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Reviews
Chopin. Pragnienie milosci (2002)
One great scene, many unnecessary ones
I am a self-professed Chopin junkie since age 10. As one who has read many biographies of Chopin and seen the 3 movies about his life: A Song to Remember, Impromptu and Desire for Love (Pragnienie milosci), there is only one scene in all of them that made me sit up and say, "Yessssss!" This is where Chopin's valet, Jan Matuszewski, is playing an oberek on the violin and Chopin asks him to repeat it. It turns into his D major Mazurka from Op. 33. Other than that scene, the movie is pretty schlocky. I do love that one scene, though!
Five Star Day (2010)
An intelligent film treatment of astrology
I was happy to see that the way astrology is first described in the movie is an accurate and reasonable assessment: that the horoscope is a snapshot of one's natal chart and the positions of the planets and luminaries at the exact moment of birth. The main character, Jake, reads his horoscope in the paper and prepares to have a "5-star" birthday; however, he has a Murphy's Law day instead. Angry that the horoscope "lied" to him, he decides to write a paper for his ethics class, demonstrating that astrology is B.S. propaganda. The newspaper horoscope he reads is bogus. It mentioned the "mid-heaven". A professional astrologer cannot know where the mid-heaven of a subject is without knowing the birth time and place, so any newspaper horoscope that would assume the mid-heaven of everyone in a particular zodiac sign or even born on a certain day is fake.
Thanks to the I-net, Jake obtains the names and addresses of three other individuals born at approximately the same time as he, at the same hospital, and he searches out the three other people. To his consternation, he discovers that 2 out of 3 had rotten birthdays too. (SPOILER: The third was not honest with him when he said his birthday was fine. His sucked also.) This third person, Wes, played by Max Hartman, seems to be somewhat older than all the others (maybe 10 years), but they're all supposed to the same age. This was a little weird.
These goobers don't spoil the main message of the film, however. As it manages to demonstrate very nicely, it's not about what chart or fate you are dealt, but how you react to what happens to you. On account of Jake's zero-star day, he becomes a better person and ends up (SPOILER, but you could see it coming) kissing Sarah. He does have a bit of an ethical dilemma as he presents his research to the class.
I am in the minority, but I felt that the actress who played Sarah (Jena Malone) seemed to be parroting rehearsed lines and gestures in her first scenes, although she relaxed later. At the beginning when Jake tracks down his first subject, I disliked him (the character) for seeming more like a creepy stalker than a college student, but he eventually becomes more human. There were two hilarious scenes: one with the diner waitress and another with the receptionist at the facility for troubled youth where one of Jake's B-day twins works. The guy who played Jake's roommate was also very funny in a low-key way.
Disorganized Crime (1989)
Steady paced crime comedy
Often when I pick up a 1980s comedy VHS at the Salvation Army for $2, the first 10 minutes are great and it's all downhill and boring from there. Not this one. It was a pleasant surprise to watch this film twice and I expect to be watching it again and again.
It concerns four criminals, each with his own specialty: explosives, cars, guns and safe-cracking; stuck in a Montana cow-town waiting for their leader who has summoned them to do a job. The four don't know or trust each other, so the movie keeps you guessing as to whether one or more of them will pull a double cross on the others. Their leader, unbeknownst to them, has been arrested, which is why he didn't meet them as promised.
The leader, Frank Salazar, has been pursued by, and has escaped from, two moronic detectives whose bumbling, skewed priorities and lust for glory precipitate a lot of laughs. A shout-out also belongs to Fred Gwynne, who plays the explosives guy. He obviously has a heart condition and is seen intermittently popping pills and smoking cigarette after cigarette! As this film unfolds you get to know and actually like the characters, even though they are criminals and if you ever caught one in your back yard you'd kick his *$$. The movie has intelligent dialogue and two concrete assets that had me sold enough to decide I could watch it over and over: no tacked-on romance to ruin the pace and no real violence! For a movie with as many guns as this one, nobody gets shot or seriously hurt, except on account of their own idiocy. 9 out of 10.
Extract (2009)
Actually better than Office Space AND Idiocracy!
Extract is a better movie than it gets credit for. The first time I watched it I gave it the thumbs-down because I didn't laugh out loud like I did during Idiocracy and Office Space. However, this movie grows on you if you have time to watch it more than once. I've seen it about 8 times now and instead of getting tired of it I find something new in it every time.
One thing I love about this film is the archetypal small roles: the annoying neighbor, the lazy, self-righteous factory workers, the bombastic lawyer, the trailer park guy drinking a huge bottle of Pepsi. Also, there are several stories going on at once. There's the con woman, the testicle incident, the marriage that needs recharging, the friendship between Ben Affleck and Justin Bateman, the "pool cleaner" who is actually a male prostitute. There's not a bad performance in the entire film. The only part that I found tedious was the scene where Justin Bateman smokes dope at that shaman's house and gets beat up. Otherwise the acting was believable and fun to watch. Just because this review doesn't have a lot of exclamation points doesn't mean I wasn't thrilled with the movie.
I'm going to watch it again and again. YOU ROCK, MIKE JUDGE!!!