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Reviews
Tron (1982)
A Fantastic Adventure for Its Time
When people watch this movie today for the first time, I think they need to try to imagine that they are watching the movie in another context--the early 1980s. This was a time before there was an Internet, before E-mail, before Windows and even before the graphical user interface operating system of the first Macintosh. Almost no one owned a computer and many educated people had no idea exactly what a computer was or what it did. However, I think people were aware or at least suspected that a new world might be on the horizon. Computers were very sexy and there was a huge buzz in the air about them. Coin-op video games had just come into existence (Asteroids, Space Invaders), the Atari 2600 was around, and schools had begun to set up computer labs full of Apple][e's. Still, computers in everyday life were non-entities. They were the wild frontier.
I watched TRON two or three times when I was a kid and I really enjoyed it. What a fantastic, original adventure for its time and a hint of the kind of computer-based adventure (the Internet) that was to come.
I think this movie is important because it encouraged and inspired people who like science and technology with a glimpse into the kind of computing power that might be available in the future and its suggestion that our society and way of life would change dramatically. (Did more than 5% of the population in 1982 spend more than one or two hours a week on a computer? No. Today, probably 90% of anyone between the ages of 10 and 40 spends at least 14 hours per week on a computer and our means of exchanging and obtaining information over the Internet is unprecedented--I'd call that a radical change.)
The movie itself does not have the depth of Shakespeare (which can be said for 95% of all), but it is still a fun movie when you maintain the context I presented and it's better than 75% of the movies produced today. The plot and premise are good and it deserves many points for originality and it's great looks.
I have not watched it recently. but many of its images and scenes still play out vividly in my mind and I remember being swept away as a pre-teen. It grabbed my imagination and it will always have a nostalgic value for me.
Men in Black II (2002)
MIB II is Nothing
[Standard Disclaimer--warning, this review may contain spoilers.]
I gave it a 3. The best word to describe this sequel is: Nothing
I went out to dinner with three friends and two of them wanted to see it. The other had doubts but wasn't opposed to seeing it. I was heavily opposed to it. Why? Because the vast majority of sequels are awful or at the very least mediocre. Unsurprisingly, two of my friends grumbled after the movie as I gloated. "I told you so!"
I didn't dislike MIB 2. It isn't downright stupid or a complete insult to your intelligence. The problem is that it lacks a decent plot; it just recycles the same MIB gag that we enjoyed in the first movie. Except for one worthwhile alien (the one that hovers), it is uninteresting. The fact that the producers, the director, and the script writer were under pressure to make a sequel is obvious. It's as though they passed MIB through an automated Hollywood sequel making machine.
What's sad is that they could have made a good movie if they had worked up a real plot (not too hard for professional script writers), catered less to children, added a bit of intrigue and suspense, and made the aliens less corny. Recycling the talking dog did not work.
Don't be surprised if MIB 2 hits the second run theaters within a month and a half. The normally crowded theater I saw it in was almost empty. Now I know why.
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Forgettable Drek. Trashy. What a Waste.
For context, I have not read any Clancy books and the only other Clancy movie that I have seen is The Hunt for Red October, which is a great movie.
In contrast, The Sum of All Fears is typical Hollywood crap and I gave it a 5 out of 10. I expected to see a quasi-espionage film with some intrigue but instead they gave us a disjointed, jumpy action flik with poor plot development and little mystery. It could have been much better. They could have allowed the main character to piece together a complex, hard-to-decipher puzzle, letting us piece it together with him along the way. What we got was a silly, contrived action movie with overly stereotyped characters and a dose of political correctness.
Does anyone really believe that the perpetrators of such a horrific crime would not be radical Muslim Arabs? According to other commenters, in the book it was the Arabs, but to keep from offending Muslim audiences the villians were magically transformed into Neo-Nazis instead. Morgan Freeman got to play the "rational, wise old black man" role which is getting old and in his case, cliched. The cookie-cutter American politicans were portrayed as being somewhat dumb and rather unreasonable.
I could have thought of the entire plot and script on my own! This movie offered nothing--no plot quirks or intrigue--that I cannot or would not imagine without the movie makers' help. The movie carried the pretense of being quasi-intellectual (political)--I expected some political intrigue and complex plot development--but instead it's just a barely intelligible action film designed to bring in box office dollars from an undiscerning public.
I don't believe Ebert gave it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. Has Hollywood's mediocrity finally poisoned his mind? Or is everything else so bad that this movie looked good by comparison?
The Sum of All Fears is a shameful waste of a simple idea that could have been a good film.
The Pornographer (1999)
Explores the Male Experience of Female Power
The Pornographer is a pleasantly surprising movie. Contrary to its name, it is not a pornographic film, nor even a chincy hard R. Rather it is an insightful movie about a man who toys with the idea of making adult films.
This movie helps communicate more about the too little (seriously) explored male experience, just like Swingers did. Consequently, I disagree with some of the other posters' evaluations of the main character's lack of social ability.
With regards to sexually attracting women, young males often experience forms of frustration, humiliation, and insatiable, unfilled longing--unbeknownst and probably incomprehensible to most women who grew up with the privilege of being able to attract decent, fairly attractive members of the opposite sex with comparatively little effort and (little more than passive) risk of rejection. I know that the indignation and sense of injustice that I felt over how unbalanced the distribution of sexual power is scarred me for life. I am certain that it has had a significant (though publicly unacknowledged) negative effect on most men's psyches, even if the men were unable to identify it or verbalize it.
If you think that the main character is socially inadept, then you have missed an important part of the movie's context. The protagonist, Paul Ryan, is a typical twentysomething who lacks Don Juan's confidence and charm, an MBA, MD, Harvard Law degree, or high paying computer science job. Most young males have difficulty sexually attracting decent women with regularity. The protagonists' experiences at asking women out for a date were very ordinary and sadly all too commonplace.
If he truly lacked social skills he would have had difficulty fitting in at a high-powered law firm and his character would not have seemed as endearing to us. He did not seem to have difficulty talking to women; he just did not have the desire to expend large amounts of effort attracting them.
In the film he explained that he was satisfied with prostitutes, but as his character develops he comes to realize that he desires an actual romantic relationship and not just sex. The real tragedy of this movie is that his past experiences and propensities kept him from seeing the forest for the trees. He could have had a real relationship with Kate, and I think he wanted to, but he was so fixated with breaking into the world of pornographic film that he turned her into a business opportunity. I get the feeling that, as a result of his previous frustrations, he was almost unable to conceive of the possibility of his having a relationship with her, which is real sad.
The film raises an interesting question. Why didn't he enter into a romantic relationship with Kate instead of trying to push her into the world of pornographic film? Had he completely given up on women? Was he just determined to succeed as a pornographic filmmaker at any cost-even the heavy cost of foregoing a real relationship? Or was he unable to conceive of it?
The movie raises another interesting question that the filmmaker may not have intended to raise. Do men perceive a significant difference between (1) paying women for sex, which seems like a straightforward and honest undertaking and (2) asking, begging, bending over backwards to please women in the hopes that they will one day agree to go to bed with them, risking rejection and spending the same money (while investing much more time) wining and dining them? Is it possible that, for some frustrated men like the protagonist, he may have found more satisfaction and less degradation with prostitution?
This movie was good for the aforementioned reasons. However, in light of these questions, I wonder what the movie would have been like with a talented, serious scriptwriter who could further explore and develop those issues while maintaining the film's same overall tone and feel. It really does show just how far a good idea and content can take a film-the director produced a much better film than most of the big budget junk.
The Pornographer and Swingers are the only two movies I know of that seriously explore the male experience from a point of view that is at least peripherally sympathetic to males.