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Reviews
Religulous (2008)
Big deception
I admit, I had great expectations. This movie should have been great but it is not. I would blame first the director who obviously did not take seriously enough his movie. I don't know the behind the scene story, but too me it is obvious that at one point he let the movie slipped out of his hand.
What is the point of having all these guests if it is to hear Maher speak all the time? If they are ridiculous let them speak, we shall laugh. If they are not, then may be you should accept this and rethink your movie on new ground.
Bill Maher look like a narcissist half smart guy who ends up preaching in a BBC documentary style of the 70's.
If at least it had been really funny...
Zeitgeist (2007)
This is not a documentary, this is a fraud
This movie sounds like a cheap television documentary about how extraterrestrial helped build the Easter Island statue. Though it has a facade of critical thinking about religion, the intellectual framework of such a movie does not depart from religious thinking. It has nothing to do with rationality.
In rational thinking - like science, you have a hypothesis and then you do everything you can to prove it wrong. If you or anyone - including your worst enemy - cannot break your hypothesis, if with all the evidences gathered and experiment done, if with all criticisms, your hypothesis still hold, then you are on something that might become accept as a rational "truth". That is more or less how science constructs theories - like the infamous Darwinian theory of evolution or Big bang theory.
In irrational thinking - like conspiracy theories, you have a hypothesis but this time you do everything to prove it right. This means that you don't explore the whole picture. You discard anything that shakes your hypothesis as rubbish without proving why it is rubbish invoking instead common sense. You prefer a complex solution to a problem rather than the simpler solution that would disprove your hypothesis. The point is not to find the truth but to prove you are right. It is not uncommon, in order to achieve this goal, to make use of a convenient agent like God or the conspirators.
Therefore this movie is definitively not a case for anything but the delusion of the author. Note also how all the so call evidences are a patchwork of different sources that are not put in context by an expert on the matter.
All of you who think that kind of Internet movie is clever are a) delusional, b) stupid and c) lethargic. This guy is obviously a nobody could not find anything about him - who spent hours obsessing about his hypothesis and went on gathering all the information he could to edit in a cheap television documentary style this piece of propaganda another word to describe irrational thinking. I find quite troubling and disgraceful to invoke a criticism of Christianity to justify nonsense. I am an atheist and criticizing religion means thinking, like really thinking in a rational manner, finding both side of the argument, wondering what is the expertise of anyone claiming to deliver the "Truth". Don't you get it? Are you too brainwash? Too delusional?
You are exchanging a bag of apple for a bag of apple. Religion and conspiracy theory, same thing. So if you don't want to be brave and put your beliefs to the test, don't bother, just enjoy life and skip voting I actually encourage clueless people to give up their democratic rights for the greater good.
Kundun (1997)
May be excellent on American standard, but I felt uneasy thinking about Buddhism
First, I will say I am one of the strongest admirer of Scorsese work. He is on my top list with movies like Taxi Driver, After Hours, Goodfellas, the Age of Innocence.
However Kundun did not felt right. Yes the cinematography is stunning, the editing perfect, the music original. Yet I felt this movie did not reach the truth of the actual Chinese/Tibetan drama. This was not the great movie it should have been.
The fact that Tibetans and Chineses were speaking English was quite annoying. Philip Glass music was too much. I longed for silence, for this Buddhist silence. Mysticism was underplay, the political plot took over. The actors were not really convincing - the one playing the Dalai-lama and Mao especially.
Is this a bad movie? No. You are captivated. You learn if you did not already know about this terrible war, genocide, invasion. You feel the pain. But yet, you don't feel it the way it was felt there, you feel it as an American would: the struggle between the good guys and the bad guys.
I, Robot (2004)
Should not have taken any credit from Asimov
This was so disappointing. I thought the movie was truly inspired from Asimov's short stories... quite the opposite, actually. As other users have pointed out, this is a disgrace to Asimov master piece. The ending is so predictable and irrelevant. Beside, many would argue that such a scenario would have been examined by robot engineer. Nothing new with the trivial motto 'mankind is the worst danger for its own security'. The book was so much more subtle in the psychology of the robot and their interaction to human being. Sigh deeply my friend and don't waste your time if you are a real SF aficionado.
Another point, this movie will age very very badly if one judges by the costumes only. Already, completely out of fashion!
Well, of course it was not a complete fiasco. 5 stars for the usual nicely oiled Hollywood machine. Consider reading the book and evolving toward real SF literature and Cinema (even beyond Asimov).
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Deceiving overall
(My apology for mistakes, I am french speaking) I had great expectation about this movie. However, in the end, I have to say, I was more bored than anything else. Of course, the cinematography was brilliant, main acting was decent though the supporting actors were even better - wives, girlfriend, stepfather and daughter.
This movie brings absolutely nothing new in the vast spectrum of movie about doomed love. Even the homophobia problematic remains barely touch. It is part of the background. Again, in a classical approach, the plot is completely centered on the two main characters. I wished we could have a better glance at the environment which oppress the heroes. Not so much in the form of more homophobic events but more as how people are knit together in this belief system.
The first half hour or so on Brokeback Mountain is the best part of the movie. It brings with subtlety how within nature, man get free of inhibition created by a social surrounding. The second part is much too long. We get the point quite fast and repetition in this case does not intensify the feeling, it actually diminishes it.
Also, I am not quite sure I really felt sorry for them. May be the acting was not strong enough to make me believe this love affair. I wonder how gay people really felt about it since gay movies have dealt with this issue with much less modesty in the past.
In the end, I find I should give a 7 because of a strong beginning, a beautiful cinematography and some excellent scenes - like when the daughter announces she is getting married.