brucetwo-2 Reviews

A Bigger Splash (1973)

ZZZZZZzzz-out of its time

[3/10 · 15 April 2024]

Seems to be one of those 1970s "gay identity" films. British tastes in art never do much for me. Hockney just comes across as an Andy Warhol wannabe--the artificial yellow hair, the I am an artist" eccentric eyeglasses. The flat one-note swimming pool paintings derived from commercial art styles and techniques. Warhol did stylized art of Marylin, Liz Taylor and Elvis--but he did a lot of other things in his art as well. Warhol's 'factory' was open to other creative people. A whole community grew out of his activities. Hockney's world seems like a soap opera of people in a self-indulgent little coterie/clique. Yes there is a swimming pool scene of nude young men with camera angles looking up their butts, and a glamorized but documentary-style shot of two guys having sex. Maybe that was 'cutting edge' for film in the 1970s--but now--who cares? And Warhol's many films about gays and transvestites that same period in New York were a lot more honest, and a lot more weird, and curiously, had a lot more vitality.

So--Hockney is not a very interesting or appealing person on film--just annoying, or out of his depth maybe. And the world has moved way past the gay "statement" films of 50 years ago.

The Vietnam War (2017)

if you lived through it, you'll find lots of stuff left out

[7/10 · 21 March 2024]

Many years of war and dimwitted politicians. Finally documented on-screen--long after the perpetrators are all dead, and many of their victims too.

Before the war got going, people assumed that America was one point of view--mostly defined by the magazines, newspapers and movies: --factories, CocaCola, John Wayne, unquestioned racism and superior military might.

That was never true--America did not fragment during the war--the war just brought those fissures and fragments to the surface. The Baby Boom, the Generation Gap was part of it. But much more, regional, educational, economic, rural, urban, back, white, suburban, urban. These divisions and tensions were bound to come out during a decade of an unwinnable war. But it was quite an upheaval.

ALL the American politicians in this Ken Burns documentary come across as basically ignorant, egotistical and paranoid fools. The footage and recordings of Johnson especially, and the "best and brightest" of his JFK-LBJ cabinet.

Vietnam was basically a RELIGIOUS war--it was based on beliefs and assumptions--military strategy that would not work, the goal of 'fighting communism" as imposed onto the nation of Vietnam. And the easy expendability of American lives, young and black and white.

The protesters believed that they were fighting to stop the 'crimes against humanity' that they'd seen in all the World War II documentaries about the Nazis--these same crimes now being committed by the US.

The government countered these criticisms by saying that these anti-war youths were lazy, and cowardly and privileged, and "nervous nellies"--to use an LBJ phrase. And "campus bums" to quote Richard Nixon.

We can say today that more returning Vietnam Vets have died from suicide after the war than died in combat during the war. But today, the suicide rate of returning US soldiers is much much higher than that.

Here in this election year of 2024 we may be seeing all these divisions returning and another right-wing lying administration taking over all our lives.

Joyland (2022)

Reminiscent of American work by Tennessee Williams

[10/10 · 9 November 2023]

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"--married couples living under the roof of an elderly authoritative patriarch and the psychological and social and sexual frustrations they each endure.

Human nature may be the same everywhere. Decades after Williams' famous play and movie American society has moved on from one "extended" family of several generations living together to the post-WW2 "nuclear families" of Mom and Dad and 2 children living in their suburban homes. And now we have the "fragmented families" of today, with divorced couples, single parent households, LGBT children and adults.

Changes in the American economy helped make most of these changes in society and the family structure happen. And this change took place over many many decades here, with a great deal of conflict and upheaval.

In "Joyland" we see a third-world Pakistani family going through these changes. This film is especially good in showing the lives of several people in this family, in a believable way. This is more complete and more complex than the publicity and reviews would lead you to expect. It is much more than one Pakistani guy discovering his 'gay identity'.

Highly recommended!

To Die For (1995)

PERFORMANCE, AND MOVIE, NOT BELIEVABLE

[4/10 · 3 August 2023]

A weird movie. Wasn't it out together from a Joyce Maynard novel and stuck onto a True Crime story about an older womans educing teenagers to kill her husband.

Nicole Kidman gives it a good try, but her character is comepletly one-note and portrayed as a mixture of over-cute and insecure. But also aggressively manipulative.

I just vere believed her as a character. It was more like a made-for-TV one-dimensional portrayal. The plot and script says her character did these actions, but I never saw a person there--good, evil, stupid or whatever--more like a cartoon.

Also--some weird camera work--one 'undressed" nude shot of Nicole is shown only from the sholders up and only from the rear. Personally I can live without seeing total frontal nudity of Ms. Kidman--I'm sure she is pretty. But this cmaera shot draws attention to itself as some kind of censorship--why? Did Nicole have something in her contract about No Nudity? Weird for a supposedly hot woman who uses her sexuality to manipulate men.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

A fun fantastic fantasy

[7/10 · 9 June 2023]

Not remotely "realistic"--more like a fabulous fairy tale.-Do you actually notice that in central-eastern Europe all the signs on buildings and vehicles and streets are in English!?

Same with the acting--you would not exactly call it "campy" but the style of most all the performances is basically Hollywood American Vernacular--speaking in movie-style slang and jargon. Not meant to be realistic. It;'s all playing and play-acting. A film in a similar pseudo historical comedic style is of course "Deat of Stalin"--all the American actors portraying Russina history as if it's an American TV sit-com.

This is of course on purpose--it gives the film it's winking "all in fun" overall tone. Like the architecture of the buildings in the movie itself--lavish, realistic but also exaggerated. You could call it cute, you could call it a confection, you could call it an adventure story. But it is never condescending. Just join in the fun. Not very film director can pull this off--balancing the tone like this and making it entertaining.

Shazam! (2019)

slow, derivitive, aimed at kids

[5/10 · 14 May 2023]

The Shazam poster makes you think it's a comedy or a spoof. But it isn't. Just an overlong unoriginal child adventure. But the plot and beginning of the movie is WAY TO SLOW--lots of scenes, but more like disjointed mini-episodes. It takes forever for Billy Batson to get his 'super powers.' The art direction--sets, cinematography, costumes seem like a mish-mash of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and similar movies. No originality or rhythm to any of it.

The plot seems like the success of the Spiderman movies convinced the studios to cash in with a different superhero.

Seems aimed at kids, but does it really hold anybody's interest over the long running time?

The Women's Room (1980 TV Movie)

TV version hides Gay Identity

[5/10 · 21 July 2022]

In the book the main character decides she and her grad school friends are definitely gay--but given that era--the book makes then closeted and sort of indirect about their sex lives,. On the TV version she finds love with a guy instead of women.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

timeless working class movie--

[8/10 · 5 May 2022]

The "first" of the 1960s blue-collar 'angry young men' films, novels and plays. A bit more glamorized perhaps in the later films: Alfie--Michael Caine in color. Quadrophenia, with a rock and roll soundtrack--the mods and rockers fighting over the same thing a generation later.

But look at a 3+ hour 2018 CHINESE movie--same story, same frustrations--ELEPHANT STANDING STILL. The sad thing is that this life is always there. The happy thing is people notice and make movies and art in reaction.

Here in the United States lives are similar but different--endless consumer goods, endless political promises, endless debt--but humanity lives on.

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)

my 1950s American Childhood in a 2018 Chinese movie!

[9/10 · 4 May 2022]

I grew up in a medium size American city on a large river in the Midwest . I was in grade school and middle school (junior high school, as they called it then) in the 1950s. Just about EVERYTHING in Elephant Sitting Still happened to me in 1950s America. And the mood--the edgy pissed-off adults, the kids fighting each other--so familiar. That's generic human nature too I guess--especially if you live an uncertain Blue Collar life (or less) . But Elephant here captures it. Not everything that happened in my childhood was sad or unhappy--we had comics, heroes, tv shows, family and aunts and uncles . But the overall mood of stasis and frustration--deeper and larger than you can even objectively recognize it--that is there.

An eastern European movie--made before the fall of the USSR captures a similar mood and time--and the title is equally apt: "TIME STANDS STILL" (Cf: Elephant Sitting Still.). It is sad to hear that the Chinese filmmaker killed himself when asked to cut the film's running time in half--(don't they have 2-part mini-series on Chinese TV?) Clearly there is a metaphorical significance for the "Elephant" of the title--China is the elephant? Chinese society is the elephant? Frustrated human nature is the elephant?

$5 a Day (2008)

good acting, stale formula, improbable plot

[5/10 · 31 March 2022]

Ok--if you want to see these actors in a movie--here you are. The situations are pretty predictable--more like a TV sit-com than a movie. I did not believe in all those "free promotions" and the "friend" who could counterfeit a drivers license with a birthday for every month or day or the year. Or the fawning, grateful, affectionate hairdressing women. And when the son says the Dad sent him to prison for a crime he himself committed--I quit following the plot--too phony. (This is not a "spoiler alert"--it happens in the middle of the film.) I kept wondering if the Dad would reveal that he has cancer at the end of the movie--oh, wait--he already said that at the beginning!

Where is Mary Tyler Moore being "disease of the week" when you need her??

Dan in Real Life (I) (2007)

By the book standard plot and characters, good acting

[5/10 · 17 March 2022]

I feel like I've seen so many versions of this film--it has become a genre in itself. The big loving all-white 3 generations family living in a lavish house only a multi-millionaire could afford in real life--but always out in the county somewhere.

And a big get-together of the tribe. A soap opera meets rom-com. Dan falls for his brother's girlfriend. Diane Weist here plays the Catherine Deneuve role of worldly wise but vulnerable matron. I don't think she secretly has cancer in this movie--but that would be standard for the genre.

The acting is good, but the characters are on the level of TV sitcom people--simplified, stock figures. If you like movies like this--it is standard fare.

Home Before Dark (1958)

Real Drama with Real People

[10/10 · 7 August 2021]

Most reviewers here talk about the main character, overcoming her nervous breakdown in an unsympathetic environment. But this film is much more than that. It's also a pretty good send-up of the stuffy pretentious community of a local New England college town, and the small, insensitive personalities there. The Jean Simmons character is slowly coming to grips with this. Things she feels emotionally but does not yet recognize or accept rationally or consciously. The Ephram Zimbalist character is the outsider--a temporary new instructor at the college.who sees this before she does. He decides to move to Boston and get a "real" job. And at the end of the film Gene Simmons pretty much does something similar--dumps her stuffy husband goes out on her own.

This film is so much more real --less soapy and less dumbed-down --than the standard Hollywood movie of that era.

I saw it on late night TV in the early 1970s, when I was coming to see that my own future needed to be outside the "academic community," which at the time was the world that I knew best. I think this movie gave me an extra push to move on and out into a larger more unknown way of life. I always think of it.

Locke (2013)

Good film and drama--but are the characters real?

[7/10 · 30 May 2021]

This is a very British film. I'm not sure than an average American guy would act the same way, with the same people and situation. Would he really leave his job to be there at the actual delivery with a woman he only had sex with once--just because he never knew his own father? Kind of sounds like watered-down Freud.

Tom Hardy makes his character believable--but what is he?--some confused religious guy, tightly wound? American films are all about people throwing OFF restrictions and escaping moralizing--not about "accepting responsibility". Reminds me of Mike Meyer's line at the end of the satirical WAYNE"S WORLD: "Now aren't we all better people?"

The Swamp (2001)

A great and real movie

[10/10 · 17 May 2021]

There are few films I've seen that actually capture the world that I myself grew up in. This is one of them. Real people, real lives, coming from real experience.

I came of age in the southern Midwest of the United States, but along with GUMMO and MY LEFT FOOT this is the world I knew, with people doing and acting on the things I grew up with. FIRST RATE!!!!

Snide and Prejudice (1997)

BOMB!!!!--Marat/Sade it isn't!

[2/10 · 18 March 2021]

Whatever it takes to make a bad movie--this film has it--bad acting, bad pacing, wandering storyline, scenes that aren't scenes at all. The worst of it is the actor portraying the mental patient who thinks he's Hitler--sooooBAD, bad bad overacting--extreme closeups of his face while he's chewing up the scenery--painful and embarrassing to watch--to what point? Ultimately this is the director's fault--nobody really seems to know what and how they are supposed to be doing.

Thumbsucker (2005)

A "message" film with idealized characters

[5/10 · 8 March 2021]

Nobody in this film really talks in real life the way the characters in this movie speak to each other. No little brother seriously gives a speech telling his older brother he's "self-absorbed." Most of the scenes are like this--TV-level psychobabble. The actors are all good and do a good job with their material. But it's mostly the way some people WISH people were like--not real in most of these situations--too simplistic, and thus--off-putting. The PLOT of this 2005 movie is curiously mirrored by Greta Gerwig's much more recent film--LADY BIRD: --A quirky teen wants to leave her family and go to school in NYC. The ending shots of both films are almost identical.

Between the Folds (2008)

An insightful look at an often ignored art and craft and science--origami

[8/10 · 26 February 2021]

Good film about the different approaches to the ancient yet 'cutting-edge' art of paper folding, circa 2008. Loved it. But some criticisms--1. too many extreme closeups of the faces of the folders--you start looking at their noses or eyelids instead of listening to them. 2. No step=by-step demonstration of folding any one origami figure or work from beginning to completion--this would be helpful and fun to people who don't already know much about paper folding--to see what it's about. 3. The film's 2008 production date places it before another parallel technology that has blossomed since then--3-D printing. There is much in this film about computers and the math and theory behind origami--but 3-D printing and the related computer software and hardware has taken a different approach to some of the same things.

3-Iron (2004)

Does it last? Reminds me of Dona Flor and Her 2 Husbands

[6/10 · 22 January 2021]

Lots of viewers and reviewers seemed to like this film--I did too. Good score on Rotten Tomatoes, etc. BUT--a fable--allegory? --Yeah OK--I couldn't really get inside some of the character's motivations--the "abusive" husband--is alternately pleading and then violent. The woman doesn't seem turned on to him at all. In America these relationships generally end-- the the couple splits up. Instead she remains passive, Buddah-like, mysterious--and passive-aggresive in the relationship. Maybe in Asia women still have less freedom than in the West--is this Ibsen's A DOLL HOUSE?. Clearly she's driving the husband nuts. And he's not handling it too well. Throughout the movie we see artsy/artistic black and white nude photos of this woman on the walls of apartments--Does this mean our housewife is a former artist's model, or just symbolically represents a dream-woman everybody longs for? Or someone who is idealized by others so not the real her.. At the end of the movie, she seems to be happy and content--living with both her confused, abusive real-life husband, and her escaped free-spirit motorcycle lover. There is some speculation by the viewers that at the end this adventurous romantic lover is actually a 'ghost' in her imagination, and this is enough keeps her happy. The same ending as the classic movie "Dona Flor and her Two Husbands." A love triangle resolved in a classic way--reality and dreams. Social station vs.true love. The princess runs off with the pirate, etc. Note that the 3-Iron title echoes the 3-way love relationship of the film--or the one woman and the two sides of male personality. And Iron has both strength and rigidity. The thing about many contemporary Asian films--people in Asia have lived through many of the same cultural upheavals of the past 70 years as the West has, but their personal and economic options are still quite limited and constrained. A lot of current Asian films seem to explore adult male-female relationships under these conditions--but often in a symbolic or indirect or surreal way--the tensions between freedom and resignation and acceptance and fate, and the intricate 'dance' of getting along with each other. In American movies when the girl runs off with the charismatic bad guy she doesn't go back to her husband--and then dream of the sexy motorcycle guy she left.. Unless it's a black comedy or social criticism--Great Gatsby--Daisy Buchanan being true to her Social Class and dumping Gatsby for her socially prominent husband, or she's just using the guy as a femme fatale for some devious reason--pretending love to get him to do something--like rob a bank or murder her husband.. One other thing: EVERYBODY in 3 Iron looks pretty, and affluent and very clean.--A fable? Done well--but how long does it stay with you? Does it last?

The Puppetmaster (1993)

BORING with INEPT CAMERA-WORK AND DIRECTION

[2/10 · 22 September 2020]

I wonder if the people who write rave reviews of this movie have actually ever sat down and watched it? I wonder if the director of this film has ever watched any movies himself--except his own. Everything about it is wrong--except maybe the actors are ok--but not very interesting or involving to watch.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

A Misogynistic Video Game--more set-pieces than plot or story

[3/10 · 17 February 2018]

Does this director hate women?--they mostly get killed. On the other hand, the main character is always getting shot, but in the next scene he's always unwounded and whole--ready to shot people again. Lots of spacey sets and art-direction--just a set-up for the next chase scene or battle scene. Made by/for the Video-Game generation. I wonder if any people working on this film ever actually read any Philip K. Dick. And whats the point of the "epic" battle scene near the end where the flying car is sinking in water and the 'hero' gets to strangle to evil woman person/android/robot--whatever underwater? Seems like a video-game made by/for a 14-year-old boy--kick butt and kill women and be an altruistic martyr.

The Judge (2014)

great acting in "by-the-numbers" plot

[4/10 · 24 February 2016]

Downey, DuVall, Billy Bob Thornton--all give great performances. But the story is nothing new-- an estranged son comes back home and confronts his dying troubled stern father. Guilt, regrets and recrimination--and some kind of acceptance and a hint of redemption on all sides by the end.--SEEN IT ALL BEFORE! The characters in the script--they are definitely not as interesting as the actors who portray them. The older brother who lost his chance at an baseball career and runs a tires store-- again--formula stuff. Though Denofrio is great, as always.

To get emotionally involved in these characters, you'd have to see them in a standard Network TV series melodrama--seeing their lives and ups and downs week after week maybe. These people's lives are really just not that involving here --formula, formula. (Can't help wondering if it was hoping to spin-off into a TV series--it's that kind of stuff).

There are some non-formula parts to the movie though--Downey's ex-girlfriend dos not look, or act, like a movie starlet--but for the pregnancy--the Jerry Springer-like "who's the Daddy??-- subplot, she seems real--or at least not a predictable plot formula. Also the ending of the film--that was better than expected--Downey's story is left hanging--he does not decide to reconcile with his wife, or move back to his hometown or become a judge-- it's all still up in the air--except for the bathroom coda scene--where he says semi-literate juries deliver compassion and intelligence in the courtroom--American justice is affirmed!--(Another formula ending--good guys win!)

I think this film is exactly what it set out to be--a predictable, pitchable-in-the boardroom formula, with good stars and actors. And--it was great seeing Robert Downey playing a real adult instead of a comic-book character. On the DVD that I watched there was a very FUNNY "extra feature" Making-Of spoof. Definitely worth watching, It shows how much fun actors have--and again, the actors in this extra feature have more appeal than the characters in the movie here..

Au hasard Balthazar (1966)

Dreadfully slow for today's audience!!!

[5/10 · 7 December 2015]

The pace of this movie--both of the PLOT and of the physical movement of the characters and the action of the scenes is very slow--like audiences needed more help to "catch up" with what's happening in 1966 when this film was released. It reminded me of another "classic" but dreadfully-paced foreign movie--Dreyer's "DAY OF WRATH"--ugh!

Beyond that, the film seems to have an "instructional" storybook quality to it--like it's saying to the audience: "This is what you're supposed to Think!!" And then the Dread that hang's over the whole movie because you think someone is going to mutilate or kill the donkey. Robert Bresson is supposed to be an important and classic film-maker, but I've never "gotten" him. I tried very hard to stay awake during "Lancelot du Lac" and thought it was stupid and felt ripped off. It is possible to be artful and "symbolic" and metaphorical in good films! For rural French life--there are all the writing of Georges Simenon and the many movies made from them. For provincial life and aimless, cruel youth there is Fellini's I Vitelloni.

The Two Jakes (1990)

Disappointing, Forgettable...

[2/10 · 13 November 2015]

Not much of a sequel to CHINATOWN. Same writer--Robert Towne. But what's missing?--Well first of all, a plot! And a mystery! And some kind of revelation. It's a real mush-mash, looking like no one was really in charge of the movie. It's troubled production history--with personnel changes, etc. might have something to do with that. The movie--as a story or drama--just kind of stumbles along. With no real momentum or any recognizable tone or style.(Like the slapstick explosion early in the film--what was that?--an homage to Charlie Chaplin??)

Of course, what's REALLY missing from this film--the TWO JAKES--is Roman Polanski.He knew what he was doing in CHINATOWN and told an intriguing and relevant story, with many memorable scenes that still stay with me years and years later. What stays with me from the TWO JAKES is just a sad feeling of disappointment. Nothing much else. A waste!

Lancelot of the Lake (1974)

Bad movie-self-indulgent -waste of existence and attention

[1/10 · 10 July 2015]

I guess I was expecting Truffaut or Godard. Back in the late 60s and early 70s the "old Hollywood" was still churning out movies that I did not like and didn't want to see. "Foreign" films were like a breath of fresh air and originality at that time.

Well--this film--"LANCELOT" was a real let-down.--It really sucked--boring, clumsy, low-production values, a director's self-centered ego trip--maybe. His "vision" is so inaccessible and uninteresting to most film-goers that it just seems to be a clumsy waste of our time. Perhaps it is supposed to be some kind of allegory about the way the people in Bresson's own life are relating to him--the "knights" and the queen--but who cares?

It is not true that all people in France have BORING boring lives!! Or make boring movies. Or want to watch them. Other reviewers of this film on the IMDb seem to like this movie--but I don't think I'd want to watch anything they like."I mean no harm or put fault on anyone who lives in a vault".....

Space Station 76 (2014)

Definitely NOT Science Fiction. Style and themes of a stage play.

[5/10 · 21 April 2015]

Nothing in the plot of this movie has anything to do with science fiction. Yes, it is set on a "space station" but it could as easily have been a 20th century cruise liner or a 19th century Orient Express Train. The plot is all about the interaction between the personalities of the people on-board. Why is it so clearly a stage play?--because it uses the old tried and true plot structure of "drama"--characters reveal themselves to each other and come to make self-discoveries as the play unwinds--that's what the film is all about--these 'revelations'. Why is this supposedly the 1970s?--Well the art-direction--the sets and costumes look something like Kubrick's film 2001--which came out in 1968--and also Star Trek--the iconic 1960's TV show. There are touches like black-and-white TV monitors etc., telephones with cords, and lots of cigarette smoking. Actors--insecure actors puzzling out how to project the script that they're given traditionally use cigarette-smoking as an action to substitute for emoting. Well--there's certainly a LOT of smoking in this FILM. Maybe they're saying that smoking is still OK in this 1970s--but it's probably just a lame ripoff of the tobacco and alcohol consumption in the MAD MEN TV show. There is some "symbolism" in the movie--the huge asteroid, which seems to menace and trivialize the mere dilemmas and conflicts of the human characters. The other symbolism is maybe the sort-of-1970s setting--a guy freaking out over his unaccepted Gay Identity--really? In 2014?--come on!--Will and Grace has been off the air for years. Also the couple who "stay together for the children"--another theme from a previous era. Today's society has moved beyond these dilemmas. Most of these plot concerns are really kind of generic and clichéd. Best part of the film is the ACTING--and this is definitely a film about ACTING--not science fiction or plot or story! Some of the acting is uneven--some characters are better at it than others. Liv Tyler is really good and not self-conscious and labored like some of the others in the cast. She does not chew up the scenery. And it's fun seeing her play a real role and not just a comic-book character as in Lord of the Rings, etc. SO--I was a little let-down by this film, but I'd give it a 7 for effort but only a 5 (at best) overall. Kind of a weird hybrid of a movie.