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Reviews
Norm of the North (2016)
Makes you wish for global warming
Any review containing the words 'awful', 'bad', 'horrid', 'abysmal' could be considered a spoiler. I didn't give this movie a 1 because that would imply that it has some entertainment value based on its awfulness. Alas! It doesn't.
My 10yo was able to discern that it was an awful movie; although 7 year-olds found it tolerable.
Rob Schneider is just as unbearable (no pun intended) as a bear as he's as a human actor.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
Shoehorning the movie to fit the ending
An 8 year-old son of a high Nazi commander befriends a Jewish death camp prisoner, also an 8 year-old boy. So far so good.
This movie is plain bad on a number of different levels. However, the most fundamental flaw is that the creators must have thought of a seemingly ironic and tragic ending, and then tried to fit the movie to that ending. Everything in that movie is just a vacuous filler to get to the last 5 minutes.
Nothing in this film justifies its overwrought, melodramatic ending. The story is flat and shallow and pretty dull. The acting is mediocre. The cinematography is repetitive and doesn't fit the subject matter. Perhaps, it intended to give this movie a meditative, surreal, fairy tale feel, in which case it came nowhere near its goal.
It is possible to forgive some departures from the strict historical narrative provided that there's a solid, logical framework. In other words, we can suspend our disbelief at some of the events, provided that the core of the story is consistent and logical. This movie lacks such a framework. The relationship between the two boys never rings true. It can't. An obvious question arises: how do the two boys communicate, since in all likelihood the Jewish boy is from Eastern Europe; the movie seems to imply that the two boys come from different countries. It would have been very hard to build a relationship absent the ability to communicate. Or it would take a much better film. But even if you gloss over the language barrier, their relationship is still very superficial and lacks tension. Oh, true, there's betrayal by the German boy. Quickly forgiven though. Life is crappy anyway, so why fret about a little betrayal.
Ironically enough, there are a couple of sub-plots -- the boys's brief relationship with a prisoner who works in the house; as well as his mother's horror when she finds out what her husband participates in -- that could have made for a decent movie. Nay! The "horrible" ending had to be attained, so full steam ahead.
I will not give away the ending. However, after seeing this movie, ask yourself this: would it have been less sad had the ending been different? It would have been...and that's just plain wrong.
Wild (2014)
Missed the mark
I am going to hazard a guess that this movies doesn't do the book justice. I think Reese Witherspoon did a competent enough job. The scenery, of course, is beautiful, more so since I am an avid hiker and live in Oregon. This is where the good news ends. The movie is pretty dull and meandering. There's little cohesion to the story.
The characters that she encounters are all flat, no exception, which is a major flaw in the narrative. The people who help her, amuse her, educate her, or frighten her are all but shadows. There's a guy that she decides to spend the night with, but it's completely incidental to the story, and we don't care.
The true peril and hardship of her journey is not fully elaborated. It seems pretty hard, but exactly how hard is not clear. Constant flashbacks detract from us being absorbed in her journey.
Perhaps, there isn't an easy way to translate the book about personal redemption and introspection of one's life into a move, in which case they shouldn't have tried.
The Imposter (2012)
How Could This Have Happened
I started watching this film after midnight, thinking that I would stop after a few minutes and maybe come back to it another day. I couldn't stop watching. As the incredible subterfuge takes shape and snowballs into...a monstrosity, you want to say: "this is where it has got to collapse". Yet, it doesn't, until, finally, someone points out the obvious. In this case, it takes an MD and a PhD to come out an state that a boy, who grew up speaking English to the age of thirteen, would not be speaking with a thick French accent -- and somewhat broken English to boot.
But, let's roll back for a minute. There's an under-appreciated aspect of the movie that ties into the zeitgeist, the theme, the hysteria of the 90's. In one scene the FBI agent on the case, Nancy Fisher, describes her first impression of "Nicholas" the impostor. She says that he did not look anything at all like the boy in the pictures. His eye color was wrong; he had coarse black (not blonde) stubble, which was indicative of someone much older than a 16yo teenager that Nicholas was supposed to be. Yet, she discards those tell-tale signs of deception and instead describes how fascinated she was with the impostor's outlandish, completely insane story of ritualistic sexual abuse that he claimed to have been subjected to. Why would she disregard the clear signs of deception in favor of pursuing an incredible story of abuse? Let's remember that this is the tail end of the sexual abuse hysteria era. The impostor's story was just right for the mass delusion that had been gripping the country throughout the 80's and into the early and mid- 90's. US AG is Janet Reno, whose claim to fame is prosecuting such dubious cases, so it's easy to see how a lowly FBI agent would be eager to jump on this incredible story. And the impostor, Bourdin, is acutely aware of this environment and knows all the societal sensitive parts.
Amazingly, as one deception unravels, another outlandish theory creeps forward: the family killed Nicholas and hid his body and they were trying to get away with the crime by claiming that Nicholas is alive. Of course, this story fails to pass the Occam Razor test as well. Intentionally or not, this film manages to overlay personal tragedy on the background of the societal dysfunction, which makes for a very powerful bit of story-telling. Watch it. It will leave you reeling, confused, and a little sad...because, let's not forget: Nicholas had never been found.