Change Your Image
joelius
Reviews
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Crap
This film was crap, a lie from start to finish. It is one thing to contend that none of the other characters "really knew" the Lisbon sisters--it is a serious problem when the film itself, or we the audience, don't know either. The girls are no more real human beings to Coppola that to the boys who worship them...they are symbols with no real identity of their own. What do we know about them, other than that they are all blonde and beautiful and that they give up on life pretty easy? The film's fetishizes them but doesn't bother to know them.
Oh, wait, I think I'm on to something here...they aren't supposed to be real characters. Like I said, they're symbols! They may seem to represent the ideal of middle-class suburban affluence, but their mass suicide puts the lie to this fantasy, exposing the corrupt, soul-killing truth of life in bourgeois America.
Thanks, but I've heard that one before.
The Undead (1957)
I like the grave digger
Yeah, that's right, I like the grave digger AND his incessant singing. Everyone calls him mad, MAD, I say!--but his little ballads are always right on point. He is very reminiscent of the Fool in King Lear--the observer whose supposed simple-mindedness allows him alone to comment insightfully on the madness of the others.
Also, I like movies that teach me things. Like that women in the fifties somehow had both 14" waists and, well, GIGANTIC BREASTS! Weird science, man. It's a wonder that woman didn't snap in two when she stood up.