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r0der1ck
Reviews
Redwoods (2009)
Lush production values & sincere sentiment make a great story.
This is a well-made and sincere film that avoids pat answers or schmaltzy sentiment in favor of asking interesting questions everyone faces in life - what makes happiness and what is its price - without relying on melodrama or exploitation. The story is very simple and the presentation very low-key with subtle, convincing performances and great chemistry between the leads.
One of the things I realized after seeing it is that the story could very easily be about heterosexuals. It in no way looks to the gay community to provide some unique positive or negative trait. Lots of films make the festival rounds relying on stereotypes to carry them along but this is simply about people and love and I think anyone can connect with the themes it presents. Highly recommended to anyone interested in a touching story regardless of orientation.
Prodigal Sons (2008)
Gripping and surprising at every turn.
This is a magnificent documentary, the sort of film that reminds one why documentaries are made. The maker clearly thinks that she knows the general shape of the film at the beginning - returning to her hometown after transitioning to being a woman, about to see her old high school friends for the first time with her new body and true identity - but instead finds that it's much more about her brother and his ongoing identity crises - who is he, who is he becoming - than about her own questions of place and home. Kim seems to answer for herself the age-old question of whether one can or cannot go home again but finds that the question is being raised over and over again for the people around her who face their own issues of loved ones lost and gained.
This film avoids any sense of predictability or forced sentiment, continually surprising the viewer and rewarding attention to detail, both by the audience and the makers. Absolutely magnificent. It will surprise from beginning to end.
Gay Zombie (2007)
Warm, funny and charming beyond all expectation.
Don't think of this as a zombie movie; think of this as a gay romantic comedy in which one of the characters happens to be a zombie. The audience at the showing I saw squirmed a bit, I suspect in part because they were expecting more horror and fewer make-over montages and, in equal measure, because this film proudly wears its stereotypes on its sleeve. That said, this movie is fun and very funny. If you've ever been young and freshly out of the closet then you are almost certain to recognize everyone and everything in this movie and I couldn't help but be charmed to the core.
The acting is quite good, the comedy works well and the romance is disturbingly tender and believable despite one of the characters being in an advanced stage of decomposition. Truly an unexpected delight.
Facility 4 (2005)
Slow-burn, intense, thoughtful suspense.
This is a very creative and disturbing short film, low on gore and utterly absent any of the cheap gotcha's of many horror films. Rather than bathe the cast in fake blood and call it a day the film maintains a very low-key ambiance, centering its short story entirely on the people of the film and not the supernatural. The horror comes not from any particular paranormal or monstrous aspect of the story but from the reactions of the human characters: the almost business-like, highly professional response they have to their circumstance. In a few short minutes it manages to frighten without shocking and in the process hints at a lengthier conversation to be had on the topic of how the horrors of real-world conflicts, endless training and stolid professionalism can come to affect a soldier and mute - perhaps blunt - his reactions.
Sirens of the 23rd Century (2003)
A deeply surreal comedy with moments of stark poignancy.
I saw this as part of a gay & lesbian film festival, and was impressed. Though the plot derails in a couple of places, leaving one to wonder just why some things have happened, the messages are well-presented and the film is very, very fun. It's definitely campy, the comedy is frequently raunchy and the setting is ridiculous, but what fairy tale isn't? When the film comes around to making its occasional serious points - our society's polarization over issues of body-image, our inability to understand or learn from the past, our inability to predict the outcomes of extremist stances, the demons of poor self-esteem that haunt the great - it does it well and generally without the use of an iron fist. Compositionally, the camera work is good, the costuming flawless and the set design cheesy in all the right ways to set off the campy feel. The actors are definitely right for their parts, and the performances are generally spot-on.
The movie itself does a great job of emphasizing the dreamlike surreality of a bedtime story. Unsure whether I liked it at first, by the end I was disappointed to see it over. This movie definitely isn't for everyone, but if you want to spend a couple of legally trippy hours giggling, you want this movie.
At Night with No Curtains (2004)
An admirable effort...?
The knowledge that this film was many of its makers' first attempt provides something of a cushion for its overall failure to realize its potential. Striving for a bit of "The Blair Witch Project" with a dab of down-home Southern Gothic feel and a shot of 1950's innocence, the film's original idea is quite interesting: that a Civil War widow who ordered the murder of her five children now haunts the crumbling remains of her mansion and can be summoned back at the command of teenagers in search of a good fright. The premise of the film is that history might repeat itself, that the teens in the movie might bite off more than they can chew by trying the trick for themselves. In the end, though, the writing is pretty awful and the delivery isn't significantly better. While all of the more abstract scenes and the camera work that accompanies them - basically anything that doesn't involve dialogue - are very impressive, they're dragged back under the surface by the poor acting, while the character development, such as there is, acts in direct contradiction to the rest of the film. The jarring disconnect between the characters' relationships and what's apparently happening around them made me wish I could edit this film myself. Somewhere in its 80+ minutes there's a terrifying half-hour short I would gladly have paid just as much to see in a third of the time.
The American Astronaut (2001)
The best film I've seen in years.
Entirely absurd, filled with a degree of joyous creativity that I would never have expected, this is the best film I've seen in years. Although the storyline is utterly surreal, it's presented so matter-of-factly that one feels like to doubt the story would hurt someone's feelings. I have real trouble summarizing my reaction to this film except to say that I walked out of the theatre in happy amazement, a smile on my face. In fact, I had the same sensation of light-headed wonderment I felt the first time I saw "True Stories," making this literally the best movie I've seen in at least a decade.
In terms of comparisons, think of this as the light-hearted kid brother of "True Stories" or the farcical, silly, prankster cousin of "Twin Peaks."
El espinazo del diablo (2001)
Beautiful, Ambient and Satisfying
This is a beautifully done ghost story and period piece, in which the horror of the supernatural and the ambience of the setting add up to a sum much greater than its parts. Beautifully filmed and very deftly acted, with a mixed-generation cast that works well together and plays off one another with tremendous craft, this is an absolute must-see. Watch it in the dark, late at night, with a few good friends. It won't make anyone throw their popcorn, but it will leave you feeling very, very satisfied.
Le pacte des loups (2001)
Simply Dreadful
I went in with some very high expectations of this movie, and was disappointed on every count. While it's got slick production values, it's a terrible muddle and a thorough waste of my time. It can't make up its mind what kind of movie it wants to be, and none of its attempts come off very well. Its whole is not greater than the sum of its parts by any stretch of the over-enthusiastic imagination.
I saw this film at a festival devoted to horror, fantasy and action, and the opinion in the lobby, afterwards, seemed universally one of, "Wow...what a stinker."
Monster (2003)
Deeply troubling, but well worth it.
Many people seem to believe that Theron's performance is simply over the top, whereas Ricci's is too alternately complacent and conspiratorial to be believable. The sad fact is that I know someone who reminded me in every way of Theron's performance. This made Theron's unbelievably horrifying portrayal of someone utterly without a perception that there is moral justice in the world so believable to me. Watching Theron as Wuornos was too easy for me to view through the lens of an existing friendship, a friend whose entirely hypothetical breakdown could easily occur along the same lines.
This was a deeply disturbing movie, but extremely well-crafted and well acted. Theron proved to me that she's not a model/actor. She's an actor, period. When the credits rolled, a friend turned to me and said, "I'm very glad I saw this, because it was very good, but I never want to see it again." I, for my part, turned to my lover and said, "Thank you for not being crazy." It was all I could say for half an hour. Everyone in the theatre was either shell-shocked or in tears.
Vegas in Space (1991)
"Wigstock" and "Priscilla" go to the stars, to fun effect.
This is a film about which people tend to feel strongly: either very good, or very bad (just check out the voting summary for evidence of this). In my opinion, it's very good, but I stumbled into it at a gay film festival, so my first viewing was perhaps in just the right place at just the right time. Overall, I would have difficulty recommending this film to anyone but fans of the bizarre, fans of drag and fans of bad sci-fi. There is some very (intentionally) hilarious dialogue in this, much of which is made better by the effective delivery -- the cast doesn't do much nudge-nudge, wink-winking of the audience, which would have made the high camp and innuendo too heavy-handed to be funny. Instead, this comes off as a sort of drag homage to the campy formative years of modern science fiction, the same era during which both drag and gay rights came into their own. An attentive viewer will find nods to Star Trek, Lost in Space, Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Red Dwarf and even the original Buck Rogers serials. Unfortunately, some terrible sound editing and not-so-hot line delivery requires the viewer to pay close attention or they miss what important plot-points there are (such as the women-only restriction on the planet, something a previous reviewer clearly missed as he criticized the crew's gender-change as having no storyline cause). Overall, this movie gets serious props for the costuming and the creative use of an obviously limited budget, the turning-on-their-ear of many of the sexist conventions of early sci-fi and for being in many spots a carefully crafted spoof of a genre. While it's definitely bad, it has fun being bad, and I have fun watching it. The song over the closing credits is fantastic.
Prime Suspect 3 (1993)
Like the others, it's gritty, engaging and engrossing.
Prime Suspect 3 is probably the grittiest of the Prime Suspects, in my opinion. While "The Lost Child" is disturbing, and Prime Suspect 1 is heartbreaking, Prime Suspects 3 delves into an examination of the world of London "rentboys," young male prostitutes hired mainly by other men. This may be the one which deals most sensitively with the ever-present personal life conflicts of DCI Tennison's co-workers and cohorts, and it doesn't hold back on letting us know just how intense some of those personal issues are. The cast is huge, the murder itself unbelievably complex, and the resolution is probably the most jarring of any of the movies' last fifteen minutes (always the best part of any murder mystery). Helen Mirren is DCI Tennison to a tee, and of the Prime Suspects, this might well be my favorite.