Change Your Image
gberke-2
Reviews
The Paperboy (2012)
Doesn't go where it said it would go...
The movie sets out with the idea that there is some great injustice being dealt to a man on death row, that he is innocent, and his conviction is a cover-up of someone else's serious wrongdoing... that never seems to happen... and it is quite puzzling. The black people take crap, there a lot of sex, but the whole arc of the story just ends in mid air, IMHO Lots of funny loose ends, where and why did the paper boys mama run away, what does his dad really know about what happened, who is that strange extended family in the swamp, what is it the Ward is trying to get "right" The sex scenes are indeed some of the nastiest :-) looks like even the actors got a little disgusted with themselves...
The Tiger Makes Out (1967)
A brilliant film
It's up there with Where's Poppa, The Groove Tube, Putney Swope. It memorializes the NY city mind set of the period, a wonderfully strange man with a bizarre plan, hoist by by own petard, and at last retreating into the bed of his adoptive parents. Totally absurd, its the life one sees through the magic glasses, seeing things as they "really are"... I don't think it is ever shown anymore. If so, surely someone would Tivo the thing and put it out there. A kidnap goes awry: mixed up in a rain storm, dashing in and out or storefronts, our hero tosses a raincoat over his prey and tossing her into his bicycle powered ice cream wagon spirits her off to his basement apartment in the village. He is amazed, surprised, and incredibly disappointed when the wraps come off: instead of a luscious lady, he has captures a middle ages suburban housewife who talks and talks and talks. The film is full of vignettes of the commuters life, the suburban life, the city officials, and all the attitudes so dearly held. It pushes the limits of comedy, such as magical reality might push a drama, much as Daffy Duck is able to draw on imaginative scenes to demonstrate his plight or desires, all at the very edge of plausibility. All of it is humorous, nobody is mean.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
is the right thing to do the right thing
It is a well done puzzler about people who did some wrong things for the right reasons, reasons of the heart, and then pay dearly for it. And the good things they did get undone, for the right reasons, but they are reasons of the mind. The detective work is excellent, those things that puzzle the audience (gee, how come they are not grilling the mother at least a little bit more) all come out. And the sad sad love story. I kept hoping the maybe, maybe something good might come of doing the right thing, the right thing of the mind. But I don't think so. The lines are right, the script is tight, the logic and flow is excellent. The review in the NY Times noted that Morgan Freeman has done better. That's really hard not to notice, especially in such a fine film. I wouldn't think that Morgan would let that happen, but maybe the director is that important, even for Freeman. I think this is one of the most thoughtful films I've seen in years.