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jmweh
Reviews
Safe (1995)
The worst film ever
Only an absolutely great actress like Julianne Moore could pull this off, which is the only positive thing I can think of. On the other hand, she shouldn't have done it. The plot is non-existent, the action slow and boring, there is no point to it all, and it's a total waste of time. Even the picture quality on the DVD is at a record low. We were wasting the full two hours just waiting for "now it's gonna happen". Almost every character showed promise as a crook. Almost every situation looks like a conspiracy. But, abandon all hope, ye who watch, there's nothing there. Nothing ever happens. I guess you're supposed to come away scared that we're all slowly poisoned by "something" out there, even though that "something" is never described. Save yourself some serious aggravation and avoid this film. Unless you enjoy content free, uninspiring, and diffuse messages of pollution coupled with unscientific drivel. Now I know to avoid anything with a similar set of prices won at obscure film festivals.
City of Angels (1998)
The first accurate OR scene I've ever seen
There's just one point I want to make about this movie, and that's about the OR scene when they're doing a coronary bypass. This is the first time I've ever seen a correct movie rendition of it, it's usually a baroque farce, but not here. Every instrument I could see, the bypass machine, the aortic cannula, the headlamps, the ECG monitors (and the traces!), the orders given, the type of suture, were correct (except I suspect they chose a heavier suture than normal 7-0, since a 7-0 would be very hard to see, it looked more like 4-0 or 5-0). Even the tying of knots, the Joule strengths used for defibrillation, the lidocaine dosages, the body temperature during bypass, the kind of mag the bypass operator is reading, the music (except we had Bach, country & western, Dylan or Cat Stevens, depending on surgeon and how the procedure was going), the time it will take to reprime the pump to get back on cardiac bypass again; I found not one single error! There's this one moment when everyone looks under the table, which is weird, but then Meg Ryan leaves the table, so even that is OK from a sterility point of view. I don't know if other people care, but this kind of care for detail makes a movie a lot more enjoyable for me.
Oh, one more remark: the reanimation with internal cardiac massage is a bit short, they give up a bit too soon. But that's exactly what she blames herself for, later.