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Reviews
Godless (2017)
A 21st century western playing at being 19th - a bit schematic, stagey
Production values: First thing I notice and keep noticing: except for the aftermath of gun fights, here in the dusty, muddy high plains of New Mexico, with characters spending lots of time outside working, their clothing in virtually every scene looks like it just came fresh out of the laundromat. It also looks like it just came out of a store, vs. being well worn, well used. Next thing I notice: they're using modern American English, not 1880's language. Next thing I notice: the script tries to be 21st century liberal contemporary by including everyone, well everyone but Asians and Mexicans, the latter omission being especially strange because its story is played out in New Mexico, which has lots of Mexicans (and, rightfully, save American land grabs, should rightfully part of Mexico or the right to vote on its return).
That said, I like the acting of Merrit Wever. Michelle Dockery seems a bit miscast. And unless I missed something (possible), it's never clear how Dockery's character ends up with a Native son or how she knows the language. Or how Sheriff Bill McNue ends up seeing well enough to be a dead eye shot in the final shootout.
The whole thing seems like it had quite a bit of a corporate hand in it.
Code 37 (2009)
Typical U.S. cop style show done in Sweden
The typical American cop show goes person by person, accusing each of having committed the crime in question, usually trying to trap them, until they find one that can't get out of it (rightly or wrongly). Is Sweden really the same? Mediocre at its best.
The War of the Worlds (1953)
My first movie
This was the first movie I ever saw, at the age of six, when it first came out. It was a birthday party for the son of a famous tennis player, and he (or his son) had the idea of taking us all after cake and ice cream to see it. It was more than a bit much for my young psyche and I was out the door in short order, spending most of the film lieing on the floor behind the station wagon's front seat. No surprise, I had a hard time falling asleep for the next week.
Twenty years later I had a chance to watch it late one night on TV and discovered that it was every bit as scary as I recalled. The sense the movie conveys of being trapped by aliens, and the sense that all gestures to them are futile, was overwhelming. Although located in London, it came out during the McCarthy witch-hunt and I seem to recall some playing off of the the situation there, although the film is based on Orson Welles' book. The movie tends to break down a bit toward the end, since after all, this is the 1950's and the human race has to come out of this alive -- or maybe the Martians just decided humans and earth weren't worth it.
My Senior Year (2020)
Well meant, but poorly done
This purports to be an anti-suicide movie with a bit of religion tossed in, but limited enough to keep the film from coming across as Christian. Like the person who walked away after 25 minutes and gave two stars, I was tempted. To that point the writing is stiff, the acting amateurish, the editing without sense and one can only wonder where the director was hiding out. After that, it got marginally better, but not much. There's no organic flow to the movie, story, characters or acting, but a series of staged scenes with stiff lines that often amount to speeches. And the final school scene makes no sense at all. As an anti-suicide movie, it doesn't make a strong impression. Overall, it seemed like a long version film school project, although it could as well been a poorly funded and thought through advocacy effort.
Gisaengchung (2019)
Much ado about a lot less than pretended
Korean satire about class differences turns into working class slapstick and pointless violence, that is, pointless relative to the point of the satire. The underlying dynamic is contemptuous of the poor and working class, and ends with a phony working class dream, under the guise of family. The last half or so of the film drags.
Charley Varrick (1973)
A Small Treasure That I'll Never Forget
I haven't seen this gem of a movie since the early '70's, yet it's one that still comes to mind strikingly often. The move is about the relationship between an old pro and the young gung-ho kid who doesn't want to think or listen, and the repercussions of the latter's actions for both of them. Walter Matthau at his best. I'll never forget the 360 degree bed scene in Vegas. I see it's been remastered. I don't know the quality yet, but that aside it's definitely worth the watch.
Der Pass (2018)
Lots of drama but breaks down badly
I'll leave it to others to point out the fun. Here are the problems with the plausibility of the writing:
- publication of certain videos means Ellie's computer has been hacked. Not a word mentioned about where it came from, yet the last few episodes turns on this event.
- Ellie's character is portrayed as weak and weepy. Hardly the picture of a female cop. Male chauvinistic steretypes in action.
- If Gideon, the Austrian detective, was really believed to be passing information to criminals, he would have been suspended.
Kis Uykusu (2014)
Greatness undermined by self indulgence
Brilliant acting and cinematography are undermined by redundancy and an ending w/o sense. Ceylan establishes that the Aydin is profoundly cynical and controlling through the scene with his sister and his attempt to intervene in his wife Nihal's meeting. The 36 minute exchange that follows between the two, brutally honest and excellently acted, is entirely redundant, giving the viewer nothing new of importance from either character. It's at this point that Ceylan runs out of ideas and the film moves to the final scenes to end in a whimper, rather than finding some reason for viewers to care about this story. Too bad, because so much of it is brilliant.
Cortez (2017)
Good acting and production, but why was it made?
Six stars for good acting and production and photography on a $100K budget. It helped in all respects that it was in good part - writing, directing, acting, producing - an affair of family and very close friend(s). Beyond that...after awhile I started asking myself why am I being put through these characters with this story; i.e., what's special here, what's the redeeming value (so to speak), what's the point? It's not enough to grab a slice of life, even done well; there's got to be some reason to put me - an audience - through it. Otherwise, it's just a form of self indulgence, more Me Generation stuff. I really like character studies, but the writers failed to offer its fullness here. No development at all. Just an extended photograph of anger and desperation and love and adaptations to it, beginning to end. Frustrating. The characters were annoying enough, repetitively so, that by about halfway through I had the urge to walk out, which, who know, I might have done were it not for an obligation to see it through - and nothing better to do the rest of that evening.
Wayward Pines (2015)
Waste of good acting talent
Probably written by big-city types, a stereotypical small (northwest) mountains town for another no-way-out story, completely stupid even on its own terms, including a wholly implausible ethnic diversity. Over the top acting (cartoonish), rehashed plots from other TV programs and movies, etc. Think of it as another Fox paranoiac TV (mini-) series, this time with little if anything original (I can't think of anything, but maybe someone will find a bit here or there). It's hard to see Matt Dillon, a horribly made-up Melissa Leo, Terrence Howard and a long list of other actors lower themselves to this nonsense (amazing the amount of money it must be costing for cast). There are so many better programs and films of this kind, past and present, including the current French series Les Revenants, redone with modest competence in the States as The Returned. Speaks to the level of intelligence so common in this country that so many here consider it good fare.