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arthursolomon7
Reviews
The Genius Club (2006)
A dark journey through an existentialist nightmare
Well for starters the movie was brilliant. If you haven't seen Following, his first film, stop reading and go do it now.
SideNote: The biggest complaint my friends had about the film is that they couldn't grasp the multitude of questions and puzzles that occur in the movie. These are key to understanding the plot and the motivations and mind-set of Armand. I didn't have any difficulty in this area, perhaps because I am described as observant and attentive. By the time the third shift happened, I was ready for it, and by the end of the movie, was relishing each shift in questions. In case its not obvious, if you can't handle these shifts, you will not do well in understanding the movie. :End SideNote
I watched it the second time VERY closely and after a while of thinking my and my friend thought we had worked it all out!
But now i'm not sure, after reading some of the reviews for this i'm not sure if what I thought is really what happened, so i'm left thinking i need 2 c it again.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
There are many questions to be answered in this film as you watch it you get the answers.
Is Armand truly a terrorist in the classical sense or simply misguided? Does he purposefully manipulate the ending? Did he really want the geniuses to discover the 3 word password? Was there another password combination to the bomb? Was the final answer worthy of 30 points?
SPOILERS ENDS HERE
Overall Opinion:
All in all this is probably the best film I've seen. It ain't got the big Hollywood celebrities, it ain't got a big budget or a world famous director.
The Genius Club proves that you don't need millions upon millions to produce a masterpiece of an exciting and entertaining film. All you need, is originality, a good technique to tell the story and good acting, plots and twists.
I give it 8 out 10.
Amistad (1997)
Phenomenal film
More people should see this. Nay, everyone should see this. You cannot imagine a more perfect script, more perfect acting, a more perfect film. I saw this with my mom and my brother, the three of us making up three of the five people that showed up that particular day, which is a pity since this is the second greatest historical picture ever (Lawrence of Arabia, of course, being first).
Loved the epic nuances and the beautiful telling of the Christ by Dimon in the middle of the slave ship.
Every actor in this film gives the performance of a lifetime. In a time when the majority of movies are, and I say this with no hesitation whatsoever, total crap, it's refreshing to find that a few films rise above to become modern masterpieces.
Among recent films that can carry this title are Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Love, Luther,, the Good Shepard, Children of Men, and the Queen. But Amazing Grace dwarfs them all to become the greatest film in the last at least the last three years, but probably more. I have yet to see a film that moved me to tears of joy or sadness, but this came close. The theater in which I saw it had no other remotely interesting movies showing but this (and 300, which I want to see simply because it looks cool). Alas, in a world where more people want to rush to the most atrocious thing that the film world has to offer, there isn't much of a place for Amistad. But I certainly will buy this movie when it's released on DVD, and
Amazing Grace (2006)
Good historical film
Amazing Grace is a very well crafted, well acted, and well told story. It is also mostly true to the history of events surrounding the Amistad 'mutiny', and the defense of the Africans responsible for it by William Wilberforce and a young lawyer.
The only disappointment of course is it's not really the story of Amazing Grace, but of William Wilberforce. The story of John Newton is far more powerful. Yet, we need this film as well as other faith-based movies.
I put the word mutiny in quotes because it is absurd to think of people fighting against murder, enslavement and rape as any form of crime. The film is unabashed about showing us the brutality and outrageousness of the covertly institutionalized slave trade that haunted one of America's darkest, most retrograde periods, and pulls no punches about the cultural differences between its victims, its culprits, and those who felt that it was not their problem