Balfour Reviews

Exotica (1994)

People being random (and never smiling)

[16 March 1999]

This movie fairly annoyed me because everyone acted the same way, the same sullen, mind-numbing, snobbish way. It reminded me of a scene in Sean Penn's The Crossing Guard with David Morse and Robin Wright(-Penn) where Morse's character is throwing a silent fit, alternately grabbing Wright's head, knocking it around, and spinning away from her, all the while both characters never changing the same dull self-absorbed facial expressions.

It strikes me as faux deep, when really there's not much there and the people are aliens from a faroff planet. Don't get me wrong, I empathized with the situations in this movie (Exotica), but I hit a brick wall with the characters who were supposed to carry it to me.

In fact, I love the set-up, and there seemed to be a foundation of something I could relate to and empathize with greatly, but why does it have to be done through these lifeless, bloodless, dour, uniform, impenetrable characters?

Gummo (1997)

Life after y2k?

[9 March 1999]

Harmony Korine's two films, Kids and Gummo, are two of the only films I can remember ever being actually disturbed by.

Watching both films, I felt like an alien visitor to some brave new world where intelligence and respect for hygiene (among other things) have been long since bred out of the species.

I still haven't decided (or figured out) whether Korine is twisting reality or simply holding up a magnifying glass to certain unsavory parts of it.

Technically I find it pretty well done, but its subject matter is really too depressing for me to get much conventional filmic pleasure from. (Probably the point.)

However, I must acknowledge that there's a core of something that I can relate to in these films, something about the characters, often allowing me to put myself in their shoes and imagine living as they do and knowing nothing else. Which is perhaps the most disturbing thing of all.

Embrace of the Vampire (1995)

What was it about again?

[23 February 1999]

Oh yeah! Alyssa Milano's body! Milano herself, along with her cute female costars, were the only erotic elements to this movie.

Aside from those, I found the movie to be quite dull.

For a much better Milano film --- one in which she bares her chest only once, briefly --- see "Hugo Pool".

A Simple Plan (1998)

Suspense? Complex symbolism? Artistry? Non sequitur!

[27 January 1999]

Some people are making the comparison between this movie and Fargo. Strangely enough, while I see many differences between the two, both films had a very similar impact on me. These films, along with The Big Lebowski, just didn't do anything for me besides alternately bore and annoy me, with no let-up or contrast.

I don't know what it is, something about how a film can "put on airs", a certain flavor of airs, and then have multitudes falling all over themselves singing its praises. But there's nothing there.

Specific to A Simple Plan, I have these complaints:

Predictability: there was nothing new or interesting to discover in the story, nothing that hadn't been done many times before in film, in almost exactly the same way. No surprises, no doubt (in my mind at least) what would occur from one scene to the next.

There was nothing beneath the immediately apparent surface. No complex subtext. Nothing to think about.

The whole set-up was contrived. What lesson was I supposed to learn from this? That big-name Hollywood filmmakers can show us unremitting stupidity and pointlessness through a solid two hour stretch? Lesson long since learned, folks. Move on to something else, in the name of all that's sacred!

I didn't sympathize in any way with any of the characters. And every other action a character took, _even in the context of finding this huge amount of money_, seemed completely random and without justification (in story terms).

I didn't even find the cinematography to be that great. I don't know what people are gushing about. Filming snow doesn't automagically make what you're doing art, to my mind. You want great lenswork, check out Seven or Heat (for just two arbitrary examples out of many that blow this thing away). And seeing Paxton's face filling 85% of the screen (not to mention Billy Bob's) for drawn-out lengths of time didn't rub me in quite a pleasing manner.

This is just another in a string of movies that has me asking "What's the big deal?". And "What's the point?" It's probably just a matter of taste. I've never been much of a one for the random-series-of-supposedly-shocking-events genre. (No, I'm not shocked, I'm bored to tears!)

I used to be a great fan of the Coen brothers. And so I guess the same thing now goes for Mr. Raimi.

Can't Hardly Wait (1998)

Very entertaining

[2 January 1999]

I've seen deeper and more intelligent teen comedies, but this one just seemed to tickle my funny bone in the right way enough times to keep me hooked.

Kull the Conqueror (1997)

A really bad movie

[31 October 1998]

Bad acting all around. Bad fight choreography. General contempt for consistency and logic. Two references to Star Wars which don't deserve to be called homage (more like ham-handed rip-off); see if you can spot 'em. Bad script. Senseless mediocre mismashed plotting. Tinfoil special effects. Everyone is too clean. (It's the medieval age for crying out loud!) Hero is never in any danger, never really has to do anything, everything falls into his lap. Badly-ported cliches up the yin-yang. Too many "acteur" extras. Connect-the-dots emotional displays. Kevin Sorbo. Need I go on?

Fall (1997)

Fall on my sword

[3/10 · 31 October 1998]

I personally found Mr. Schaeffer himself occasionally funny. Aside from that, we have this supposed "true love" thingamajig about a cab driver (or is he?) with a fetish for makeup-slathered brittly-coiffed stick figures. So, it's basically: empty poetry, fake manufactured poignancy, kinky sex (yeah right, ooh! shocking!), and we get to hear a supermodel whine about how "I don't know what I want" (boo hoo!) for an hour and a half.

I also found the main character's two girl friends incredibly hollow and grating. On one hand we have the "mother", who worries that "she's gonna break your heart", ... but only for a scene or two, 'cause she meets the lust object and all of a sudden they're sisters or something. And on the other hand we have the "feminist-representer", oh she is so rich (straight long hair done up just-so, and the ever-present I'm-a-smart-gal spectacles). The model tickles her ego, declaiming the "relevance" of her pretentious non-sequitorish little play (what a way to enter the priesthood, eh?), and now we have a thumbs-up from this quarter. All bases covered. Schaeffer's obsession is given the nod from all of womanity, then we trudge on through the rest of the film's inanity. Hey, that rhymed! Maybe I should go write direct and star in a film about my own adolescent philosophy-d'amour, and fill it with reams (no pun intended) of my airy polished-turds/love-sonnets! Holy lord, I wish my ego was worth so much money ...

I don't know *who* this movie is for. Maybe those lost forlorn souls who have finally realized they shall never ever partake of that airbrushed lovely on the cover of [insert favorite glossy surgery-fest here]. Or maybe supermodels who want to reinforce their delusions of humanity. ("Hurt me, do I not weep? Pay me in cash, do I not pout and preen and smoke cigarettes?")

Or maybe it's just for Eric Schaeffer, auteur, tortured lover, poet extraordinaire.

The End of Violence (1997)

Random, sluggish and boring

[3/10 · 21 October 1998]

It didn't feel like it had any central thread. Nothing really grabbed my attention. There were a number of promising potentials, but they were never followed up on. Through most of the movie, I didn't know what the hell was going on, and I wondered if the whole thing was Wenders' private joke.

Many of the characters were either annoying (actors playing their pretentious selves), or just big blobs of nothing.

Pointless non-sequitur slug of a movie.

What Dreams May Come (1998)

One of my most favorite movies of all time

[10/10 · 6 October 1998]

Reminded me of Made In Heaven (another of my all-time favorites). I saw it with my sister and my dad. My sister really disliked it (it was too abstract for her). And, my dad had a problem with the depiction of heaven therein-presented. I thought it was very dreamy and strongly metaphorical and fantastical. Very strong imagery throughout.

Simon Birch (1998)

And the sap runneth over ...

[13 September 1998]

From almost the beginning, I knew I was in the hands of amateurs. They don 't give me a chance to like the characters before they're already force -feeding me with contrived emotion and fake poignancy. I can't really put my finger on it. Maybe it's the music, constantly wailing at me to feel feel. I'm already human; you can take it down a notch. Maybe it's the characters, all of whom I found rather obnoxious. But it's one thing to bear witness to a masterful storytelling which contains characters meant to be obnoxious. And it's quite another to experience said obnoxiousness in spades simply through the filmmaker(s) ineptitude. (Of course that Mazzello kid really just needs to be slapped. And Platt! Don't get me started ... he's currently on a crap-sappy marathon train ride straight to hell.) Maybe it's that I found much of the situations they put Ian Michael Smith into rather condescending and undignified. Someone's gonna say I'm nitpicking or obsessing because he's small. I'm not PC-knee-jerking that he should be either treated as if he were big or not seen at all. What I am saying is that with the filmmaker(s) heavy hand(s), he came off like an adorable little circus freak. And he was barely (just barely) given the chance to be anything but (the sinking-bus scene comes to mind). I often felt the director was trying to make the audience feel at ease with laughing at the little guy. ("It's a heartfelt tear-jerker; of *course* I 'm sincere!" "I'm not laughing at him, I'm just laughing with a profound joy in reaction to my heart-strings being tugged.") And Jim, Jim Jim Jim, what are you doing to me man? Not that I don't buy you in a serious role. I know you're good. But pick and choose, man, pick and choose!