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Reviews
Signs (2002)
Holes in the plot -- SPOILER INCLUDED!!!!
SPOILER WARNING: There are plot details discussed in this comment so please don't read it if you haven't seen the movie yet.
I enjoyed watching this movie, but once it was over I was annoyed at some enormous holes in the plot. The most obvious gaping hole is that the aliens could be destroyed by water. Don't you think that if they had the intelligence to send fleets of ships through light years of space they would have known to wear some type of protective covering on earth with its water laden atmosphere? These creatures would be killed every time it rained. For us it would be like going to a planet where the rain is a powerful acid instead of water. We would wear some type of protective clothing. These aliens wouldn't even have been able to run through the corn field at night because at night in the summer the corn stalks would often be covered with dew.
Another hole: the aliens made these giant signs in the corn fields which people suspect (correctly as it turns out) are aids to navigation. First of all, you would have trouble seeing them from space, especially if it's night on the ground. Second, don't you think the aliens would have some better form of technology to navigate the earth's surface? And most important, wouldn't some bright person have gotten the idea to mow the fields where the signs had been carved to erase the signs?
Another hole: the neighbor (played by the director) catches an alien and locks it in the pantry. Mel Gibson knows it's there because he cuts its fingers off. Shouldn't one of these guys have mentioned this to somebody like maybe the police or the military? Said something like "There's a spaceman in the kitchen"? Instead the neighbor drives off to the lake and Mel runs home and boards up the windows. That just doesn't make any sense to me.
Like I said, while the movie was playing I really enjoyed it because the performances are uniformly strong and there are some wonderful moments of suspense and humor. But afterward I just felt annoyed.
Shallow Hal (2001)
A fable for our times
This movie was a charming treat, kind of a little fable about our attitudes toward appearance. In it's own way, this movie is a classic, almost like a reverse Cyrano de Bergerac. The Farelly Brothers have a reputation for over the top gross out humor and there certainly were plenty of opportunities for it here, but they took the high road and the result, in my opinion, is really worth watching and thinking about.
Gummo (1997)
Trash masquerading as something important
A film doesn't have to have a plot, or likable characters, or a message. However, it seems to me there should be some point to making a film, and some reason for an audience to sit through it. Gummo lacks any reason for existing, other than to portray the Director as some kind of very cool artiste who most of us are too dense to understand.
Drop any idea that this film is some kind of cinema verite. This was not real life. These were actors, or in some case locals recruited to be in the film, improvising from some ideas and/or scripts supplied by the Director. Handheld cameras and bad sound are used to create the illusion of a documentary, but this is actually the real life of white trash as imagined by the Director. It's totally fake. The people in this movie are unremittingly portrayed as stupid, libidinous, hillbillies with nothing better to do than to sniff glue, hit on each other (in every sense of the word) and murder cats. For some reason they all have strong southern accents although they are supposed to be Ohio. They do things that are outlandish enough that they are entertaining to watch at times, but it doesn't add up to anything worth watching.
If you want to see a true cinema verite style film in a similar setting, try "Roger and Me", Michael Moore's documentary about the attempts of people in Flint, Michigan to stay afloat after the local automobile factories had shut down. If you want to see a more compelling fictionalized version of this movie, try "River's Edge", based on a true story of a group of teenagers near Sacramento who all knew the location of a murdered classmate's body, which they visited and gawked at, but which none of them revealed to their parents or the police.
Monkeybone (2001)
SPOILER WARNING Funhouses shouldn't be dull SPOILER WARNING
Monkeybone comes off as a low rent Tim Burton wannabe -- sort of a poorly realized combination of "Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Beetlejuice" with some "Little Nicky" thrown in. While it has some of the imaginative art direction in those films, unfortunately it lacks their humor and is quite a bit less coherent. Brendan Frasier plays Stu, a cartoonist who is injured in an accident and finds himself in a strange netherworld called "Downtown" which is a way station for people who are in comas and are waiting to see whether they will awaken or die. Downtown is also the Land of Sleep, so besides being full of people in comas, it's populated by creatures from nightmares. For entertainment, people's nightmares are shown continuously on televisions and in the movie theater (the "Morpheum"). There are no happy dreams, and the nightmares are all the same. In my nightmares the house is on fire, or I have to take a final exam but I don't know where the classroom is. In Downtown the nightmares are all about strange creatures and carnival rides. The place looks like a funhouse.
Stu is kept company by his cartoon creation, a rascally monkey named Monkeybone who acts and sounds an awful lot like an R rated version of Roger Rabbit. Stu is desperate to return to the land of the awake because he wants to propose to his girl friend, Julie, played by Bridget Fonda, so he sneaks into the Land of Death and steals an exit pass (used for people who are almost dead but are revived at the last second), but just as he's about to leave Monkeybone steals the exit pass and uses it to escape to the real world where he inhabits Stu's body, turning Stu's life into mayhem. Only Stu's dog seems to know there's something wrong here.
It turns out that all the creatures in Downtown had conspired to let Monkeybone escape into the real world because Julie has a large quantity of a chemical that causes nightmares, and they want Monkeybone/Stu to release it on an unsuspecting population to create lots of new nightmares to keep Downtown entertained (seems there aren't as many nightmares as there used to be). Stu is imprisoned in Downtown with a bunch of other people whose bodies also were snatched so that they could create nightmares (there's a cameo by Steven King), but he escapes and goes back to the Land of Death to try and steal another exit pass. He gets caught, but the Angel of Death, played by Whoppi Goldberg (there's exactly 2 black people in this movie with speaking parts, one is the angel of death, and the other is the angel of nightmares) takes pity on him and sends him back into the body of a man, played by Chris Kattan, who is recently deceased and whose organs are being harvested at that very moment. He leaps off the operating table and takes off in search of Julie and Monkeybone with the organ harvesters chasing after him. Can he propose to Julie and stop Monkeybone from spraying crowds of people with nightmare juice before the end of the movie? Will he have to go back to the Land of Death or will he get to live happily ever after? You'd have to sit through this preposterous movie to find out, but I'll bet you could guess the answer. It may seem to hard to believe but I simplified the plot in this comment; it's actually much more complicated.
There is no charm to this movie. There's no light-heartedness. There's no fun. Despite the funhouse atmosphere and busy plot, there's a surprising dullness and lack of imagination to all of it. The trailer looked promising and I'm a big fan of both Brendan Frasier and Bridget Fonda, but this film was a major disappointment.
Rat Race (2001)
A great movie to see if you want to laugh
I wanted to see a movie that would make me laugh, and this one really succeeded. There are so many gags and stunts thrown in that it would be hard to single any of them out (besides which, I don't want to spoil any surprises by divulging them). But I think what really made this film successful was the comic ability of the actors, each of whom turned in a solid performance. Movies with a lot of manic energy can fall flat if the timing isn't quite right, in which case they become painful to watch. Remember Tom Hanks in "Bachelor Party"? Also with a large ensemble cast you run the risk of having the characters become indistinguishable from each other, or of having over the top caricatures that wear thin in a hurry. That didn't happen here. Seth Greene and Vince Vieluf were especially good, and the combination of Lanei Chapman as a driven yuppie and Whoppi Goldberg as her sweet natured long lost mother worked perfectly. Rowan Atkinson would have become annoying if he were given more screen time, but as one of many in a large cast his character was quite funny and made a great contribution. My only quibble with this movie was that the ending didn't seem quite right. Without giving away what happens, I'll say that I think the writers got to the end and didn't know what to do, and in my opinion the result looked like a car running out of gas. Despite that, I was laughing very hard through most of this movie as was the audience I saw it with.
Made (2001)
Enjoyable movie despite its flaws
This film has great dialogue, characterizations, atmosphere and pacing. All of this comes together to make it a thoroughly enjoyable movie to watch, sort of a darker version of "Swingers". That said, I had trouble believing that Bobby would, to quote the film, "vouch for" his friend. The character of Ricky, played by Vince Vaughn, is such a jerk that he's practically psychotic. Nobody in their right mind would keep finding him jobs, much less take him along on a mob-related assignment requiring tremendous tact and discretion. As a piece of diverting entertainment this film scores big, but I think John Favreau was aiming higher with this film than he was with his earlier efforts, and it doesn't doesn't quite hit the mark.
Basquiat (1996)
Captures the NY art scene of the early 80's
I found this film to be especially compelling because it really managed to capture the New York art scene of the early 1980's. At that time New York was still pretty grungey from the near financial collapse of the late 1970's, but there was a tremendous amount of energy that was beginning to gather itself together. This would culminate mid-decade in the whole East Village neo-bohemian scene that, in popular culture, brought us Madonna, among other things (remember "Desperately Seeking Susan?). Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Harring both came to prominence in the early 80's. Both became known from their graffiti (graffiti was everywhere and the city wasn't bothering to clean it up) which in the minds of the art world made them seem raw and authentic. Julian Schnabel recreates this period with the knowing eye of an insider, making the film well worth seeing.
Wo hu cang long (2000)
What's all the fuss about?
I had heard such unmitigated praise for this film that I went to it expecting to see something really special. Instead I saw a good film that was beautifully shot, engaging story, well put together, very dreamlike. . . but the best film of the year? I think not. Not even in the year 2000 when there was a scarcity of good movies. And certainly not one of the best films ever made. I don't understand the fanatical devotion that many people seem to feel for this film.
Fever (1999)
Dark, claustrophobic, and downright creepy
This film proves that you don't need a huge budget and a slew of special effects to scare the audience. The film is dark and creepy, very claustrophobic.
Nick is an undiscovered artist living in a rundown building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He's losing his part time job, and is already so broke that he doesn't have a phone. His life is spiraling downward.
Somebody is murdering people in Nick's building. He hears strange noises through the walls. There's a mysterious man in the supposedly empty apartment upstairs, but nobody else seems to know he's there. Nick is not feeling well. He's feverish. He might be imagining all this. Perhaps he's not. Strange things keep happening -- sometimes just little things -- that make everything feel tilted and out of control. The film feels sort of like "Eraserhead" meets the "Sixth Sense". When I came out of the theater I took a big gulp of fresh air and looked all around me to reassure myself that real life was nothing like this movie.
State and Main (2000)
It made me smile
This was not a great movie, but it was consistently fun to watch. We know what's going to happen right from the start. There are a number of characters whose egos need deflating, and we know that this film will do it. So it's fairly predictable, but enjoyable to watch as the story unfolds. It was also great to see a number of fine actors on screen together. This was also definitely a change of pace for David Mamet.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Not exactly the feel good movie of 2000
Requiem for a Dream is another screen adaptation of a Hubert Selby novel, and like 1991's "Last Exit to Brooklyn" no one gets out of this one unscathed. It's a powerful movie and a bit difficult to watch at times, but it's worth the ride to go down with these characters to depths from which they will never emerge. All the performances are solid, but Ellen Burstyn gives the performance of her life as a woman who just wants to wear a red dress that reminds her of more hopeful days. Jared Leto -- where did he come from? -- gives an equally impressive performance as her totally hapless drug addicted son. This movie is a great antidote to morally bankrupt films along the lines of "Trainspotting" that portray serious addiction as glamorous. "Trainspotting" made an episode of cold turkey look like a really cool music video with a baby crawling on the ceiling. When Ellen sees the refrigerator comes sliding and grinding across the floor in "Requiem" it is neither cool nor glamorous. The word "malevolent" comes to mind.
The Cheaters (1945)
A forgotten gem
This is a delightful movie that is rarely seen. It's a Christmas movie. A family of rich, self-absorbed people loses everything in the depression. They are visited by a mysterious stranger who helps them to find something more important than the money they have lost. Nicely done.