Reviews

Not bad for a low budget movie, but also far from "good". Quite a few plot holes, and at least one really odd cinematic aspect - the license plate of the car was digitally blurred in all scenes... huh? What's up with that? Remove the plate, or leave it on.

Besides that, the kids are a bit too stupid for the situation. They're kids, sure, but the girl was trained by her dad specifically for "a day like this", and what do they do first when they find themselves with 1-2 months of food? Loaf around in that store, instead of trying to find the meeting point. Then what do they do once they find a CAR? Waste fuel joy riding it in circles. Brilliant.

Also, towards the end, the miss the silliest things: video games, movies, but not "a shower".

This film is a South Korean clone of Chloe (2009) with Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried.

The plot is almost a complete copy-cat: the husband is a professor, the doctor is a wife, the mistress is a student, the wife uses undercover mechanisms to explore her husband's infidelity and satisfy her curiosity, and the wife and mistress end up developing feelings for each other and delighting the audience with a girl-on-girl sex scene.

Unfortunately, mistress Su-Ji (Shim Yi-Young) wasn't that appealing (YMMV of course), and the movie parroted the same-old false choice between one relationship or the other.

Watch Kiss Me Again for a more mature exploration of the love triangle theme, or Chloe for the socially-dictate one, but still way better made than Du yeoja.

The Reader is an interesting non-formulaic story, with a complex character (Hanna Schmitz) played by Kate Winslet. Though, as some characters mention in the movie, it seems there's not much to learn from the experience of watching it.

Consider the protagonist: admitting illiteracy is more shameful than admitting participating in mass murder? And why didn't Hanna learn to read on her own after she met Michael, or before that anyway? Another note: Hanna's justification of why she let the 300 prisoners die in a church that caught on fire is not that she was told to (which would be explainable by Philip Zimbardo's experiments on abuse of power under duress from authority figures), or that she'd be prosecuted herself, but that... there would have been chaos if she let the prisoners free. Good role model for schizophrenia perhaps.

What might be learned from this movie is summarized in this quote by the old law professor:

...Societies think they operate by something called morality, but they don't. They operate by something called law.

...8000 people worked at Auschwitz. Precisely 19 have been convicted, and only 6 of murder.

...The question is never "Was it wrong", but "Was it legal". And not by our laws, no. By the laws at the time.

I've read tens of reviews of "The Last Temptation of Christ": from the Washington Post, BBCi, Chicago Sun-Times, eFilmCritic, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, even FilmAtheist.com. Everyone mentioned how fundamentalist Christians were offended by Jesus being shown naked, or making love to Magdalene, but NONE, and I mean, NONE talked about the dialog between Apostle Paul and Jesus.

Short background, which summarizes the first 2 (torturous) hours of the movie: Jesus of the movie is pretty much the same Jesus depicted by the gospels. You can safely skip the first 120 minutes of the movie if you know the gospel story - you will not lose anything; Scorsese doesn't bring anything new here. After the 2 hour mark, Jesus is caught by the Romans put up on the cross. There, he has a vision of an angel, who offers to take him off the cross and give him a chance at a normal life. Jesus accepts, and goes on having sex with Magdalene (whom God later kills without explanation), then with other women. He has children and works for a living.

NOW HERE'S THE CATCH: when Jesus is perhaps in his 50s, Apostle Paul comes preaching in his village, about - guess what - the resurrection of Jesus, and how the resurrected Jesus will save the world. Jesus is astonished at the lies and confronts Paul. The following dialog, the shocking gist of the movie in my opinion, ensues after the 2h22m mark:

Paul (preaching to the crowd): And now I bring the good news to you - it's about Jesus of Nazareth. He was not the son of Mary, He was the son of God! [...] And He was punished for our sins. Then He was tortured and crucified. But three days later He rose up from the dead and went up to Heaven! Death was conquered! Amen!

Jesus: Did you ever see this Jesus of Nazareth, after He came back from the dead? I mean, with your own eyes?

Paul: No, but I saw a light that blinded me. and I heard His voice.

Jesus: You're a liar.

Paul: His disciples saw Him. They were hiding in an attic with the doors locked. He appeared to them.

Jesus (going away): Liar. He's a liar!

Paul (running after Jesus): Wait a minute, I wanna talk to you!

Jesus (grabbing Paul by the throat): I was never crucified, I never came back from the dead. I'm a man, like everybody else. Why are you telling these lies?

Paul: What are you talking about?

Jesus: I'm the son of Mary and Joseph. I'm the one who preached in Galilee. I had followers, we marched on Jerusalem, Pilate condemned me and God saved me.

Paul: No you didn't.

Jesus: Who are you talking about?! DON'T TRY TO TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, BECAUSE I KNOW. I live like a man now. I work, eat, have children. [...] So don't go around telling lies about me. Or I'll tell everybody the truth.

And here it is, RELIGION IN THE MAKING:

Paul: Look around you. Look at all these people. Look at their faces.

Do you see how unhappy they are, how much they're suffering? Their only hope is the resurrected Jesus. I don't care whether you're Jesus or not. The resurrected Jesus will save the world, and that's what matters.

Jesus: Those are lies. You can't save the world by lying.

Paul: I CREATED the truth out of what people needed and what they believed.

If I have to crucify you to save the world, I'll crucify you. And if I have to resurrect you, then I'll do that too, whether you like it or not.

Jesus: I won't let you. I'll tell everyone the truth.

Paul: Go ahead. Go on. Tell them now. Who's going to believe you? You started all this; now you can't stop it. All those people who believe me will grab you and kill you.

Jesus: No, that wouldn't happen.

Paul: How do you know? You see, you don't know how much people NEED God. You don't know how happy He can make them. He can make them happy to do anything. He can make them happy to die, and they'll die. All for the sake of Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus of Nazareth. The Son of God. The Messiah. Not you. Not for your sake. [...] My Jesus is much more important and much more powerful.

There you have it - how Christianity started. If Jesus existed at all, he was an ordinary preacher, who got crucified, and died. But a hopeful story survived, took over truth and reality, and got repeated ad nauseam to the point of very few questioning its origins.

If you watch this movie for the philosophy and emotion in it, you'll have a much higher chance of enjoying it. Forgive the unbelievable premise (existence of angels) and think of an extremely comfortable status quote that a man must renounce in order to be with a woman (if you need an example, think of a medieval prince in love with a peasant girl). Also overlook Meg not being spooked by a man who by all appearances is stalking her.

Instead, enjoy the beautifully matched soundtrack: Sarah McLachlan – Angel, and Goo Goo Dools – Iris:

And I'd give up forever to touch you / 'Cause I know that you feel me somehow [...] / And I don't want the world to see me / Cause I don't think that they'd understand / When everything's made to be broken / I just want you to know who I am

Many have not appreciated the end of the movie. I saw three messages being conveyed:

1. When you're about to drop everything and turn your life around in order to be with someone, understand the risks.

2. If you decide to do it and it turns out bad, it can still be worth it. At the end of the movie, Seth/Nicolas Cage's angel friend Cassiel asks him, "If you knew what was going to happen, would you still have done it? Was it worth it?" He answered, "I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it. One.

3. I think the ending has a very powerful meaning: Seth has lost literally everything. He is no longer an angel; he is a mortal, suffering from pain, hunger and despair. He lost the love of his life. He has no job, no home, no money.

Yet he manages to pull himself out of mourning and depression, starts enjoying the simple things in life, and moves on, accepting his free-will choice of becoming a human.

"Before Sunrise" is the most realistic romantic film I've watched, and it's thought-provoking beyond the pseudo-intellectual dialog. This is not a typical Hollywood romance. The characters do not live happily ever-after and they are surprisingly mature for their age (early 20s) about the nature of couple relationships and love.

Have you ever wondered why at the end of most romantic comedies the screen fades to black? Because after that, there story ceases to be interesting. And the life of the couple starts on the slow path toward routine and comfort and apathy. One notable exception from that pattern is The Graduate: after the protagonists are reunited and elope on a bus, before the fade to black, the expression on their faces reads "Now what?"

Indeed, "Before Sunrise" is one of the very few films who looks at long-term relationships though a realistic, even if cold, lens. "I kind of see this all love as this, escape for two people who don't know how to be alone." You might not like this if you're still in the infancy of your emotional development. "Jesse: Why do you think everybody thinks relationships are supposed to last forever anyway? Celine: Yeah, why. It's stupid." You'll like it and identify with it if you've been through things (or if you've read about them - see Laura Kipnis' book Against Love).

Yet the characters are not jaded, so the romantic in your will rejoice as much as the cynic: "Listen, if somebody gave me the choice right now, of to never see you again or to marry you, I would marry you."

This movie seemed bad from the first few minutes: cliché shots, forced dialog, and all that. However, it was highly sought after by a friend of mine, so I kept watching to see what was so good about it.

Well, don't hold your breath - the movie was less than ordinary. I will forgets it in a matter of hours, because it had nothing special. OK, maybe I won't forget that soon the obvious plot holes: When Jarod reads the sign language letters from the photos that Alex left, they happen to be in the right order to spell GHOST, a chance of 1 in 120.

Jarod is a genius and when he calls to ask for the Swedish embassy's phone number, he memorizes it instantly and dials it right away, pretending to be a Swedish journalist. However, when he is told that the Swedish ambassador will be at the Opera house at 4:00pm, he has to write down that information.

At the end of the movie, Alex walks into a crane hanging over the water and pummels at the door at its end, when it is clear that there would be no escape even if the door were to open.

Anyway, this movie was a complete waste of my time, and the only reason I'm writing here about it is to advise others to not waste their time as well.