Change Your Image
osyenka
Reviews
Blue Crush (2002)
1/2 awesome film
There are two movies here, and only one of them is really worth seeing.
The first one is a predictable "overcoming your fears" story, which, as usual, focuses on the least interesting but most WASP-y character. Nothing to offensive there except how dull she was. Why didn't they focus on Sanoe Lake's character, who was WAY less insipid? The second movie was a about water. And waves. And figuring out how to convince them to let you ride them without dying. Whoever filmed the water sequences should go to heaven on this film alone- it's beautiful and terrifying. I was on the edge of my seat with every wave. Perfect.
I'm a super n00b surfer and learned at a women-friendly break. I didn't realize how unusual that was. My favorite part of the "above water" part of this movie is when Kennelly coaches and cheer leads her competitor onto a perfect wave. When I've surfed with women it's really like that. When I finally caught a wave, every women there cheered.
It was great to see this camaraderie in a film.
And to anyone worrying about this film being nothing but titillation, it isn't. Yes, they're in bikinis. If you've been to Hawaii you know that's what people wear on the beach, even people you might wish didn't. There was nothing salacious, even when they could have gotten away with it in the plot. (Think of all the wet bikini shots they missed by having Bosworth wear a rash guard!) It was a very modest film. The T&A emphasis the previous reviewers remarked upon came from their brains, and not from the film.
Once Were Warriors (1994)
Not Maori-specific
I haven't read all 16 pages of reviews, but if it makes any of the Maori reviewers feel better, when this Californian saw Once Were Warriors when it came out in the theaters, Maori-ness made the least impression. Alcoholism made the most.
I'm white white white but this family could have been my own in so many ways. I liked so much that it showed why Beth could love Jake, and how Beth was as complicit in the destruction of her kids as Jake was, in her own way, whatever her motivations for her actions were. Jake's the one you point at with the problem, but his is just the most obvious- the whole family's sick.
The end tragedy actually weakened the movie, in my opinion. Up to that point everything seemed realistic. The death and manner of death seemed over-dramatic and more just a set up so that there could be a big emotional blow out at the end.
I saw this movie when I was 22 and haven't had the guts to watch it again. It was too real.
Mr. Brooks (2007)
Boy was this a dog!
This movie is bad. The acting... eh, passable. I guess. It's hard to tell given the ghastly characters the actors were given to animate. The main character is the only one who can be called 3 dimensional, and that's only because his id hangs out in the backseat filling us in. Cheaters.
The main character is the only one with half a brain. The writer lets you know repeatedly that he's exceptionally brilliant. The usual cat-and-mouse that is the fun part of a murder mystery is completely absent. The detective has no amazing insights. She has a hunch. Yes, that's the brilliant sleuthing with which the writer has decided will entertain us. The only thing we know about the detective is that she's going through an idiotic divorce, where we're supposed to feel sorry for her for having to give up 1/60th of her networth. That's it. Oh. And there's a vapid "revelation" at the end about her life's motivations.
Death is never realistic. None of the victims are made to be remotely sympathetic or even human except in the sense of being human-shaped. They're just plot points. The only exceptions are a couple of people we've met just long enough to establish them as Scummy Enough To Kill.
In the end there is STILL no one likable. What's more nothing is resolved. In the meantime you've watched several gratuitous deaths and a death scene reminiscent of Paul Reubens's in the original Buffy movie.
Whoever wrote this must have been some 22 year old guy wishing he could try out serial killing for a living. And that was the extent of his writing expertise. He (and I assume it's a "he") has no experience with grey areas, and no experience with human motivations and complexities that make watching thrillers entertaining.
Worst of all, he has no idea of the horror that is murder. Clearly to this writer it's an abstract idea that moves the plot along and provides some gore with which to wash it down. If you're going to do gore, go over the top and make it cartoonish, a la Sin City or any Tarantino. Then we can enjoy it. Mr. Brooks, however fails as a cartoon, and fails as a horror film. That just leaves us with thriller, and this amount of context-less blood is out of place. Chandler described Hammet as "having taken murder out of the drawing room and dumped it in the alley where it belonged". If this movie is any indication, significant backsliding has taken place.