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Reviews
Apocalypto (2006)
without taste
Mel Gibson has made an action film with native people (I think it's Maya). I like to compare movies to food. This is a Luther Vandross-burger, you know the one with donuts instead of bread. Put a little whipped cream on that one and bake it with cheese..
Overkill. There's like ten different camera angles on each scene and they want to use them all, even if two guys are just standing talking. Not to mention all the stop and slow motion stuff..
There too much of everything. Even an action movie needs fingertip feeling. It is a film about a primitive civilization, it should have been made with a feeling that resembles the Maya people, not the latest camera technique.
Hallam Foe (2007)
tacky and pretentious
Hallam Foe tells us the story about a boy who lost his mother and experiences some sort of Oedepus complex afterward.
It is something like 95 minutes long but would be better in ten. There's like an hour in the middle where he is doing climbing practice on rooftops, and habits in a church tower like Quasimodo (only he is much less sympathetic).
There's a strange love story involved which doesn't have anything to do with anything. She happens to look like his mother, yes so what? We know he misses his mother, that's what the first ten minutes were about. They should just have put the beginning and ending together and it would have been a O.K. short film. Now it's a portrait of a character who doesn't change. He is a guy that stuff happens to. The only active choice he has in the whole middle of the movie is to apply for a job.
There's this whole Oedepus thing going on which is supposed to make us analyze his character. He paints his face, dresses in women's clothing and wears a dead Badger on his head. A Badger! You've got to see the ending! He returns to his home with the badger on his head (and it is shot like a tacky Horror film) to kill his dad's new wife (which he had sex with in the beginning). And somehow they thought this wouldn't be entertaining enough so they put some indie punk music in the background. I've got to admit though, I'm kind of allergic to films that want to write a psychological complex on your nose. It feels like this MacKenzie director/guy/whatever is trying to show us that he also has been studying psychology in school. You are so smart! Thank you for bringing all these forgotten theories back into our memories! You really dug! What a Wallraff! Okay so now I realized this film is based on some random book, but anyway..
Photowise it is boring. A lot of talking heads. Plus the editor has changed the colors from scene to scene, you know cold and warm etc.. why? maybe "Hallam Foe" is both a feature and a test film for color blind people. Or maybe they just thought that the drama wouldn't be enough to tell us that he feels lonely, so they increased blue so that we really get it.
I'm not even gonna comment on the cliché indie-oh-how-how-how-cute drawings they have made in the presentation. And all the "cute" sex stuff going on. This whole film is an independent cliché. But I do recommend it. I laughed more than a few times. Though it is really annoying to be a film student and to see how crap like this gets through the machine.
Ascension (2002)
If you want to challenge your view on art
It is interesting to see how dramatically people react to this movie. You've got to have an open-minded approach to be able to appreciate the slow, poetic vision of the director. If you don't like to think while watching a film, this is simply not for you.
I think this is a fantastic film. The young women have a talent for magic and poetry for this sort of surrealist artistic statement. It is impossible to take your eyes of them. That is probably also the thought of the camera zooms.
There are a lot of memorable lines. They are loaded with among the most cynicism and nihilism I have heard. Sometimes they are so extreme you have to laugh. It's like watching Evil Dead only you react to the dialouge instead of the gore.
Musicwise it is especially interesting. It reminds me of B-science fiction films set in a post-apocalyptic world, like Cyborg 3, but obviously with fingertip feeling. It merges with the soothing sound design similar to that in Blade Runner.
Overall, well worth watching if you are into Nietzsche-philosophies and Tarkovsky-symbolism.
Year of the Horse (1997)
As great as RUST NEVER SLEEPS.
The point of this film is to catch the essence of Neil Young & Crazy Horse's strange sound. Their sound is interesting because it is based on pure emotions (according to Neil Young), and not so much on technical skills (if you listen to drummer Ralph Molina he plays like a 10-year old). This film should therefore appeal to anyone who's interested in music. In addition to that, in contains fantastic live performance by one of the truly great rock bands.
Why this film is good? It IS the essence of Crazy Horse - it is lo-fi, filmed with a shaky 8mm camera (but the sound is okay). It's trashy American feeling with the random interviews (like when guitarist "Poncho" questions why Jarmusch is doing this film) and all the on-the-road footage is also contributing to explaining how they work as a band, and therefore why the sound like they do. This film reflects the trashiness of Crazy Horse.
American Beauty (1999)
Spectacular, as good as a drama gets
This movie is probably my favorite movie of all time in terms of how enjoyable it is. It is as powerful as Reqiuem for a dream but instead of depressing, it takes a easy-going approach to life's serious matters. It is probably the funniest movie I know. Though it has a serious plot and both sad and tragic scenes, it is the movie I watch if I want a good laugh. It really gives you the feeling that you want to go out and live life afterward.
You follow Lester Burnham, Kevin Spacey, who is bored with his life and sort of has a middle life crisis which he during the movie is getting out of. To see how his attitude to life changes is actually the main plot of the movie.
However, it has several side plots. You follow the whole Burnham family and their neighbors, the Fits, and both families are totally screwed up. Jane Burnham is a confused teenager trying to find her identity, and she will get involved with her new neighbor, Ricky Fits, who is very much controlled by his military gay-hating dad.
You will see their relation develop throughout the whole movie. Also, Jane has a friend, Angela Hayes, who is a extremely shallow (and you can figure out she is insecure) 18-year old with the dream of becoming a model. She represents the fear of being ordinary and she is also important in the development in both Jane's and Lester's characters (she wakes Lester up and he falls in love with her).
You will also see Carolyn Burnham, Lester's wife, finding her way through her real estate business with the local real estate king Buddy. They both stand for the "career-focused and materialistic fake" American attitude. Lester Burnham is the total opposite, a slacker who does exactly what he feels like. You can easily figure out their marriage is not working.
So through his characters, Sam Mendes illustrates extreme moods in the American lifestyle - the slacker (Lester Burnham), the materialist (Carolyn Burnham & Buddy the King), the existentialistic loner (Ricky Fits), the confused teenagers with boob-job dreams (Jane Burnham & Angela Hayes) and the gay-hating marine corps officer Mr Fits (and his wife is just totally depressed).
However, the movie doesn't any standpoint which attitude it the best - instead, you should figure out what kind of person you are and what your goals are. Obviously materialistic fundamentalism isn't great but as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy you should take all opportunities to shape your own character. It's simple, yet, many people don't really get it, do they?
Aside from all this, the picture, the dialog and the acting are all just fabulous. Especially the Lester Burnham dialog and the Burnham parent's acting are spectacular. The first half of the movie I laugh the whole time, while the second half is more melancholic and deep. American Beauty is basically like watching what life is about. Me and my friend rented it so many times we broke the DVD (and I still haven't purchased it - how stupid is that?), probably twelve times, and the movie is as good every time.
Many people might not like this because of the explicit and awkward scenes (actually they are never really awkward, just very funny), but if you are a person who can't see a sex scene, maybe realism isn't your thing really.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Fantastic visual experience but with no real audience
First of all, this movie is definitely worth watching because it is very unique. The special effects are very well done and it is entertaining to see futuristic versions of well known cities (you will se Manhattan under water due to global warming). What also makes it unique is obviously that it is a Kubrick script. It contains the concept of emotional robots (like HAL in Space Odyssey, but this movie takes it to the step of a physical boy), and his search for identity. However hard it is to appreciate child actors, Haley Joel Osment has a lot of talent and is almost not annoying at all. Jude Law will show up as a prostituted robot and has a interesting and entertaining character, which he pulls of very well. However, I see some problems with this film. 1. It tries to reach too many audiences at once, which makes it end up with no real audience. At times, it is very childish and you wonder if it is a Pixar movie you are watching. But at other times, it has the bleak atmosphere of for example Blade Runner. The concept of the movie is serious but it has a lot of Disneyish features (this is also enhanced by the overdose of color in the picture). It is obvious that Kubrick would have made this movie a lot less lollipop-ish (Hollywood). 2. It baked in too much in the plot. You are already in the future, but in the ending you go 2000 years further and the robots are hyperintelligent and they apparently admire humans. You get no background why. And Osment can bring his mom back, but ONLY for one day. This just seemed like a last-minute solution to give the audience that are used to cliché movies a little reward, but to audiences that don't like cliché movies it was just unessecary. It should have ended when Osment was underwater.
A.I. is despite these reasons a fantastic visual experience for sci-fi lovers, and an interesting suggestion to the scenario humans vs. robots. See it and get an opinion.