jesus-100-984521 Reviews

Down Bad (2021– )

amazing, serene camera work

[9/10 · 24 May 2023]

I have never seen a camera used this way before, dwelling lovingly on each frame as though loathe to move on, creating a sense of intimate space in which real emotions can reveal themselves.

I do value the subtitles that make a pathway for me to identify with the characters. The last episode is inexplicably surreal - who is alive and who is dead? How could this or that have happened? There seems to be a missing episode.

The story as it unfolds slowly seems too real to be a tv show. But the director is on top of every shot. A joy to watch, even though the story is cruel.

All I want from this series is more of it. Every actor lives their role; there are no false notes or self-indulgent histrionics for the camera. But why....?

Dedalus (2018)

painfully real and true to love and its lack. Thank you Jonah.

[9/10 · 22 August 2022]

If your heart beats like mine to the rhythm of this lovely film, you will feel the desperation of the young men and the limitations of the elders. I've been a psychiatrist for 50 years, and I learn from this film that the older men who love younger men are recapitulating the love of their mothers for them, as that love is selfish superficial, and harmful.

Another Earth (2011)

Suspend disbelief, and love this movie

[9/10 · 7 July 2011]

I am a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who can tell a hawk from a handsaw, and there is a wonderful handsaw in this movie. So, I feel qualified to tell you it is safe to see this movie as it is, without worrying about details like gravity. Do not allow unimaginative naysayers to keep you from enjoying this gem. I mean, we all can enjoy vampire and zombie movies, right? Is any movie any better than "Let the Right One In"? I saw this movie last night in Brookline Mass at a Q&A preview, with director, writers, and an actor -- all combined in two lovely people. No one in our sophisticated audience that included a CETI scientist cared enough about the "laws of physics" problems to mention them in the question period. All we cared about were the endearing characters, the music both acoustic and visual, the plot developments, the shocking climaxes, the compelling emotional plausibility.

The movie is not about anything as terrestrial as gravity. In the world of this movie, something has happened to upset some kind of cosmic symmetry, and the other earth has appeared from a parallel universe. I do wish some character or other had dispelled the physics with "I don't know why our orbits are not affected". But, the metaphor works as a way to discuss looking at oneself. It really does not matter. The acting is perfect, the camera-work perfectly beautiful, the plot deeply affecting with wonderful surprises.