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TheGriff
Reviews
Donnie Darko (2001)
No film is a 10 if you need a manual to go with it.
The problem with Donnie Darko is that you cannot really understand this movie without either buying the director's cut version or finding a website to explain the point. Supposedly the real plot had to do with tangential universes. Unfortunately, you can't figure this out on your own. The director of this movie actually wrote out about 10 pages of the 'Philosophy of Time Travel' book that Donnie is given, and you can find these pages to be read on the internet, as well as on the DVD. You can't really understand this movie without glancing at those pages, or having the movie explained to you in some other way, and I have a problem with that. Though I'm not saying that a movie can't be good if you don't understand it the first time (I actually enjoyed having to watch it a few times to understand it), I was disappointed with the fact that it was only after reading a list of questions/answers about the plot and subplot did I understand what the director was trying to say. That's kind of disappointing...a film isn't really that great if you need extensive explanation on its meaning. I think the director assumed that his audience would be able to understand too much with no explanation of what was going on.
Date Movie (2006)
How do you f***this up???
Something that really makes me mad is when a parody is not even remotely funny. Romantic comedies are such easy. They're sooo easy. The target audience for this movie must be crackheads and 10 year old boys who think 'poop' is the funniest concept. Problem is, neither can afford the ticket and thus this piece of crap is thrust upon us poor idiots who choose to watch.
How do you mess this up? How do you write this script and think it's good enough to present to a producer or director? How do you read this script and say "I must produce this! I must direct this!" Where is pride? This movie is garbage! Get it together, watch a couple of wayans brothers movies, and reconsider your occupation. If you can't come up with an original idea can you please make it worth the money it takes to make it? The only good thing about this movie is however it might have boosted the economy with the jobs it required to make.
The Baxter (2005)
Stupid.
Because of my devotion to the boys of Stella, I was a pre-ordained fan on this movie before it came out, and a poster hung on my door even before I saw it. However, I just saw it, and I'm taking it down, because the movie sucked.
Nobody could ever criticize me of 'not understanding the humor'. I am a Stella fanatic. I'm the one guy of my friends who finds it hysterical all the time. This just was not. I was really disappointed. It just wasn't funny at all. I kept waiting....'oh...it'll come....' but it didn't. There were no jokes. Some people may have said that it was subtle. It wasn't. I think that's just rationalization...sometimes you just have to accept when you have to call the bomb squad.
I give it a 3 out of 10 because I didn't hate it, but it was painful to get through. It was pathetically predictable, and I found that the best part was the drinking game that was played involving impersonations. Does anyone know what game that was? Yech.
Broken Flowers (2005)
my review of this movie
Broken Flowers is best described as "High Fidelity meets Sideways". Starring Bill Murray, the viewer is thrust into the content world of aging bachelor Don Johnston (you have to pronounce the 'T'), who has just been dumped by his latest girlfriend, Sherry. Soon afterwards, he receives an anonymous letter that he has a son who may be looking from him. After discussing it with friend and neighbor Winston, he comes up with some clues as to who it might be, and is urged by Winston to make a road trip to discover the author of the letter.
Armed with only memories and adequate tickets and maps to find his old girlfriends, Johnston sets out to the far corners of the country to revisit his past in order to find his son in the future.
Throughout the story, Murray's character begins to realize the futility of his quest. His girlfriends who had been relatively normal in the past have all wound up more messed up than he could have imagined; the biker mom, the abused yuppie realtor, the lesbian 'animal communicator', and others. Although some visits wind up happier than others (laughter with some, beaten up by the husbands of others), Don realizes that looking back on a series of passionate pasts bring only pain to himself and those he visits. Finally, he visits the last of his girlfriends at a cemetery, where she has lain for five years. Greeting her with "hello beautiful" with a smile hiding tears, Murray lays down the flowers he has brought to her tombstone and leans up against a tree as it begins to rain.
Throughout the movie, Don is constantly searching for his son, seeing similarities in young men at the airport, who wear similar sunglasses to him, or dress similar to him. Upon seeing one of these candidates from the window of a restaurant, Don takes this as a sign of fate and leaps up to greet him, asking if he can buy him lunch. The young man seems to be slightly uncomfortable, but eventually accepts the offer and the two of them sit down behind the restaurant and talk. The traveler asks for philosophical advice in life's journey, and the only words Don can come up with reflect his own realization in the past weeks that there is no point in looking back at the past, for it has already happened, and that the future will always be uncertain, so the only thing we truly have is the present to cherish. Caught in emotion, Don tries to embrace the young man as his son, and he immediately runs off, frightened by Murray's candidness. It is obvious that Don was incorrect in this leap of faith, and as he stands in the street watching his dream of knowing his son physically and metaphorically running away, a car drives past, where another young man bears a striking resemblance to Don.
In seeing yet another person who could be his son, Don realizes that he will never be able to find his true son in such a way, for when you are looking for someone who is special in your heart, you will see your face and theirs together in everything; in this way everyone and everything is connected, and to nothing at all.
As the car finally passes by (which is slowed down to mimic the painful realization of his true loneliness), we see Don standing in the street alone, silent, with his mouth open and a look that communicates his inner pain. The screen goes black, and all goes silent, reflecting the emptiness that has finally descended upon Don.
As Don realizes Sherry most likely wrote the letter, the audience realizes at the end its true vengeful nature, as it leads Don to realize his repressed need for the pure love of family, in contrast to his bachelor status that he has kept into old age.
Frankly, at first I did not like this movie. The more I think about it though, the more I realize that its slower pace is necessary to truly understanding how a lifetime of pain a man has repressed can be felt in the hearts of a viewer in less than two hours; one truly understands what it is to be alone at the end of the road through 'Broken Flowers'.