Reviews

An interesting quasi documentary / feature film. Julie goes around studying nudism in Europe and then later in Florida. I just liked this film because it was quite unconventional and took a relatively objective look into social nudism.

Not much of a plot, and tends to meander a bit, but since its a pretty rare and authentic addressing of the subject matter I can't help but to forgive its few deficiencies and look at the interesting boldness of it all.

The copy I watched of this was rather oldish VHS style. I wish they would maybe do a remake or a sequel to further explore this interesting facet of society.

Most of us probably heard the little snippet of news that some guy got eaten by some bears in Alaska. I seem to remember that story, well what I didn't know was that his footage would be found, and then assembled by none other than madman Werner Herzog.

Herzog's blunt honesty in this documentary is quite surprising, he both respects Treadwell and finds him to be foolishly irrational. From a psychological perspective you have to wonder what exactly pushed Treadwell into his madness. He was a failed actor who somehow wanted attention and notoriety and got it by saying he was protecting the bears. Herzog shows that he was mostly doing harm by being around these bears and violating state park laws. Of course we can all understand this man's desire to wander out into the woods, everyone wants to just get out there sometimes.

The subject matter of this documentary is strange, and the character we focus on is not incredibly interesting, but Herzog puts on his best show, with his deep German accented narration and straight forward interviews. This would have been dull had anyone else done it.

A short little film, where Herzog eats his shoe, although in reality he just eats the leather part of his old shoe after boiling it in water. But still the principle of the whole thing is humorous, Herzog promised to do this if a filmmaker would actually just make the film they were always dreaming of making.

Errol Morris accomplishes this and so Herzog submits to it. Les Blank also did this documentary on Herzog "Burden of Dreams" so I think if I recall some footage of that is intertwined into this story.

Herzog should constantly have a camera on him, he strikes me as very interesting, I don't always love his films but he is always worth hearing from.

Some artistic license was taken in this film, but if you can get past that (which shouldn't be hard to do, most true stories are elaborated) you will find this to be a pretty memorable film. Having seen Little Dieter Needs To Fly the documentary on which this film is based I wasn't surprised or held in suspense very often but I still thought everyone gave a good performance. It felt a little strange seeing Steve Zahn in a serious role, I consider him to be more of a comedic actor and I don't feel that he held up as well performance wise when looked at along with Bale. Scrawny Jeremy Davies somehow loses even more weight to play another POW alongside Bale and he carries on his traditional of playing cowards (he was also the Saving Private Ryan wimp / coward).

The basic plot is Dieter crashes over Vietnam, and is put in a POW camp in Laos. He then plots his escape. It really is a miraculous true story, and well worth hearing. The real Dieter was a fascinating and optimistic person.

I respect Herzog and like how he goes in strange directions, but with that sometimes he wanders down the wrong path, or maybe wrong isn't the word. He sometimes wanders down a boring path. Somehow Herzog got his hands on some space footage and some antarctic underwater footage and thought he could compose that into a sci fi movie.

This is of course a visually distinctive journey and a must for all die hard Herzog fans, but I felt it was a bit too strange and far out. Brad Dourif plays an alien on earth who says he sucks at what he does or something along those lines, which is kind of funny.

Maybe you have to be in the right atmosphere to enjoy this journey, but if you are only going to see one Herzog film, don't make it this one.

This is a lyrical film more than anything. Herzog refuses to classify his documentaries as "documentaries" which I respect. Truthfully this isn't a straight forward documentary even if it does follow one man's quest to get his air ship to float above Guyana.

Herzog is an observer more than anything and we see that in how his documentary is assembled, he does not force anything and he will leave his camera on people for longer than you would expect so that they will feel compelled to say something else.

A random man will come up and start talking and Herzog will focus on him for several minutes. This film goes alongside Herzog's other films that represent men with near impossible dreams.

I will try not to be overly critical here because I have been somewhat harsh on the mumblecore movement and while this movie is not something I enjoyed I did not find it as sloppy as some of the previous mumblecore work.

This film was showing at south by southwest in austin, after it showed some people were really into it while others hated it. I was impartial, having seen the previous mumblecore work I knew what to anticipate. Rambling scenes, mumbling, nudity for the sake of shock and attention, whiney pathetic lead characters.

I hate to tell people what to think, and I can say a few people seemed to find it interesting. I can say what I thought though, their was basically no plot, the whole story revolves around two characters, and if you find whiney pathetic characters annoying then you are in trouble.

I have a theory that after seeing so much garbage that looked the same at SXSW people were merely impressed because they saw a different looking piece of garbage, and they said, well is that still garbage, it looks different. The thing is, garbage comes in all shapes and sizes.

I am a Woody Allen fan, and I expected more. I went into this film hoping to get something along the lines of Match Point, ideally something even better than that. What I got was a pretty cheaply constructed morality tale. The problem is you can feel pretty early on EXACTLY where everything is going, you just know these two brothers are fools. Farrell and McGregor acted both their parts really well, the acting almost elevated the story out of its problems but ultimately the flawed story overwhelmed all else.

This film seemed to be shot with such speed, almost as if the characters did not have time to digest their roles. I was hoping for more from the newcomer Hayley Atwell but her part didn't prove to be that interesting.

Allen keeps rehashing his old ideas and characters, there's Allen comedy and Allen drama, those are his two categories. His films seem to take place in some kind of parallel universe, people don't quite talk the way people talk in his films.

I felt like I was trapped while watching this movie, seeing everything go down in typical Woody fashion. Maybe someone less familiar with his works will have a different perspective and will find it to be refreshing but as for me I found it to be too redundant and a waste of a lot of really exceptional talent.

A girl I am friends with recommended this film, and it's definitely in the romantic comedy genre. I thought it was a decent film, Minnie Driver proves to be the most interesting of the bunch. The film doesn't dig too deeply into the characters, it shows them only on a superficial level but for the tone of the film which is light that is appropriate I suppose. It was good to see David Alan Grier in a nice movie. Duchovny is somewhat stiff in his part, and not entirely believable. Minnie Driver does pretty well considering she wasn't given that much to work with.

Its light fluff, but its not bad.

Belushi sort of overplays his part as the oaf of a father, certain parts were excessively cutesy, overly cute.

I give it a fair rating.

I had some good laughs in this film, it's not to be taken too seriously. Allen and Johansson are paired up after she is confronted by the ghost of a journalist man. I like how the film is allowed to be so ridiculous, ghosts appear, ridiculous things happen but it all flows together reasonably well.

Allen proves that his acting chops and comedic talent are still in tact with his performance. I think I remember reading that Woody made this film because he felt that Johansson and him had some great back and forth banter during the making of Match Point and he was right, they work well together.

It almost felt like a throwback to Allen's early early comedies Bananas and Sleeper, with its disregard for logic and emphasis on just having a good care free time.

If you like Woody's comedy and feel like something that doesn't take itself serious then this would be a good pick.

Don't get me wrong, I am all about assisting in Darfur, but having said that this documentary was shifting more towards propaganda than objective cinema. And perhaps that is what they wanted, my friend showed me this film and it was shockingly graphic. I personally enjoyed the part where Brian comes back to present this story and it is treated as nothing more than entertainment. It goes to show how things are perceived by the masses.

This film seemed to dig too deeply into Brian the marine officer hero, and not enough into the sociological implications of what this occurring means to our world. I felt the camera was too often on Brian, while I know it is important to show him since he brought the photos back I wasn't interested in seeing him transform into a passionate spokesperson, I would rather focus on what is happening over there.

I am a film goer who likes to think for himself, and this film doesn't allow me that luxury, it barks its orders at me as to what I should think and feel and do. It would be better if they let me digest this on my own. It is a tragedy over there, but I am interested in Darfur, not in the guy who photographed the insanity that is darfur.

But I suppose this film wasn't meant to be looked at as a "film" per se, but rather as an educational video.

Dig through your closet, find old home movies, then splice them together via some editing equipment and you are bound to find something more entertaining than this film. The lead actress Greta Gerwig was really good, and its impressive that someone could come off as good in this mess, just imagine what she would be capable of given an actual script. Yea thats right this film was shot without a script, I gotta say I wasn't surprised to hear that. And if you are unlucky enough to see this film you will understand what I mean by that.

This film has a rightful place alongside the other mumblecore works, its bad, poorly filmed, but does both start and END so there is that, it has that going for it. The basic plot is this, Hannah is confused, what to do? Thats it, I don't have to elaborate at all, thats the entirety of it.

If you come near this film, run in the opposite direction

This was a film that I loved but could never fully recommend to other people, because it is such a personal experience. Either you are on-board with Plainview or you aren't. I am a huge Daniel Day Lewis fan, but was actually almost hesitant to see this film because I felt this character would likely have many similarities to his previous character Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York. I was way off, Day Lewis pulls off another masterful and fully distinct portrayal.

This is a dark film, and a long one, but I never once noticed the running time because the movie just flows beautifully.

The basic plot is Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is an oil man who gets word that there might be tons of oil in a town called Little Boston. When he gets there he finds it, and finds success along with rivalry with the town's wild preacher. But that is only the plot on the superficial level, there are deeper themes of greed and overwhelming anger. Plainview descends into madness, but we can't quite tell at what moment this happens.

I am a huge Wes Anderson fan but I was somewhat let down by The Life Aquatic, it was a good film, but good is not what I expect from Anderson. I expect great! So when this film came out I did not rush to the theater, I saw it a few weeks after its release. And for that matter I almost didn't see it at all.

You've seen similar plot lines before in Anderson film's, with a sort of Family dysfunction that is trying to get resolved. But while this is familiar territory it is somehow new and fresh. You get the Anderson scenes, with the slow motion and music in the background but nothing is redundant.

I guess it comes down to the characters, they are very interesting. There are also some hilarious moments, but only in the obscure sense. At one point Schwartzmann's character says Wouldn't it be nice to hear a train in the distance, to which both Wilson and Brody disagree, saying no that would actually be quite annoying.

If you liked Rushmore, and Tenenbaums you will like this one as well.

The first 45-50 minutes of this film were absolutely beautiful. Had the film just been released as that I would have perhaps loved it more. The director Wright is certainly coming into his own and I am anticipating all of his upcoming films. Saoirse Ronan was wonderful as the young Briony, her performance really impressed me, especially considering she is so young, her academy award nomination was very much deserved and not at all one of those nominations that is just tagged onto an epic film to make it look better. I think I can almost even say that once her part in the film is over nothing quite holds up as well.

I guess this is mainly why I feel the film is disjointed, we spend the first 45 minutes of the movie exploring ONE single day, then we breeze through the final hour or so of the film and cover a span of several decades. So we go from the minute exploration of the details of a day to the cliffs notes of the rest of everyone else's life.

This film was around 2 hours and really should have been right at 3 hours, I felt so much was left unsaid and unexplored, the pace for the first hour indicated that you were in for an English Patient type of film and yet at some point the filmmakers decided not to be so bold with this project.

Speaking of the English Patient, I am a film scholar and the director of the English Patient shows up near the end of this film in a small role and that completely took me out of this film. All I could think of was why did they put Anthony Minghella in this film? I mean I know I shouldn't have been so distracted but I was.

This films marketing came in completely wrong, it seemed arrogant, all of the magazine interviews only focused on how it was believed that this film would rack up 14 Oscar nominations.

But all said and done I still believe this film is worthy of its Best Picture Nomination, and of the nominees I might almost consider it the best, although There Will Be Blood was quite interesting.

Bottom Line: See it.

This film was absolutely awful, I even feel uncomfortable calling it a film. Its the typical "mumblecore" movie, with zero plot and a bunch of aimless whiny twenty somethings stumbling around trying to "figure stuff out". I have tried to give mumblecore a chance, but lets be honest its just horrible.

I am not out of sync with cinema, I appreciate Dogme95 films, Idioterne is one of my all time favorite films. So I do not mind if a film is cheaply made so long as there is some (ANY) substance.

Everything in this film is horrid, the acting, the writing (or was it all improvised?), the direction, but MOST of all, above everything else, the camera work was just plain and simple nonsense. The camera was never anywhere logical, there was no consistency. I got to admit being a guy I had heard there was nudity in this film so I thought to myself well even if its horrible at least there's nudity (yea I know, I'm a jerk). Well thanks to the uber crappy camera-work you never really get to see anything, and the things you do see, TRUST ME - YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE. This film made me want to vomit on numerous levels.

The dialogue made me want to vomit, the camera-work made me want to vomit, but mostly the idea that this film was praised by some legit critics, well now that more than anything makes me want to vomit.

The digital age has produced a decent amount of crap, but none so crappy as the film(?) Funny Ha Ha.

First let me explain something, editing together crappy footage until you reach a point near 90 minutes does not equal a film. Basically thats what happened on this film.

The plot follows Marnie, since the actress who plays Marnie can't act we are immediately bored. But since Marnie is around other people who can't act the director is hoping that we won't notice, that perhaps by proximity it will appear that everyone can act. It doesn't work, because I have seen other films, therefore I understand acting.

I have seen my fair share of low budget crap, I used to review short films. So I have developed a taste for what works and what doesn't in the arena of up and comers. I can confidently say this film is a total waste of time, I checked it out from my LIBRARY FOR FREE, and still felt ripped off. I didn't even spend money to see this and I felt ripped off, that should tell you something.