umiboozu Reviews

Dragonfly (2002)

They selled it as a thriller

[7/10 · 31 August 2005]

• but as a thriller is mediocre. Looking at the cover one expects suspense, spine-chilling. My impression was that this ingredient was put by force in a potentially good movie about feelings/love after death/NDE (near death experience) because they wanted to sell it as a thriller. The disappointment of many people is so justified.

Nevertheless I found this movie well written. My congratulations to David Seltzer, Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson. They succeeded to paint a story from different points of view, talking about NDE in a colorful but neat and profound Way. I assume that they they are smart enough to understand that the thriller element is a crap. They were probably ordered to fit it inside Tom Shadyak -the director - was quite accurate but sometimes I found his visual choices weak.

Kevin Costner is an icon. It's not really important if he can or he can't act.

To the producers - if they are the ones who forced the thriller element - goes a 5. Great movies need a little bit of courage. In all the movies they produced there is little courage. The results are not so exciting, even with the incomes (apart for some exceptions like Ace Ventura).

Anyway I give this movie a 7. Being interested in NDE, I enjoyed it.

Heaven & Earth (1993)

Forget Vietnam

[10/10 · 10 June 2003]

I don't understand why most people don't appreciate this movie. I guess one reason is that it's not easy to look at your own people, US soldiers, as enemies, or at your country - in the final - as the land of fatty meaninglessnes. Or maybe they were expecting something different from Stone, something more than that history - not so unusual as someone observed - of a simple vietnamese country girl. The point, for me, is that this is not a film about the vietnam war, which is only the background. If you make the effort to forget the vietnam war, its historical and cultural legacy, to avoid being on the side of one of the armies (maybe is easier for me, being an italian), you'll discover one of the most intense movie about the family and the bonds with the earth where you belong. Stone through the story of this simple girl succeeded in telling the story of entire humankind, analizing those which are its roots, its ties, its hopes, its condemnations. Honestly, one of the best movies I've ever seen. Sincere, profound, touching. True.