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Reviews
Life Like (2019)
The Millennials Speak
The Puritannic Old Testament judgment is waning and the Victorian posturing is losing power as the Millennials experiment without guilt and so easily announce their individual findings to the 70 years of guilt ridden posturing I've suffered. It's so refreshing.
A Warm Wind (2011)
The Marine
There are several scenes where the disabled marine shares his military experience. The actor playing this role was so controlled in his approach to the character's heartache I felt I was hearing the truth. Totally caught up in his tragedy. This actor held the movie in place. He should become a star leading man.
The Predator (2018)
What's the problem with your eyes and ears?
This movie is so much fun. It's a backstory to some degree while it brings the franchise into its future. For the first time we discover an alternative reason for the Predators coming to earth for a more reasonable set of concepts than sport. I totally enjoyed this flick,and it isn't a parody of the franchise. The result of having made the film is that a whole new set of doors we can go through now that can take us off world into the galaxy. These negative comments are just immature jealousies coming out from pseudo intellectuals pretending to be legitimate reviewers. Pitiful.
Designated Survivor (2016)
Unbelievable
I watched this through the second season, so obviously I like it that much. But each episode is getting more and more hokey and formulaic. It's got scenarios that are more and more like when the frightened beautiful girl or leading young male is about to open the door the audience intuits that the monster is behind that door, and everybody in the audience is saying "No, no, don't open that door." Other than that it's an enjoyable hour of light entertainment.
Miseuteo Shunshain (2018)
Exquisite acting
I have thoroughly enjoyed this film series. My wish would be for it to be in English. But my fear is that it would ruin the consistent poetry of the Korean language. It's eloquent even as it uses contemporary expressions in the subtitles. It would be interesting to hear the story in its historical context. For example, the series Deadwood uses such language that matches perfectly with the expressiveness of the language used during the pioneering era in the American westward expansion. The whole soul of a language is so very important and difficult, and Shakespeare proves that easily. There are long pauses in the dialogue which tries to emphasize the subtextual meanings in both the language as well as the scene itself. And the cinematography is elegant and filled with gracious wisdom, making the long pauses worth the wait/weight of the meanings between words. It is both an intellectual and spiritual experience. Some may say it is soap opera, but this is a masterpiece of historical costume drama with the most eloquent balance between all aspects of making a film work. The actors are so perfectly matched as they experience one another in character. My favorite balancing act in the project is the consistent humour that I've begun to recognize in great epic Asian film projects. Jackie Chan comes to mind when a dramatic moment astonishingly becomes the Keystone Cops and the wonder of Charlie Chaplin. The character actors are genius as their dialogues expand the story using the most powerful and long-lasting aspect of film theory/storytelling. These moments are climactic and as such get us ready for the next constellation of plot structuring. I guess I'm trying to say that I feel the intensity of effort and belief going into the project, and that alone makes it worth watching.
Gods of Egypt (2016)
A tragic failure in promoting a great film
The only thing I can figure is that this really epic film is that it was not promoted ahead of its premiere. There could have been some underhanded jealousy in politics that is such an entrenched part of the Hollywood scene. I just can't understand how a film where all the critical elements are steadfastly present, could not be appreciated for its elegant design in all aspects of filmography. This film should have had Oscar written all over it, yet there was no breath of life put into getting the film born appropriately. I'm not going to repeat what all the reviewers who appreciate the movie have said because it's just not necessary. I recommend the film to anyone with an eye for magnificence.
Yamato 2520 (1994)
Yamato and Japanese culture
The mighty battleship Yamato, is a symbol of Japanese ingenuity going back to WWII. It was the largest battleship ever made and had more firepower than any other warship afloat during its time in service which sadly was not very long because it was nearly completed when it first set sail at the end of the war. IT was sent basically on a suicide mission to the battle of Okinawa (?). The ship is a cultural symbol that still lies deeply in the hearts of the Japanese people because it was like the people themselves, so very unique as a society and a world culture. The innovative mindset that has brought the Japanese culture out of World War II and into the 21st century as one of the leading nations on this earth, and as one that has set itself as a symbol of morality and ethics, makes it no wonder that the people themselves are a contradiction tot the NEW WORLD ORDER.
The Cosmopolitans: The Cosmopolitans (2014)
My college students' generation at work in learning life.
This pilot is so very subtle in its use of humour, very European/British/French. I hope the audience grows for this one to at least let the project grow. I am waiting with anticipation. This is classic sophisticated humor at its best. This play digs deeply into the mindsets and the source of those mindsets for this generation of young people. Ex-patriots from America's small minded social atmosphere of what I would, as a professor of English Literature, call society undermining the learning process and forcing good minds to evacuate a failed American Education, thinking that Paris, and seeing themselves as Parisians, will recreate their true selves. Ah, the errors of youth.
Blandings (2013)
wonderful British understatement in "slapdashery"
I don't care about comparing or contrasting this series with literary masterpieces. I care about how enjoyable it is to watch character actors do their thing. And these actors do not disappoint. Their presentations are so well done and so well matched it gives me great pleasure to watch nostalgically the antics of the British upper crust makes a consistent dash toward lunacy in logic as they refuse to face reality during the great Victorian Age which in truth mimics some of the sexual innuendo to be found here. I hope the series gets the chance to find its feet. This show is an intellectual delight, especially if one enjoys the poetics of words, the sounds they make, and the sub-textual meanings behind them in a given context. The writers must have enjoyed themselves immensely while struggling to put the strings of expressions together to help develop the characters and their relationships to one another. "Lmao", in a dignified manner, of course.
Shinui (2012)
The search for the truth is not for the faint hearted. Vincent D'Onofrio
I have come to appreciate the emotions good Korean actors can emit in a scene. This series is so very well done, I'm hoping it continues. I found it on Netflix {I'm not trying to sell Netflix), and was thinking it probably is an adolescent series. It isn't that simple. The subtitles are obviously done by an inexperienced translator, which sometimes is irritating, but also can be very interesting for a native English-speaker. The language the translator uses is very contemporary, using terms like "punk" etc., but I imagined from the get-go that there was a meeting of the staff to decide if using contemporary language would add or detract from the series. I believe they made the right decision in one sense because viewers (and most likely they are as adolescent viewers as me, it's true} can get caught up in the exchanges between actors, Min-ho Lee {Choi Young, the general, and Hee-seon Kim {Yoo Eun-Soo, the good doctor} as the love tension between them evolves, and there are some hilarious moments with these two as they struggle to hide their growing love from both themselves and one another. But I'm so curious about the archaic language that I might be missing because that language has always reflected the complex and brutal formality of the ancient cultures of the Asian societies. It's so very Shakespearean in his characters' consistent struggle to find one another in a feudal age where honor is everything to a male. But even with their use of contemporary Korean, I realize at this very instant, the power lies in a mixture of archaic expression with the contemporary "kids", "punks", etc., showing the exquisite complexity that one simple word can carry in the politics of the mind in a chess game or Go. As the first reviewer has said, it is very obvious the director tightens the series very sublimely as it progresses, moving nicely to much deeper themes than simply a love story or drama. I've been privileged to have seen some of the top actors of the series in other major films, and the impetus created by the story-lines and stylistic methodology compels the viewer to keep watching for the next episodes.
I'm amazed by the Korean theatre. It is very well established, and this series makes that obvious. The result makes for scholarly study of such a phenomenon as well as an enjoyable and even emotional/spiritual experience even if it is adolescent at its core. Perhaps I'm simply a 65 year old baby looking at my past remembering in my own melancholy some of the finer things in my life. As a former film maker though, I cannot help but want this show to continue to evolve. So does it matter that perhaps it is a little adolescent while covering a sublime set of universal themes? there's so much more I would like to say here, but I guess I will have to write an essay about it. No room here.