t_maly Reviews

The Hunger Games (2012)

Full of potential, but fell short

[5/10 · 23 September 2012]

I found the dystopian premise interesting - in a seemingly totalitarian future - kinda a mix of the blind obedience of 1984 and the sensuality of Brave New World - children are sacrificed to fight to the death as some remembrance of a rebellion. As hard as the powers to be try to show it in a prideful light, you just can't help but see the sham that it is, how gladiator type of games of punishment towards the working class are turned into frivolous entertainment.

It sounds a lot like society of today. I kept on trying to think about how this dystopia compares to here and now. We have capitalism which we are all on board with thinking is a great thing, but it becomes a dog-eat-dog situation that we rarely really question about being on top or not. We all desire to be on top and yet only a small percentage can be so. The rest of us are moderately compensated with half-decent lifestyles or mostly downtrodden.

This is where the potential lies in this book/movie, but it falls short because I kept expecting the main protagonists to rebel against the games somehow. After all, the whole thing is a show of entertainment, one based in the punishment and suffering of random people for things they have nothing to do with. In the end I found it interesting they'd rather die together than one kill the other - but when the games were suddenly over because of this threat to the entertainment value, and they went on their merry business like they were just glad it was over (instead of being outraged at those who manage these events). I found that incredibly disappointing and the fact that the movie/book lacks this moral makes it feel like the main characters aren't intelligent or worth liking at all. It has all sorts of awareness on how much of society is a total show, but something needs to be done about that. Simply being glad to be alive is a cop out, if you ask me.

I also was expecting more rebellion, anger, etc and less butt kissing from these kids. It reminds me of how much high school graduates suck up to colleges to get admitted, and how college graduates suck up to employers to get work. It's all bull, if you ask me. We're selling our souls/lives to others for their gain, and we pretend we actually care about what matters to them just so we get them to want us. To act like we're commodities and bothering 'selling' ourselves is a profound disgust of this society we live in.

I was hoping the kids would band together and realize that they are the target of mutual punishment and mass entertainment, and that the real enemy is NOT each other, but those in charge. They are only there to end up all (but one) being killed, so why go along with sucking up to the public and acting like a bunch of drama-loving superficial celebrities? It was disturbing how quickly they went to kill each other, and I sincerely hope that such kind of behavior is not in our nature. I would only hope for a future where our children learn to come together to fight bigger enemies than the minor quibbles with each other. I sincerely hope that our youth have the smarts to defy the rules realizing that our world is rigged rather than comply and fight over scraps in the process.

I also found that the whole romance thing between the boy and girl was an interesting thing to 'milk', but I found it so artificial. Obviously he had a crush on her, but I felt like her advancements towards him were out of place, even with the intimate setting of mutual injury and survival. He didn't seem like the kind of guy you'd want her with. His character was so underdeveloped. I felt it was also out of place to introduce in the beginning the friendship she had with the other teen boy from their district only to interject this romance story with some boy she's hardly noticed. I was also waiting for this 2nd guy to somehow find a way to enter the grounds of the game to help her out, etc. It just felt out of place for the other guy to be introduced and that storyline not be fully developed or get some closure on.

You know you've watched a movie based upon a children's/teens' book when you have underbaked stories and sub-stories, no overall moral, and action/violence shown off like it's okay. At least with R-rated films like the James Bond movies, you get a feeling that the guns and violence are okay because it's a 'good vs evil' thing. In a lot of half-baked children/teen books, there is no concept of 'good vs evil'. It just advocates gratuitous violence for no reason.

The total lack of an overall morality when it's so blatant that there should be, just leaves this among a certain fatalistic viewpoint that sadly promulgates a lifestyle of senseless pleasure rather than purposeful living. I feel bad for our youth when they are given stories that are severely lacking in morality. What exactly do they walk away with from all this? In the end, the two main characters end up going along with the sham of an entertainment show. The girl says exactly what the audience wants to hear for mass entertainment, instead of speaking of her true heart and putting these atrocious games in their place.

Our youth absolutely NEED morals to our stories. They need to be told to rebel against a rigged system rather than just be grateful to be alive in the end of a violent lifestyle.

Star Trek: Enterprise: Rogue Planet (2002) Season 1, Episode 18

Serious loopholes in the script

[2/10 · 6 July 2012]

I can't believe somebody wrote an episode of a 'rogue planet' that apparently lost orbit and has no sun, is somehow M-class, and yet without that sun is somehow habitable at a reasonable temperature.

Last time I checked, the temperature of a planet is determined by it's distance from a heat/light source, ie a sun.

Without the sun, the planet would quickly freeze to a very(!) cold temperature.

Even with our planet still reliably in orbit, we still experience drastic temperature changes from day to night and season to season.

What the heck were they thinking?

The Celestine Prophecy (2006)

Trite new age happy thought nonsense

[1/10 · 4 June 2012]

I have only watched 39:14 of the movie so far and am taken aback by a line in the movie - a woman discussing her wishes to adopt a Peruvian child where she says something about how it's a time consuming process and how they just haven't found the "right one" yet.

WOW. Just wow. For "enlightened" beings, I honestly am shocked and disgusted that such a comment could be made that loving a child is something that depends on a very particular child. That is new age self-righteous nonsense. Love is supposed to be unconditional and some advanced spiritual woman is complaining how she can't pick a child to adopt yet because she hasn't found 'the right one'. How incredibly selfish.

This is definitely the epitome of new age nonsense distilled into bite-sized pieces. To think that the world is just going to magically get better without any effort on one's own - or that everything in life that was 'meant to be' will just fall in their lap with this synchronicity nonsense - where's the fun in that?

Suffering happens BECAUSE of lack of participation. We suffer because we rely upon others who do not have our own best interest, and do not bother trying to trust ourselves, learning the things we need to thrive in life, not believing in ourselves.

Yet when life becomes effortless, handed to us, where exactly is the meaning? There will always be a small percentage of 'well-off' people who flock to happy thoughts and delusional beliefs in a utopian world of 'higher consciousness' where the problems of the world just magically disappear. But this keeps more and more of us pacified while the elite cause the suffering and destruction in the world. New age philosophy is profitable because it makes people passive, allowing atrocities to continue without a fight. We have power struggles where the majority of people are good hearted but are deceived by the minority and opportunities at a fair and decent life are stripped away, where entire cities are robbed of a fair way of life, of loyal/fair employers, of any sense of safety and well-being. The wealthy become so because they have little concern for others and cling to wealth to make them feel strong and powerful to compensate for their loneliness and lack of inner happiness.

There is a certain selfishness in seeking inner bliss because it leaves one content to the point of non-participation. When you learn to 'just be', you tend to lose the motivation and anger to demand a better world, to get yourself off your butt and actually create it. A better world will not create itself, like this trite of a book/movie that obsesses over synchronicity suggests. The suffering of others is not purely from a lack of 'consciousness' but in many ways due to the power structures that a small elite dictate onto the masses, starting with the deprivation of resources and demanding of compensation of others through the concept of 'ownership' of resources, land, etc, and forced dependence upon people who use and abuse your situation, often without your knowledge, often blaming it on magical external forces like an 'economy'. To suggest that all this new age 'consciousness' stuff is where the world is headed is to deny that most of the world struggles and will continue to struggle worse because of a small percentage of people who do not care, who won't magically give up their desire for control, especially the more they seem to be losing it. Sorry, folks, but that's not human nature.

Anyway, Redfield isn't saying anything new, he just read a few books and plagiarized his own theory for the sake of making a few bucks. There have been plenty of Americans, as well as ancient teachers of east and west, who have said all this before. Sure, it's great to believe in meaningful coincidences, but is that seriously going to happen to everybody? Even the inner city prostitute who has to sell her body to feed her baby? I'm sorry, but the world is not getting better all by itself, as much as Mr. Redfield and other new agers would like to suggest - it demands the participation of everybody, not their apathy/passivity. Maybe a small percentage of people are becoming wiser in their day, choosing to reject the power structures around them, but there still are more and more people who are being sucked into a mindless way of living and suffering. I can understand the appeal, though, of an effortless promise from the universe/God/whatever that all of our problems are going away. That would be an incredible sense of relief and it sure would be darned tempting to believe. But I'd call it premature, naive, and not very well understanding of why exactly we end up suffering. Forget the new age nonsense, because suffering isn't purely a choice when people are being deprived their freedom and autonomy, their ability to be spontaneous. They're being deceived by an elite few and yeah, sure, eventually we will see through it and revolt, but it's not happening over night. It's not rocket science that change happens eventually. All civilizations/societies fluctuate over the centuries. With our technological inventions, learning and awareness are multiplying, and I wouldn't particularly say it's anything magical.

The only reason why I am watching the movie is because of Sarah Wayne Callies. I just finished watching season 1 of Prison Break and wanted to see her in a different role out of some boyish fantasy.

Love, Wedding, Marriage (2011)

Irritating characters, sudden resolution

[5/10 · 24 April 2012]

I like light romance comedies, but what I found most unlikable about this particular movie was Mandy Moore's character's very one-sided personality. She's been in too many movies where her characters have been irritating, one-sided, primadonna types. It's unfortunate given that she is so attractive. It's incredibly irritating to see a protagonist force her vision of what her parent's marriage should be. It was pounded again and again, just irritating, and there was no depth to it such as her showing a painful side as to why she needs to 'fix' things (ie some sense of childhood neglect), nor did it show her maturing into someone who wants their parents to be happy in their own way, without somebody, society, etc telling them what they 'should' be happy with. Who's to say anybody can tell another what makes them happy? Can't a couple go their separate ways for a few days or months, to discover their individual selves? I was more pleased with Jane Seymour's character to experience a life, grow, do new things, travel, etc apart from being some wife-servant. At least with Mandy Moore's character, she could have had some evolution in her efforts (not just that last second fake pill overdose shenanigan to manipulate her parents), to be more altruistic instead of dominating/manipulating.

The conflict with the husband regarding the manipulation was well played. Mandy's character manipulates a fake life-and-death situation to deceive his mother into not wanting to be on her own for 6 months out of her life for once. Mandy's husband called her out on this blatant manipulation and I felt that was the most honest part of the movie, how shallow, selfish the manipulation was, to judge for other people what 'should' make them happy, that it involves some stereotype instead of personal discovery/independence. The resolution of the conflict came out of nowhere. The dialogue started with Mandy's character trying to apologize, but was interrupted, as if an apology or personal change/growth was completely unnecessary. The things the husband wanted from the wife (to accept, in him) was actually nothing to do with why he was angry in the first place. She gets interrupted from her apology, he asks to be accepted, they kiss, end credits. She never got the chance to apologize and so that almost says that it was unnecessary, superficial. Messages like that are dangerous. Even with the movie being a comedy.

I found Mandy's character overall annoying/irritating and given that she felt no remorse for manipulating her parents, that she had no soul. I don't think it was Ms. Moore's fault, as that has more to do with the script and directing, hinting at emotion, providing pause, reflection, etc that the director simply did not provide. These romantic comedies that have such absurd conflict only to end in even more absurd resolution are ultimately dangerous stories of fantasy that even a lighthearted audience should not see. It only can give terrible impressions in a relationship, bad example, and make relationships more painful and illusive. At least a comedy could teach the viewers something. There was no lesson of compromise, of heart-felt communication, of acceptance, of change, of growth, etc - the conflict was sudden and the resolution was even more sudden.

Normally I don't mind watching rom-coms multiple times, but i don't think this is enjoyable to watch again. The characters were too irritating to enjoy. It reminds me of the irritation I felt with another Mandy Moore movie, License to Wed, where the conflict felt so incredibly contrived/out-of-nowhere and the helplessness of the characters (to augment the ridiculous conflict) just made it really annoying. I actually liked her better in Swinging With The Finkels, even though in that movie I found the shallow, apathetic and loyalty-less husband quite irritating.

Travelers and Magicians (2003)

Seemed promising, yet lacks on delivery

[13 November 2011]

The movie really seemed promising - an average Joe in a Bhutanese village falls under the spell of America and opportunity and sets off on a journey toward a different life. Along the way, he meets a monk who lectures him on 'the grass isn't always greener on the other side' and a farmer and his young daughter who may give him reason to stay.

The idea seemed promising. The main character, I found really annoying. So incredibly foolish, truly believing the hype of America. I suppose there's something to say about how the things we are captivated by are very often things we are the most ignorant of.

But at the same time, I didn't find the small village life appealing, either. Perhaps I'm outgrowing my Buddhist interests and am starting to not quite agree with Buddhist philosophy, not anymore. I'll spare the rant. I don't necessarily disagree (I do think the main character was really stupid), just that there's more to living in this world than thinking so black and white. You can't summarize happiness into a philosophical debate. But oh well.

Story wise, I enjoyed the sub-story of the student wandering into the woods to find a beautiful woman and her overprotective old husband, but felt that it took up too much time from the main story that it somewhat took away that story's strength. The movie ended way before I felt it should have. The conflict was just barely starting to develop, when the movie ended. Good stories require a protagonist who is met with a dilemma, and handles it in either a foolish or a wise way. Perhaps this protagonist handled it in a foolish way, but I was hoping for some sort of transformation, that the guy was more than just some fool ready to believe American media propaganda. However, I felt that the conflict did not reach a climax to really portray his bad decision. It almost felt like the story ended before he was even really truly contemplating the dilemma.

Honestly, I would have left too, despite the girl. I don't think going to America would solve all the protagonists problems. I don't think there is one single panacea to our unhappiness. However, I do think that living a stale, isolated, dull life can very much be a large part of our unhappiness. My perspective is that when things don't change in our lives, we lose our passion, our joy. We depend too much on others for everything, and no matter what that means, we'll be unhappy at some point, never truly satisfied. My perspective is that true happiness is a life of curiosity, adventure, experimentation, travel, learning, creativity, sharing within community, and mastery of survival and living. There's no one thing or place that can make us happy. And that means not even where we are, this supposed place that is 'good enough' because it's handed to us. Even in the simplest and least industrialized of societies, there still are rigid social structures and lifestyles that tear away at our freedom. Happiness comes in being capable of handling life's challenges, and being given many challenges. Variety and diversity, met with gusto. And maybe loving each other along the way. Too much tradition, superstition, culture - that can easily get in our way of being truly free. I don't think that we as individuals were ever meant/designed to do just one thing with our time. Perhaps division of labor is more the root of our unhappiness than 'craving' or 'desire'. Perhaps when we divide our tasks and specialize in doing one or two things, we leave ourselves dependent upon others for the entirety of our survival - and in the process, find ourselves at their mercy, helpless, powerless. We never truly see the power within ourselves, what we are truly capable of, how well we can thrive in life if we have some intelligence and creativity.

Melancholia (2011)

What the Hell????

[31 October 2011]

Not to ramble strongly for or against this film, I can see why many people would love it and why many people would hate it. It's very unusual of a movie, has a strong feeling of artisticness, which gives it an advantage.

Unfortunately it hardly has any story or plot and barely anything happens in the film, as well as the two main parts are totally incohesive. The first half of the movie is about a depressed sister getting married, which shows a really strong depth to her hopelessness.

However, half way through the movie, it switches focus to the other sister, where miraculously, everyone else in the film but the sisters, her son, and her husband, simply leave. The entire second half of the film really has no connection to the first half except that it shares 3 of the same characters. Mid-film, it switches from a drama to a sci-fi, and I'm still at a loss whether to like the idea or abhor it.

There really is no cohesiveness to the two parts of the movie, so it almost seems like the writer either couldn't think of a full-length script and put two separate ones together, or thought it would be clever/genius to do so. The second part, given that there are only 3 characters (other than a little boy), is dull. The majority of the dialogue (and there is little) is a back-and-forth paranoid conversation with the husband and wife about whether or not this planet in the sky is going to hit the earth. There is no actual conflict, nothing that can be done about it, and totally makes no sense as a film, except to convey something apparently profound about the human soul or something. I dunno.

The constant replaying of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde as the entirety of the film's soundtrack gets quite annoying fairly quickly. Especially when it's the same part played over and over.

Two final things leave me with a sense of frustration/disappointment. The film's climax is the collision of this blue planet with earth and the characters do nothing in the film other than pointless dialog and running around. The film ends quite suddenly and while the cinematography seems beautiful, I really wonder what the whole point was. There was no story other than what can be described in a short sentence: Two sisters, a husband and their small boy are at a hotel golf resort to observe a blue planet 'moving past' Earth, mostly with dialog of depression and paranoia, when in fact it ends up colliding. The end.

My final gripe is Kiefer Sutherland's character. As an astronomer, he observes this blue projectile planet and is convinced that it will just pass Earth by. Yet when he realizes it doesn't, he ends up committing suicide, leaving his wife and young son behind. I can understand fear and hopelessness and surprise on his part, but what the heck kind of father/husband leaves his wife/child behind when the world is going to end, not doing everything possible to protect/comfort/care for them? It was stupid and didn't add anything to the story other than make me not like it. Not just the character, but the movie as a whole. Why would I want to spend 2 hours of my time watching dullness and nothingness that just is meant to make me feel depressed? It's artistic and beautiful, but sometimes making art into a film just doesn't work for me.

Little Monsters (1989)

Should be PG-13

[22 July 2011]

I saw this movie a few months ago with my young children and was a bit shocked how foul the movie was. Maybe when I was a young boy I found it intriguing, but as a father I don't think I'd want my kids exposed to that stuff until they're older and have a moral framework in place.

There are several instances of severe curse words - including sh*t, b*tch, a**hole, etc. and directed toward people, no less. The whole movie is premised around a boy's exploration of a demonic fantasy land and playing practical jokes on other kids while his parents are going through an awful divorce. This is where I first remember hearing the vulgar phrase for a bra: over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder. Not something I particularly want my 10 year old to know about. And then a scene where they pee into a jar and make it look like apple juice for a kid to drink the next day. Very vulgar and my 10 year old laughed hilariously, but I found it a bit too much for that age. It seems like only the mind of an adult who went through ugly times of a parental divorce could come up with a story like this.

It reminds me of the recent Where the Wild Things Are movie. Just dysfunctional. Disturbing and not feel-good. Absolutely do not think this is a PG movie that you can take any child under 10 to watch. It's just too disturbing.