123ray Reviews

What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)

Happy Birthday LASSE HALLSTROM!

[10/10 · 2 June 2005]

Great film, with even greater performances--one everyone should see.

I came in late when I saw this in the theater, but loved it anyway, and always wanted to see it all. Twelve years later, I found it on DVD, bought it, and tonight I watched it all.

What I found absolutely amazing is that it was full of so many actors whose work I now admire so greatly. I hadn't even realized the main characters were played by Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. (I had remembered "Gilbert" as being Lou Diamond Phillips...sorry!) DiCapprio was amazing, and so young! I saw hints of this great performance again in The Aviator (which I also purchased). Perhaps DiCaprio works best when portraying the "mentally challenged" among us.

While the film suffers from technical issues (the trucks headlights duplicated in the camera lens--c'mon! You can "PhotoShop" that out now, can't you?) and a lack of editing, I had time tonight, and actually enjoyed the longer pace.

Though fiction, it's a story of real life events, and from the comments written here, I know many people related to it. As my daughter says, "We all come from dysfunctional families." :) I also noticed the director is Lasse Hallstrom (with one of those double-dot Swedish characters over the "o" which I don't know how to make...) and TODAY, June 2, is his birthday, so, Happy Birthday, Lasse. Email me. I know someone (Swedish-American) with an amazing script you should direct!

Saints and Soldiers (2003)

Outstanding in every sense

[10/10 · 17 February 2005]

My wife and I go out to see a movie every Friday night. Some nights, I'll tell you, the Picken's Is Slim, as they were when we saw this film about six months ago (if memory serves). I'd never heard of it. She didn't want to see any more war films since that miserable, over-hyped "Pearl Harbor" with the lame love story thrown into the mix. (Cuba Gooding was the only good part in the movie, and, shock! His character's part really happened, too! Hollywood take note!) To tell you the truth, we nearly went to rent something to watch at home, but as we left, we heard a guy in line talking excitedly about how he'd seen it three times, and loved it. What the heck. We got back in line. Their popcorn is better than ours. We went in, not expecting much of anything.

I'll tell you, we were blown away. I came on this site tonight because I've been meaning to write and tell everybody to go see this little film that only ran a week in our local theater. (Buy the DVD!) I have read every comment on this site, and have to LOL at the comments about Mormons. What Mormons? I never even knew it was Mormons until I read it tonight on this site! And so what? It happened to a Mormon guy. It was his story. You expect Catholics to tell it? The other complaints about the story being predictable...what? It sure got us! It was a true story. Don't you get it? If it's true, you can't change what really happened--and what happened was humanity showing it's face. It was right winning out over allegiance.

I'm looking forward to the DVD coming out. I'm getting it and showing it to all my friends. This is film-making the way it should be done. We want to see it more of it.