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Of Tomorrows Unknown (1991)
I sort of agree with both of the others... though they did actually make the thing.
You know, in one sense anyone may have, and share, their opinion about anything they want, even their own work... but Mike. Oh, Mike.
Now let's be clear - he isn't trying to boost sales (it isn't presently for sale), and his name is clearly emblazoned above the review, so he's not being deceptive or anything, but Mike...
Reviewer "Obliv", who stars as the lead villain, is spot on about the movie. It is quite ambitious. Most Local Filmmakers follow the rule that says to only write what you can shoot. Mike wrote what James Cameron could shoot, and then set out to do it himself on his own hard work, and the goodwill of friends. He edited it on a linear editing system (which means that you're essentially re-recording the shots one after the other. If you realize, 20 minutes in, that you want to fix something at the beginning, your only option is to start over). Much of the acting is wooden (happens in Hollywood occasionally), but not all of it. Much of the story is derivative (Hollywood!), but the mix is int'resting. One scene just works - it involves a guy hunting through wreckage as an alien onslaught continues around him. Its placement in the film, the camera-work, and Mike's use of sound effects made it convincing.
It is unlikely that anyone reading this who does not personally know these reviewers will ever see this film, because it was scored with the music of Jerry Goldsmith. You could call it a "temp track", but it's really probably stuck there, unless the picture undergoes a whole re- edit. But if Mike becomes more popularly known, this might give you a glimpse into his work as a young adult.
Roll Bounce (2005)
Very good natured, and lots of fun to watch, so minor imperfections don't matter so much
This is a really charming little movie. It is very much like what you'll see in the trailer, in its use of music, its skating cinematography and its simplicity, so I think anyone with any inclination to see it at all is going to be pleased. The film is overall quite good natured when it's following X and his friends, and at times dazzling when they're skating. One is tempted to say that this is what the rollerskating movies of the late 70's should have been, but that implies that they should have been in the first place, and they probably shouldn't have. They missed the point. It's not enough to see *that* people are skating - we need to feel the energy of it. That's done with the camera, and in Roll Bounce, the camera is definitely dancing with the kids, which is great.
Fantastic song soundtrack, which almost goes without saying, but it doesn't. Seriously - there is a lot of really good music in this movie, and it's almost constant.
Know going in that it's not perfect, and try not to sweat the small stuff. Minor quibbles are with anachronisms and dialogue. Atari released the arcade version of the Asteroids game in 1979, but these guys are playing it at home in 1978. Sounds picky, but late 1981, when they really could have done that, and 1978 are day and night. They might as well be 10 years apart. Pong would have been not only accurate, but also really cool and evocative. As to dialogue, it's not bad so much as just basic. It's above the Afterschool Special level, but occasionally not much above that, so when it occurred to me that I wish these kids had slightly smarter things to say, I had to let it go.
And I did, easily.
It just left me with a really good feeling, this one, a fun feeling, a *nice* feeling, and lately that's a rare thing to come away from a film with. This movie pretty well satisfies on all of its promises.
** Oh, two things
1) This movie has the best Teaser Trailer I've seen in years. It's available online (http:// www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/roll_bounce/), so check out the one marked Teaser (not 'trailer'). It's wonderful. Look at it. Look at it now.
2) On the subject of the 70's, remember that country song The Devil Went Down to Georgia? Where the devil duels a guy on 'the fiddle' for his soul? I always thought the devil's playing far exceeded that of 'Johnny", I believe his name was, that the devil had essentially won the competition, whatever the jury had decided. That same effect is sort of at play in this film with the final competition. The Sweetness team really pull out the stops, while the kids are basically just very good. Ultimately it doesn't matter, because of how things wind up, but I'm just saying... don't let it bug you. The movie isn't about the technical accuracies of skating evaluation, it's about joy.
Most (2003)
Greatness from an oft-told story
By my unofficial tally, speaking in a theater lobby with many attendees, at The Heartland Film Festival (October, 2003) this short, MOST (The Bridge), was the favorite, and most discussed, among all of its various films. The plot may become familiar as you watch the piece. It's from a story that was once passed along at summer camps, and now circulates the internet. No matter - it has been transformed into both an instantly captivating work of its own, and the best possible presentation of this tale. Intense care was taken in the film's details, from story to cinematography to sound. The latter was clearly edited on the emotion, which plays amazingly. As such, MOST lends itself to scrutiny, if you want to do that. Deeper meanings are there to be plumbed, but, like the best of all such cinema, it also works intuitively. Effort isn't necessary - you can just let it wash over you. In that way it approaches, if not meets, the singular style and quality of WINGS OF DESIRE.
I've allowed a few months pass, just to let it settle with me, and I'm now reasonably sure that MOST can be called a masterpiece. Really - it's that good.
Down with Love (2003)
If you love cinema...
Man, is this a treat! It's just dripping with style and joy!
This is one of those movies where I liked everybody - even when they were being bad. Affability is a non-commodity in pictures today, so what a treasure to run into it in such abundance! Ewan McGregor's character comes closest to those in MOULIN ROUGE and A LIFE LESS ORDINARY. He's not afraid to wear that bleary-eyed grin, but he also has a snazzy cool about him. David Hyde Pierce is playing a saturated version of his usual character, but it fits in perfectly. Instead of "seen this before", I got an "It's nice to have you around!" feel. Renée Zellweger fits the Doris Day part, but is too smart to simply mimic her. Instead she relies on the charms natural to her own person (and isn't that really the best way to imitate Ms. Day?), and Sarah Paulson, as her editor and friend Vikki, is so familiar in her role that I was certain I'd seen her in something before even though I actually hadn't. It's exactly what you want from that character.
The parodied cinematic conventions aren't mere "Ta-da!" setpieces coming in succession to be marked off a checklist. Instead the whole film is painted with them. When the visuals alone aren't delighting, the wonderfully obvious, lavish and ever-present music is. The orchestrations are perfect, literally channelling the sound of the era (in fact, my sole disappointment came midway through the film as I realized that there was no way the entire score would fit on a single CD). When that isn't all, it's the writing, either by perfectly emulating the dialogue of the time, or by just being great comic dialogue on its own. Add the performances, not just by the four leads, all perfectly cast, but by every supporting player - even the extras, and you can see how the joy compounds.
I even laughed at the sexual innuendo, which never seemed cheap, in a day when to do it at all is almost automatically lazy. One scene even out Austin Powerses the Austin Powers movies, and still retains the film's class!
DOWN WITH LOVE does what the best send-ups do. Like YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or GHOSTBUSTERS, it has enough plot that it would have worked as a straightforward version of itself, and in that form might even be a better movie than some of its inspirations.
One online critic has said, "If you're a heterosexual male and your significant other wants to drag you to this one...run." Well, I saw this with five other straight guys - no one else was in the theater, and we filled the room with big, male roars of laughter. If your girlfriend drags you to this picture, either it'll be a delightful accident, or she's got great taste, and you'd better not let her go!
As we left the movie, one guy blurted out, "I just feel good about life!"
That was me.
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Better enjoyed if you know which flaws to expect
ATTACK OF THE CLONES is one of the most consistently dazzling movies I have seen in years, and it was probably an okay picture until it ended. Unlike EMPIRE, which closed on a cliffhanger or two, this movie didn't bother to become climactic before it simply stopped. It was much, much better the second time, but remains flawed in some big ways.
CLONES takes itself seriously from the start, a refreshing change from its Jar-Jar laden predecessor. Very little aims to be cute. It's the most political of these films. It would help to have this realized in a more dramatic fashion given its ultimate import to the story. Padme is believable as a Senator. Yoda is well developed as the head of the Jedi order. It's easy to understand why so many rely upon in him. He's a counselor, an effective general in battle, and he's pretty cool with his lightsaber, though he gets barely a minute of time with it. Luke Skywalker's whininess is clearly an inherited trait. Anakin is nothing if not petulant. He is portrayed as headstrong, arrogant, resentful and lacking anything resembling wisdom, but otherwise he doesn't even start down the dark path.
It's slow for a Star Wars movie. Transitions between scenes are labored. A final line of dialogue is said, the shot holds before the wipe to the next one, then there is a hold before the new dialogue starts. This may seem picky, but with 178 scenes - it adds up to a sluggish picture.
Action scenes lay limp. An asteroid field chase brings no concern about anyone hitting anything. The big ending battle with the colossal ships is quite grand, but also quite short for a climax. These sequences suffer from the consistent use of master shots, spectacular on their own, but not conveying progress in the battles. While this may seem realistic, it is also anonymous, structureless, and without drama. There is no urgency, no sense of goal, just spectacular, empty fighting. Scored gloomily, CLONES' action music sometimes has a beat, but still saps the energy right out of these scenes. John Williams seems to have forgotten how to score a heroic moment, or a victory. Listening to the CD, I just assumed that there weren't any, but there are, and they're diminished by the music.
While CLONES portrays a romance, it is not in the least way romantic. Anakin's attraction is immediate and intense. Padme's is neither. Her draw to Anakin is motivated only by the needs of the story. Many scripted personal moments have been left out of the film, and I think her character needed those to make this believable from both sides. Her eventual pronouncement of love is made with clumsiness - it's not sweet, it's kind of weird. Anakin's lengthy one on Naboo is earned, but Christiansen's woodenness makes it fall flat as well.
The dialogue could have used a once-over by someone who isn't afraid to correct George Lucas. "M'Lady" is said too frequently, and never comfortably. Anakin and Kenobi say each other's names repeatedly, and not naturally, because it's unnatural to do. Obi-Wan's sarcasm seems forced, and the buddy-picture dialogue plays flat. Things are also repeated within scenes. As Padme prepares to leave Coruscant, her handmaid jokes that the security guard will be safe with her around. A minute later Anakin makes the same reversal joke about Artoo being along with he and Padme. Also, jokes are sometimes made, including three awful, awful one-liners, not worthy of a low-rent Henny Youngman - made by C-3PO. I would almost trade these in for more of Jake Lloyd's "Yipee!"'s.
SPOILER TIME
A scene with Anakin's mother is too pat. She sees him, says, "Now... I am complete" and dies. This kind of thing happened in MENACE, but there was so much talk of the will of the force, that the deus-ex-machinas worked. This plays as melodrama.
The lightsaber duel is the least dramatic or exciting since the first Star Wars movie. EMPIRE added geography and drama to its duel. JEDI's duel was fierce, and pivotal. MENACE added the speed and acrobatics of real Jedi Knights. This one represents a regression. Dooku fights Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda each in turn. The fights with Anakin and Obi-Wan are shot like the duel in A NEW HOPE - close-ups with swords moving past the camera until Dooku gets the better of them. Yoda makes an entrance, and the two battle with lightning, then Yoda whips out the blade. His fighting style works for his size, but the skirmish is too brief to be relished before Dooku pulls the Distract Him By Endangering His Friends trick, and skirts away while Yoda saves our heroes.
Where other movies build to a climax, even MENACE, this one concludes with our heroes getting into, and then out of, an isolated mess. The Clone War begins, but that has no import to these specific characters in the moment, as would, say, Anakin's turning to the dark side. It's interesting politically, but politics play as backdrop. CLONES ended as would have EMPIRE if it had stopped just as the Millennium Falcon landed at Cloud City. It's not that the story isn't finished, or that the film isn't self-contained, it's that neither a climax nor a breaking point were reached. Even FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING ended at a clear chapter stop. CLONES seems to end more in the middle of a chapter, with a cut straight to a quick epilogue just for form.
END SPOILERS
The problem is not with what the filmmakers did, i.e. "focusing too much on the visuals". That effort cannot be faulted. It is a constant blessing, and it has nothing to do with this movie's problems. It is what they didn't do, fixing up the dialogue, tightening, emphasizing the important story elements, and including the moments that develop Padme's love of Anakin, as well as the political dialogue. These and building to a climax - these are the problems.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
A perfect, gentle ghost movie.
Like many suspense thrillers, but for reasons other than the usual, please try to see or hear as little about this movie as you can before seeing it. It's certainly not all surprises, it's much better than that, but why spoil those that are there? This movie is so wonderfully restrained and subtle. Dialogue is unobvious and genuine. The most interesting thing about this for me was that I left the film not thinking only "What a great ghost story flick.", but also "What a nice relationship movie!" In fact that's what stayed with me, which is not what one usually expects from such a film. Early in the movie there appears trouble for the relationship between Bruce Willis's character and that of his wife, a thing which annoyed me, because as subplots, these things usually detract and end badly or through cliche. Not so here. Everything works in this movie. Everything.