berry-michael61 Reviews

Half Nelson (2006)

Half Unwatchable

[3/10 · 27 July 2013]

I could bear watching only the first 15 minutes because of the unsteady, shaking camera. I understand that making it appear that a five year old is holding the camera is, in artistic circles, considered an improvement; but this old man just gets irritated and reaches for the remote. Trying to follow the constant jittering image is, to me, akin to staring into a strobe light. It's not comfortable.

This technique is followed in practically all televised commercials now and has been determined, I'm sure, to be effective in focusing attention, taking advantage of the natural human tendency to automatically look at movement. And it is effective - for a 10 second advertisement. But how people can stare at a constantly flashing, jumping, jittering, zoomed-in, zoomed-out, poorly framed image is beyond my understanding.

Joe (1970)

That's the way it was

[7/10 · 8 September 2012]

This was the first movie I viewed, just by chance, after my discharge from active duty in the Army in 1970. Forty-two years later, remembering nothing of the plot, only that I left the theater very emotional (rare for me), I found a DVD copy at a local library.

I now realize why I have since not been able to regard Peter Boyle as anything but a frightening character, even in his comic role on the TV series "Everybody Loves Raymond." To be fair, his 1976 role in "Taxi Driver" didn't help, but his face, as seen in "Joe", is still the stuff of nightmares for me.

That said, I learned that it was the now long-forgotten hostility between sectors of our society, so brutally represented in the film, created by the debacle in Vietnam that affected me so deeply in 1970. Today, even to one who was there, the experience of living in an America so torn, so close to open rebellion, is hard to conceive - even harder to explain. But fresh off the plane, still somewhat glum from the cold stares at the airport caused by my uniform, this film hit me like a hammer. And guessing from the huge profit it made, it did the same to many.

It shocked me that I hadn't remembered Susan Sarandon was in this film - she has been one of my favorites - and, as a bonus, the then 24 year-old Ms. Sarandon appears nude. How could I have possibly forgotten that?