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Reviews
Elephant (2003)
awful truly dire, irresponsible reckless,stupid and boring.
In Elephant Gus Van Sant recreates a truly normal school day and for anyone who can remember or still goes to school they will no that a ordinary school day is tedious and dull. This is to make the following events seem also ordinary and realistic and look everyday what follows is a high school "columbine" style shooting and Van Sant therefore fails to acknowledge that these events are not everyday but actually a freak occurrence that no one can comprehend or begin to understand. The blurring of the line between fiction and reality is what is disturbing here these are events that did happen and yet now they are being used for entertainment but what is worse is Van Sant's attempt to try and explain the killers reasoning which is clumsy, irresponsible and well quite frankly stupid. Van Sant lays the blame for these high school killers on various sources violent computer games, being gay and rock music by failing to examine these in any detail Van Sant implies that anyone who is gay is obviously full of bent up sexual tension and is likely to go on a killing spree and anyone who listens to violent music or plays violent game is so strongly influenced they too will immediately wander into the local high school shooting wildly. The simple fact of the matter is no-one knows why someone could be possessed to kill their friends in such a way and there really is no simple solution. All this aside the film is dull and pretentious and comes from the director who re-made Pscycho in colour. stay away from his films. an elephant never forgets and i won't forget this truly vile film.
Kaze no na wa amunejia (1990)
Cheesy but Charming
Certainly not one of the best Anime films but certainly one of the most accessible to the casual viewer.The film is set in a post- apocalyptic world and the film follows the road journey across the decaying landscape of the United States meeting different characters and following different plots each of which is short and sweet and whilst not demanding many are entertaining. There are many moments which are very much based in Eastern culture and are a little difficult to comprehend as a westerner but these moments are few and far between. Sometimes the film can be very cheesy but the films overall charm and originality make it certainly worth a look.