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Reviews
The Hours (2002)
Dysfuntional
I cannot fathom how or why some people want to experience the abject miseries of others. There is nobody happy in this movie, nobody glad to be alive, only misery. I had read the IMDb comments about this film before I watched it. There was so much praise, so many inspired essays, I knew the movie had be to good. Plus, all the females in it are among my favorites. What I did not read in ANY of the commentary is, this movie is about the dysfunctional nature of relationships resulting from aberrant sexual behavior. I'm trying to be politically correct, don't want to offend any of the well-adjusted deviants might read this. Good for you. However, for all of the folks praised this movie, why did you not say what this thing was really about? Coulda saved me and others who are uncomfortable with homosexuality a lot of wasted time & interest. Maybe that's why?
You Can Count on Me (2000)
You cannot count on me
Maybe as a one act play, on a stage, this story might have served some kind of purpose. However, 111 minutes of it on film was tedious and a serious downer without mercy. It could serve as a terrific example (terror being the root of that word) of morale relativism in action, with excellent effects and photography to bring home that message. Martin Scorcese can put a movie together. It could serve very well for instructing older children how shabby life can be smoking pot and shuffling along without purpose, an evil bedtime story, maybe. But it isn't something they'd want to watch again for entertainment, which wasn't its intended purpose.
Hard Contract (1969)
A Heterodrama
I was interested in this story right off, what with James Coburn having a series of women his own way, and with them "consenting" despite their own natural tendencies, even among prostitutes. Switch to Lee Remick, who's been hobnobbing (no pun intended) among the elites for recreation, but has become disenchanted of late with that whole scene. The concierge of the hotel she's been playing in informs her that a strange new guest is seeking the services of a prostitute. This was an odd and quaint concept, considering how everybody was doing everybody else there for free, so it must be because he was American. On a lark Lee decides to pose as the desired prostitute. Watching the changes she has to go through as Coburn begins telling her how he wants it distinguishes this movie from any others in the genre. And from there an obvious romance begins which satisfies both of their needs and they run away from their pasts in an ancient native ritual and they live happily ever after. There are some heavy insights into the minds of cold blooded hit men and some intriguing political concepts (Burgess Merredith says his organization is researching which religion will best control the most people), but I see this as an extraordinary heterodrama, one for serious collectors.
The Eavesdropper (2004)
Keeps coming back
How movies become keepers in my collection is they come back on me for days or weeks after I first see them. They haunt me, in other words, until I purchase a copy. Well, it took seeing Patient 14 a second time on TV to get that kind of grip. First time through I was hooked on the babe, of course, but I missed one of the main points, that noise can drive people crazy if they don't pay attention and tune out the noxious. So here's a movie about how we deal with incoming audio information, good & bad, and there's a lot of bad out there even without super hearing. When the bad guy gets a dose of his own medicine and falls down in agony over what he's hearing, it reminds me of modern day, digitally mixed audio commercials designed to carve searing paths of selective and permanent memory through our brains.
Reign of Fire (2002)
Real men of the future
If you can put up with the brooding hero throughout the entire length of this movie it's a pretty entertaining story. The dragons are first-rate and the battle with them quite realistic as fantasies go. The politics tossed into dialog seem amusing ("Only thing worse than a dragon is Americans") until you realize when it's all over how heavily weighted by politics the production was. The various types of heroes represented are either righteously politically correct or they're made to look like madmen. I'm keeping this movie in my collection as a example of liberal social engineering, well, until the real fire-breathing dragons of this world take everything away.
Break Up (1998)
It just won't go away.
Bridget Fonda has disappointed me several times over the years, but she had my attention in BREAK UP. It's true the story is missing critical details in several places, but I just kept scrutinizing Fonda for clues about what was meaningful in the story and she didn't let me down. The look in her eyes in the last scene, as she musters up courage to, literally, put one foot in front of the other toward her uncertain future is one of the most dramatic and significant examples of face acting ever. I believed her completely, possibly because I've known and admired several "tough broads" who survived similar abusive situations. And they did this without becoming man-haters, but that's my own hopeful projection of Fonda's character at the BREAK UP.
Death and the Maiden (1994)
The Future
We see the rule of morale relativism being bolstered in the early 90s in this morbid and horrible production. The evil doctor never learned to relate with women, and so, when he got the chance, he exacted his sordid revenge on helpless captives. And he was forgiven for these atrocities because, as he said, "I loved them." The other man in the story, the wimpy husband, exemplifies metro man, a lawyer of course, and has his own crippling problems trying to impose reason and law on matters of relationship, and so he cannot or will not defend his wife. And she, apparently, believes these two creeps have justification for their woman-hating motivations, and chooses to suffer the consequences in silence. Where were the feminists hiding when this rag came out or did I miss their reviews back then?
Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
A Fairy Tale
Sweet Home Alabama is a tune from my past, the only one I can think of which involves a blatant political statement from one top-name band to another, i.e., advising Neal Young to stay out of the South. The movie's sound track is inspiring for this and other reasons and the South wins in the end. Except for one major & horrendous blow (no pun intended) when social engineers tossed into this sweet, heterosexual, fairytale, at a clutch moment in the plot, two guys being too fond of each other. This is the most obvious and damning example of the process I have ever seen. Funny thing is, I accidentally hit the record button on my VCR and lost those scenes.
Evil Eyes (2004)
Virtual Reality
I want to keep my movie collection down to a manageable & rational number for reasons I won't go into here. Evil Eyes became a keeper because of its treatment of females. The movie was way too violent first time through, so I wrote it off & forgot about it, or so I thought at the time. But the images of the girls kept coming back on me. They were all attractive in various ways and whoever shot the scenes including them adores the opposite sex as much as I do. And the actresses treatments of their own respective characters bridged the gap between drama and reality. In other words, they were at the same time, themselves and the roles they were playing. You see this kind of melding in live comedy skits, as on Saturday Night Live, but I can't think of another movie with actresses so ready to break out.