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Reviews
Juno (2007)
An unexpected gem
I saw this on a hunch, and it was one hunch that proved to be correct. Tremendous writing, at the same time funny, heartbreaking, bitter and sweet, but at no point is it shallow. It casts a very realistic light on the challenges and complications of teen pregnancy, and for that reason I think I want our 13-year-old daughter to see it. I understand that Diablo Cody won an Oscar for the script, and she deserves it.
All the acting was fine, but I felt that Ellen Page was outstanding as Juno, playing a very convincing 16-year-old in such a way that you feel Juno's pain and confusion along with her. She has a promising acting career ahead of her.
Juno is one of those films that plays to the heart and that stays with you for hours or days after you have left the theater. My wife hasn't seen it yet. Good. That'll give me an excuse to take her so I can watch it again. Highly recommended.
Ronja Rövardotter (1984)
They don't get any better than this
I don't think I have ever given a film a rating of 10; it's a little thing I learned from science fair judging: always leave room for something better. However, in this case, I can't imagine anything better. I'm a classic film buff, and it's way up there with Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, if not better, except that even the kids will love it.
The film is based on a book by Astrid Lindgren, better known for her Pippi Longstocking stories. But this title may be her great masterpiece. It's an epic saga of friendship, love, and trust that transcend the petty bickering of the ordinary world, all set in a frame of curious fantasy and breathtaking cinematography. I can watch it over and over and over.
Here's the catch: as far as I know, it's only available in Scandinavian languages and German. Not a problem. Although my Swedish is improving slowly, it still sucks, but that doesn't seem to matter. This film is worth learning the language for, and if you don't want to go that far, it's still worth watching even if you don't understand a single spoken word. No one can miss the message. It ranks as one of my select top half dozen films (out of thousands), and certain to remain there forever.
The Wicker Man (2006)
A truly horrible movie experience
It's unfortunate that you can't go any lower than one star. Prior to watching The Wicker Man, I had considered Aliens 3 to be the only movie that would actually merit negative stars. In all fairness, The Wicker Man doesn't detract from the enjoyment of an earlier film, but the fact remains that my cumulative movie enjoyment has been reduced by seeing it.
There is a cheap trick all too often used in Hollywood when the producers are too stingy to hire good writers or in too much of a hurry to allow them to bring a plot to a satisfactory conclusion: slap in a shocker ending and hope that the public will mistake it for something artistic or meaningful. It is a gambit that rarely succeeds and in this case manages only to splatter embarrassment on a fine actor and ridicule upon the producers. Even more so in that the "carefully crafted" (or however they put it) conclusion didn't seem to follow logically from the plot (which naturally I can't elaborate on without introducing spoilers), and instead negates what merit the plot had up to that point.
It is a film that might logically appeal to psychopaths, pedophiles, and possibly die-hard Nicholas Cage fans, but only to a few of the mainstream audience. If you really want something along these lines, I heartily recommend M. Night Shyamalan's The Village instead. Lacking some kind of memory-erasing pill, I suppose I need to watch something better to force it from my mind, say, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Pee-wee's Big Adventure?