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Reviews
Leave No Trace (2018)
Subject is worthy of a movie but...
I found this painfully boring and probably sugar coated in that life has highs and lows, and bad things happen, but this movie just never engages. I highly doubt that someone can live with a mentally ill person without developing real and painful issues. It offers no insights, just a dreamy slow evolution of nothing notable.
The Reader (2008)
Well done movie with an absurd storyline.
First, I thought this story was pretty well acted and brought to life. A young boy falls in love and has an affair with an older woman, but she is hiding something. Well done. Next the young man, some years later, finds this woman is on trial for being a guard at a concentration camp, for activity helping with the function of this death camp, and later keeping the doors locked while 300 women burn to death. I think this puts her in the category of evil. So the big twist turns out to be that she was illiterate and (skipping details) didn't have to spend as long in prison as she did, because she was too ashamed to admit that she couldn't read. This storyline is offensive, absurd, and insulting to the memory of all the victims. Participating in mass murder of men, women, and children and what you really feel ashamed about is that you cannot read? Oh please, this movie should never have been made. What a waste of talent (the acting was pretty decent) and cinematography well done. And with regard to those reviews that ask, "How do we know what we would have done in the same situation?" I really don't think "normal" people can murder so many people without at minimum considering quitting their job at the concentration camp--they were there and employed by choice. Why not give us true insights into people that commit terrible acts and then go home and are tender with their friends and family. Much more powerful was an interview I saw with one of the Nazi executioners that gathered three generations of women from one family, told them to disrobe and prepare to die, and then shot each one. He was asked whether he had any regrets, to which he responded, "Absolutely not, they deserved it." This dimension is completely missing from the movie, leaving essentially a love story with the question, how bad can your lover be and you still maintain strong feelings of affection.
Before Midnight (2013)
At first I hated it, then I liked it (a new genre)
(When I initially hated it.)
In the last few years I've watched a set of movies that with this movie, I now realize is a form of reality TV as a style--that is, a movie that moves slowly, focuses on a few people talking, and it is through what is said that the movie and meaning unfolds.
For example, in Before Midnight one essentially becomes a passenger in a car listening in to a conversation for ten minutes or more.
Other movies of this new genre are Boyhood, Nebraska, and Inside Llewyn Davis. However, in Boyhood and Nebraska in particular, there were deep surprises and twists that gradually unfold (I very much recommend these two).
However, with Before Midnight, I was just completely bored.
(Now I like it.)
I hate at first watched more than half the movie waiting for it to "begin." It just seemed to drone on and on. Eventually I started skipping parts until I just watched the concluding few minutes. A dysfunctional marriage I thought, so what.
However, the next day there were a few lines in the ending that left me curious. I backed up to when the fight (argument/middle of hotel room scene) really began. A lot poured and I watched it to its end, quite engrossed. Great acting. At that point I re-watched the dinner with guests scene and the walk up to the chapel. It was hugely more meaningful and rich having understood what was really underneath.
This time I felt moved. So I would highly recommend the movie, but this advise--you need to watch it twice.
Ida (2013)
Opened my eyes
Amazing, though a unique and dark journey back to Poland in the 1930's or 1940's. It is told from the perspective of those left alive in post-war communist Poland. It speaks to what happens when your neighbors turn against you. Exceptional photography combined and a story that adds unexpected depth to an unimaginable episode in humanity.
I have always thought that with youth and energy one can go find and build a better life--no matter what, you can leave a bad experience behind you and eventually move on; leave those who shun you. However, this movie opened my eyes to the mental damage to those who might happen to survive the ultimate social rejection. One can be left without a thread of hope or motivation or belief to look beyond.
It's a dark movie but one that should not be missed.
The Monuments Men (2014)
Stinks
The script continually tells you how to feel without really developing the story or characters. Be happy, be sad, be scared, etc.
For example, to create a "chill", let someone discover a barrow filled with gold fillings. Announce the finding, and then move on to the next joke or next forced moment.
Need a moment of comradery? Let's have one of the team step on a landmine, but not step off. Next, have each of the team members enter the room and make a one liner. (I'm sure the guy standing on the mine appreciated the chuckles.) They all work to put some weight down and then guess what, then they refuse to leave the room when the it is time for the guy to step off the mine. I can see putting your life on the line to save your buddy, but here's a first--have a bunch of guys hold his hand just so that he doesn't have to get blown up by himself, should it happen.
The liberal side of Clooney is sure leaking out. Need an anti-war moment? How about a good guy meeting a bad guy--a US soldier runs into a German/Nazi. In most movies, the American figures out how to kill or take prisoner the Nazi. Not here. They start a "dance" through the American's gestures and offerings (a cigarette) to relax and just agree that each should walk away. Even after the Nazi soldier leaves, the US soldiers don't go after him. Great, now the Nazi can get back to killing children and other things Nazi's are good at. Okay, maybe the soldier wasn't a Nazi, so he went back to killing other Allied soldiers.
I agree with another reviewer who said that this is an example of how not to make a movie. It was painful to watch--like a happy version of the Hollocaust that never really makes any point with any impact, though it seems to be telling you that it is all really important, in between the jokes.
Finding Vivian Maier (2013)
Into the world of creative madness
This is a very good movie. It starts by the accidental discovery of the negatives of what turns out to be a very talented photographer. You slowly learn more. There is a darker side, and you soon find yourself immersed a bizarre world--a journey of following Vivian Maier's discarded gems, photographic and other, as well as emotional debris and dark alleys that echo of the unthinkable. A woman so capable at looking at us and revealing truth, yet carefully masks herself behind which must certainly be the workings of the mental ill. The movie does a unique job at letting your experience how greatness and mental illness can coexist; in fact, perhaps her greatness is a result of the mental illness.
Stories We Tell (2012)
Interesting film, though indirect
You should watch the film before reading my comments. It is film worth watching.
This film, as the director tells us a few times, is about the different points of a view over the same events. I didn't find these differing points of view, as other reviewers have also pointed out. In fact, quite the opposite—the various comments seem to re-enforce each other. But I'll put aside this disconnect between Sarah Polley's intent and what I actually saw.
We have a daughter who discovers that her father, with whom she has grown up, is not her biological father; in fact, her mother has slept with at least two other people. The father is painted by everyone, including him, as a good father but incapable of providing the love craved by her mother. So much so, that when one of his daughters hears that she had an affair, the daughter is so happy for her. In the next moment, when all the daughters learn of their mother's exploits in the name of love, they all get divorced.
Sarah's biological father sees nothing wrong with his pursuit of a married woman (or accepting her advances, which ever was the case), and wishes Sarah's mother would have divorced her husband and come, along with her children to live with him. Their relationship may or may not have worked, but they had a strong love for each other—given the six weeks that they knew each other. By the way, the gay son is disappointed that his father was reluctant to talk about oral sex. If this last comment seems to come out of the blue in my discussion, that's exactly how it felt in the movie.
We learn that the Sarah's mother wanted much more sex than her father would provide, and the suggestion is made that love and sex are the same thing: Sarah's mother needed more love and sex than her husband could provide. Her husband knew this and was thus grateful that she had outside affairs because otherwise she might have left him.
Sarah learns that her mother had scheduled an abortion (of her) and in fact was on her way to the procedure, when she changes her mind. Her mother appears to have known who the true father was all along—despite having slept with at least three males during the period in question—as Sarah's mother sent the biological father pictures from time to time of Sarah.
Sarah's non-biological father, the one she grew up calling dad, appears to feel that he got the better end of the deal, in that he got to take care and love this wonderful person Sarah. He says that if she had been his own child, she may have been a better person, or worse, but that Sarah was special.
Did her non-biological father (dad) love her mother? It does appear so, and in fact when her mother dies, he is devastated. When he learned of his mother's affair, is he angry? No. He talks about how this revelation has brought him closer to his (adopted?) daughter and that he doesn't remember exchanging such hugs with her, as they have done now that the story is out. He says "nothing has changed," yet she is off being welcomed into the fold of all her newly discovered blood relatives, and in particular, bonding with her biological father.
Despite the trauma, no one seems angry, disappointed or even upset with anyone. Sarah in particular maintains a monotone and cool demeanor through it all.
Am I being critical of all of this? No. It's amazing and at least surface level honest. That's why the film is worth watching.
There is probably a story we didn't hear about how Sarah's father got into the position of seeing himself as so completely unworthy. He seems a totally defeated individual, but with a good heart. Once Sarah's sisters were freed from the bonds of marriage upon learning of their mother's adventures, I wonder how their husbands felt when they were divorced?
Sarah's mother was married when she fell in love with Sarah's "dad," and subsequently divorced this first husband. This first husband was not happy being divorced and gained full custody of their children (a first in Canada). Sarah's siblings report being abused by their stepmother in this relationship, and that Sarah's mother would cry endlessly having to return her children into this abusive home. I wish Sarah had more fully reported on this perpetrated abuse. How about interviewing the stepmother and her first husband?
The facts and interviews in Sarah Polley's documentary tell an amazing story about the nature of one family's structure and bonds. It was well filmed and filled with old clips. Its major flaw I suspect is in the fact that no one ever stood up and said something in an angry, outraged, betrayed and hurt voice.
Django Unchained (2012)
Nice story until you realize there is something sick about it.
I was looking forward to a great western including what I presumed would be a deservedly negative portrayal of slavery. There was a clue right in the beginning of the sickness that would come to dominate the film, but it takes a while to realize where you are being taken. So the clue: Advice from our hero to some freed slaves that they should murder their subdued captors, said with a smile.
The movie continues with a sense of joy and happiness in sadistically killing people. Two bounty hunters head off initially killing wanted men (criminals), but then it branches off into killing white southerners. When Django (one of the bounty hunters) is asked what he thinks of their task, he responds "killing white people and getting paid too, what's not to like." In the same way, perhaps early Nazis got a piece of paper from a superior authorizing them to round up men, women, and children, and have a great time killing them, this movie develops that strange sense of moral "okay" because it is written on a piece of paper. So, for example, because a warrant says dead or alive, the bounty hunters take this to mean that having-a-blast killing has now been authorized. So, instead of easily arresting a criminal, you shoot them, put them in pain, and then before a crowd, and with a smile, kill them dead.
In another great scene, as the movie slips further into its killing spree, a wanted man is plowing a field with the help of his son. So from a distance, they shoot him and listen to the horrified son say, "Oh, dad." You would think that this is somehow setting up for making a deep statement about slavery. Well, no. Our bounty hunters (one white, one former slave) eventually decide to rescue the former slave's wife. Why not just go get the wife? It seems they want a properly documented sale. Back to this notion that be it a warrant or a bill of sale, these pieces of paper are all controlling. An interesting point, but it gets lost in all the joyous killing.
One last example: Django asks a couple of female slaves to say goodbye to a southern bell, and then shoots her (along with all the other whites). I guess he was worried she might curse at him---how can Django been seen as anything other than a murdered? I had hoped for some sense of morality, of review of slavery, of a fantasy of righting some wrongs. However, the movie just wants to have fun murdering and with different reasons, setting up people to be casually executed.
It is worth noting that it was Abraham Lincoln, having witnessing the horror of all the killing, wished to purge slavery and heal the nation. The north did not send out squads to murder the southern white population in joyous revenge.
I object to presenting a movie that carries with it the message that given some basis of moral authority, you are then free to enjoy and needlessly murder to your heart's content.
Bikur Ha-Tizmoret (2007)
Painful to watch
I had invited a couple of friends over to watch a movie together along with my wife. From most of the reviews as well as the countless awards this movie has received, I was excited at the prospect of sharing a meaningful journey.
However, the movie was beyond bad. Everyone suffered through it. The movie is slow, which by itself is not a problem. However, its lack of substance causes one to build up such a vacuum of sensory deprivation that when it finally ends, you feel the need to rush out and turn on the TV or play anything just to be normal again. It isn't that there are no touching lines in the movie, but its overwhelming success is making you so completely bored. Most international movies that have won multiple awards are generally a sure thing, but this movie proves that despite claims of being a great movie, for many people, some such movies are complete duds.
The really sad thing about it, is that this movie had all the elements (good setting, photography, very capable actors, etc.) to be a great movie except the story just didn't work for us.
I simply don't understand why there are so many good reviews.
The Woodmans (2010)
Exceptional movie
This is a rare opportunity to follow the lives of three artists (the parents and Francesca, their daughter) and to experience the drive, passion, insecurities, and tensions involved in creating art.
Francesca's use of her own nudity in some of her work enhances what is already a rich visual experience with an intimacy with the artist. You get so close to the family and its dynamics—idyllic in many ways, such as living in beautiful surroundings (Colorado, New York, Italy) and facing mostly one's own internal challenges of being who you want to be, the most you can be, and accepted by others—that you are caught off guard as the "normal" trials and tribulations suddenly spiral out of control and Francesca leaps from a tall building.
Was it right for her boyfriend to have questioned whether her work was art--honesty versus support? Why should success matter that much? This sub-theme is gently explored in the contrast between the father's and mother's careers. You expect the movie to end with Francesca's death, but it continues on, on with the broader painting of the Woodmans' tapestry.
If you have ever questioned the meaning of life, the unfolding of this story would normally be a celebration of the drive and finding meaning, until it takes you right over the edge. How we suffer for what we care about. How we love what we create and want it to live.
I was deeply moved, made to reflect on emotions we all feel at times, and haunted by the fact that the story is not fiction, but true and told by the actual people, including Francesca.