scotty-37 Reviews

The Last Thing He Told Me (2023– )

Slow, overly earnest, shallow and boring

[3/10 · 1 June 2023]

This show drags on and on earnestly hoping to involve us in the internal turmoil of the characters when the husband/father disappears at the very first of the series. It wants to create suspense about why he disappeared or what the secrets of his life were, but it's just not very compelling.

Most audience members will probably consider some possibilities for what is going on by episode 3 that the script avoids until episode 5 or 6. The 7 episodes need to be cut to 2 or 3, which would be more appropriate for the actual amount of interesting material they have.

The writing is very one dimensional and of a quality you might expect from a Lifetime Original, Hallmark Channel or after school special. They find a couple traits for each character and hammer them into the ground. Hannah is strong willed, concerned for Bailey and confused; Bailey shows her unsettled teen confusion and rebellion by being petulant and rude; Owen is mysterious and concerned for his daughter. You'll get the tropes in one or two episodes and no characters get much deeper from there.

It doesn't help much that about half of each episode is told through excessive numbers of flashback scenes that drain momentum and spend long stretches tediously reinforcing whatever point the lead-in to the flashback scene was clearly going to make to start with. You will be bludgeoned with time-wasting flashbacks that you already know the point of before they've begun.

The writers also heavily overuse the trope of Bailey remembering one random detail after another when she's exposed to people and places she knew in her childhood at 2 or 3 years old. She's never sure of any of the memories right away, but they're predictably significant and the plot device gets reused over and over again as another example of the show's lazy and uninteresting writing as though the writers couldn't think of other ways to drop in more hints.

The actors try to make things interesting, but the script is so repetitive, bland, tedious and uninteresting that they just repeat the same expressions and emotions repeatedly and there isn't any real range of emotions. The characters also do some dumb things that I don't think most people of average intelligence would do in their situation and it makes them unbelievable and unrelatable. The last episode finally has some more interesting situations and choices for Hannah to make, but it's too little and too late to save the show.

I can't believe I wasted my time on seven episodes of this thoroughly mediocre show. The slight improvement in quality at the end of the series isn't enough to go through all the painful boredom of sitting through the first 5 episodes. I would've turned it off a lot earlier, but was watching with someone who seemed like they wanted to finish.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

great eye candy, interesting world, predictable plot and wooden acting

[6/10 · 23 July 2017]

I went into this without much in the way of expectations. While the director Luc Besson has made some good movies, he's also made some clunkers (his Joan of Arc movie for example, where the main feature was lots of screaming). I wasn't sure which this would be and it turned out to be a combination of very separate good elements and bad ones. If you care about all elements of the movie being well executed and working together you might be disappointed, but if you go in only expecting visuals and the world to be interesting, you might enjoy the movie.

I'm not going to give much background because you probably know already or can look up things such as the source material.

The world building and creature creation are beautiful and interesting. The opening montage set to an edited version of David Bowie's Space Oddity works well. The bazaar is a fun concept and interesting to watch along with most of the settings and creatures in the movie.

Unfortunately, the male lead seems to have taken lessons from the Keanu Reeves School of Acting, the female lead seems wooden and the chemistry between the two is non-existent even though the movie makes a major thing out of it.

The plotting is thin, the dialog weak, the bad guys more predictable than any movie in recent history.

Overall, I was struck by just how juvenile many elements seemed, as though they'd asked a fully average 7 to 10 year old to write the dialog and script. Pixar Studios and others have raised the bar on kids movies because they give everyone something more to enjoy from a movie, even when aimed at kids. This was more like a kids serial pumped out in the early half of the 20th century as far as plot and predictability. Oh, PS, if the characters ever get in trouble, they just fall through a hole to get out of it (as a Besson version of deus ex machina).

Even with all the problems it was OK to watch because of the world--not exactly a waste of time, but not something I really want to see again, either. It's too bad Besson couldn't have just given us a tour of the world and just dropped the pretense around having a functioning plot or decent casting, acting or chemistry between the leads.

How I Live Now (2013)

Telepathic teeny-bopper romance turns eternal, conquering war and distance

[4/10 · 21 December 2014]

American-girl, Daisy, is shipped off to England to live with her cousins in a rural area so she can get embroiled in a war. She has lots of voices in her head telling her rules, but she mostly likes to sulk, overreact and snipe at everyone. Then she notices cousin Eddie staring at her and at first hates him, but when he licks the blood off her hand where she injured herself she starts warming up to him. He frolics in the lake with her so she finally opens up because she realizes he's dreamy and telepathic and handles skittish, hurt animals and angry girls well.

Then the little girl in the family picks petals off a flower, just like the famous nuclear war political ad from the 60s. Uh oh, nuclear war has begun in England and there is some weird weather. The kids decide to hide in a barn for some reason instead of their house but now Daisy has suddenly decided she's in eternal love with cousin Eddie. They do the wild thing and Daisy has finally gotten rid of the voices in her head telling her rules. She's growing into a woman now so she can be responsible for herself and her new experiences. She doesn't need no stinking rules anymore!

But just after discovering her first telepathic boy-crush, soldiers show up to take all the kids to safe haven communities away from where terrorists will find them (or so they think). They separate the boys from the girls and Daisy and her day-old romance are brutally torn apart. Eddie yells to her to remember what he told her (that they should always make their way back to the farm area if anything bad happens since it's their eternal happy place).

The girls are sent to live with a Scottish woman in a nice house inside a military-like installation. Daisy and the little girl are made to work on a farm and grow vegetables. Daisy is plotting her escape back to the farm to be with telepathic, dreamy Eddie. She looks at maps and pilfers packaged goods to eat on her escape. One day after farming work is over for the day, the rebels attack the caravan and their safe haven so she and the little girl run off to go back to the farm for her eternal, telepathic lover. Luckily she is all ready to leave.

The two girls walk back to the farm for a week and find out you should avoid men in the wild along the way. They are trouble and will all try rape you or chase you and they might need to be shot if you can't hide from them. They also find chocolates in a crashed plane's wreckage. They find out the younger cousin who is a boy has been killed (maybe as a child soldier).

They finally make it back to the farm-area by using Daisy's eternal telepathic connection to Eddie after she loses her map and compass. When she wishes for help from him, she has dreams or a hawk- friend guides her back. She has the special, eternal kind of teen romance that comes with supernatural abilities!

When she finally finds cousin Eddie, he has recently been injured and is lying in the woods near the farm. She nurses him back to health, but he has been scarred by the war so is now mute. The war ends as she's nursing him and finally all she can do is lick Eddie's hand where he accidentally injured it to show she cares. How the roles have changed, now she's the strong one helping Eddie to heal his psychic wounds just as he did for her.

---

Overall the movie is mediocre because of the ludicrous script and the actors have to work very hard to try to pull it off. The girl playing Daisy tries hard, has a pretty decent American accent but doesn't feel convincing as an American teen (the attitude and the way she carries herself don't quite work, and I've seen plenty of surly American teens).

The main problem is the awful script with too much and too many corny things packed into its short length. The director tries, but this movie was stillborn before he started.

Manchild (2002–2003)

This series doesn't do much for me

[5/10 · 5 April 2009]

The idea for this series is interesting, but I had a hard time buying into it that these rich, often spoiled, 50-something men were all swanning around together to begin with.

Of the men, 2 are divorced, one seems never to have been married and one is married. They all hang out together in their seemingly extensive leisure time, drive fancy cars, inhabit big houses and seem to be focused on picking up chicks 25 years their juniors.

The acting is good enough, but I mostly had a problem with the premise, the plot-lines and the set ups.

The narration throughout each episode was bothersome to me since it is mostly a bunch of pretentious drivel about the stages of a man's life and how it relates to sex. Perhaps it's meant to be ironic and expose the character of one of the main characters, but if so it's not particularly funny or ironic. It keeps droning on in the same pretentious way throughout the episode and if it's supposed to add a light-hearted touch it utterly fails. This kind of thing works better in the Sex and the City universe than it does here.

I don't particularly know men that chum around together in the way that these guys do. Maybe it's different in London, but the chatter that fills each episode didn't strike me as especially authentic or likely for men that I know. Who wrote this stuff? I also noticed in the IMDb ratings that women of all ages rated this show much, much more highly than men did. Maybe this show isn't really targeted to men or meant to represent them, but is instead targeted at appealing to womens' conceptions of men or their projections onto them.

In any case, I can see why the show only lasted a few seasons. It's an unusual subject for TV to tackle sex-obsessed, gossipy, Peter Pan-syndrome middle-aged men, but maybe there is a reason for the lack of shows like this one. I'd guess that most average people will not find these shows very authentic or interesting, but mostly pretentious, unfunny and bizarre.

Little Britain (2003–2006)

Funny, but repetitive after a while

[7/10 · 2 April 2009]

I watched these episodes on NetFlix and there are moments that are funny, but the comedy gets a little old after a while because of the limited number of characters. Not that this problem is all that unusual for a lot of sketch comedy.

It reminds me a bit of MadTV or SNL with the repeating characters; with some of the vulgarity of South Park; and some absurdity as in Monty Python. It has much higher production values than the usual sketch comedy (which usually has an obvious look of being filmed on a set with cheap costumes and a "studio audience"). They make it look much more like a normal TV show.

Some touches are outstanding--including some very funny characters, good voice-over and interesting ending vignettes.

While it's undeniably entertaining, it has all the same problems that most sketch comedy has: some characters start becoming more annoying than funny after a while, especially if they were a little annoying to begin with. Give it time for shock-value to wear off or the line to be said one-too-many-times, or the main joke of a sketch becomes routine, and you'll start feeling a little weary of it. This is especially true if you watch episodes without giving some time in between.

Examples: Dame Sally Markham was funny at first, but finding more ways for her to pad out her romance novels starts to get a little boring. Lou and Andy are also funny at first, but after a while I get tired of the 3 minute set-up for him to predictably change his mind about what he wants.

Other characters are a little more funny such as Marjorie Dawes of FatFighters (the ultimate hypocrite who lectures everyone else and tries to act superior). It's a bit Church Lady-ish from SNL. Yet at least they put her in some different situations and give her more material. I find Vicky funny despite the repetitiveness.

I'm sure the characters people get annoyed with depend on the personality and how often you see them.

It's probably worth checking out the series if you haven't seen it, but don't watch too many in a row or you'll blow through the series and feel a little sick and annoyed in the process.

Save Me (2007)

A nuanced character study and a minor gem

[8/10 · 25 February 2009]

There is a whole list of things I liked about this movie. Though it has some flaws, they are far outshone by the good.

The setting of the movie and the approach to the characters is brilliant. Most movies that show non-urban, non-coastal US cities fall into a trap of playing the setting and the characters for laughs, or at least exaggerating the local color for effect (witness Coen Brothers movies, for example). This movie didn't fall into the self-conscious exaggeration, which inevitably keeps the audience at a distance. Instead, it shows most things in a very human level--you're not looking down on, or sideways at, or with an outsider's view of the people or situation. This is the water you're swimming in. You're there to witness what is going on without the self-conscious, ironic and "precious" aspects that many directors are afraid to leave behind. This view of the rural West feels very genuine (and I know because I've lived there before).

The acting by Judith Light and Stephen Lang is phenomenal and that by Chad Allen and Robert Gant is very good. The large cast of supporting actors is largely very good, too. It becomes even more amazing that they pulled this off when the movie makers undoubtedly were working on a shoe-string budget. The performances are better than many big budget movies. The script allows for complex characters and the acting is nuanced.

The production values are similarly good for the small budget: beautiful filming, a good musical score and songs that worked just right for the tone.

There is a sense of space and stillness that allows things to breathe and it's a little bit "Zen" once the movie gets going. I didn't find the first few scenes of the movie fit in particularly well with the rest of the tone, but it was a minor annoyance. Some people may be expecting more of an emotional roller-coaster. The script and the direction were taken in a different direction than "hero-against-conspiring-world." You're meant to identify with different aspects of many characters and not only see things from a single perspective. It's harder to maintain a singular emotional intensity based on this focus. I found it quite effective for what it set out to accomplish (not what some reviewers wished it had accomplished instead).

A minor quibble is that some of the quiet lines were hard to hear and understand (though it could've been bad audio compression artifacts since I watched it on Netflix instant watch so it was not full DVD quality).

You really should see this movie if you care about any of the themes it addresses or you love to watch good acting.

OT: Our Town (2002)

It's all about the kids in the film

[7/10 · 29 October 2008]

OT: Our Town is a documentary I'm glad I watched. It's an inspirational story in the vein of those dramas about teachers who make a difference in a falling apart urban school. But really, the kids are what make the movie work.

The filming and editing are good enough, nothing special. It also seems like the filming crew were dropped in the middle of the action with no time to get much back-story. The pieces of background and context they do get are really priceless.

It's nice to see the kids go through this play. To me, the most striking aspect was just how vulnerable and tender the kids actually are, despite the rough neighborhood and the rough situations life has given them.

There are some touching moments as the kids come together and connect with each other. They touch on some issues of feeling competent, dealing with romance, and negotiating relationships with parents. In some ways it's a bit cathartic like a "Breakfast Club" set in Compton instead of John Hughes' suburban Chicago. It's nice to see them come together, but just like The Breakfast Club you have to wonder if it will really last past the experience they had together.

Lets hope these kids remember their successes and go on to be successful and happy in life. They deserve it.

East of Shanghai (1931)

Certainly Strange and Disjointed

[6/10 · 13 February 2008]

This movie really doesn't hang together well and there is very little flow. The story is disjointed and you get the feeling that the script wasn't very good, that Hitchcock was a bit bored with the premise and experimented.

The beginning scenes in which Fred leaves work, the umbrellas, and the underground are all highly stylized. The umbrella sequence is like some choreographed chorus line. Very strange.

Fred, the husband, is insufferably boring and unsympathetic from about 2 minutes into the movie until the end. The actions on the subway are enough to make you cringe and think he's an idiotic lout from then and the loutishness pretty much continues the entire movie. Fred makes you feel uncomfortable and itchy on a number of occasions.

If you've looked at the other reviews you know the general outline of the movie. Fred is boring and bored. He gets some money from a rich uncle to take a cruise with his wife who is way out of his league. The cruise just makes the couple find other people to fall in love with.

The only people I felt any sympathy for were Emily Commander Gordon. Emily because she is somewhat pretty and the closest thing to vivacious in the movie, and Commander Gorden for being somewhat distinguished-looking and calling Emily on being a flirt ("are you pulling my leg?") and seeming to want to be decent to her while clearly aware that her husband is on the level of a slug and that Emily and Fred are horrible together.

Meanwhile, Fred falls for "The Princess." There is an intensely awkward and itchy-feeling scene in which Fred is trying to kiss the princess while wearing his ridiculous Arabian Knights outfit and he can't figure out how to get around the veil covering her mouth. This is a great scene that once again illustrates what an idiot Fred is. It made my skin crawl. This is a sort of comedy by making the audience extremely uncomfortable at just how pathetic a human can be.

Though not a sympathetic character, I had to agree with "The Princess" when she later tells Emily that she's stupid not to leave Fred for Commander Gordon.

The elevator and watch scene is outright comic.

Some scenes with Emily and Commander Gordon that show their feet while walking are just odd.

In the end, I was feeling it a bit of a tragedy that the couple stayed together at all. I wondered if Hitchcock really wanted people to be happy or annoyed that they ended up together in the end.

I actually felt there were many scenes that worked well at creating an odd atmosphere and tension with their experimental flavor. At times I was reminded of David Lynch's Eraserhead. For instance, in the scene where the two stay in their cabin while the boat is being abandoned, the loud thumping and running noises nearly drown out the dialog in both loudness and any attention being paid to it. It made me wonder how many of these odd touches were mistakes and how many were Hitchcock trying to do something interesting with a movie that was essentially not that interesting because of plot and character.

This is probably a movie that is worth watching for individual scenes and experiments, but doesn't further the assumed point of the movie. In fact in some ways, Hitchcock seems to try actively subverting any kind of morality-play aspects that might have been implied in the script.

It doesn't hold together as a whole, but there are plenty of interesting experiments to watch. If it's a train-wreck of a movie, at least it's an interesting wreck.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Beautiful, Wandering, Cartoonish Mess

[6/10 · 20 October 2007]

I wanted to like this movie much more than I did since I've liked many Wes Anderson movies in the past. This movie just didn't do all that much for me, though.

Sure it's shiny and detailed and Wes Anderson has a distinctive visual style. He can repeat motifs over and over. He can play up his own little inside jokes for his fan base, give them a wink as if to say "isn't it fun being part of my club." The fact is that I didn't actually feel like the characters were in any way real. They were all exaggerated cartoons. I know that's Wes' style and it works sometimes, especially in the more comedic moments and when the characters weren't mostly just a stuttering of themes without direction. Thanks for showing us your stylistic twitches.

As profound as this movie wants to be, it often came off as simply pretentious and too clever by half.

I'm sure the people will fall all over themselves to defend this movie, say it's the best thing ever made and they're happy that they're elite enough to understand it while anyone who criticizes it didn't truly understand.

Fine, reinforce your clique if it makes you feel better.

But perhaps I (and others who criticize it) understood it just fine, but didn't have a need to try reading in as much profoundness, where there really wasn't much of actual substance there. Lots of style, lots of repeated elements, lots of flash. No one would claim that it's lacking in style, just that it lacks in believability and real feeling. The cartoon characters didn't tug at my heart strings, sorry.

It's probably worth seeing for its stylistic elements, I just wouldn't go in counting on lots more than that.

Transamerica (2005)

Inconsistent Movie with some Good Moments, carried by Felicity Huffman

[6/10 · 12 August 2007]

Felicity Huffman does a good job in this movie while pretending to be a man trying to be a woman. Although there are a few annoying and unrealistic things about her performance, she pulls off the role quite admirably.

The main problem with the movie is that it is quite frankly, boring. The introduction to the characters takes a long time, the initial hour of the road trip seems rather contrived and is supposed to make us think that the characters are growing fonder and closer to each other and that they had real issues, but I was never very sincerely convinced by most of what I saw. In the same way, I was never convinced of Bree's church lady persona, uptightness, and complete frumpiness.

It is better than many movies, but still nothing all that special aside from the fact that Felicity Huffman pulls off pretending to be a man ish woman pretty well. It peeks at issues never raised by most movies, but is neither extremely entertaining nor extremely enlightening in any emotional way.

It's probably worth watching slightly more than an average movie, but not all that much more. I'm a bit surprised by all the extremely positive reviews since I didn't find it to be anything all that special.

Universe (1976)

Reasonable Documentary on Facts about the Universe

[6/10 · 16 June 2007]

As others have said, this video gives some facts about the universe and types of stars and the ways they live and die in particular. It includes NASA footage and animations.

Shatner does a good job of narrating without calling attention to himself with the overly dramatic pauses he is sometimes known for. I instantly recognized his voice, but his narration was nicely unobtrusive.

The information is at a pretty basic level, so if you've ever had an astronomy class or even were mildly curious about astronomy and have done a little reading then you probably know most of this. Examples are information about stars going supernova, what a black hole is, etc.

I ran across this on a 2 DVD set of NASA videos called "Mysteries of Space" that I picked up for $4.99. Of the 3 short documentaries on this DVD, this one was by far the best, since it had reasonable information and wasn't nearly so slow-paced as some of the other NASA documentaries. It also showed less gratuitous footage expressing "aren't we cool because of our superior 1960s technology" (which of course looks comically dated). This particular DVD set puts an annoying watermark in the bottom corner of the screen the entire length of these videos (probably so they could say they added something to the video so that people couldn't legally simply re-copy the video off the DVD, see below).

This documentary itself likely has no (or few) copyright restrictions since it was a publication of NASA, a US government agency. This probably explains why is it might be widely available on different DVD collections that simply repackage NASA non-copyrightable videos. It's likely that you can legally view this video for free if you can find it somewhere online.

These documentaries are 100% voice-over narration with other images (no talking to experts or exploring issues or controversies as a more modern documentary probably would). The documentary technique seems dated and slightly more boring at times, but for a film simply presenting basic information it's a passable, if unexciting technique.

It's probably something to watch if you have some time to kill, don't know much about the universe or want to relive the kind of films you saw in the 1970s and 1980s in school (though this is one of the better videos of that type).

Spring Forward (1999)

Good movie, interesting idea, good acting

[8/10 · 14 December 2006]

I liked this movie and found it an interesting character study that creates a hypnotic viewing experience. A few times the writing can be a bit overboard, but it's mostly very good.

The one scene that stood out to me as really out of character was one towards the first where the character Paul runs off into the woods and starts crying. To me, it seemed vary unlikely that it would've happened this way. It doesn't seem likely, and this seemed more like a blunt object to set up the plot and background than coming out of the character here.

To me, this movie was much more interesting for things that were unsaid than for the things that were said. The negative space is used well and I was glad they didn't follow up everything with some explanation of what happened next. You have to stay observant and make connections rather than expecting to be spoon fed. Nothing is certain in life, and neither is this movie. If you want a very linear storyline then go see something else. But if you want to examine the edges of things that are said and things that are meant, but not said, this is a good movie.

Fascinating to watch. Peri Gilpin's brief appearance was perfect, also.

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Bad movie that is good with the right crowd

[3/10 · 18 August 2006]

Well, what do you expect? I think everyone is aware that this movie is an over-the-top joke. I enjoyed seeing it on opening night since I think the entire audience was there to make fun of it. They were yelling funny comments, throwing inflatable snakes and rubber toy snakes, hissing and having a good time.

I'd rate my experience seeing the movie a 8 or 9 since it was pretty enjoyable with our audience, but the movie itself is predictable and pretty bad. Don't watch it alone or with people trying to take it seriously. It's only good if you take great glee in making fun of it and everyone around you is in the same state.

I'm guessing the enjoyableness of watching this movie will decline drastically once the drunken, mocking crowds have had enough. When/if people start going to the movie to take it seriously it just will not be worth bothering to see.

It's predictable, silly, full of snake deaths and has stereotypical and stupid dialog. But you might enjoy it if you can see it with the right group.

The Other Side of AIDS (2004)

Fairly One Sided and Full of Misinformation

[3/10 · 16 June 2006]

The documentary would be more believable if it presented both sides evenly. It tries questioning the idea that HIV is the likeliest cause of AIDS. It shows evidence for its claims and ignores or reduces evidence to the contrary view which is, in fact, abundant and more well documented than the filmmakers pretend. This is far from a balanced or responsible view. I hope most people seeing this film know enough to understand where it manipulates and exaggerates the facts.

For instance is AIDS really is just a disease that is brought on by negative outlook, extreme partying, popper use and anti-HIV drugs? Doubtful. If this were true then why do many people who don't fit any of these criteria get sick or die of it? This is obviously an unfair characterization of AIDS victims.

It might be appropriate to question the drug side effects, effectiveness, drug marketing campaigns and other things related to HIV. Certainly some issues come up that deserve discussion, but this movie doesn't give a balanced discussion of them. It seems to say, "Since you can't prove everything to our satisfaction about HIV--it must be untrue." They ignore the fact of the preponderance of evidence, even if not everything is known. This is analogous to the people who deny global warming despite the larger mass of reliable evidence to show it IS happening.

If you see this documentary then do some research and do not believe everything it tells you without really investigating and understanding thoroughly.

The documentary fails to mention other factors that are well known in HIV research such as the fact that a very small number of people infected with HIV are protected from AIDS by mechanisms that are not fully understood. The 'immunity' research has shown that certain African prostitutes and gay men do not develop HIV despite being infected. But this percentage is very, very low. Having everyone believe that they will not become ill is very dangerous.

Be careful of this movie and do not view it uncritically and without doing your homework since it's a misleading piece. If you're uninformed and buy into its claims without questioning, it has the potential to do a lot of harm.

Rumor Has It... (2005)

Unoriginal and with Lots of Missed Opportunities

[5/10 · 16 June 2006]

As others have commented, this is essentially a boring movie that isn't particularly original or satisfying. All the acting and direction is OK as far as it goes, but the thing that is really wrong is the storyline. It doesn't know what the point is or what it's trying to accomplish.

I noticed the group that rated this movie the highest were 18 year old and younger women. Interestingly 45+ year old women rated it significantly lower. I interpret this to mean that younger women were more willing to buy into Jennifer Anniston's weird behavior and were sympathetic to it, while older women more often thought that the plot a was little too neat, pat, simplistic and unrealistic.

*Some Spoilers Below* The most entertaining part of the film is the grandmother (who was supposed to be the same person as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate). At least they gave her some funny lines and she's a fun character to watch. They manage to homogenize most other characters, even ones that ought to be more interesting, like Mina Suvari's as the younger sister who is having doubts about her marriage.

There are oil-tanker sized boatloads of missed opportunities for jokes and dramatic or comedic conflict. They don't capitalize well on many jokes relating to events from The Graduate, for one thing. The Graduate is mostly used as backdrop. Maybe they figured that many audience members were too stupid or too young to understand jokes relating on The Graduate, so it seems they only threw in a couple of relatively unfunny things relating to it.

The time period for this movie isn't shown well aside from having people carry large cell phones. You get the idea that it's supposed to take place between 1995 and 1997 or so, but it just looks like today's world. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago, but when you actually look at things like news footage and movies from that time, styles and other things have changed a noticeable amount.

I wasn't quite sure what the movie wanted me to think about Kevin Costner's character. He seems nice enough for most of the time if maybe a little messed up, but then turns narcissistic in one scene out of nowhere, "Tell me I'm great. Tell me I'm sexy" or something like that. There is no clear perspective to look at him with, and the script misses lots of opportunities to play with the idea that he might be Jennifer Anniston's father. The script writers seem to have self censored or been wary of playing with the idea of this taboo in any real way. I'm sure it's tricky, but if you're going to bring up the taboo, you need to create a little more doubt in order to get anyone's interest. It's resolved almost immediately when he tells her he is sterile almost on first meeting. Yeah, they try to cast *some* doubt, but it seems a halfhearted attempt and I couldn't take it seriously.

I have doubts that tacking a "happy ending" on was the right thing to do. I actually would've liked it better if Jennifer Anniston's nice-guy fiancée had told her to get lost and stuck with it, rather than acting spineless in the end. Other movies such as "My Best Friend's Wedding" have successfully pulled off the non-happy ending and this movie would have been better off without it. I understand wanting the happy ending, but sometimes it's nice for a character to take a stand and be something besides a pasteurized, processed wimp.

There are some moments of overwhelming cheese here. Everyone I saw it with rolled their eyes when the dad said "I drive slow because you're in the car." Please. Thank you Michelin man, "Mr. Precious Cargo." This was over the top, and dripping with enough fake sentiment to make even sentimental people think "I can't believe they had him say that line." Overall, this is a very forgettable movie. It's bland, inoffensive, unmemorable and uninteresting. It's a waste of time. Maybe see it if you're bored and really can't find anything else to do, but it's really not worth bothering with if you value two hours of your time.

Wings of Desire (1987)

Completely Unique and Fascinating

[9/10 · 28 January 2006]

Der Himmel uber Berlin has unsurpassed moments of poetry and clarity. It also demands a lot of attention and patience on the part of the viewer. Even after seeing it a number of times I find new, interesting and moving things in the movie.

Some vignettes from the movie astound me as I see inside someone's experience or see things freshly through them. The framing poem by Peter Handke gives meaning to the whole movie. It's one of the things that I respond to most strongly.

There are very minor choices in movie that I think could have been made differently, but at the same time they do not significantly detract from my enjoyment. Wim Wenders gives a lot of screen time to Solveig Dommartin as she works the trapeze and thinks to herself in her trailer. She certainly needs time to get audience's sympathy and attention among all the other characters, but some of her screen time seems a little indulgent. Also, some short glimpses into people's lives are not as effective as others--especially the later more non-specific "noise of humanity" sequences. The noise of humanity is well established in the library scenes and other sequences towards the first of the movie and the later less concrete vignettes do less for me than the earlier ones.

The movie is more of a visual and auditory poem than a traditional plot-driven movie. Plots do exist, but they are not relentlessly forwarded by everything shown on screen. You'll do a lot of people watching and find both grimness and despair as well as joy and beauty. It's a movie about experience, humanity, and both the joy and the pain of life. If you view it receptively, there are many entire worlds within the movie that you'll be able to enter momentarily and perhaps get a better view of your own world.

Watch this movie. It can be an amazing experience. You will need energy to pay attention, patience with the pacing, and a willingness to deal with some confusing aspects of the movie. If you don't have these things it might be better to come back to the movie at some other time when you feel more receptive. It is well worth the payoff, though.

King Kong (2005)

Bad Interspecies Romance

[4/10 · 17 December 2005]

This movie was huge budget with spectacular effects and reasonable acting considering the subject matter. It was limited in subject and I had a hard time taking the giant ape and human girl romance seriously. I'd recommend not wasting your money on this movie unless you're seeing it because you're tired of staring at the shiny thing on the floor or picking your belly button lint.

It had all the same problems that the original movie did, only it was more self-conscious of its faults and tried to take itself more seriously than the original movie did. The seriousness resulted in many moments in which the sap was poured on so thick and earnestly that it dripped off the screen.

I can't figure out why the woman in the movie had the desire to go on the dating circuit with the Kongster. Sure he saved her from Land of the Lost dinosaurs after he decided not to tear her up as he apparently did with the previous victims. Aw, what a nice giant ape monster. He didn't kill her because she had a hot body and is apparently mega-beautiful (as we're patted on the head and told at the end of the movie).

I suspect she really liked him because of "Stockholm Syndrome" in which kidnap victims begin to be sympathetic with their captors. Either that or she just likes really tall . . . er . . . violent and abusive 100 foot tall apes. Next on Jerry Springer, giant apes and the women who love them.

The movie has 3 long and indulgent sections and Peter Jackson's thinking seems to be something like:

Act 1: Isn't the great depression horrible? Lets go on an ocean voyage with some scoundrels and set up the characters in the movie. Oh, those mildly lovable rascals!

Act 2:Lets get our characters stuck on an island with murderous natives who want to kidnap our virgins and crush all our characters' skulls. When the virgin gets kidnapped it would be fun to have a ramble through Jurassic Park and Land of the Lost for a while. Grisly deaths should keep things serious and make people forget how dumb this whole plot really is. We need people to take this really, really seriously. Many deaths will distract people for a while. Oh, and lets be sure that the interspecies date goes well enough to warrant a second date in act 3. We don't want Kong to be elimidated just yet.

Act 3: Don't exploit Kong! If he doesn't get a second date he'll go on a rampage. He has the second date all planned out. First he'll go ice skating and the couple can laugh happily as they fall down in a loving heap on the ice as they slowly fall in deeper and deeper love. Then it's up to the top of the Empire State Building to watch the sun rise over Manhattan. It's the perfect ending to an almost perfect night. But alas, that their interspecies date was so misunderstood by a judgmental society! The military has been called in and has torn their star-crossed love apart. Such a sad ending for the giant ape that was charmed by the beauty and power of love. He just wanted to be loved was that so wrong?

Independent Lens: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) Season 8, Episode 22

Disturbing and Thought Provoking if Sometimes Unfocused

[8/10 · 29 May 2005]

I came away from this movie disturbed by the things that went on at Enron. It broke my idea of companies following "the rules" of business. It paints a disturbing picture of corporate culture in the US and the lengths to which people will go to hang on to what they have (or to get even more). Its subjects make for interesting watching since the audience gets a view of greed, power and corruption.

The movie gives shocking figures on the amount of money that was being taken, and hints at the human costs of Enron's fraud and deceit. In a particularly revolting moment, it plays audio of brokers laughing gleefully about the way in which California's Enron-created artificial power shortage is allowing them to raise prices absurdly high. The brokers mention "Granny Mae" and laugh about how much fun it is to bilk her and all the Californians out of their money.

Although the movie is good, it misses many opportunities by attempting to cover too much ground. It introduces the main figures in the Enron world, it shows a large number of different unethical and illegal practices and recounts many of the more notable bad incidents from Enron's history. It even attempts some examination the dark side of human nature along the way.

I came away feeling that the focus of the movie was not well defined. Was the movie focusing on one company and its scandalous practices? Was it trying to explain why the business world went along? Was it examining the dark side of human nature? Was it trying to create an emotional response in the audience by making them sympathetic to or hateful of anyone in the cast of characters? All these questions are examined in some ways by the movie, but none are given enough emotional or intellectual depth to derive any satisfactory answers or satisfaction.

The movie raises many questions. It's worth seeing. Just don't expect the questions raised to be completely thought through or answered.

Saw (2004)

A Contrived Movie with Some Interesting Ideas

[4/10 · 6 May 2005]

This movie relies heavily on disturbing imagery, chilling violence and fast cutting to make its point. If you just want to see some very disturbing things, this movie is for you.

Some reviews and the description on the DVD box try claiming that the killer is trying to teach people something and do some kind of therapy through his violence. These moral posturings are about as thin as tracing paper. The "teach a lesson" conceit comes across as a plot device to make more disturbing and creative violence rather than a need in the story telling.

It also follows many of the same old clichés. Hiding the killer's face. Making him go around in a scary skull/clown mask. It's not particularly original except in the conception of violent ways in which to kill people or force them to kill themselves or someone else.

If you're looking for a movie that shows killing and death in a gruesome and disturbing way, enjoy your blood feast. If you just need to fill your gore or violence needs, maybe this is the movie for you.

There are some elements with promise but they aren't followed up on well. There are also holes in the story. Its internal consistency and believability is threatened.

It is often scary, gut-churning, and vile. If you mostly want to focus on these elements then you may really like the movie since it presents these elements strongly. If you're looking for any motivation, uncontrived plot elements or useful characterization then I suggest watching something else.

Sin City (2005)

Pounding and Slick

[7/10 · 17 April 2005]

Sin City is stylish. Sin City is gritty. Sin City is a sledgehammer. Sin City is bold. Sin City is pessimistic. Sin City is subversive. Sin City is ultra-violent. Sin City is scorched earth. Sin City is funny. Sin City is over the top. Sin City escapes reality.

It's a good roller coaster ride. Enjoy it. Don't think. Just watch. If you must think, think about style, movement, technique and energy. React.

You'll remember the movie because it is graphic and extreme. You'll remember the movie because it is stylish. Accept what you view. Don't ask questions. You will enjoy. It will leave you blank.

Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)

Fun for the Kids, Less for the Adults

[16 October 2004]

It seems that many people really liked this movie when they were children. I have to admit that I liked the "special powers" aspect of this movie and it was fun to watch when I was a child. I also suspect these same people still love this movie as an adult more out of nostalgia than because of the properties of the movie itself.

As an adult, I find the movie less enchanting. One of the reasons it works for me has to do with the more competent adult actors in it. The child actors are typical child actors--not really all that convincing or interesting to watch.

Some of the movie is pretty cheesy and there are occasional "Dr. Who" style special effects and sound effects (meaning they aren't always very convincing or appropriate).

I actually liked many of the animated Disney features much better than the (often) contrived and manipulative live action movies such as this or Candleshoe. I liked Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Robin Hood (animated), The Jungle Book (animated), The Shaggy Dog, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, etc. I don't know if some of these were from the 60s rather than the mid to late 70s when Disney admittedly had some problems making interesting movies.

I don't like this movie enough to watch it without children present, but children will probably still enjoy it. I think there are many Disney movies better than this one (made between the 1930s until now), but if the children have seen all of the Disney classics already, the adults may want to show Escape to Witch Mountain to keep the kids entertained for a while.

Blue City (1997)

An Atmospheric Short, Well Made and Interesting

[8/10 · 5 July 2004]

I rented a DVD of shorts called "Insanity" and Blue City was the best of the short pieces on the disk. As you can see from the summary, it's about a suicidal man, 2 car thieves and a boy with a basketball. Essentially, the characters keep running into each other over the course of the story and the results are unexpected.

This 12.5 minute film works since it keeps the audience engaged by showing the emotions and motivations of the characters without dialog. It's fun to see the interactions of the characters since the interactions are unexpected, yet humorous and pleasing.

It's probably not a film that will change your life, but it at least makes the audience think and feel. The look is appropriate and it's certainly a very good film for the budget (probably a student film). None of the actors deliver dialog, but they do a good job expressing the emotions and motivations of the characters. The casting is good, and nothing sticks out as being cheap, inappropriate, or particularly pretentious as happens in some student films.

I give this short an 8/10. I hope the people behind this film have created some other things since they have talent that should be used.

The Fog of War (2003)

A good film, but ambiguous about some things, clear on others

[8/10 · 30 June 2004]

The Fog of War is a film in the style of other Errol Morris films such as Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, or The Thin Blue Line. It's certainly a well-made film and it will leave you scratching your head when you finish. It's ultimately up to you to figure out what lessons you wish to draw from the movie. While Morris shows thematic road signs, he doesn't always present an overt agenda or strong point of view (though you will come to some conclusions). Certainly, Errol Morris has a strong agenda when he talks outside of his own documentaries.

As others have mentioned, the 11-lesson structure seems contrived since many items talked about by McNamara don't fit neatly into any of the categories and sometimes don't support the points supposedly being talked about. It's unclear whether these 11 lessons are being imposed on the film by Errol Morris in order to structure the film, or if McNamara has stated these 11 points somewhere else, and Morris is trying to constrain the film to fit them. We're not really given any context to decide who has come up with these points. Whether based on Morris' or McNamara's ideas, these eleven lessons seem artificial to the interview taking place. I actually found them distracting rather than particularly enlightening because they felt intellectually imposed rather than fitting any emotional or intuitive needs.

This is a worthwhile film to see because it gives glimpses into McNamara as a complex man, and to a lesser extent into the times in which decisions about war have been made. It is also a somewhat bothersome film since the viewers don't come out with any particularly clear conclusions about certain things brought up in the film. Is McNamara despicable and responsible for many unnecessary deaths? Did he actually try to moderate LBJ with respect to Viet Nam? Who really made which decisions? The viewer never gets particularly clear answers to these issues. Many things are ambiguous and unclear and Errol Morris doesn't give any easy answers, either, since his subject wont. The movie doesn't shy away from the ambiguity but simply shows it on these issues. McNamara clearly doesn't want to give a straightforward answer to certain questions or to explain certain issues.

Aside from the ambiguity, there are certain things that become very clear in the film: McNamara is brilliant, analytical and interesting; he is loyal and emotional (you see this when he talks about JFK's death and being fired by LBJ); many things that happened in WWII against Japan were terrible; war is impossible to predict and control once it starts; other resolutions to a problem besides war are preferable.

Overall, I give this movie an 8/10 since it's very good, but flawed in some ways (notably the imposed 11-lesson structure). The music by Phillip Glass generally works nicely and adds to the experience.

On another note, Errol Morris' style sometimes rubs me the wrong way since he throws in a lot of visual metaphors which sometimes seem unsubtle, lacking in emotional tone, or insight. I find myself distracted by his style rather than really focusing on what is being said. Other people may not feel this way about his films since it's probably a matter of taste and style. Whether you like or dislike the signature style you will run across it in all of his films.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

A Good Film That Ties Things Together for the Uninformed

[8/10 · 28 June 2004]

Although, I dislike the Bush administration immensely, I didn't think this was the most brilliant film ever. It's a good film (not completely brilliant or deep, and sometimes disingenuous, but good). Michael Moore tugs on the heartstrings nicely. He represents his point of view and conveys information in a sensational-enough way that it actually wakes some people from their brain-dead slumber. Apparently it takes a sledge-hammer to wake many people up.

Facts are overstated and skewed (such as the implication that many of the Bin Laden relatives are encouraging Osama to commit terrorist acts against the US). He implies a number of things that aren't completely factual--often deceptively and manipulatively. At the same time, most of the "hard facts" he reports in the movie are taken from public sources such as government reports, newspapers, and investigative journalists. Things such as the amount that the Bushes make from their Saudi oil connections vs. the presidential pay are well documented. The movie is a mixture of exaggerated implications along with well-established facts. It can be a frustrating mixture since the sometimes misleading implications and character assassination will probably make some people doubt even the well-established facts. It becomes difficult for viewers to sort things out for themselves if they haven't been diligent in following the news for the past three years from an in-depth source. Hint: 30 minute newscasts with 8 minutes of ads are NOT in-depth (especially with all those dippy human-interest stories, along with sports and weather taking up half of those 22 minutes).

Ultimately, the movie's problems are also its strengths at the box office. It's often simplistic, misleading and sensational, but demands attention through its insistence, humor, and shock value. Moore has correctly figured out that many people won't pay attention unless they're given something shocking, big and outrageous. He delivers something that is a product of its times and meets people on their level: simplified, entertaining, manipulative, emotional, gripping and incendiary. I don't like the "dumbing down" aspects of the movie--but it's really nothing new. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have been using these exact same techniques for years. For instance, people such as Rush Limbaugh did things such as implying that Bill Clinton had one of his friends killed when it was well-established that the friend committed suicide because of intense pressures and depression. Some of the attacks on Bush are similarly unfounded and speculative. Moore has figured out the antics of the conservative propaganda machine and beat them at their own game. He's fighting fire with fire. It's unfortunate that many of these tactics aren't always particularly honest, are divisive, and encourage emotion, rhetoric, and speculation more than rational thought or responsibility.

Perhaps for me the thing this movie does best is to summarize the very troubling aspects of the Bush administration for those who weren't bothering to pay any attention. Even despite the bias (or maybe because of it), this movie will probably wake some people up who were too busy rallying around the flag to pay any attention to what was actually happening. Even with the bias, Fahrenheit 9/11 will stir up issues and ensure that they're talked about rather than swept under the rug. Maybe this movie will even have a part in being sure that government and big business are held responsible for their acts or deception and irresponsibility if even some of the allegations it makes are shown to be true.

Hellboy (2004)

Surprisingly Entertaining

[7/10 · 13 May 2004]

Since I'm not a huge comic book fan (gasp! yes, I know comic books are ultra-cool for trendy kids) I wasn't sure I would like it. The trailers looked kind of interesting, but with a name like Hell Boy, I thought it might be the equivalent of an 80s heavy-metal hair band in movie form.

A friend finally convinced me to go see it and I enjoyed it. It delivers what it promises--a fun action movie with enough plot and character development so that it's not completely brainless (just mostly). I thought this movie was similar in quality with X-Men and a little better than X2 (which I didn't like as well). It has similar themes of misfit, outcast mutants, er, supernatural creatures trying to save mankind from disaster and destruction. You get some love, redemption and Hell Boy has some good lines.

While you're there, do a guessing game to see if you can figure out which character John Hurt plays (don't look at the credits here until you've watched it). I was a little surprised to see his name on the credits. Maybe I'm just dopey but I really didn't know he was in it until I looked.

A lot is predictable, but the makers put in some elements that weren't complete formula. For example, I kept expecting the obnoxious boss (played by Jeffrey Tambor) to "get his" since these types of characters usually turn into monster food pretty fast (just like the unnamed minor characters that always get killed on Star Trek away missions). Stay through most of the credits and you'll get a little clip of him as a comic reward. He was funny and contemptible, but in the end he wasn't so bad. This is just a minor example, but the movie felt fresher than a lot of things that have been trying to recycle formulas lately.

I can't help comparing this movie to Van Helsing since they're both in the theaters at the same time and vaguely in the same genre. Skip Van Helsing and see Hell Boy instead. It is by far a more effective movie than Van Helsing was and on a much smaller budget. I hope someone in Hollywood is paying attention and notices that bigger, faster, and more expensive is not always better. You notice that this movie bothered to create at least a minimal plot and some character definition?

Just wait 10 years when everyone can do high-quality special effects for even cheaper and special effects will stop being able to sell a movie on their own.

In all an entertaining movie. Not profound, but one of the best sci-fi/action movies this year.