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SquareEyesMacTelly
Reviews
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Key question
Have just seen this film and came on here to praise it and compare notes - very surprised to see all the negative reaction. This film takes the standard American teen high school films of the eighties and injects them with a healthy dose of realism. The result is a comedic masterpiece. Superb casting, script, artwork, pacing and set piece comedy a brilliantly understated celebration of the teenage condition, freed from the sanitised, sentimental fantasy of earlier archetypes. This film is funny because it allows us to look back at our teenage years and laugh at the absurdity of it all. There is a little piece of all these characters in ALL of us, both male and female, to varying degrees. If you don't find it funny, or even if you found it uncomfortable to watch, it might just be because you are subconsciously aware of the Napoleon in you, but have been trying to repress it, rather than embrace and celebrate your inner Napoleon. The key moment to understanding this film is the silence that follows Napoleon's dance 'skit' in front of the whole school. Did you want them to break into applause or to be sitting, mouths agog, in stony silence?
Night Train to Venice (1993)
Incredible
Incredible... yes, this film lacks any credibility whatsoever: To put you in the picture, I found a DVD copy of this for sale last year under the title 'Train to Hell', and recognised it as the same 'Night Train to Venice' I had seen in the mid-nineties. Over the last few years I have repeatedly made reference to this production whenever discussions about 'the worst movie of all time' have arisen. I will defend this movie's right to that title until my death, as I can not envisage a worse film being made in the future. Some films are so bad they're actually quite fun to watch, becoming cult hits in the fashion of 'Springtime for Hitler' from Mel Brooks', 'The Producers'. Yet N.T.T.V. opens up a whole new category below that... a category in which making it through to the end of the film is a physical challenge of the highest proportions. The complete lack of direction that permeates every facet of this film's production leaves an almost tangibly bad smell in the room in which one attempts to suffer through the experience. I think its supposed to be a surreal paranoid fantasy with a few neo-Nazis thrown in for good measure, done in what was presumably conceived as an European 'arthouse' style - 'Murder on the Orient Express' meets 'The Boys from Brazil' and is then drained of all quality and coherence. Anyway, I bought the DVD and it's sitting in its wrapping on a shelf in my house, ready to be produced if I ever have to prove in the future, that this is without doubt, the worst film ever made.