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washsem2001
Reviews
Secret Millionaire (2008)
Joe Millionaire + The Simple Life + Oprah's Big Give = yawn.
I don't get what the poster below is talking about. Whoever this "Aaron" is, clearly he knows his stuff. Clearly. "Secret Millionaire" is all well and good, but it comes off looking like a mishmash ripoff of a whole bunch of old cancelled reality shows thrown together in a blender. The intention is nice, but it's basically "The Simple Life" with cash giveaways at the end of every episode.
Am I jaded and heartless because I was bored out of my mind watching this show? Maybe, but I don't think so...it's just not a very good show. Not a very good show at all.
And so, in conclusion, ask not wherefore the Other is a douche: know rather that the douche is thee.
Chicago (2002)
Pure spectacle. Exactly the point.
"Chicago" is a masterpiece on two levels. On the surface it's possibly the best time you'll have at the movies all year: wild, exhilarating, and fun, with rapid-fire wit, terrific music, and spectacular choreography. It's almost impossible to watch "Chicago" without a grin on your face: the music is just so catchy, the dancing is just so exciting, the lights and the sound are just so dazzling, and the actors are just so darn cheerful. (Even the brilliantly melancholy John C. Reilly belts out the heartbreaking "Mr. Cellophane" with a smile.)
(MINOR SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.)
But on a deeper level, "Chicago" is a stinging and poignant critique of modern American society: the flaws of the legal system, the harsh reality of capital punishment, and the unfailing willingness of Americans to ditch substance for style. Whether the ladies of Murderers' Row are convicted or acquitted depends, not on whether or not they're actually guilty, but on whether they can get the best lawyer...and "the best lawyer" is the one who's best at turning the trial into a circus. Billy Flynn (Gere) works the audience--sorry, the jury--like P.T. Barnum, his flashy showmanship always triumphing over fact. Those poorer women who can't afford Billy's 5000-dollar fee are (literally) hung out to dry--whether they're actually guilty or not. (It's telling that the only woman we see executed in "Chicago" is also the only woman who is actually innocent. Innocence, it turns out, is a liability in this corrupt system, in which you have to lie in order to win.) Billy, the master puppeteer, manipulates the media as easily as the jury, working up public sympathy with a touching (and completely made-up) sob story.
There are numerous sobering parallels between the world of "Chicago" and the America of today. The O.J. Simpson trial, among many others, shows us that the real American legal system is just as flawed, and in all the same ways, as "Chicago"'s fictional courtroom was. (Maybe the Lorena Bobbitt trial is a more appropriate example.) The real-life governor of Illinois, George Ryan, has just granted clemency to every single death-row inmate in the state after DNA evidence cleared almost thirty falsely-convicted prisoners (in Illinois alone!) who had been waiting for their own execution. (How many "Hungarian disappearing acts" have there been?)
Of course, "Chicago" is not the kind of movie that makes you think about these things. In fact "Chicago" isn't the kind of movie that makes you think at all. "Chicago" is a fun ride, a dazzling experience, with catchy songs, tap dances, flashy costumes and happy jazz that can't help but put a smile on your face. And when you exit the theater or shut off the VCR you'll be humming some song you have stuck in your head or talking about how great the acting was, and the fundamental flaws of American society will be the last thing on your mind... ...which is exactly the whole point. "Chicago," like Billy Flynn, razzle-dazzles us into submission, hits us with such a barrage of lights and sound and spectacle that the deep and serious message flitters by completely unnoticed. And we the audience, like the jury, are utterly taken in by it. We--us, me and you, sitting there watching this movie--*we* are the biggest suckers of them all. Don't believe me? Read the comments below about how the movie is all style and no substance, so much flash and nothing to show for it. That's it right there.
"Chicago" is really a horrifying story. Roxie Hart, so pathologically deluded that she views the world as her own personal cabaret theater and other people as either her costars or her audience, works with a terribly corrupt warden and a spectacularly corrupt lawyer to get acquitted, any way she can, for a murder she proudly committed. Fun stuff. But like the public in the movie, we focus on the flash and dazzle, and utterly forget about the sleaze and deceit and crime.
"Chicago," at bottom, is about how we all get suckered in by a catchy song, a touching image, a celebrity--about how we can all be led, like puppets, to follow the flashy, colorful, and meaningless, blindly ignoring what's really important--so much that we don't even see it's there, even if it's right in front of us. ("Razzle-dazzle 'em," Billy sings, "and they'll never catch wise.") In this sense, "Chicago" is not only the most fun movie of the year, but also, very possibly, the most important as well.
10/10.
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Like a virgin...Hey!
Bialystock and Bloom themselves couldn't have come up with a better formula for a bad movie. Rip off an old musical ("Cabaret"), set it in the past, and force your characters to spend the entire movie singing bad 80's pop songs. Wait--not bad enough. Let there only be about four or five bad 80's pop songs, and force your characters to sing each one for a half an hour straight, until no one who watches the movie can ever hear the songs again without being traumatized all over again. Get some real A-list, truly great actors, and run their careers into the ground by forcing them to dress in tablecloths and prance around serenading random passersby. Then edit it all so that it's completely incomprehensible and impossible to understand.
That's a pretty good formula for a bad movie. And the fact that "Moulin Rouge" is now nominated for eight Oscars and is well entrenched on the top 250 list only goes to prove that Mel Brooks was even more visionary than we thought. "Moulin Rouge" is the real world's "Springtime for Hitler."
Where did "Moulin Rouge" go right? I haven't the faintest idea. I sat there for two hours watching this thing, knowing that so many people loved it--I just assumed it would get better after a while. But it just kept getting worse.
This really is a love-it-or-hate-it movie. I don't think there's any middle ground. And I think it really depends on what you think of the use of modern pop songs in a movie set in 1900. Apparently Luhrmann justified it as necessary to convey the idea that Ewan McGregor's character was writing lyrics that transcended time and spoke to the true nature of love (or something along those lines). Even if that's true, that still doesn't justify the "Like A Virgin" sequence. Or "Smells Like Teen Spirit," for that matter. Or "The Sound Of Music." And if I ever thought "Your Song" transcended time and spoke to the true nature of love, I certainly don't now, after having to endure McGregor and Kidman first singing the lyrics, then speaking the lyrics to each other, then speaking the lyrics to other people, then singing them again, then singing them again later...
I like Elton John, but that went on for a half an hour. (Interrupted, that is, by another song that was "So a-nnoy-ing! I can't clear it from my head! So a-nnoy-ing! It will stay there till I'm dead!")
So, in conclusion, I hated this movie. I gave it a 2/10 on the strength of the acting, which at least is very good. The fact that Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent are at least watchable in this movie is a testament to their respective greatnesses as actors. If Kidman wins Best Actress, I won't be too upset. (If it wins any other Oscars at all, I will break my television with a hammer.)
Warning to all: if you're watching this movie for the first time, and you get to the part (about five or ten minutes in) where Ewan McGregor belts out "The hills are alive with the sound of music," and you find yourself really hoping the rest of the movie isn't going to be like this, shut--it--off. It will not get better. If you're still tolerating it at that point, keep watching. You'll love it.
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
Not that great
While Max Schreck's performance is unquestionably remarkable (and highly unique among all the romanticized Bela Lugosi impersonations found in most other vampire movies), "Nosferatu" as a whole didn't impress me. My disappointment may just have been a result of the particular version I saw--namely, the 60-minute Americanized version in which all the names had been changed back to match the original Dracula story (Dracula, Harker, Renfield, etc.). Even so, however, it definitely didn't meet my expectations.
Of course, as with any "classic" movie, there are many good things to say about it. Schreck is phenomenal. His performance alone makes the movie worthwhile. Technically the film was far ahead of its time, making new innovations in camera work and special effects. (The makeup on Schreck is believable even to this day.) And the film as a whole certainly has its moments. The best scene in the whole movie, I think, comes when the ship floats peacefully into the perfectly calm, quiet harbor of Bremen...the eerie calm of the scene masks the terrible cargo the ship carries on board. (And you don't even see the vampire!)
Nevertheless, the flaws of this movie definitely outweigh the positives. There is a distracting subplot involving Renfield which comes out of nowhere and doesn't connect at all to the rest of the movie. Aside from Schreck and the actor playing Renfield, the acting is so-so at best (the actor playing Harker is particularly hammy). I can't forget the awful, awful score, which featured among its many glorious moments a highly out-of-place jazz interlude and (most hilariously) "Renfield's Theme," a bouncy circus melody which played every time Renfield was on screen (and reminded me way too much of "Torgo's Theme" in Manos: Hands of Fate--which is not a compliment). The score, of course, may have just been added to the Americanized version I saw. But the topper was the fact that, although Count Orlock/Dracula is supposed to die if exposed to sunlight, he spends half of his onscreen time wandering around outside in the middle of the afternoon (as evidenced by the obvious shadows all over the place).
See "Shadow of the Vampire" instead. Willem Dafoe is just as good as Orlock as Max Schreck was, and his character is much more defined and nuanced and interesting. (The climax is also much more thrilling and--well, climactic.) I give this movie a 5/10, almost entirely on the strength of Schreck as an actor (as you can tell, I can't say enough about it). Otherwise, "Nosferatu" doesn't satisfy.