I don't see what the big fuss is about. The acting was very good, but I felt like the characters were undeveloped and the story went nowhere. It shows glimpses of Joe Buck's past just enough to get the point across that it was troubled, but it never connects it back to his current problems, so it's really irrelevant. Similarly, I was incredibly sympathetic to Rizzo's character, but thought his ambitions of escaping to Florida were kind of arbitrary and unexplained, and drew nothing from the story when he failed to make it. The whole film was just a story with no lesson, no message, no cultural significance. TOTALLY BLUE BALLED.
Reviews
4 Reviews
Koyaanisqatsi
(1982)
a radically effective critique of industrialism / modernity
5 March 2007
Koyaanisqatsi powerfully juxtaposes the symmetry and balance of the natural world with the chaos of modernity's constant and accelerating technological progress. The film has no dialogue, but a clear message is contained in a title that derides industrial life as unbalanced or morally corrupt and a soundtrack that manages to convey conflicting opinions and emotions in a way that words simply could not have. Glass's minimalist sound scape is perfectly matched to the subject matter - it evokes simultaneous feelings of respectful awe and of absolute terror. This is a film about directionless progress, about a rapid and unregulated increase in the rate and scale upon which human life is lived, and about man's violent conquest of moral and physical nature. Ellul must have been proud.
Pan's Labyrinth
(2006)
Three Cheers!!!!
1 February 2007
Truthfully, I'm no cinephile, and I don't quite understand the laundry lists people are making of technical reasons why this film is objectively the best movie of the year. If you're looking for those sorts of qualifications, read another review.
With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth. It's the story of a young girl confronted with the ideologically-driven bloodbath of guerrilla warfare in fascist Spain, and her retreat from its chaos into a personal fantasy world. Over the course of the movie, all the adults (her mother most explicitly) tell her that the real world is a place of arbitrary and merciless brutality, and that it has no place for fantasy or imagination. Ultimately, they turn out to be right!! The truth is that I've got a soft spot for art that expresses the impotence of man in the face of an uncaring universe. It's great! This was a fantastic movie about, as Philip Ridley so eloquently put it, The nightmare of childhood. Bravo, del Toro!
With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth. It's the story of a young girl confronted with the ideologically-driven bloodbath of guerrilla warfare in fascist Spain, and her retreat from its chaos into a personal fantasy world. Over the course of the movie, all the adults (her mother most explicitly) tell her that the real world is a place of arbitrary and merciless brutality, and that it has no place for fantasy or imagination. Ultimately, they turn out to be right!! The truth is that I've got a soft spot for art that expresses the impotence of man in the face of an uncaring universe. It's great! This was a fantastic movie about, as Philip Ridley so eloquently put it, The nightmare of childhood. Bravo, del Toro!
Legend
(1985)
Too bad to even write a funny review about
20 September 2006
Aside from some very pretty cinematography, legend was completely one dimensional. It was presented as an epic struggle of good against evil, but there was no depth to the characters or back story at all, and "morality" was addressed only at face value - the evil characters were evil only insofar as they hated the good characters and wore all black. There were no ethical conflicts, so you can't really blame the movie's failure on the decadence of its generation like that one guy did.
All said, I was surprised by how well they managed to avoid giving any depth to the characters beyond their roles as "The Good Guy", "The Girl", "The Dark Lord", and "The Completely Unbearable Comic Relief Dwarfs". I think the bad guy was played by Diablo from that computer game.
All said, I was surprised by how well they managed to avoid giving any depth to the characters beyond their roles as "The Good Guy", "The Girl", "The Dark Lord", and "The Completely Unbearable Comic Relief Dwarfs". I think the bad guy was played by Diablo from that computer game.
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