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Reviews
Twentynine Palms (2003)
Complete Waste of Time
Here is a summary of what happens in this film:
1% - driving through city
85% - driving through beautiful scenery. I love driving through beautiful scenery, which is why I would never watch a movie of it, you really have to be there.
5% - sitting in a hotel room grinding through utterly forgettable dialog
9% - bodily functions:
* Urination
* Sex. 3 or 4 scenes (can't remember) and man-on-man rape
* Eating
0% - plot, storyline, motivation, character development.
I love daring movies that defy convention to tell a story. Problem with this movie is there just isn't a story to tell.
Since I love to drive through beautiful scenery, I have no particular interest in watching it in a movie. After 20 minutes I started fast- forwarding through the driving, leaving about 20 minutes of film left. Unfortunately that left mostly sex scenes, so I fast-forwarded through them and that left about 5 minutes of film. Maybe.
Agora (2009)
19th/20th Century Arguments, With Togas
I enjoy a historical drama if it stays true to what we know of the period, this movie fails completely.
The movie is aimed squarely at the religious/atheism debate, but the arguments presented are pure 19th/20th century. Except the proponents are wearing togas.
Example: The Christians are arguing "No salvation w/o Jesus". That's 19th century. In Alexandria in 391 the Christians were already established and were more likely to have been arguing for and against Arianism (which does not make for much of a plot for a movie). Prior to that they would have been promoting The Resurrection, because their main focus was that they worshiped a living god, in comparison to the Romans, whom they believed worshiped dead statues. The Romans, by comparison, would have argued the pacifism and "love everybody even if they don't deserve it" ethics of the Christians were completely impractical and would destroy the empire.
Also, a woman teaching men philosophy and science In Alexandria in 391? No chance. Sorry, the Romans didn't swing that way.
If you are really curious about how Christianity interacted with the Roman religions from about 100 AD - 500 AD, this movie will not only tell you nothing, you'll get loaded up with disinformation.
Brick (2005)
Bogart is back
Imagine about 90 minutes of the corniest 40's dialog you can come up with, where the hard-boiled down-and-outer seeks the truth of his ex- girlfriend's murder, but the characters are modern high school students, and you get ---- pure perfection.
In the best cinema, the director and actors persuade you to enter their story, even if it is not what you are used to or expecting, and as the story unfolds you slowly forget any misgivings you had, until the ending when you realize you've been handed some of the most entertaining 90 minutes of your life. That is this movie.
I'll quote one line, which I hope that IMDb does not think is a spoiler, since I never put spoilers in reviews, but here it is. The down-and- outer says to the presumed femme fatale, "Brad was a chump, you're not a chump, you were playing Brad, I don't want you play me." The entire movie sounds like that and it is delivered with such perfection and timing that you find yourself enjoying every corny cliché.
There is a line at the end that is equal to the ending of Casablanca, but you'll have to watch through to see and hear it delivered, it is the perfect closing to a great movie.
Under Suspicion (2000)
Masterpiece Character Study
First Advice: Do not read any spoilers or details about this movie, the less you know about it the more you will enjoy it. This is not because of some "amazing surprise ending" but because every line of dialog gradually builds a picture of the life and character of the protagonist, and the thrill of seeing it all develop is so much the greater if you do not know where it is (supposedly) going.
Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman are their usual brilliant selves, but the study is all about Gene Hackman, his troubles, triumphs, loves and losses, and how he has dealt with them -- for better or worse.
Gene Hackman discovers the body of a murdered girl and dutifully reports it to the police. But there are some problems with his story they want to clear up, and as he attempts to explain them he seems to be digging a deeper hole for himself, bringing us to the title, he is "under suspicion." It is impossible to discuss this movie without giving spoilers, so I will instead mention one of the greatest classics that it can be compared to, that play we all had to read in high school: Oedipus Rex. We all know that play is about a man who murdered his father and married his mother, right? Wrong! The play is about a man who has been told he is destined to do these things. But he is not a craven pervert who wants to kill his father or sleep with his mother. He is in fact just like you and I, he finds such things disgusting, and so he spends his life seeking to avoid the prophecy. But the reason we all have to read it in high school to this day is not just because he is a good guy trying to avoid an evil fate, it is the masterful revealing of each little detail through the play that gradually reveals how Oedipus' attempts to avoid the curse have brought him directly into it.
There are two parallels with Oedipus Rex. Both stories deal with a crime universally recognized as horrible and perverted, and both are masterfully told to gradually reveal more and more detail about what may or may not have happened.
This is why you do not want to know anything about this movie before seeing it, because it is not about knowing whether or not he is guilty, or what troubles he may have in his marriage (who doesn't?), it is about the brilliantly written dialog and interplay between Hackman and Freeman as the suspicion is developed.
One final warning. There are plenty of good movies out there that fully develop both man and woman as characters in a troubled relationship, this is not one of them. Hackman's wife exists solely to further develop his own character. It is not about her, it is about him. If you don't like such one-sided developments, well, maybe you won't like this movie.
Zardoz (1974)
If I have to explain, you won't understand
Forget good, forget bad.
But if you must think good/bad, it is infinitely better than Bowie's "The Hunger", and dismally worse, and both for the same reason.
You watch the opening scene, a man's head against a black background and wearing a blue headdress delivering a pompous monologue and you realize, "Oh, right, not a movie, avant-garde theatre, let's see what happens next." And you are not disappointed, the next scene with the famous floating stone head that vomits up guns shows that the filmmaker has not a care in the world for the conventions of filmmaking, he is going to tell the story his own way. You wonder, for all the effort that went into making that great big stone head, could they have made the teeth straight if they wanted to? We're not in Kansas anymore, this is not a filmed comic book.
This film simply cannot be compared to any other. Love, life, immortality, death, passion, rage, boredom and what it drives people to, they are all there.
If you liked "Let the Right One In", you might like Zardoz, but you might hate it.
If you liked "Wings of Desire", you might like Zardoz, but you might hate it.
If you read all 6 Dune books (the real ones, not that garbage written by Herbert's son), you might like Zardoz, but you might hate it.
If you liked "Scanners", you might like Zardoz, but you might hate it.
If you know in your heart and soul why the top is still spinning when Inception fades to black, then you might like Zardoz...