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Reviews
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
Excellent - A Gem of a Movie
One of the best films I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot). As a mockumentary, it actually deserves an 11 ...
Bought it on DVD - can watch it again and again and my admiration for the perfection with which it has been made only grows. Every detail is right on the spot, the actors are fantastic, the script is amazing, and the director hits just the right note ...
A biting social commentary if there ever was one, it shows a side of America which people pretend doesn't exist, and that without any exaggeration - it only condenses a lot of things into one story which in reality you probably would not find that close together. One can see that the author knows exactly what she is writing about. I can understand that many people don't like this film - it hits too close to home ... though they'll never admit that this is the reason and cite bad taste or whatever. The miracle for me is that this picture got made at all.
Hard-hitting as it is, the film never gets mean - it always stays human and in a detached way almost compassionate towards all its characters. The author is a woman, and I noticed one thing about women as artists: if the're bad, they're bad as any male artist who's bad, but when they're good, they tend to be *exceptionally* good, and often they bring up angles which a man would have never thought of.
One thing - I do not think the critique in this film concerns only America: exchange just a few minor cultural details for their continental counterparts and you'll see that here in Europe we have the same types of people who recognize themselves in this movie and consequently hate it, like their cousins overseas ... so finally I think its valid worldwide, wherever people live.
Beyond the Rising Moon (1987)
An independent B-movie with surprises
At first glance one might think this is going to be just a cheap SF B-movie, but if one considers how it was made (practically "in the backyard"), it is simply fantastic.
A lot of care went into the production, even with the very limited constraints these independent filmmakers were working in, and one can notice this.
One thing: this is not a movie of the "Spielberg-Lucas-etc.-Roller-Coaster-Ride-with Special-Effects"-kind, so if you expect something of that sort, you will be disappointed. Though it comes with an action-style plot, this is almost a quiet movie - which is one of its charms, if one can appreciate that.
The story, about an female android seeking freedom and teaming up with a space pilot to find a lost alien spaceship, battling an evil corporation on the way, is no big deal, but quite nicely done, human and believable in its context - more than can be said about some multi-million-dollar-productions. The acting sometimes is a bit on the heavy side, but strangely this somehow adds to the atmosphere this film manages to produce (rare in a SF-Film nowadays), and even helps in creating a sense of wonder, which you wouldn't expect in a movie on that budget ... The special effects are done with miniatures and they are in in their way almost stylish, so that you know you're looking at models but you don't care; one can admire what has been done here with a extremely tiny budget and how the filmmakers even managed to achieve a certain visual consistency in their film.
I bought this video by chance, not expecting much, and now find that I've seen it several times already and will continue to see it again from time to time, because in its own unpretentious, not-quite-professional way it manages to take me into another world of infinite possibilities, and what more could one ask from an SF-movie?