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sharifgraham11
Reviews
El rey de la montaña (2007)
Excellent
Great film. It has been released in France now, in Spanish of course with French subtitles, but that's OK because I speak some Spanish and read French well. It is just all very well done, very creepy. There are a few unexplained moments, like who turned on the big road machine? Who is it that shoots the man in the leg (do we see him or not--I have to see it again). Who is the man he runs down, and why did he point his rifle? Is it the same dog with him? Why are the police so weird? And finally, exactly what happened (earlier, before the film time) between the younger hunter and the woman? Whose car does she have? Well, these are just a few questions. Maybe the film deliberately doesn't answer them. There seems to be a spate of films where the bad guys are teenage boys (for example, Michael Haneke's Funny Games US, which I walked out of two-thirds of the way through because I just couldn't take any more--probably what MH was hoping for!) without consciences--sociopaths, I suppose, but blond seemingly innocent sociopaths. What does this say (aside from watch out for innocent-looking blond teenage boys)? Anyway, everything about the film is great: the acting, the setting, the camera work, the music, the kind-of sick satisfaction at the end. It really works. Bravo.
Hard Candy (2005)
Gruesome
This was about the most uncomfortable, disturbing film I have seen in a long time. It has just been released in France (September, 2006). The acting was is places very good, even excellent, but making a 14-year-old into a brilliant revenge killer for a pedophile does not send an acceptable message. In fact, any male who sits through the castration scene could not possibly emerge with any empathy whatsoever for the girl! There is extreme moral confusion here, and the pedophile is actually a more sympathetic character than the girl. Even so, the movie lets her "win", and one can easily imagine a series of sequels in which she forces any number of evil men to do themselves in. Apparently, as with many other films, the idea of personal, extra-legal revenge still has appeal for some people, even though it represents reversion to a method a addressing evil which has caused untold suffering throughout human history. I maintain that the film is immoral as well as revolting. I advise my friends not even to think of seeing it. I don't think I have ever felt so strongly against a film in my life (I'm 64 years old).