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Reviews
Northfork (2003)
A Modern Masterpiece
Just go with the flow and enjoy this one with all its fine idealism and lack of conventional structure. It is most definately not a formula movie so if you like reality television shows, and perhaps even if you like any prime time television, this is probably not a movie for you. It is not pretentious or pedantic or pedagogic, but maybe guilty of exceeding its reach, but its grasp is firm and even handed. It speaks on the touchy, difficult topics of death and redemption, new beginnings, teleogy, changes that occur in life and how our interpretations of the same event are formed based on our perspectives of relative gain and loss. Not surprisingly, in the end, you are left to sort out these things for yourself. It is a modern masterpiece.
Whale Rider (2002)
Politically Correct And Predictable
This movie is a no brainer yawn of a story for all those who think that glorifying false and contradictary premises makes for fine movies. Fifteen minutes into the movie, I was truly bored by the tedious pace and the obvious story line of the movie. Everything the girl would do had to be better than any boy who ever lived. The tribal men are brutish, crude, chauvinistic, good for nothing drinkers, dead enders. The tribal women are humorous, cynical, wise, industrious. If only the men had let the women run the tribe, their hopeless lives would have been worth living. After all, they were in the garden of eden in their homes by the sea, while they lived quiet lives of desperation, their tribal community degenerating around them. No problem, not to worry in this story when you have the perfect child in your midst. We have the perfect girl to lead the tribe back to respectability even though her greatness was not immediately appreciated by the tribal elder, her grandfather, because the girl was after all only about ten or eleven. Nope, not until she talked the whales into beaching and then rode one of them out to sea could her greatness be recognized by one and all. By then the good part was that it was time to go home. Save your money and do not watch this clunk of a skunk fairy tale for the politically correct.
Copenhagen (2002)
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
This is well done and thoroughly enjoyable portrayal of the moral hesitation and dissembling that go hand and hand with Heisenberg and his efforts with respect to the bomb. It is well acted with informative and intelligent dialogue that brings two of the leading scientists of the 20th century to life while examining all facets of the issues surrounding Heisenberg's visit to Copenhagen and the consequences of his efforts to develop a bomb for Nazi Germany.
Igby Goes Down (2002)
An Igby in the Wry
This movie explains the youthful alienation and rebellious actions of Igby, a rich kid who wants the easy life but not the one his parents have. It tells Igby's story in a cynical, detached way, moving quickly from one episode to another. There's no dwelling on or overdoing a scene. No moralizing one way or another. The viewer gets to draw his own conclusions about how everyone in Igby's world is going down and not just Igby, which is I suppose is the whole point of it all.
I found it to be entertaining, a Holden Caulfield kind of story updated fifty years later, but no overarching on language or sex, just the details of Igby's world as they are. The dialogue is a bit of a reach, way too wry and witty, but never to the point where you feel it's contrived and done just for the laugh.