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Palomedes
Reviews
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
not a spoiler Compelling Film!
Something happened near the end of the film that I cannot discuss here, which was crucial to my understanding of this film, and I do not know where to go to discuss what can only be seen as a total spoiler, unless you don't see or understand the same way I do. First I had to be captivated by the main characters; then I had to start moving with them through the film. I have only watched the film once. Then I started looking into it. David Fincher, Daniel Craig, and Rooney Mara were unfolding before my eyes. Maybe you can understand that I do not have time for the research, but the film was compelling. Soon the book and the reviews for the 2009 film began to demand that I need to do more work to be entitled to an opinion. Nope! The art of watching a film has to be active on a first view of a film, if I never see it again, and I have to be able to see the production values of a film, an advertisement, or a trailer if I want to appreciate what I am looking at and where I want to go with it. There are many seasoned writers and film viewer represented here. No one is allowed to talk about a point that seems essential to one of interpersonal dynamics so well handled in this psychological dark thriller..
Multiple Sarcasms (2010)
A New York Movie!
I guess it all depends on what one brings to a movie. If I were only going to watch this film once, I would miss most of it. On a film binge, long vacation, I watched 2 other films of other genres before I got to _Multiple Sarcasms_. I wouldn't classify it as a comedy and I got unsorted mush. I even stopped in the middle and went to bed. The next morning I decided to see it through. I will watch it again. Scenes of exceptional beauty, characters that are real, believable (uh, is this a movie or did I get into somebody else's head). Terms one learned at school, well, for example about theater -- for example, "vraisemblance" -- help to "defamiliarize the text". We may have seen movies with bits, tropes, business, cutting and editing like this before, but this one is still original, subtle, and inviting with sufficient refractions with stage and staging to place us both inside it and outside it. Very near the end of the film, the writer places himself as an actor on the stage, then also to one side as editor/actor critiquing the writer/actor. This was not over done. Life into stage or film is very strange and wonderful. There are characters playing the role of audience members whom we have gotten to know during the course of the film. The music was excellent, the scenes, the character development of supporting characters was fine (getting good and drunk with "Eric"). We could probe the messiness of the protagonist's life "as life" with the "vraisemblance" probe (Living out of a suitcase? His dwelling was no suitcase.) By the end of the film we have seen a man's life shuddering into chaos as he takes up writing, and the miracle of the process is that a beautiful coherence emerges. He has become more grounded, centered and real. The process works! I should write a play. This is pretty good film alchemy. India Ennenga's "Liz" was radiant.