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Reviews
Avatar (2009)
so many good things could be done with $400 million...
I mostly liked - but did not adore - most James Cameron's movies I had seen before, and I really loved Aliens. I had high expectations regarding the visual concept of the film, and they were quite fulfilled, even though I didn't see it in 3D. The visuals are quite strong, while sitting in the theater you sometimes really feel like you live on this paradise- like planet light years away. But then, many animated animals and plants appear somehow tacky, some even are pure Kitsch. I hadn't thought much about the movie's content before entering the cinema. So I was hit hard by the foolishness and superficiality of the story, the characters and the plot. The intellectual level of the story was barely grammar school. Every little fairy tale I know demands more of your mind than this. The coarse- cut human characters and presumed lack of intellectual and spiritual development our human race will undergo in the next 150 years was just ridiculous - as well as the concept of the Noble Natives living on this far away planet, in perfect harmony with nature. And then the boring love story and the cheap militarism. What a waist of mind-power, material and money.
The Day of the Locust (1975)
A film you won't forget
I saw this film in 1986 and I was very thrilled. But it had even more impact on me when I came to L.A. for the first time two years later. It seemed as if the movie had exposed parts of the soul of this strange city to me. Many people I met there - some of them became friends - seemed to share features of the characters in "The Day of the Locust", maybe it had something to do with their unfulfilled dreams and their lack of success. One seems to understand who Hollywood an the movie industry became the way they are now. Another aspect of the picture is the incomparable feeling of horror it lays on you - even though the sun is shining most of the time and you have no idea what will actually happen in the end. I would love to see this film again ever since, but it's so hard to find. Only a single one of my friends has even heard of it. In my view one of Schlesingers masterpieces, strangely underrated and almost forgotten.