Change Your Image
kosta-pap
Reviews
Shutter Island (2010)
Decent thriller, surprisingly polarizing
I was very surprised to find this film was either loved or hated by most reviewers. Of course, it tends to be an inherent quality of publicly posted comments that people with strong opinions will be the ones who will bother to post, but still... I thought the film was a decent and well-made one. Predictable - yes. Over the top acting - come on, it's Marty! Too long - again, Marty. However, I must insist that the predictability of the ending was rather a strength of the film: If one were to follow the "conspiracy/detective" plot through 2 hours, it's logical that the ending will disappoint - but that's your problem, dear viewer! Not only is the insanity plot much more interesting, the film becomes much more interesting once you watch it from this premise. For example, the warden who drives Teddy back from the cliffs, who isn't buying into the doctors' tactics and gives him the "you're dangerous and violent" comments: great scene, but merely weird if you haven't suspected the context. Flaws: The score was horrible. Horrible. Destroyed many scenes, and I'm so glad Marty toned it down toward the end. The dead children scenes were redundant and extremely overused; then again, Marty always does that with his favorite "symbols": rubbing it in, again and again. Some of the dialogue could have been much better written, but it's a mainstream movie after all. One last note on the history of psychiatry: the struggle between psychosurgery and modern psychiatry devoted to the phenomenology of the patient's narrative - that is a true fact, and it did begin in the fifties. Furthermore, going along with a patient's delusion at crtain points of the therapeutic process: I'm appalled that many reviewers found this so absurd. I'm a psychiatrist and it's my line of work. Granted, the film is an exaggerated version of that, but it's fiction after all.
Blood Diamond (2006)
Great effort, great message, too much Hollywood
Blood Diamond is an excellent example of how Hollywood formulas can suck the essence out of a unique work of art. The film is exceptionally well done, with great performances, well-written characters, good research and, above all, shocking messages. To all those reviewers who thought it wasn't "interesting": Are you kidding me? Three of the most horrible tragedies of our times are shown in the film: - Africa's child-warriors - Militia-led smuggling supporting brutal civil wars and exploiting ancient hatred - The diamond monopoly and its ruthlessness. And the film shows how these are intertwined! If this doesn't touch you, I don't know what will.
But perhaps here lies the film's greatest fault. As other reviewers have eloquently mentioned, it apparently thinks it HAS to use Hollywood formulas in order to get the point across to a wide audience: so we have superstars, a romantic subplot, a cheesy ending, lots of action. And this, combined with the heavy messages of the plot, is just too much. It is no coincidence that so many reviewers used words such as "odd" and "confusing". They didn't mean they didn't follow the film, they just didn't know why it was going there (and back and forth again). Which was my feeling exactly. It's like listening to a beautiful song with great lyrics, and just as the text is about to grasp you, a cheesy sax-solo rises.
The film had too many sax-solos for its worth. It touched extremely important issues, but didn't have the guts to look the audience in the eye and scream out: "Are you finally listening? Look around you!" The Hollywood gutlessness is best shown in the final comments: They do explicitly mention the diamond industry's exploits, but then they advise the audience to "demand diamonds from peaceful areas". What? After having shown that the industry holds prices ridiculously high by convincing everyone that diamonds are valuable as such and oh so rare? And that you just NEED to buy or have diamonds as a sign of class, power, and, most importantly, love... And all the producers want us to do is to ask nicely for a "good" diamond?...
If that movie touched you, find out more about the diamond brainwash and the African civil war tragedies. Open your eyes.