Change Your Image
TRWDAL
Reviews
Casa de los babys (2003)
compelling ensemble piece
This is a wonderfully compelling film that seemingly covers all perspectives of Americans adopting children in Latin and South America. You won't soon forget the stories and the characters: the street children, the American women, the maids at the hotel -- so many good actors, such a moving story. The little boy who plays the principal street child warrants an Oscar. There was a collective sigh from the audience when it ended because I think we all wanted to see more.
Northfork (2003)
Monochromatic monotonous muddle
Having seen the previews for Northfork at one of our local Indie-plexes we had a decidedly different impression of what it would be like from what it really is. A newspaper review furthered our expectations so we popped for a babysitter and went. Wow, what a disappointment!
Northfork is a dark, sad, and ultimately pointless movie with some cutesy dialog to occasionally grab ahold of in the darkness.
I emailed the local reviewer with the suggestion that his article seemed carefully crafted to describe the film in the most positive possible terms, much like a defense lawyer might embellish a description of his otherwise low-life client. I asked him why he didn't just write that the damned movie was about a dying orphan cared for by Nick Nolte looking like he did in his police mug shot or "Affliction" (which was also a ticketable offense), interspersed with absurdist scenes of three pairs of locally-recruited mercenary evacuation enforcers trying to evict three silly 2D weirdoes? A 50's suburban tract house with two Chevy's parked in the driveway in an otherwise bleak prairie town? An ark with no animals? An old guy shooting at the enforcers from his porch? Goofy yes, maybe even darkly whimsical, but what about a real PLOT? (I apologize for giving away an hour of the storyline but when lots of footage can be reduced to a few sentences and nothing is left out, well, I consider that a public service.)
The images at times are stark and lovely in their own way, e.g., Nolte monotoning a sermon in a church where the wall behind him is gone revealing an expanse of open prairie, but just as SFX and CGI can't make an engaging worthwhile film, neither can a movie consisting of strung-together weirdness.