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Reviews
Queen Marie of Romania (2019)
Good Intentions: Subpar Script
I either would have created a series with some substance or a gripping movie with dialog and real passion. I think they did an injustice to Queen Marie in this movie. This women defied so many odds but the language of the script was poor. The quality of the dialog was trite. I though the Wilson character was just that, a character. Mrs. Wilson sounded like the wife of a dime store owner rather than the wife of one of America's most intelligent professors. The subtlety was a bit too subtle. The male actors looked feckless and ineffectual. The female actresses seemed silly.. Even in unkind characterizations of the Romanov's the women appear to be gritty and substantial. The King seemed extremely week. And Prince Carol's duplicity I think wasn't obvious enough. The was the most significant event upt to this time and this movie lacks gravitas. It's the writing as much as anything else. Though I have to say that the many dictatorships of Romania haven't helped in leaving remnants of a gorgeous Romanian dynastic culture so little wonder the scenes lacked lavishness. If I were the Romanians I would have worked with Netflix or some of the bigger funds to mount a truly substantial movie.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)
I Wish I May I Wish I Might
This is amongst a growing list of films by filmmakers who are either on the border of the US or are outside the US entirely. This one was shot almost entirely in Canada. The accents by and large are phoney as a two dollar American bill.
There are factual errors throughout. The internal Smithsonian shots are a joke. Sadly the storyline thought heartwarming is rather predictable in so many ways. Like a lot of foreign films continuity and factual errors abound and why? Because the production team was Canadian and not American. They gloss over things they can't possibly recreate in Quebec and in western Canada.
They could easily have shot this in the western US giving it authenticity. But they chose to chase the Canadian government's giveaway. The French and Canadian government gave away a US American story.
But the accents were what bothered me. They were so Canadian and no one seemed to notice. The fake western accents were so obvious. There were numerous goofs in many places.
The speech that T. S. gave was wonderful but the reaction of the audience wasn't real and neither was his speech. He never really was allowed to go into detail. The interview (which we assume took place in America) had a host whose Canadian accent was so obvious it should have embarrassed them.
What T. S. didn't get to show and what would have been stupendous is the great stock yard in Chicago where cars are re-aligned so that they are on the right tracks going to the right part of the US. But that didn't happen. Instead they choose a cheaper almost abandoned train yard. No one bothered to trace the real thing.
They could have used a real house with a real longitude and latitude that lined up so that a local community could have a great boom to their local economy but no they went "on the cheap" and the longitude and latitude goes no where.
The little boy slips past police and a hot dog stand owner who seem to amusingly notice the boy. We think the hot dog stand owner is going to give the boy a wink and a nod but no - she's too clueless to notice.
Helena Bonham Carter's character was so sadly clueless. The father was emotionally checked out. They had a beautiful house but there was no indicator of how the family made its money.
There was ample chance in the school scene to show how boys and girls could embrace science and triumph but that didn't happen.
Overall the scriptwriting was mediocre. The sets were cheap. The acting was second rate.The directing was poor. The fact checking was bad. It's a cute movie but no more.
The Falls: Testament of Love (2013)
Poignant & Human
I am not LDS - so let me start the review in that fashion. I grew up amongst judgmental people who seem to have nothing one could call an open mind. This movie brings to the fore painful experiences because I have known so many closeted people in very sad situations including LDS members. My impression is that whether Catholic, LDS, Baptist, Jehova's Witness, Orthodox Jewish - some of the shared beliefs about our relationships with one another create the kinds of dynamics one sees in this movie. That sense of profound shame. That acute need to be accepted. The message that God rejects you (when in fact it's man's interpretation of God's word that is the slap in the face.) The movie points to this fact a couple of times. The script isn't golden. It's a tough "sell" to the viewer if you've had a variety of experiences and have known LDS people. But the shared experiences of pain and closetedness are alive and well. Anyone who has not been accepted can clearly see that being "other" is a terrible thing. The sad part about this film is that it points out the train wreck that lying to oneself can create in order to live with who we are. Little wonder suicide amongst mainline faiths is so commonplace. If you can't tolerate some discomfort and pain this is a good movie. The house in the movie by the way, a mid-century modern is absolutely fabulous. You feel for everyone in the movie because no one escapes unscathed.
Time of Death (2013)
Badly Constructed, Badly Executed
This is yet again another Canadian film trying desperately to seek the middle ground so that they can cash in on both US and American markets which are so substantial. A quick look at the credits demonstrates that nearly every single name is French. Fine. But the FBI. That's what got me. This is supposedly a US film. I have to hand it to the folks who handle continuity. They were good. Except for "sooooorry" you couldn't guess it was Canadian. Except you could. Throughout there were differences which are readily apparent.
This was shot on location in Canada. Canadian films have a different vibe to them. That would be fine but why the ruse? Why pretend this takes place in the US? Or that we're using the FBI in some sense.
Then the weak link between the FBI and a DOD case. Except for border cases the FBI doesn't generally operate outside the US and DOD people are DOD people; FBI are FBI. If any US Agency would investigate this it would probably be the DIA. The Defense Intelligence Agency but that would be a stretch.
In general FBI doesn't get entangled in US cases either unless there are cross state lines type issues or a small laundry list of federal versus state issues. They stay as far away from DOD stuff as they can because they just don't have the necessary credentials to work with DOD without a lot of effort.
The storyline is so weak. And it was predictable. The characters in the storyline were weak and underdeveloped. The events of twenty some years before didn't add up. The exposition was so poor that one couldn't tell why someone was murdering until about 2/3 of the way in. That's just bad writing period.
I wish Canada would produce Canadian crime movies and leave American crime movies to Americans. Also can we please regrow the US film industry - Canada's is very robust and we don't need it. Let them make their own and let's make our own and everyone will be richer for the effort.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
Lee Israel
It had been so long since I read the biographies she wrote I had to look on my bookshelf. I suspect that Melissa McCarthy was probably too nice as Lee Israel. And although Israel was a great writer I suspect she was not as pretty or glamorous as McCarthy. McCarthy shows a lovable side of a woman whose whit was acerbic. But that wasn't very believable as I doubt the real person could have been as kind as the actresses portrayal. I was also surprised that the movie wasn't full of more profanity. The writing was very good and the design was outstanding. I do think McCarthy was far too young. McCarthy was just 48 while the woman she portrayed was 54 and alcoholic. But McCarthy put in a good performance. And made up for her physical beauty capturing Israel's dry humor. The actor who played Lee's friend in the movie really came off as a dolt and perhaps he was. The actor was superb and the character he creates delightful. This is well worth watching and I liked the movie immensely.
Z: The Beginning of Everything (2015)
Ricci, Hoflin and Straithairn Save The Day!
It must be remembered that this movie is based on a fictionalization of the Fitzgerald's real lives. If one reads the Great Gatsby and other novels by F. Scott one sees the direct correlation between their lives and the fiction. Christina Ricci is indeed too old to play Zelda. It's sad because Ricci was once a very beautiful, petite and young woman but she's a decade or two too late to play Zelda who was about 20 years old when the Fitzgerald's married.
Ricci is too mature for Zelda Sayre who was a young woman with limited life experience. Ricci is definitely a woman and an experienced one at that - innocence is tough to create on screen. Also the digital enhancement of her as a girl is a bit contrived. Ricci is also quite made-up in order to create a youthful image for the camera.
David Hoflin is handsome but he is not 20 years old. Fitzgerald was a young, rakish man, a boy really when he went to New York to try to "make it". Hoflin has a hard time carrying of the impetuous and irresponsible Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald of late has been rumored, along with Hemingway of being either bisexual or gay. There's zero proof that this was true. But Hemingway had a way with the men in his life as he did with women. He tended to live large and Fitzgerald tended to compete with and try to "one up" him. Both believed they were "men's men".
The movie captured the incredible passion the two had for each other and others. It even includes a brief appearance by none other than Tallulah "Codeine...bourbon..." Bankhead. And little wonder. Bankehead's father was the 42nd Speaker of the US House of Representatives. The two had a great deal in common and knew one another well. For one thing both drank like fish.
David Straithairn tries to master Zelda's father who was quiet, aloof and rather nondescript. Most writing about him would make him so boring that Straithairn couldn't really play him "straight".
This movie is very good given the situation. You have two actors who are double the age of the real people trying to play young, impetuous, entitled, very free young people during the time just following the Great War. Zelda typified the Flapper and Scott had an eye for the ladies and a penchant for hard living with the men. Little wonder that he did associate with men like Papa Hemingway.
The book tries to capture Fitzgerald's Hollywood years but misses the mark. Zelda sadly of course passes away in a mental institution from smoke inhalation. If she hadn't been locked away when the fire broke out in 1940, she would have probably lived quite a few more years.
Father Rupert Mayer (2014)
A Heartfelt Effort
You can tell that the actors and individuals involved with this movie meant well. It appears to me to be largely accurate. It is of course not a biopic but is instead a fictionalization. Some of the locations no longer exist so they did the best they can. I assume they probably filmed in the Czech Republic because in some cases those places have similar architecture from the time.
Some of it was filmed in Munich. I lived in Munich. I saw these places. They would be very difficult to film in because they're very close together - especially in Munich. But the dialog was bit forced in English. The choice was made to have the actors (some of whom were US American) speak in English with German accents and using German phrasing. This is a common tactic. Unfortunately I think Darryl Hannah in particular it didn't work well. I felt sorry for Stacy Keach. He did his best. He doesn't speak German so he didn't try. The Germans mostly didn't make the effort to affect an accent.
The facts were a bit muddled but they did their best. It was a tiny bit slow. The production was not the best quality.
But the effort was there. The people meant well and I enjoyed learning more about father Mayer. It's sad but worth seeing.
Der kommer en dag (2016)
Moral Outrage
This is an excellent movie. You hold back tears and your humanity is tested as you watch these children in the most horrifying situations as the adults around them fail them at every single turn. The filmmaker seems to capture our souls as the vignettes build. Still you can't help but feel a sense of Oliver Twist with a modern day Lord of the Flies as you watch the movie. You see this socialist state more or less abandon these children well into the 1970's. In this story we focus on two boys but the fact is that many, many more were abused. I'm not spoiling anything for the viewer because you will not believe the horrors visited upon these children. But yet you're drawn to it, drawn because you wonder whether or not there's a silver lining. This is a fictional story. The bad guys are in fact an amalgam - there is no one-to-one between the story-line and the actual events. But imagine the worst acts that could take place in an adult prison - they're worse at this place. And imagine bad luck and then multiply it by 100 as these two little boys go from bad to worse. But the outrage really comes when you realize that even "bad" boys will band together once they recognize that they themselves aren't the problem but the adults and the system they face.
Children in this day and age were told they were bad. Told they were evil. Thousands of years of upbringing informed the modern day practices in this incredible montage. Yet even when our heroes leave the isolation of this children's community the world outside isn't much better.
I wish dear reader that I could tell you that something turned out well. It didn't. The horrors visited upon these children - and they would range in age now from about 40 to about 70 or 80 - is pretty horrendous. The level of proof demanded by Sweden's socialist government created a bar so high that definitely no child could meet it. Few adults could.
And today - still today - the government of Sweden has not acknowledged what happened in these children's homes - and I'm quite certain this was not unique. Similar to the Catholic church the government of Sweden will not admit there was any wrong doing and did not punish the perpetrators. And the perps by the way were every bit as bad as the priest of the Catholic church.
Watch this movie even if you feel your gut has been punched by the strongest bully possible and then act. Post. Get involved. Because society cannot abandon the least among us. And when we do - heaven help us the hell that will be visited on our societies.
Forsaken (2015)
Good Movie; Not Sure About the Western
I don't want to rag on Canadian productions. This one was made in Bannff. I live in the Dallas area. North and Central Texas, really more West Texas, are thee west of the original movies. That along with Oklahoma, Montana and so on. I live not far from the Chisholm Trail - in fact it's in a mall parking lot today.
The point being that this felt like it was filmed in a movie studio - and frankly one that wasn't that well researched. The set looked like a set. It didn't feel real.
The dialog narrowly escapes Canadianisms. And certain subtle things in the film are decidedly not Western US. Some of the furniture on set is not 1872 and there are other errors as well.
I think the movie could have been grittier. The town wasn't as large as in classic Reconstruction era towns. Plano and Allen Texas were just such towns and post-civil war they were much more substantive and I know this because of photos from that era.
People seem to stand around instead of going about relatively normal business. Most westerns have more people in town - which is pretty accurate. The towns themselves are usually not huge but the farmers would come into town to trade.
Sutherland and Sutherland did a great acting job with an average script. You see men in worn civil war uniforms at the beginning and by 1872 that wasn't very realistic. The characters in some cases (the Demi Moore character) seemed rather flat as opposed to rounded.
The firearms were fairly accurate though by this era Gatling guns were pretty easy to come by. The people were probably a bit too well fed looking. The 1930's and 1940's era Western films were more accurate in that the people often looked worn and haggard. The women were a bit too pretty and the men a bit too handsome. Also the beards and hair weren't oily enough and the beards were trimmed a bit too neatly. The town would have been covered in sand and dirt - the buildings were too neat and too new looking - even in anticipation of the railroad coming through.
These guys were not John Huston, Sam Peckinpah or Raol Walsh. The shots didn't create the lushness of Huston's later films. It was a bit too photo-realistic. I would have used filters of various kinds. And I would have aimed for Panavision or modified Cinemascope as these would have created a more lush feeling for the viewer. Many of the larger studios still have this stuff stored in mothballs - I'm shocked they didn't try to access that.
Missing especially were expansive and bold shots, and dramatic pauses and cutaway techniques that made for classic Western. Take a look at 1930's, 1940's and 1950's era Westerns and even such of the cheesy Italian spaghetti Westerns - even they were much, much better than this film.
This is a 21st century feel good adaptation of a classic Western. It needed to be shot in the Western US not Canada. The look and feel of Canada is great for some kinds of movies. But though some very good Westerns were made in Canada in their day - the stories weren't based on themes from Canada.
Targeted: Exposing the Gun Control Agenda (2016)
A Film Is Far From Neutral and Filled with Bias
I like to follow the money because it tells you a lot about people. Money is the great aggregator. Friend or foe, good or bad, money says a lot. Jesse Winton is 21 years old. His first major foray into filmmaking cost $250K to make according to IMDb. How did a 21 year old obtain a quarter of a million dollars to make a film? Where did that money come from and why?
A modicum of research reveals Mr. Winton is the child of a Bluegrass Christian family who have made a consider amount of money in religious music. Randy Winton appears to be the producer and with a bit of research one finds Mr. Randy Winton affiliated with Christian Home Industry. Mr. Jesse Winton mentions "freedom" in his monologue.
The voice-over for his film is decidedly programmed. His perspective is that of an individual who has grown up thinking and believing in what his peers and their parents call a "Christian lifestyle". Not to say they aren't Christian or to disparage them. What I am stating unequivocally is that when you live in a bubble – right and wrong, good and bad, freedom and enslavement are obvious. And you see the world through that lens. So travel, viewing things from someone else's perspective, is very difficult because critical thinking is discouraged.
In fact there is no balance in the film Jesse Winton has made. But what's more disturbing about the mindset is how easily taken in people would be who subscribe to this framework. Mr. Winton pretends to be "exploring" and "learning" but in fact he began his film from a certain socio-economic and political stance and he sought facts to reinforce that stance. He claims, as others have said, to view the gun control issue from multiple perspectives.
But what Mr. Jesse Winton and his father Randy found in their interviews were people of like mindsets. They both are experiencing "boiling frog", that concept that says a frog will literally boil rather than move and think for himself because that's what the frog has always done. If Mr. Jesse Winton received a classical education and were forced to face his belief system critically, then he could say that he could make films that are of independent thought and neutral stance.
Sadly, a large distribution network like Netflix is moving from a more liberal social stance to one that is decidedly more conservative, perhaps in response to its market. This is unfortunate since originally the company appeared to reach out to new and exciting producers and directors who absolutely were making Indie films. This film is Indie from a technical perspective, but it reinforces the thinking of the status quo.
Far from coming from a perspective of freedom, democracy and social justice, this film reinforces both the gun control lobby and its proponents. Mike Huckabee, for instance, received substantial donations from PACs and SuperPACs as well as industry donations which were in support of the gun lobby, which closely align with is personal philosophy and those of his constituency.
That Jesse Winton sought him out and didn't seek out someone who was diametrically opposed really shows the lack of quality of this film. The Christian- centric, Calvinist, right-wing community will closely identify with this film because it reflects their socio-economic values. Largely supported by white, middle and upper class white neocons, the fringe support for this type of edutainment is sadly broad – in those constituencies. And sadly, more to the point, the Donald Trumps, the Mitch McConnells, the Ted Cruz's align themselves closely with these groups who support and provide succor for rather disturbing political stances which do not protect our democracy and freedoms but instead expose them to the potential for right-wing sponsored hate crimes and fascism.
The Naked Mile (2006)
American Pie Naked Mile is Lacking
American Pie Naked Mile lost my vote. I've been in those raunchy frat houses at University of Michigan - and the ones in the movie were too nice. At one point they talk about stealing a monkey from a Zoo - only one problem - Ann Arbor doesn't have a Zoo and it's too damned far to go to Detroit to steal a monkey. The frats and sororities that I saw were all along Washtenaw Avenue several blocks from the U of M campus - so they weren't "on campus". The main campus doesn't have enough dirt to play the kind of football game I saw. The people were entirely too nice in the movie - the frat boys and girls I saw were so blasted off their a**es that there was no way they could begin to have anything approaching intelligent conversation. Also the frats looked way too nice. I went to a nearby university - not U of M - and the frats at my school likewise didn't look that nice and the sets were much bigger than any frats I saw. The reality just wasn't there for me so it wasn't as funny. It was too clean and not raunchy enough. The other American Pies were a bit better. I wish they just wouldn't mention specific schools that way they're not tied to any sense of reality. And if they make anymore maybe they'll make the sets a little smaller, not so nice and a bit more realistic.