a year, and this is the first one I have walked out on in recent memory. Rather than "magical" I found the songs to be mediocre and so repetitive that I wanted to tear my hair out. Singing "A million dreams is all it's gonna take" over and over and over again is no substitute for a plot. I left the second time I saw the same collection of "human oddities" performing what seemed to be the exact same out-of-place modern song and dance routine for the second time in a circus ring, to the delight of an audience dressed in period costume, but rocking out like no 19th century audience ever had.
It's not that I'm not totally averse to modern song and dance in a story that takes place in the 19th century. I enjoyed Moulin Rouge, a movie whose anachronistic music seemed jarring in 2001. But although that movie wasn't exactly "Citizen Kane", at least it had Nicole Kidman to look at.
It may be that I know a bit too much about American history to let all the absurd inaccuracies past. Maybe the audience that loved this movie had no idea that Jenny Lind was an opera singer, not a contestant on "The Voice." Maybe they had no idea that she was a philanthropist who gave away the vast sums she earned to her favorite charities, not a hootchie momma homewrecker. Maybe they have no idea that Barnum lured his "human oddities" to his shows with the promise of steady pay and not human dignity. Or maybe they just have never seen any of the classic movie musicals with songs with witty, memorable lyrics.
It's not that I'm not totally averse to modern song and dance in a story that takes place in the 19th century. I enjoyed Moulin Rouge, a movie whose anachronistic music seemed jarring in 2001. But although that movie wasn't exactly "Citizen Kane", at least it had Nicole Kidman to look at.
It may be that I know a bit too much about American history to let all the absurd inaccuracies past. Maybe the audience that loved this movie had no idea that Jenny Lind was an opera singer, not a contestant on "The Voice." Maybe they had no idea that she was a philanthropist who gave away the vast sums she earned to her favorite charities, not a hootchie momma homewrecker. Maybe they have no idea that Barnum lured his "human oddities" to his shows with the promise of steady pay and not human dignity. Or maybe they just have never seen any of the classic movie musicals with songs with witty, memorable lyrics.
Timbuktu
(2014)
Film shows that "Islamic Funadmentalists" are actually Nazis
13 February 2015
Warning: Spoilers
The portrayal of the daily life in the town of Timbuktu after its occupation will be very familiar to those who have seen movies portraying the actions of the Nazis. Forbidding "degenerate" behavior but indulging in it themselves in secret. Taking by force what people will not give up willingly. Imposing cruel and shocking punishments to terrorize the citizens and make them more compliant. So, too, the fate of the complacent Kidane who refuses to move after all of his neighbors have fled, and realizes too late that "it can happen here." It's pretty clear from their discussions with the Imam, whose credentials as a religious scholar show, that their actions have nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with a lust for power and blood. If we simply called such people Nazis, rather than Islamic extremists,everybody would have a much clearer idea of what we're dealing with.
The Romantics
(2010)
Boring script, bad acting, limp direction
10 February 2011
Since Galt Niederhoffer wrote the book and screenplay and directed this movie, she has nobody to blame for its terrible awfulness but herself. The screenplay has lots of boring gaps in which this supposedly bright, witty group wanders around without saying much at all. Although they are all supposed to be college buddies, the obvious ten-year age gap between Anna Paquin and Josh Duhamel makes this proposition laughable.
Katie Holmes acting here is so bad that it makes Josh Duhamel look like DeNiro, which is saying something. The whole movie hinges on the chemistry between the two leads, and there is none whatsoever. Sidekicks Jeremy Strong and Rebecca Lawrence are virtual non-entities. Candice Bergen does the same geriatric reprise of Murphy Brown that she recently did on the TV series "House," with no better results. If Elijah Wood was going for creepy he succeeded, but to no great purpose.
That leaves only the performances of Anna Paquin, Malin Akerman, and Adam Brody to save this stinker. Akerman is the standout of the three, and it's only when she is on screen do you have the sense that something interesting could happen. Unfortunately, she not on screen all that much.
Katie Holmes acting here is so bad that it makes Josh Duhamel look like DeNiro, which is saying something. The whole movie hinges on the chemistry between the two leads, and there is none whatsoever. Sidekicks Jeremy Strong and Rebecca Lawrence are virtual non-entities. Candice Bergen does the same geriatric reprise of Murphy Brown that she recently did on the TV series "House," with no better results. If Elijah Wood was going for creepy he succeeded, but to no great purpose.
That leaves only the performances of Anna Paquin, Malin Akerman, and Adam Brody to save this stinker. Akerman is the standout of the three, and it's only when she is on screen do you have the sense that something interesting could happen. Unfortunately, she not on screen all that much.
Fall of the Republic: The Presidency of Barack Obama
(2009 Video)
Get in touch with reality, people
12 June 2010
I don't see how people can be so delusional as to believe this nonsense. In countries whose leaders actually want to curtail liberties, they declare martial law, they revoke the constitution, they arrest opposition leaders, they shoot protesters, etc. It happens all the time. Do you see any of that actually happening in the U.S.? If so, you're hallucinating.
Meanwhile, if you want to see somebody curtailing liberties in the U.S., take a look at he huge multinational corporations who manipulate the global economy and spend billions on lobbyists to protect their interests politically. But why focus on things that are actually happening, when you can obsess about fantasies with no basis in actual events?
Meanwhile, if you want to see somebody curtailing liberties in the U.S., take a look at he huge multinational corporations who manipulate the global economy and spend billions on lobbyists to protect their interests politically. But why focus on things that are actually happening, when you can obsess about fantasies with no basis in actual events?
Love Hurts
(I) (2009)
A Generic Title for a Generic Rom-Com
7 November 2009
Stop me if you've heard this plot before: Wife leaves hubby because he's become too boring and inattentive. Hubby must somehow reconnect with the youthful self she fell in love with in order to win her back.
In the interim, the writer and director have to come up with a bunch of "funny" stuff to happen to Hubby before he finally achieves his goal. This includes him learning to be a stud and hooking up with a host of really unappealing ladies, including Jenna Elfman as his sushi-crazed secretary and Janeane Garofalo as an unorthodox Orthodox Jew. But the "funny" stuff is on the order of him going nuts at an 80's Karaoke night, and bowling badly while under the influence of cannabis fudge. I'd call these scenes "funny-adjacent" rather than funny. They're similar to scenes you'd find in a funny movie, minus the laughs.
Bottom Line: Richard Grant is no Hugh Grant, but this film is watchable--just.
In the interim, the writer and director have to come up with a bunch of "funny" stuff to happen to Hubby before he finally achieves his goal. This includes him learning to be a stud and hooking up with a host of really unappealing ladies, including Jenna Elfman as his sushi-crazed secretary and Janeane Garofalo as an unorthodox Orthodox Jew. But the "funny" stuff is on the order of him going nuts at an 80's Karaoke night, and bowling badly while under the influence of cannabis fudge. I'd call these scenes "funny-adjacent" rather than funny. They're similar to scenes you'd find in a funny movie, minus the laughs.
Bottom Line: Richard Grant is no Hugh Grant, but this film is watchable--just.
Drag Me to Hell
(2009)
Booorrring--the only hell involved was sitting through this movie
13 August 2009
My advice is, if you are a rational person for whom the concept of Hell and demons is simply ridiculous, give this movie a pass.
I came in with high hopes because of the great reviews and user comments. My first warning should have come when I didn't find the opening sequence at all shocking or intense.
The setup for the main story was so boring that it had me looking at my watch every few minutes. After about half an hour, I could hear somebody in the theater loudly snoring, and I couldn't blame him. When he continued to snore through the entire film my reaction was "at least SOMEBODY got his money's worth."
To sum up, I had no interest in, let alone empathy for, any of the characters. The scenes meant to be shocking or scary were simply boring and annoying. The only way I might have enjoyed the film even a little would have been if in the end, every single character in the film was dragged kicking and screaming into Hell.
I came in with high hopes because of the great reviews and user comments. My first warning should have come when I didn't find the opening sequence at all shocking or intense.
The setup for the main story was so boring that it had me looking at my watch every few minutes. After about half an hour, I could hear somebody in the theater loudly snoring, and I couldn't blame him. When he continued to snore through the entire film my reaction was "at least SOMEBODY got his money's worth."
To sum up, I had no interest in, let alone empathy for, any of the characters. The scenes meant to be shocking or scary were simply boring and annoying. The only way I might have enjoyed the film even a little would have been if in the end, every single character in the film was dragged kicking and screaming into Hell.
Of Time and the City
(2008)
Disappointing--Images and music tell their story very, very slowly
9 July 2009
I'm usually a patient viewer who has no problem with films in which nothing much happen. In this case, however, I was expecting a more traditional memoir in which the director tells a personal story. What I got was a series of images and music (classical and vintage popular songs) interspersed with a sparse narration of quotes, anecdotes, and philosophical ramblings.
It's supposed to be a lyrical visual poem evoking the director's repressed homosexual youth in an industrial hell. To me, however, it was just a bunch of random images screaming "Look here. This is Art! ART!" I guess that one man's masterpiece is another man's boring, self-indulgent, pretentious twaddle.
It's supposed to be a lyrical visual poem evoking the director's repressed homosexual youth in an industrial hell. To me, however, it was just a bunch of random images screaming "Look here. This is Art! ART!" I guess that one man's masterpiece is another man's boring, self-indulgent, pretentious twaddle.
Dear Mr. Waldman
(2006)
A nostalgic look at the Tel Aviv boyhood of the son of survivors
11 January 2008
At its heart, Dear Mr. Waldman deals with Holocaust survivor Moishe's relationship with two sons, the ten-year-old currently living with him in 1960's Tel Aviv, and the other who perished along with his mother in the camps. On the surface, the living son, Hilik (played by the adorable Ido Port), has the kind of childhood we remember with fond nostalgia. When he's not in with school (with its vivid teachers), he hangs out with a "bad influence" classmate amid the seamy but colorful inhabitants of Tel Aviv's perennially impoverished Florentine neighborhood, and watches Hollywood epics like Spartacus over and over again. But his idyll is spoiled by the ghosts of his father's first family, who in Hilik's nightmares take his father away from him.
The precarious balance tips when Moishe see a newspaper photo of President Kennedy with an adviser whose name is similar to that of his dead son. He is haunted by the absurd notion that this man might actually *be* his dead son, miraculously escaped to America and elevated to high office,and he soon plunges utterly into delusion. It is only with Hilik's help that he is able to break the chains of the past, and reconnect with the land of the living.
Mr. Peled is intimately acquainted with the themes in this movie, because he too had a father whose first wife and young son perished in the Holocaust, and as a son of survivors he too felt an obligation to try to compensate for the horrors his parents went through.
Although the movie deals with Holocaust survivors, it isn't heavy handed or depressing. Instead, the colorful external details of life in Tel Aviv in the 60's are used to set off the main characters' internal struggles.
The precarious balance tips when Moishe see a newspaper photo of President Kennedy with an adviser whose name is similar to that of his dead son. He is haunted by the absurd notion that this man might actually *be* his dead son, miraculously escaped to America and elevated to high office,and he soon plunges utterly into delusion. It is only with Hilik's help that he is able to break the chains of the past, and reconnect with the land of the living.
Mr. Peled is intimately acquainted with the themes in this movie, because he too had a father whose first wife and young son perished in the Holocaust, and as a son of survivors he too felt an obligation to try to compensate for the horrors his parents went through.
Although the movie deals with Holocaust survivors, it isn't heavy handed or depressing. Instead, the colorful external details of life in Tel Aviv in the 60's are used to set off the main characters' internal struggles.
All My Loved Ones
(1999)
Moving drama of a Czech-Jewish family on a collision course with the Holocaust
13 May 2002
Although this film deals peripherally with the rescue efforts of Harry Winton, a British man who came to Prague and saved over 600 Jewish children by evacuating them to London, it is really the story of one of those children, and the family he left behind. When the film starts, in 1939, the Silberstein family seems to have it made. David's father is a wealthy and respected doctor, and his uncle Sam a world-famous violinist. As Hitler's Germany claims first the Sudetenland, then all of Czechoslovakia, however, slowly the walls begin to creep in on their privileged life. We get an excellent view of this life (perhaps a bit idealized, as seen through the eyes of the son), and the changes that force them to send their beloved son away to strangers in a last desperate attempt to salvage something from calamity.
Inside Out
(1998)
A pleasant amateur-hour comedy
13 May 2002
The plot of this "fish out of water" comedy is simple: Hazel Levine, an aspiring South African actress, is stranded in Eden (the middle of nowhere) when her car breaks down on the way to a job in Capetown. The townspeople, who recognize her from her commercials, hire her to direct the local Nativity pageant, despite the fact she's Jewish.
Will Hazel win over the lovable-but-eccentric towns people? But of course. And, along the way she'll overcome serious problems such as racial segregation and domestic abuse with nothing more than her plucky spirit. What distinguishes this from the average made-for-TV movie is the somewhat exotic locale and characters--certainly not the production values, which are very much on a par with Hazel's amateur theatrical. If you can turn off your brain, you may enjoy this pleasant fluff.
Will Hazel win over the lovable-but-eccentric towns people? But of course. And, along the way she'll overcome serious problems such as racial segregation and domestic abuse with nothing more than her plucky spirit. What distinguishes this from the average made-for-TV movie is the somewhat exotic locale and characters--certainly not the production values, which are very much on a par with Hazel's amateur theatrical. If you can turn off your brain, you may enjoy this pleasant fluff.
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