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jon-carl
Reviews
Cursed (2005)
Cute, stylish romp
I very much enjoyed this stylish romp of a horror movie. It went from point to point to point as is should have, but I was disappointed by the conventional path the movie chose to take when it could have gone so many other places.
Some of the sub-themes were interesting, such as the concept of coming to terms with an identity by overcompensating and a realistic look at the power struggles one can encounter in high school and in the young professional role.
acting was mostly good, but most of the stars are for the beautiful sets, the nice lighting, and the serviceable score.
Not the perfect film by any means, but I enjoyed the little flashes of humor and sexiness, and might buy the film half price for a cold winter's light entertainment.
Detention (1998)
Wonderful Gritty Teacher's Fantasy
As a person who works with kids with behavior problems, and am starting to teach special education, this movie provided a great, guilty, cathartic escape.
I thoroughly enjoyed the humorous but dead-on portrayals of the various problems with teaching "problem kids", and I really enjoyed seeing the kids get to find themselves when literally stripped of the distractions of material culture.
I found that the language and disturbing situations in the school were not very far off from my experiences in the classroom and hallways. I really have known homeless students. I really have known kids who went out on their own because a parent overdosed and died.
And, on the fantasy end, it was interesting to see the extreme application of brainwashing for a startling new effect. Sure, some scenes stretched credulity... (How do you pretend to shoot a student at point blank range without really killing them?) but I found it great entertainment with a deep truth to the core message of the film.
Although the production quality on the VHS I bought was poor, I intend on buying the DVD so I can watch my favorite scenes - the art scenes and the Heart of Darkness scene - repeatedly.
What a wonderful guilty pleasure. I plan on watching it while grading papers several times a semester!
Riverworld (2003)
Lush and Interesting
This movie did the ultimate for me: it made me rush to the internet and purchase the first Riverworld book. The lush cinematography and okay plot kept me and my husband interested long after we would have had to turn off other SciFi channel features!
The Falling (1998)
Intriguingly shy movie on a bold subject
If I were a film teacher, I'd send this film back to the maker to be done right for a better final grade. Intriguing. I really liked the three-person point of view thing, but almost stopped watching becasue the first view was so ... well,like a soft-porn movie without the skin. Then the second take allowed us to see the depth of all of the actors except Christopher Shyer's Lars. There were some very fine moments of acting, some very fine moments of silence, some interesting cinematography, but looked like a prudish attmept to show the evils of sex at times, and a pornographic, movie-of-the-week exploitation of a compelling story question at others. I recommend people see this, and I hope someone will write, direct and produce a better movie based on the very promising elements found in this piece.
Anything Once (1998)
Nice, sophisticated short comedy
I very much enjoyed watching Anything Once. I watched it twice. The story was simple, well told, and the naturalistic feel lent itself well to making the film believable and the characters likeable. There was a refreshing lack of high camp, and the character motivations seemed honest. Nice acting performances all around, not stellar, but I'd like to see these folks act again.