Change Your Image
Wood-20
Reviews
Before and After (1996)
Before (high hopes) and After (what happened!?)
.Spoilers.
There was a lot of good things about this movie. It was a compelling and interesting story right from the beginning. The acting was seemingly well played...... until the third act. What on earth happened to the direction of this film? I have not read the book, so I don't know if it has the same direction as this movie played out... but the third act did not even seem like the same movie. The acting took a nose-dive, and the melodrama began flowing freely like ipecac down the throat.
From the beginning, I thought: Hey, sure, it's plausible that the Father wanted to save his son, and that these goofy things with the cover-up, and the family binding together to uphold the lie, were certainly no stretch of reason. Then we get to mom's, and Eddie's character's confession, and the whole thing is a puke-fest of gotchas and ridiculous moral claims about right and wrong which are, at best, pointless opposing claims about whether right or wrong and the law are the same thing.
Don't misread me, though. I really enjoyed the beginning of this movie. I just hated the end.
6/10
Abandon (2002)
Great directing and cinematography...
I really enjoyed the "aesthetics" of this movie, even though pulling the movie together was, on the whole, pretty lacking. There were tons of scenes that showed promise from the director's end. I loved the silent cut from the party where the crowd was all dancing around, to the football field where the four friends were dancing around. If there had been a point to those scenes, it might have even been better. I loved the soundtrack they chose. Again, had the story been pulled together well, some of these elements would have been able to drag this film from its underground lair. The vibrant colors in some of the ending scenes were quality; if only the ending hadn't required multiple fast forwards just to get to it. Katie Holmes was having sex enough, and "changes her clothes" for us, but what was the point of those scenes? Nothing at all. So, if you're looking for a film with the same "feel" you got from this movie, but actually has all the elements of a good movie, head back to the video store and rent "Donnie Darko".
Ripe (1996)
Not very good... in any sense.
This movie did attempt to capture the naive idealism that many young teenaged girls have for fun, friendship, escape, danger, sex, maturity, etc. The problem was that it failed to establish these things on every single level; which is why it failed to build a decent story around them. I couldn't follow the point of any part of this story, nor any reason why I should care.
This movie is not an exploration into pedophilia at all. It's basically about a girl being in love with her sister, and her sister being in love with the idea of "men". While the latter tries out her love of men, the former tries to win her sister back by "getting even".
The plot is weak, the characters are weak, and the reality of it all was similar to an amateur porn filmmaker (without the sexual substance).
The Man with Rain in His Shoes (1998)
There could be hope...
I found this movie to be realistic in it's apporach to broken relationships. The movie carried you through a 'Sliding Doors' type of scenario, and did it very well. I found the ending a bit paradoxical, which caused me to suffer my own uneasiness. I would see it, but there is probably no motivation to see it again.