silvergirl606 Reviews

The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)

A confusing campy masterpiece

[1/10 · 10 April 2008]

I have never read any John Irving, but based on this movie and "Simon Birch", the man is either a jaw-droppingly terrible writer, or he has the worst luck in movie adaptations of any author in history.

This movie lost me in the first five minutes. The plot is impossible to follow without confusion. There are in fact 147 different plots, each more absurd than the last. The most absurd being the campy terrorists whose plot is never explained. Characters die and their family members never seem sad. It's impossible to tell how much time has passed. Characters wander in and out without explanation. The dialog and characters are laughable and totally unbelievable. Even good actors like Jodie Foster are awkward and are always a beat off.

The slapstick attempts at humor made me cringe (to say nothing of the incest.) The gang rape and multiple deaths of family members made me laugh, because I didn't believe in the characters or the situations.

When Jodie Foster's character is raped I was disturbed for a moment. But when her brother and a gang of black students rush to the rescue, and Foster's character makes some crack about "same old Halloween" I laughed. I laughed harder when they bring her home and she just wants to recover from the experience by cuddling with dog...WHO THE FATHER HAS JUST HAS PUT TO SLEEP. The girl is gang raped and her father put the dog to sleep without telling her. This is better than "Degrassi" or other after school specials, and cannot be taken at all seriously.

Perhaps some things were meant to be surreal or blackly humorous, but none of the humor or the surreal impossibility of the many plots seemed intentional.

Perhaps Irving is a good writer, but I wonder after the campy mess of an acid trip of this film and the soppy diabetic mess of "Simon Birch." If you enjoyed "Plan 9 From Outer Space", you should pick this film up. Oh hell, it's a masterpiece that will have you laughing, laughing, cringing, and hitting your pillows and screaming "WHAT THE FCK?!!!"

Swing Kids (1993)

Good moments, could have been better

[6/10 · 7 April 2006]

I really don't understand a lot of these reviewers. The movie far from trivializes anything about the Nazis, it simply tries to portray a moment before the bloodiest war in history on a smallish scale.

Would it be better to just have a movie that says "Nazis are bad and they killed six million Jews."? No, because that wouldn't be a movie.

It's like when people complained that a mini-series about Hitler's life that was supposed to be shown on TV would "humanize Hitler". Well, news flash, he WAS a human. That's the worst part, a human could do that sort of thing. What good is it to call evil-doers monsters and then leave it at that? When "Swing Kids" succeeds is when it's portraying the conflicts of youth as their country goes mad. Can anyone honestly say they feel NO sympathy for those who were forced to join the Hitler youth? It's easy to say you would have done different.

And the idea that the music being key somehow trivializes the events of WWII, um, it's based on an ACTUAL subculture, swing kids. There were lots of them and at first they were fairly lacking in politics, but later in the 40s when they were cracked down on more so by the Nazis some were more active.

It's not like the movie makers pulled the concept of kids, Nazis and swing out of their asses, which is what people seem to think.

And at least it was something, at least it wasn't giving in totally. Remember these were young kids, high-school age, nobody can expect them all to be Sophie Scholl.

Where "Swing Kids" lacks is its occasional excessive heavy-handedness. The ending is a bit excessive, something more subtle would have been better.

But as I say, the conflicts between the three main leads are fantastic and bring up questions of what you would do in such circumstances. I think the boys's indifference in respect to the Jew being beat up in the beginning of the movie is a good touch. This is NOT about the holocaust, because it was just starting and was largely unknown at the time. I hate when people can't lose what they know to watch a movie.

I recommend everyone to read some swing kids history, just look them up, it makes the movie much better and more interesting to know the facts.

This is a fairly good movie with very good acting, great great music and costumes, a great story that was influenced by deeply interesting history, and too much heavy handedness.

But seriously, who can resist a movie put out by Disney that includes the line of dialog "You're turning into a f*cking Nazi!"?

Titanic (1997)

It could have been a masterpiece

[5/10 · 5 April 2006]

This movie was loved and then it was loved to be hated.

Personally, it drives me crazy. It had amazing effects, a great secondary cast and extras and the sinking scene is one of the most stomach wrenching things I have ever seen in a movie.

But James Cameron CANNOT write dialog. Unless it was already based on something that happened in reality it was awful. And it wasn't DiCaprio or Winslet's faults as they aren't bad when they're not talking and they have been great in other things.

Not to mention, yes you can certainly watch a documentary if you want the true story of the Titanic, but that doesn't change one simple fact. The real story is more interesting than a stilted generic love story.

So many things not included in the movie... Charles Lightoller and twenty other men standing on an overturned life-boat for hours in freezing water is somehow less interesting than Cal Hockley the most generic villain I have seen on screen in a long time.

So why do I bother watching? Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews is heart-breaking and probably the best thing in the movie. I also love the man who plays Wallace Hartley, the entire "Nearer My God to Thee" scene is fantastic.

Or when Winslet and DeCaprio finally shut up, they have a good scene or two. When Rose is being lowered in a lifeboat and looking up at Jack, and when Rose and some minor characters exchange these amazing little looks as they wait on the stern for the ship to go down.

There is some great eye-acting in this movie. Victor Garber, the man playing William Murdoch. The priest in the sinking scene as praying people grab his hands. Most of the extras and the people in the life-boats.

But Jmes Cameron's dull fiction and dreadful dialog kills the movie. It's a lot shorter the way I watch it, a lot gets fast forwared. But I keep watching because when the movie is great, it's great.

It would have been a masterpiece if Cameron had stuck to reality. Not because it was reality, but because it was a thousand times more interesting than a stilted love story.

A better writer than Camron would be hard pressed to write fiction more interesting than the reality of that night.

"A Night to Remember" is much, much, better but "Titanic" is a good-ish could have been amazing movie that I can't help but go back to for its quality elements.