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Reviews
The Kite Runner (2007)
Amazing cast, excellent script and photography, haunting music, compassionate themes.
After reading The Kite Runner, fans of the novel may wonder if the movie can come close to capturing its intense emotions. The movie indeed is so intelligently, creatively and compassionately composed that its emotional power at times becomes nearly overwhelming. The cast is amazing, especially the boy who plays Hassan, a character who is truly unforgettable. The script reflects the care with which the author, director and producer collaborated to tell a story true to the book's compassionate, illuminating intentions. Weaving all the elements together is a very fine combination of photography and music that keeps the audience in The Kite Runner's beautiful and yet heartbreaking world.
Zatôichi (2003)
Takeshi Kitano is superb in the main role.
Takeshi Kitano delivers a masterful performance as Zatoichi, whose characterization shows Kitano's respect for past actors in the role, but also his determination to surpass what others have achieved. His talents as director also are evident throughout the film. The DVD extra feature interviews with the cinematographer, fight choreographer, and costume designer provide interesting background on how carefully Kitano has textured this film to create a work of art appealing across generations of Zatoichi fans. The final dance sequence is itself a marvel of ingenuity. Overall,Kitano, his production team and the actors clearly deserve the film's many international awards.
To End All Wars (2001)
Has to be one of the best World War II movies ever made.
This movie should have been promoted more widely by the producers. Favorable word of mouth is now gaining the audience it deserves. The acting, script, cinematography, music and themes combine to make this an outstanding film. The director dares to take seriously important questions about courage, justice, forgiveness, anger, reconciliation and redemption. The transformation of the POWs during their 2 1/2 years in a Thailand camp is portrayed realistically and complexly. No easy answers are given to any of the moral questions confronting the POWs. The audience is asked to think through what they themselves would do -- and why -- in such a horrific situation. How to keep your humanity from disintegrating, how to keep compassion alive in your heart, how to live with honor and courage -- all are addressed in psychologically and philosophically compelling terms. The ending alone is worth watching the whole movie. Highly recommended for anyone interested in an unusually intelligent look at what war does to everyone involved.
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Ben Kingsley in top form.
Ben Kingsley is absolutely riveting. His performance is one of the best ever in an American film. The combination of novelistic and cinematic narrative styles is mesmerizing. The tragedy is inevitable, yet built with respect for the complexities of the Colonel's ambitions, his wife's fears and his son's destiny. Jennifer C must have known she didn't deserve top billing; she in no way matches the emotional power Kingsley brings to each and every one of his scenes. The actors playing his wife and son are very well-suited to their roles. The character of the sheriff, though, seems like he's lost on the movie set. He's brought in and out by the director to manipulate the plot -- which wasn't at all necessary, given the rich material offered by Andre Dubus in the original story. Overall, a movie not to be missed by anyone who appreciates the poetry of film at its best.
Monster's Ball (2001)
Very disappointing sexploitation film.
Does anyone really believe that Leticia, the character played by Halle Berry, would throw herself at a white man she hardly knows, a man who's at least 25 years older than she is, a man who lives in the same small town where she does, where Black-white relations are so tense and hateful? (When Leticia's son is in the car "accident," she knows the police are not going to investigate.) This movie is a sexploitation of both Leticia and Halle Berry herself, turning a beautiful, complex, conflicted Black woman into the objectifed, graphically displayed embodiment of the white man's physical and emotional salvation. Aren't people getting tired of this bleak, historically predictable plotline by now? And why does the director need to present the white prostitute as if she isn't even human, as if she doesn't have any feelings about her defilement by countless men like Hank, the character played by Thornton? The entire movie shows Leticia's character and Halle Berry herself being manipulated by the director in the fulfillment of a white man's fantasy of how to save his life by "taking care" of a Black woman, who (in the logic of this dream) can't save herself and isn't ever going to find a Black man who could help her. It's a shame that the first Oscar for Best Actress given to a Black woman had to be for this shallow movie. Why did Hank hate his son, his wife and possibly his own mother? Why did his father rule his life until nearly his dying day? It doesn't matter to the director because Hank isn't meant to do much more than stand in for men who would like to think their cruelties and barbarities can be forgiven without them ever having to do more than become the caretakers of Black women's bodies and dreams == even if they have helped to put these women's husbands on death row. This movie could have been a scathing social commentary on Black-white relations, but the director chose to evade the very issues that are central to the story. The cast is talented, but they can't go far with the script. One last note: with so many negative comments on this movie, why is it getting almost an 8 out of 10 on the imd voting chart?
Musíme si pomáhat (2000)
Highly recommended no matter how many WWII movies you've already seen.
As reflected in the many positive comments posted at this site, "Divided We Fall" is a movie full of surprises about the many stories still to be told about WWII. It's not like any other WWII movie that I've seen, especially in its attention to the intricacy and intimacy of moral decision-making. How anyone determines what is right or wrong is the result of an entire lifetime of relationships and commitments. One of the main themes of the movie is that courage can be the consequence rather than the cause of doing what is right. Overall, this is an unusually compassionate exploration of why we must help each other.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
The director works the audience as if he himself is a drug dealer supplying what they crave.
It's surprising to see how many people are being duped by the director of this pretentiously and gratuitously violent film. What the director offers are quick fixes of rapid fire imagery and viciously cut scenes without any need or opportunity for the audience to think hard or deeply about anything. Take,for example, his treatment of the character played by Jennifer Connelly. How is his degradation of that character any different than her debasement by the other men who exploit her for their cruel pleasure? The director consistently keeps his view of her "objective" in the literal sense of presenting her as an object -- upon which he projects his own fantasies of how an addicted woman would sell herself. Why doesn't he allow her to have any inner, believable life that could make her more real and make her conflicts more intense? (His objectification of her is so extensive that it feels at the end as if he is one of the men zeroing in on her pain to feed their horrifying pleasure.) Ellen B's character is more fully drawn, but even then, why does the director need multiple shots of electric shock treatment when one shot would show what she is feeling? The answer is that the director knows the fix his audience is seeking. We say we're appalled, but we can't stop watching what the slick photography and postmodern soundtrack turn into the very kind of media-induced high that his movie supposedly is critiquing. Wake up, audiences, and try to think for yourselves. The best directors want us to do that; the worst are afraid of what will happen if we dare to do so.
The Painted Desert (1931)
Fun to see Clark Gable in one of his earliest films.
Clark Gable's acting potential is evident in this cowboy film of feuding families. He's not sorry for his crimes, which makes him more interesting than everyone else in their complete predictability. Helen Twelvetrees, Our Heroine, seems like she's stepped right out of silent films into talkies without realizing the difference between them.
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001)
Far more entertaining than "Moulin Rouge"!
"Lagaan"'s multi-talented Indian cast has a great time dancing and singing its way through this very entertaining story. Producers of American musicals should learn a lesson or two from the way Aamir Khan has assembled this movie. By the end, each Indian character is individualized and at the same time significant as an allegorical figure in a modern legend of how to live with grace and courage, even under political oppression. The British villain is the one cardboard character in the movie, but it's clear from the start that he's only meant to be a foil for the hero and his friends. Anyone who likes this movie will want the soundtrack, which is appealing across countries.(Aamir Khan, by the way, also appears in the movie "Earth.")
Black Hawk Down (2001)
No point, no moral center, nothing to make this worth watching
Why do we need an action film about the US fighting in Somalia? What do any of us gain from propaganda? If every US soldier fights not for a cause but to stand by his buddies -- as nearly every scene and certainly the ending insist -- then what difference does it make if he's killing people in Somalia, Vietnam, Europe, or anywhere else? The portrayal of "the skinnies" by Ridley Scott is despicable. Very few even have faces; instead they have screaming mouths and war cries to reinforce their inhumanity in the viewers' eyes. Of course, we don't want to think about"the skinnies"too much; after all, that could slow down the action -- and the action has to be the whole point. (Don't ask, though, why Scott has time to make us hear about Ewan's coffee preferences.) The Somalians aren't real, and neither are the US soldiers. Scott manipulates all the characters to skew the telling of history as he wants us to see it. Scott isn't just "on the side of the soldiers"; he's expecting his audience to give up their any critical inquiry into the nature of war and the immense power held by our military leaders. Not one soldier in this movie is enraged at the political decisions that have led to so many lives needlessly lost. Is Scott saying soldiers don't think - they just obey? And is he saying we should admire soldiers for that? If so, he's participating in the kind of film making that many of our country's enemies have been perfecting for years.
What Women Want (2000)
Insulting to the intelligence of women and men. Way behind the times in its fantasies.
As a Mel Gibson fan going all the way back to the first Mad Max, I thought this movie would be entertaining. The trailers shown in previews make it look like a light-hearted comedy. And with all the hype in newspapers,magazines, and late-night talk shows, anyone would think this movie marks a breakthrough for Gibson. What a joke! I don't know anyone -- woman or man, of any age -- who thinks this movie is even slightly amusing (with the exception of seeing Gibson wax his legs). The attitudes toward women all the way through the movie have to make any mature person cringe. For example, one of the awful subplots (and there are several that make the movie seem longer than Tom Hanks' four years on the island) has Gibson involved with a coffee shop waitress. He doesn't care 2 cents for her, goes to bed with her to prove his "manhood" (in one of the most vulgar sex scenes in any PG -13 movie!), then totally forgets about her. A week later, she shows up at his apt. house, out of her mind because she can't stand the thought that he doesn't care about her. Of course, he doesn't care about her -- he has a whole new life as "Mr. Sensitive," which apparently doesn't include ever having to say he's sorry for grinding women under his heel. The movie lets him get away from her by saying he's gay -- and supposedly that's all she needs to hear for her insanely obsessive world to be all right again. Why does this movie include so many women with such inane ways of dealing with real life? When we left the movie, everyone was saying how stupid it was -- because it DOESN'T have any insights into what women or men want. You would think this movie was put together by men who hate women -- and themselves. Don't be taken in by all the hype about this movie. It is one of the worst movies ever to pull people in by trailers!
Eye of the Beholder (1999)
Pretentious and plodding. Would get a failing grade at any decent film school.
The comments on this film are much more interesting than the film itself. People who defend this film seem to want to prove how worldly and sophisticated they are. Because they can identify symbolic references or because they can recognize how the film rips off --excuse me, pays tribute to -- other directors' work, they conclude that only they can see its true worth. Its true worth is something less than the price you'd pay to rent it. Great films reach beyond the "worldly" few to offer all kinds of viewers the opportunity to see life in significantly different ways. This film is mind-numbing. Save your money!