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woundedegomusic
Reviews
If I Were You (2012)
Ends well
A good ending is all important and this ends magnificently.
It also starts with a bang.
It feels like a play, more than a movie, so we don't necessarily always get to suspend our disbelief about the situations, but if we're at all generous, none of the humor of the humanity is lost.
Marcia Gay Harden's part in the early scenes taps into more or less one vein of gold. She deftly constantly reinforces her character's main motivations while comically introducing us to her more nuanced and contradictory self, making her always exactly herself and amusingly unpredictable.
Once she gets involved with the theater, humor and humanity constantly erupt unpredictably, creating a kind of juicy atmosphere of warmth and surprise, that propel the central story into a team sport. It becomes a place that one might want to be in, despite its continual disasters. Human tragedy becomes a kind of fuel in the theater world, rather than a menace.
In short, you should not miss this movie.
Seven Pounds (2008)
Great story, weak production
The concept and overall story of this movie was very powerful and poignant, and is well worth seeing.
However, I think Will Smith was miscast and most of the other characters with the exception of Emily and Woody were miscast.
This was a two hour movie and felt about three or four. But, the ending was rewarding, certainly.
I think this could be redone as a 90 minute, or maybe a 30 or 60 minute story and have the same impact, with the right cast, maybe the right direction.
I hope we see more of Emily. She was the one character that made her character live in a way that would be hard to replace, instead of being replaceable by any other actor.
Travelers (2016)
Surprisingly interesting
I'm not one for supernatural or sci-fi but this was okay.
Black or White (2014)
Very good
Excellent, real life type situations, dialogs, but lots of missed opportunities. Maybe it was too true to real life? Because in the end, Wee-Wee and the family have a new appreciation for Grandpa, but Grandpa seems not to have grown at all. This kind of makes him come off as "right all along" despite his self righteous hypocrisy, rather than growing and embracing the other part of the family. You can feel the continued mistrust and it makes such an important character unlikable and probably untrue to his speeches, which makes the story unsatisfying. A kind word to Reggie wouldn't have hurt any either. Again, maybe this is how the actual story went in real life. I wouldn't be surprised if it is. But it kind of made the movie unsatisfying. Other than that peeve, there was plenty to like about the movie.
Spectral (2016)
Surprisingly good sci-fi.
I generally find sci-fi to be hokey. This was surprisingly taut the whole way through. By that I mean that it had lots of well crafted action, while the story line was loud and clear without long drawn out dialogs. Maybe it simply caught me on a good day but I was impressed. If you liked "Outside the Wire" then you'll like this just as well and vice versa.
The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951)
I came for the outer story but stayed for the inner story
I'm at that point in my life where I'm so jaded and despondent to movies in general that I rarely waste my time. Not that Hollywood is slacking, because they are not, but just that a lot of the thrill is gone from watching the hero tale unfold. But this little gem was so surprising and "unkempt" from an expectations point of view that I found myself in constant admiration. The "hero" of the story is a man who completely embodies the virtues of "the right" (the dutiful soldier) and INCOMPLETELY embodies the values of "the left" (putting human decency above order) and his conflicting inner compulsions yield ambiguous, or perhaps ironic, results.
His wife plays "the wife" in a way that complicates and elevates her role in a subtle but powerful way -- much as in real life.
I thoroughly enjoyed this, admired it, and hope the whole world enjoys and appreciates it. This is class, classy art.