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Reviews
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
A Masterpiece
This is filmmaking at its finest, and also at it's most raw, real, and honest. With few ingredients, writer/director Jim Jarmusch still manages to serve up one of the tastiest treats in memory, and it will surely leave a pleasant taste in your mouth and you'll be smiling and wanting more. It's just...characters sitting around having conversations whilst sipping coffee and puffing cigarettes? Really? How can that be any good? Where's the action? Where's the suspense? Well, you're right, that's basically all there is to it, but don't underestimate the power of good storytelling in the hands of the right filmmaker. Jarmusch pulls it off brilliantly. Every second is mesmerizing, and the black and white? Excellent choice! The film is beautiful, the characters are intriguing, and the conversations are interesting, dramatic, and hilarious! I want more!!!
Dheepan (2015)
An Interesting Story
While I am a fan of this director's works, this is not at all his best film. However, it was still enjoyable. There are some very interesting things about it. It starts out a bit slow, but it is nevertheless an interesting look at the struggles and lives of some immigrants. While watching this slow portion I got the feeling that some of the bits were very realistic and may have been based on life.
Later in the film there is an action sequence. It feels very realistic at times but it looked like there was some CGI in there, which sort of took me out of the moment. I think CGI has its place in some of those big blockbuster type of films like Transformers, but with a very realistic movie like this, it almost feels like they added CGI to a documentary or something to make the explosions bigger.
It's still an interesting story, however. It is not a typical story structure either, it feels like they found a new way to tell a story and it works. It may feel a bit odd for some people who watch it but I think that is only because they may be so used to seeing the traditional types of storytelling and this one is a bit different.
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
A Wonderful Classic
This is one of those movies that I can watch again and again, and I have! That is not typically the case with mystery films. After all, once you know the secret what's the point? But this is the exception. The film is fascinating, it is funny, and it is wonderfully acted. The actors share a truly magical onscreen chemistry that you just don't see anymore.
Empty Spaces (2019)
A Fun Family Film
Empty Spaces is not a "family" film in the way that Bambi or Lassie are family films. Rather, it is a film about a family, starring a real-life family, and, from what I can tell, produced by a family. There are no big special effects, but rather an honest and up-close look at some dysfunctional lives. Don't watch this one with the kids (there's cursing and innuendo) unless of course you want them to get a look at some real life situations. Maybe it would do them some good. Apart from that, the film is very well-made from a technical standpoint, despite the obviously modest budget. It is not a documentary or a home movie, but it does incorporate what appears to be real home movies of the main actors as children, which is an added bonus. The real treat here is the special dynamic shared by the real-life brothers, which really gives their characters added layers of depth and believability, and which certainly makes them far more interesting to watch. In my eyes, they do it better than Luke and Owen Wilson ever could.
High Fantasy (2017)
A Piece of Garbage
This is undoubtedly the worst film I can recall having seen in recent memory. It's very amateurish and shot with phones. That's o.k. The framing on most of the shots is sloppy and the acting and dialog are terrible. That's o.k. It's an independent film. I get that.
But I cannot forgive the absolutely awful storytelling here. The film tells the story of four frenemies who go camping in the middle of an open field that belongs to one of their families. They wake up one morning to find out that they've all mysteriously swapped bodies with each other. All of this is intercut with after-the-fact interviews with each about their experiences.
The films attempts to tackle issues of racial tension and chronic womanizing in South Africa, which is no doubt the only reason it was accepted to the Toronto International Film Festival. They love that sort of thing, I guess. The only problem is that it wasn't an undertone or a theme in the movie. It was the story, it was all the obnoxious characters talked about. There weren't thirty seconds where they didn't keep beating it to death. Everything out of their mouths was either an attack on each other's race or an attack against the way that men treat women. It just wasn't believable that these four, while spending three days together camping, could find nothing else to talk about. Surely the subject would drift at some point.
And the whole part about the body-swapping was completely unbelievable. It felt like a bad YouTube video that the makers put zero planning or rehearsal into. The whole film felt that way. But the whole point is that after swapping bodies they're supposed to understand each other better, yet the film offers no answers, no solutions. It merely suggests, in the end, that men are pigs and white people are evil, just as was posited at the beginning of the film.
The only reasons I didn't give this film a lower rating was because it was pretty short for a feature and also one of the characters tells kind of a funny joke at one point. It's not worth watching it though. But honestly I'm glad that these kids put in the time and effort to put together an entire feature film. It's a lot of hard work. But I did not care for the final product. Not one bit.
Swamp Thing (1982)
Love it!
I don't know what it is but I just can't get enough of this classic from my childhood. Back when superhero movies were done right and none of this corny boring stuff where every single one year after year is exactly the same. Just stale and boring now days.
The old batman and superman films were great too but it's swamp thing all the way for me. Best of the best.