Change Your Image
expostdelirium
Reviews
Rolling Kansas (2003)
if you like this movie...
...you might like to read "cows are freaky when they look at you". it is a compilation of anecdotes and history of Lawrence, ks, in the sixties and seventies, focusing on the "kaw valley hemp pickers" most/all of the stories are told in the first person and are great. the movie reminds me of an account in the book,but for some reason, i can't locate my copy to figure out which one. the stories are great, and some of the "locals" in the book are still around 30, 40 years after the events recounted in the book. some of my co-workers have attested to the truth in many of the accounts. the book should hold you over between viewings of this hilarious, random, movie.
Belly (1998)
gut-check for the gutless!
I've seen questions as to why 'ox' has so much dialogue; why not? If one looks at this films as some sort of nouveau-blaxploitation, as an affirmation of `blackness' and a new assertion of black art, then it is sensible to have a `black' drug lord who is Jamaican. Think `Scarface' for black folk. This guy is living the American dream, he comes from the Caribbean and ascends to power, and he did it by doing what the other characters are trying to do, just like Al Pacino's did.
`The character Nas portrays is supposed to have a sort of pseudo-street urbane sensibility. his character is a mere rehash of about a thousand other characters in gangster movies that wish for a better life.' Exactly, only this time the lamentation is by a gangster w/ black skin. He wants to do the right thing, or at least wants it all to turn out as best it can. In that way he's human. Hm, a film that portrays a black gangster as human, that IS a stretch, and maybe ultimately what leads critics to be so hard on this movie.
There are also charges that this movie is poorly acted. I'm not sure that it's any worse than say, `Reservoir Dogs', a movie I love, but really wouldn't be considered as good as it is if it weren't Tarantino's. I think in that way `Belly' is similar to `RD': they were both made with tremendous vision, and the directors/writers didn't seem like they could trust their `vision' (good or bad) to other people to make. There are other actors that could've played the characters in `Belly', but there are lots of factors involved in casting, and I'm sure that having these hip-hop starts was as much marketing as it was about the `art'. Besides, most of us on here cannot say what a `real' gangster acts like. It's my guess that besides what they do for a living, inside they're humans like we are.
The comment that I always use when discussing this movie is that if it had been written/directed by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, starred Leonardo DiCaprio (if not Damon and Affleck),and had been set in SoCal or New England, it would've won awards, but it was made by Hip-Hop artists with their OWN vision, so it languishes to lame critics that don't realize that the pain in their `Belly' is not from watching this film, but is a result of their lack of desire to change prescriptions for their near-sightedness.
Something Wild (1986)
my own private virginia
...i was lucky enough to have seen this in the theatre. i'd have to say that lulu/audrey got me pretty caught up in her joyride that didn't end up being so joyous. the movie is about as perfect an escape as there ever has been committed to film.
i "grew up" watching this film. i was a college frosh when i first saw it ('86), and the characters' ages seemed almost foreign. i watched it all through college, and ever since, and it's so odd to realize that i'm OLDER than the characters at the reunion were when this was filmed. they were 28 when i was 18, they were 28 when i was 28, and they're still 28. in my opinion, any film that is able to hold one's interest through a chronological change of perspective while not excluding the viewer is a classic.
i HATE romantic comedies, and i always have, but this is a film that really draws the viewer in to the personal/sexual/romantic/historic/familial possibilities that exist if one could just let go, and do "something wild". melanie griffith is the antithesis of the meg ryans/julia roberts'/sandra bullocks': she makes lulu the girl you'd want to take a chance with. i've always liked girls that were into bad fun and that had clever comebacks. my favorite exchange between lulu and charley that demonstrates what lulu is REALLY about and is the most telling dialogue in the movie (imo) occured when they were getting ready to go into lulu/audrey's mom's house:
lulu: (taking off handcuffs) there, you're free. charles: maybe i don't want to be free. lulu: maybe you're not.
it's loaded w/ all the philosophical implications that have existed in the movie to that point, and all that will come up after it.
my main reason for getting on here was to ask if anyone knows the names of the non-album tracks that're featured in the film, or where i can get them.
thanks and i know we'll all keep watching this movie.