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GregoryMohn
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Alpine Lake (2020)
Possibly the worst film I've ever watched.
I've seen a lot of bad films. I've seen a lot of inept films. But this is on a different level. It fails on every level as a story and as a film.
The sound throughout is painful. Sometimes, you could hear the actors. Sometimes not. Most of the time, they were using a microphone on the camera to capture interior dialog, and all the echoes and reverb that provides. And most brain melting, is that sometimes, they had a wireless lav on actors, but for shots of the actor running around in the woods, so you hear more clothing rubbing than anything else.
The cinematography is equally bad. 90% of all the shots are on a tripod with a not-so-fluid head, so any panning was jerky and NOT smooth. 9% of the shots were from a cheaper consumer drone, with an operator who couldn't get very smooth movements, and it was too small to not have that floating around footage when trying to stay still. The ONE shot that moved was when they put the camera on a towel on the floor and dragged it across, simulating a slider. But the shot was pointless as it didn't show or reveal anything a static shot wouldn't have established. And then they put a go pro (or maybe an actual camera) on the hood of a car for a driving shot, but the reflections on the windshield were so extreme that you couldn't see into the car. So much fail.
It appeared that they had one small LED panel that was battery operated, so any exterior night scene (and there were many many MANY exterior night scenes) were all lit by this one small LED panel.
And then there's the editing. Oh, my, the editing. Characters would teleport. There was no way to judge the passing of time. After a certain point, it was impossible to know where any character was at any moment, since they could be literally anywhere in once scene, and then cut to the next scene and they were also there. I also think there was a scene that was accidentally put in the wrong place in the film.
The writing is ridiculous, and the characters even more so. The acting is wooden and unmotivated.
I could go on and on, but I won't. This is quite possibly the worst waste of time I've ever seen for everyone involved in this film.
Swiss Army Man (2016)
Very nearly a perfect movie
This review is intended to be read by those who have already seen the film. Pointless, I know.
When the film was released, I had heard the buzz about it and thankfully, I stayed away from detailed reviews and spoilers of it. And I'm very thankful that I did. This review WILL contain major plot elements and some spoilers.
On a whim, without preparation or care, I decided to just watch it. Knowing about the farting and how the film opens, I was prepared for that much. And it was silly. Stupid, really. I actually almost checked out less than 10 minutes into the film. I can see why there was so many walkouts from it's premiere at Sundance.
But then I realized it was a much deeper, darker dive into the psyche of a person on the edge of emotional reality. Through most of the film, I was almost sure that the entire thing was happening inside of Hank's mind in the moments just before his death as a result of him hanging himself. The small clues of him speaking about the "seeing your life flash" seemed to match up to Manny's quite childlike amazement of everything and knowing nothing from the beginning through to some kind of adolescence and puberty with the SI magazine. And then to finding real love and experiencing that life, as I assumed that he eventually DID all the things they played out, finally meeting the girl and falling in love, etc.
THEN, I thought that maybe some of it was real, but he was just reliving the lost opportunities of talking to the girl on the bus, and creating a new reality that he would live out, using a corpse as a surrogate self.
THEN, I thought again that almost none of it was real, even the existence of Manny by the time they ended up on Sarah's back lawn. I though that it would be revealed that there was no Manny and that Hank was the one in the body bag, dead just as he reached his only goal to see Sarah one last time as he succumbed to exposure.
But then all of those expectations were subverted and it suggests that almost all of what was shown in the film actually happened as other characters discovered the playsets and the abilities of Manny. That part was a little disappointing as it's the least interesting (and most ridiculous) way to explain things in the film.
However, I'll admit that I cried harder and longer and in more scenes during this film than any other film I've ever seen. This is a masterclass of acting, directing, editing and scoring to create more emotion in two characters than I've ever seen. Even more of an achievement because one of the characters did not move on his own.
The way this story is told through cinematography and character development just worked on every level my brain can appreciate. I give it a 9 instead of a 10 because it is still a bit silly in parts and I really didn't enjoy the father character or how the story resolved itself at the end. It felt like they shoehorned in a "best case scenario" for what I was preparing to be a soul-crushingly tragic yet satisfying end for Hank.
I'm left wondering what Hank learned or discovered through this story. He was essentially living a fantasy lie, infatuated with the idea of a woman and a life that from the outside would be interpreted as nothing short of stalking. When he finally acted on his unhealthy obsession, he was arrested and will likely be charged with a list of offenses, desecration of a corpse included. Pretty dark.
But that doesn't change the fact that it was the most heartwarming and heartbreaking film I've seen in a decade or more. A film about a farting corpse. Highly recommended.