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Reviews
Jackass: The Movie (2002)
i am still laughing
it doesn't matter what anybody says. this is possibly the funniest movie ever made, if you can call it a movie. whatever it is, i was in a state of shock as i exited the theater. i didn't laugh or anything. i knew that that was probably the funniest 90 minutes of my life.
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
hmmm...
notice most negative reviews of this movie are extremely brief and somewhat base.
one sure-fire way to tell if a film is worth seeing is by observing the reviews. in the case of really good cinema one begins to see an extreme contrast in people's reactions. either people love it or they hate it. if everybody loves a movie then the movie has most likely been calculated and tailored for just that purpose, for everyone to like it. while this movie is good on the surface, it will rarely give the kind of satisfaction that a truly good film has to offer.
punch-drunk love seems to be one of these films. the first thing i thought when the credits rolled and i looked around was "boy i bet alot of people are gonna hate this." alot of people were just baffled by this film. i can see why. there are elements that are seemingly nonsensical, the characters are flawed, and all the other things people have mentioned in the negative reviews. that is all true. thank god bc that is what made the film great.
(SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH) look at the nonsensical elements more closely. the harmonium in the beginning for example. now most people in the theater (including me) were like "what the hell?" when a car suddenly went into a roll and a taxi put a small piano on the road and drove off. now i am merely postulating but PT Anderson seems has used symbolism in his movies before. notice barry picks up the harmonium as the moving truck drives by. notice the moving truck in the background as barry and lena walk out of the restaraunt together. notice the moving boxes with the same logo in lena's apartment. whether you find the use of symbols in movies pretentious or not (judging by what has been said about magnolia) this is a very interesting device. barry's life seemed to be a car-crash figurativly, until lena - very much like the harmonium - was dropped at his feet. he did need to fix it up a bit though for it to work. but in the end it played fine.
the music was very grating in some parts. the characters were almost disturbing. i am sure some people do not want a movie to affect them. the shallower films are always more popular, but Anderson is an extremely talented director. Like the other Anderson (Wes) he seems to favor wide angle lenses and anamorphic widescreen. this sometimes puts people off and makes them feel detached, but if used correctly this type of photography can give important insight into the characters and in doing so can actually bring us closer to them. notice both Andersons' movies are very character driven.
no this film isnt for everyone, alot of people would probably be better off not seeing it. in which case i would recommend "JACKASS: The Movie(which isn't really for everybody either now that i think about it. but it is damn funny. anyway-). but if you have appreciated Anderson's previous cinematic works, or you love truly good films, punch-drunk love is a great film.
Chelsea Walls (2001)
Ethan should stick to acting
This was without a doubt one of the worst films at SXSW this year. How could they have possibly screwed it up? I was looking forward to seeing this movie, it has tons of great actors and actresses in it. Well they managed to mess it up. Or maybe not, this kind of film seems like it was probably messed up from the beginning. Now I am not a close-minded moviegoer, nor am I a moviegoer who enjoys only big films like Lord of the Rings and writes the smaller films off as boring because I have a minute attention span; In fact this is almost exclusivly not so. However, this film was boring. It was almost like a parody of an art house film. The first hour I kept myself entertained by musing over how absurd the dialog was but after that I just wanted to leave. Oh but I stayed. And let me say the cinematography is very good, the music is excellent, and the acting as well, although everyone cast in the film is wasted on the most god awful script I have ever heard. The dialog is extremely pretentious and psuedo-intellectual, many will enjoy pretending to grasp some deeper meaning so they can look cool, but that is like trying to put on shoes that are 10 sizes to small. Gifted Actors like D'nofrio are only given a few lines of dialog with no meaning, emotion, and (as one can observe on the film) no direction. Did Ethan Hawke really direct this film? Did anyone direct it? It plays like a film with no director. No direction...literally. Before you say:
"No you have it all wrong, you didn't understand the film. It was about the struggle of the creative mind or <insert some other B.S. here>"
let me just say the film wanted to be about alot of things, but it failed. Somewhere in between the lovers reading high-school english class poems and some little kid talking about how when he grows up he wants to be Mr. Invisible or something when he grows up, the movie loses any meaning. ALL MEANING IS LOST! DONT GO AND SEE THIS MOVIE.
What really gets me is the film was originally about 4 hours. Four hours!