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daniel-j-doughty
Reviews
Three Moons Over Milford (2006)
I enjoy it
This is a fun little show that I look forward to every week. I had my Tivo filled up with automatically scheduled shows, so I had to manually search for it each week. And I DID. Which is a sure sign that it's a good show. I'd never go out of my way that much if it wasn't.
The plot isn't overly complex and others comparisons to Northern Exposure and Gilmore Girls is apt. Except this family has a teenage boy and girl so the interaction is actually a bit more real and less Nancy Drewish. The kid's trying to get laid and the mom's trying to crack it down.
And the overtones of the world ending are actually interesting in a farsical sort of manner. There is a general fear of the world coming to end via pandemic or nukes or evil squeegies from planet x that we all live with today. Instead of ignoring that fear, this show sort of throws it all on it's head. It says, OK, so maybe the world is ending. Now what are you going to do? Which is a day by day sort of attitude I can get behind.
New Waterford Girl (1999)
Small town life satirized.
Great Canadian film. It's all about small town life and how you have to fight to get out if that life doesn't fit you. And it's about teenage catholic issues. Who's preggers, who's gotten an abortion, who's f^(*&ing who, why there's no space in the house for more kids, etc. The leading actress Liane Balaban did a really good job of it all. She reminds me of Natalie Portman. If you're not sentimental or need action then I wouldn't bother. But if you find humor in the daughter of an incarcerated boxer knocking out all the boys in town then you'll dig this fun little movie. And oh yeah, it deals with young women actually have physical desires...which seems to be taboo or something.
At Close Range (1986)
it's pretty much no good
I love Penn and Walken. They both disappointed me. The plot was weak. The characters were weaker. No time is spent in defining characters and then the director attempted to develop them to some new state. It just doesn't work. And at a very basic level I'll tell you that having a rat be the centerpiece of a gangster film never works out too well.
OK, here's a HUGE point of contention with other reviews. Everyone raves about how great the soundtrack is. IT'S THE SAME BLOODY SONG AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. Look, I like the damn Madonna song, but just playing it on repeat doesn't make it better and it certainly doesn't set a mood. Frequently I actually don't notice a soundtrack on a film. This one was so damn obnoxious that I couldn't ignore it.
So overall I think the movie sucked. It's the first Walken film I've ever given a thumbs down to. The plot has holes. The characters are boring and transparent. The music sucks. The cinematography is OK. Pretty much it's crap.
The Third Miracle (1999)
enjoyable plot until the last 2 minutes
title of the film is "the third miracle." the priest spends the whole damn film trying to find the third miracle. In the end he finds it. And it's accepted. The other two miracles were easily proved and witnessed. So the three miracle limit was met. But then in the last 2 minutes of the film the priest says that they've had two miracles and they're waiting for another one to happen. Pisses me off.
Honestly, I rated this film a 1 because of this horrid plot twist at the end. I would have rated it an 8 otherwise. The acting was alright, cinematography was nice as it had some footage that had to look like WWII footage, and there was an underlying plot of the priest finding his faith. Plus it managed to not bag on the Catholic church too much. I'm not Catholic, but I don't really enjoy the films that are too polar on the church.
So anyhow, if they could just cut off the last 2 minutes of the film it would have been great. As it is, IT SUCKS. It's like reading a short story for 20 minutes only to find out that the narrator was just dreaming or something. CHEAP TRICK, YOU BUTTHEADS, don't do it again.
Love the Hard Way (2001)
student to hooker...I get that....hooker to scientist....I don't
I watched the film to it's semi-awful end and I have to say that it just wasn't worth it. I liked the initial characters. I enjoyed the flirtation of the bad boy and the good girl. I even enjoyed the initial back and forth of I love you-Who are you again-I love you. But when we got to the Claire is a bloody whore part of the film I just fell a bit a apart.
Not to mention there are glaring holes in the logic of the film. Just because two guys are friends doesn't mean they'll get assigned to the same kitchen in prison. I mean with persuasion and some chance it might happen, but what happened to their dumbass third guy who pimped Claire out the first time? OK, and here is my finally bit of criticism. I, unlike others, have no problem seeing a good student fall from the pedestal. I personally would have expected drugs to be a part of the fall, but no matter the cause I'm not stunned to watch such a fall. I am however, AMAZED, to watch her be a serious scientist 2 years later. And in fact, to be screwing guys without condoms in NYC for several months before her beau was bagged? All I can say is AIDS AIDS AIDS. When they fast-forwarded two years forward I expected him to show up at her funeral plot, not to meet the successful scientist doing well without him.
Decent acting. Decent plot. BIG PLOT HOLES.
The Elite (2001)
it's just awful
the premise of the film is that they trained together since pre-pubescence. then in the first action scene they all act like they're meeting each other for the first time. I couldn't make it past the first 15 minutes. I don't know why Time Warner rated it a 2.5 out of 4...but it's an awful film.
oh yeah, and even the first scene sucks. the guy comes in and is asked to shoot one of his undercover cohorts. Of course he gives in and tries to shoot the villain instead. And there's a bloody ICBM in an Austrian chapel...Europeans would never do something like that to their heritage. Hell, even Americans plant them out in the middle of nowhere amongst the corn and wheat.
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Best of Show, take 2?
I'm sorry. I liked Best of Show. This is just a revisiting of the same material. It was funny once, now it's boring except to those that didn't catch Best of Show the first time. This can not be a fully objective review as I turned the film off after 20 minutes of this nonsense.
Wow, there's a wife who screwed everyone or who is a porn star once again. Eugene Levy is once again in a film as a social retard. Don't get me wrong here...Eugene is funny...the role is funny...but much like a fart joke on Thanksgiving...It's only funny so many times.
Oh yes and there's the chuckling idiots who revisit one another after years away from one another. "Wow, you don't have hair!"..."Sure but now you're fat"...Well at least I don't have a wife with fake boobs like him!
Particles of Truth (2003)
Enjoyable film
Wow, the other comments seem awfully snobbish to me. Anyhow, I liked the film, but do tend to enjoy films that fade to black frequently and I'm not perturbed by flashes of different scenes...there's a German term for it, but I forget what it is. I think maybe leitmotif's or something like that. Anyhow this film is chock-a-block full of it.
There is one gripe I have with the film. As a mature artist the main character produces paintings of scared girls or fetuses on a black background. These same paintings show up in the background in the crappy apartment where her parents get high when she was a child. And you know it's not that she could paint them at that age because they have her holding up drawings she's doing with crayons. So I dislike that.
But overall I really liked the whole film. And someone said it's not plot driven. I don't get that at all. It's a dark romance film. In the end the guy gets the girl. And there are many turns and twists along the way. And then someone else griped about a ton of people voting 10. Well I did vote a ten for it. If I bother to review a film then it usually gets at 10 or a really low score. If it's important enough to me to review a film it gets a ten. I've probably watched 200 films over the last quarter and this is the only one I felt worth reviewing. Doesn't that deserver a 10?
Automat Kalaschnikow (2000)
fine in parts, unfocused and anti-gun in others
The film director is putting words into the mouth of the original engineer. I speak Russian quite well and at no time does Mikhail Kalashnikov state that he feels that criminal use of guns in the US is what he regrets the most. Yet the narrator makes this point and the movie seems to attempt to make this point several times.
The director also is quite misdirected in their information on steel-core bullets, AKA armor-piercing bullets.
In short, I'm a bit confused why two German film producers are so concerned about guns in the United States. And I'm very confused about how they seem to think that a Russian produced gun is somehow one of America's largest threats, as if other machine guns weren't available had this one not been produced? It's an OK film, but it's a bit annoying to wade through all the anti-gun nonsense just to get to the interesting bits. And in a bit of drama they ended the film with a bunch of hicks shooting up some gun range for no reason whatsoever. Only point in the damn film where an American shows up with a backwoods accent and of course they're acting like a bunch of jackasses...never mind the intelligent police officers that briefed the guy on the LA bank robbery that happened a few years ago. Yup, us dumb Americans can't be trusted with them crazy Russian machine guns.