niuqniuq Reviews

Reign Over Me (2007)

Full of good intentions... and yet such a BAD movie

[1/10 · 7 September 2007]

The dialogues are awful, the characters not likable at all, everything sounds so fake and phony, even feelings, especially sad feelings. And so many explanations... everything gets explained, even after Sandler finally speaks about his dead family to Don Cheadle, he has to explain "I don't like to remember" while Liv Tyler (the most improbable psychiatrist in the whole movie history - possibly worse than J. Lo in "The Cell") stands there gaping. The movie has no rhythm, there is absolutely no building of tension - neither dramatic nor romantic - the situations are all highly improbable. The Saffron Burrows story bears no resemblance to anything remotely possible - gorgeous woman coming from a tragic marriage asks her dentist to please let her give him a blow-job, he refuses, she threatens him with a false accusation of trying to rape her, then repents her behavior, withdraws her threats and then - Lo and behold! - becomes eligible as the next sweetheart of said dentists' loony friend. I read a comment here going "If you are not moved by this, check your pulse". Well, my pulse is working fine, thank you very much, but to feel moved by a story I need to be able to identify at least a little bit with at least ONE of the characters. The whole story looks like the result of reading too many Readers' Digest psychoanalytic articles. The 9/11 issue looks like a base way of captivating the audience's favors - certainly not mine. I only wonder why among Post-Vietnam movies there are so many masterpieces, while post-9/11 movies have yet to produce something decent. What is happening to American movies? Where have all the great directors gone? Awful, from A to Z - and beyond.

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

double disappointment

[2/10 · 17 September 2006]

I must say that I am doubly deceived by this movie: first, by the movie itself, with a plot that could be good but in the end gets too uselessly complicated and "Tarantinian" to satisfy, and secondly because of the very high rating this movie has received by the voters of the IMDb. In fact, I think that the "moral" level (please don't misunderstand me, I'm not a moralist, but I think that a movie should be a bit careful in presenting as a positive character a man who is such a complete monster as the main character of this one) is alarming, to say the least. And what is worse this movie presents the most brutal vengeance as a perfectly justified and empathic reaction (weren't we supposed, after Eschylus, to think that the strong man is the one who resists the temptation to repay an eye for an eye?). So I could hardly believe my eyes when I watched the happy ending, where the guy gets the girl and lives happily ever after, in the most traditional and soppy happy ending one could imagine, as if he were an ordinary movie hero and not a (very improbable, by the way) cold-blooded and almost superman-like killer. In fact, he not only finishes off the two men against whom he has to avenge his father, but also (and this is the thing that has disturbed me most) the son of one of these two killers, a perfectly innocent guy who hasn't done anything except being gay! and making him a gay character, I sadly suspect, was a genial solution on the part of the writers not to make the public too sorry for him... yes, b-series human beings may well be killed without too many compliments, who cares after all? the important thing is that the gloriously heterosexual hero may get the girl, and live happily ever after? I have to admit that I am a bit disgusted.