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fridaynightchicken
Reviews
Super Truck of Car City (2016)
It is a "slow show"
I prefer this new show for my toddlers because it is less stimulating than many other kids shows. It has calming music, narration, dialogue, pace. Too many shows cause children to become stressed out and frustrated due to the overwhelming sounds and pace. Thank you for producing the first three seasons of this. Season four is an abomination and I will not let my children watch it. It is too stimulating and stress inducing.
I was sad to see it was over already and there would be no more good episodes. Ironic, because when I first heard that my toddler liked this new cheap show on amazon called super truck I was a little concerned. Then I too became a fan...
I especially liked when the narrator would raise his voice and say "Time to transform Carl. Carl, transforrrm!"
L'amant (1992)
Better than expected
I saw 2046 and wanted something else that would take me to someplace other than the normal film construct. I looked through the indie film channels and found this on at 2 am, I recorded it to watch later. I read a review by Ebert and others which said the film was just like Emmanuelle and basically soft core porn. I wasn't too enthused by this, even though in highschool I liked the dubbed version of Emmanuelle so much that I bought a copy, it was so dream-like and ethereal. I looked at the director of The Lover and saw that he also directed 2 brothers about the two tigers and I liked that movie so I got more enticed. I do like to read a little backstory about a film before I see it, because I see them as a piece of creation/art and since I am spending an hour or two of my life observing this creation I would like to understand the context of it.
The Lover is a good film, and a great imagination. Even though the original author experienced this same plot in real life, her imagination is the one that brought all these events into existence and viewed them from this narrative.
I empathized with all the characters. The director and the original author depicted the pain of each person so well, usually without even saying a word. Just the role that each person plays and their conditions really draws you in. I could relate to the older brother and the film even made me reevaluate my own status in my family. When the young girl asks her mother why she treats her older brother so differently than the rest of the family the mother simply says 'I don't know'. That to me made this movie more true and legitimate than any other movie I have seen. Because everything else that happens in the movie relates to this trueness, and it all correlates so crystal clear.
It is truly a sad movie. That is the core of what it sent to me. The poor young girl, the poor family. It was broken apart through events and the protective figurehead, the father, died. Now, they are left in squalor in Asia, and they are truly at a loss at how to reorient their lives. It is like watching headless animals wandering around with no understanding of what to do or how to fix it. And out of this, lack of center, the young girl enters her sexuality and her female skill of lethal seduction. The seduction that many young women use to give their feelings of insignificance something of power and control.
This young girl draws a wealthy man to her by her skills and right from the start her animal nature tells her that she just caught what she was fishing for, in a sense. She has become significant. And she uses this role that she has created to elevate her to near or above her domineering older brother, and the squalor around her. She finds love, that she is missing from her mother and dead father. And she knows that the wealthy chinaman only wants her because he can't have her.
From the start this chinaman showed that he was unworthy of compassion, by the way he told her he only wanted sex, and so she began her pantheress pursuit of his carcass. Her sense of guilt was non existent from his display of inconsiderateness for the thing he wanted to eat and use, and so the young girl's mind was free to take her prey down to lengths even she couldn't know she was capable of. And perhaps she was still more able to continue with it because of the hurt of her knowing that if she ever did fall for him his sense of need would die along with his inability to possess her.
She liked how powerless he was, and to be honest, it is very enjoyable to be reassured that no matter how much money you have, you can never buy somebody's emotions.
Though the last of the feeling that you get from this movie is the sadness that this poor girl had to sell herself for the emotions that she could have and should have gotten from her family and those around her, love, devotion and importance. I see it all the time, and it just makes the woman feel cheap and disillusioned with life and cold at how heartless and simple people can be.
The Experiment (2010)
Good because of Brody and Whitaker
I'll give it a seven. Brody and Whitaker are both good. The movie is somewhat low budget and the script isn't the best, but the themes and the character analysis is actually pretty good. I pondered the themes throughout multiple viewings. You can tell both actors put work into their roles and wanted it to be a success. I don't know why people are complaining, because compared to 90% of what else is on t.v. this is way better.
As an aside, the progression of the protagonists can be seen as sort of a self character study for the viewer. You get to see what types of personalities are more power hungry and apt to infringe on other people's lives, what types of people stand up for goodness, and the others that fall in between.
Brody's character is a peace activist and also an underachiever, perhaps the script writers wanted to show that these types of people are usually oppressed even though they feel the occasional desire to protest. Over the course of the film his character's psyche is peeled back like an onion to reveal his true underlying self; a fighter for good. Brody's character doesn't have it in him to oppress, and it takes being put into an ultimate situation like this, where his sense of safe civilly adhering human is completely stripped away. He has nothing left to do but fully be the 'savior' type that his personality type is at its core. This may sound stupid, but I sense a unicorn-ness about Brody's character. The ultimate good versus evil. Which can be read between the lines of this movie.
Whitaker's persona is the opposite of light and good, it is dark and oppressed and thus seeks to oppress. He has become what he was raised from. Backstory vignettes show how his mother was domineering and he still lives with her at age 41. He begins the story as meek and polite and god fearing, but further into the story you see that those were just covers for his true quiet desperation. And once he is placed in a position of power he gets to embody all of that pain that made him feel powerless throughout his life. Like a tortured animal that wants to see his trauma wrought upon another, in a very sociopathic way, his character can't live without experiencing that. It is unfortunate, but as is seen in this movie, that is why there are roles in society for people brought up like this; prison guard.
By the end of the movie, and after empathizing with the characters, you see that humans are just the products of their environments. I would say it is good versus evil, but Whitaker's character is too complex to fully write off as true evil, he is a naive human grown in an unideal home, and I feel bad for him. Brody's character, though more enjoyable to watch and the 'hero' of the story, is somewhat less fulfilling, because he has obviously been raised into a life that has given him freedom and light, he is sort of the fool, as he is in most of his films, and so in a broader sense is regarded with less depth. But as is seen in the last bus scene, it's all about choice, and in the end everybody has one. And Whitaker's character chooses to be dark and Brody's to be light.
Lady in the Water (2006)
Best message(s) of 2006
I just saw the movie at the drive-in last night and am happy to say that it made me re-evaluate life. I am enlightened, or I think I am, relatively as everything is, and the movie ever so lightly brushes up against those avenues that lead one to enlightenment. From the exact way M. Night goes about subversively illuminating the horrific truths that exist in life, real life, I can see that he isn't fully aware of the problem's immensity, but something sparked him nonetheless and he was inspired to show the layer of it that he is currently aware of. That aside, the themes and messages of the movie are the best of the year/years. Telling people to follow feelings because that is the only indicator of truth. Saying everybody has a purpose... you know maybe M. Night does know the whole truth, maybe the bedtime story is an allegory for what is happening now in our world, but who are the monkey's in the trees protecting justice? I can understand why Disney didn't like the movie, because of its themes. And M. Night is very brave for making it.