hpipik Reviews

Oblivion (I) (2013)

There Is A Message

[9/10 · 21 November 2013]

There are over 700 user reviews and almost 500 critic reviews and I certainly did not read all of them, but I did read a bunch of them, and not one of the reviews describes what the movie is actually about. They get into the acting and the cinematography and the personal and professional lives of Tom Cruise, and a whole bunch of other stuff---not including what the movie is actually about.

Some of the critics even claim there is not much of a story. They are flat wrong and I am going to have to say why.

*** Serious Spoiler Alert ***

The point of the movie is that there was a war between Humanity and space aliens. In the beginning, we are told and we believe that, yes, Humanity won that war but at terrible cost.

As the movie develops, we start to sense a growing doubt. Did Humanity really win that war or did the aliens win it? The answer gets less and less clear as the movie develops.

My initial reaction to "Oblivion" was much like everybody else's: I thought it was a slick nothing. But, as I thought about the central theme of the movie---who really won the war?---and put it into our own modern context, I realized the brilliance of it.

Everybody seems to think that the West in general and the U.S. in particular won the Cold War. Many people, including scholars, have pronounced the death of socialism and the triumph of capitalism. Of course, that is just what I thought, as well. And yet, today we have a socialist president in the White House, we are getting socialized medicine, and my own city (New York) just elected a Sandinista-style Marxist as mayor.

At this point, it is fair to ask: Who really won the Cold War? Once I realized this, my sense of the movie changed completely. Yea, sure, there are flaws, no doubt, but the basic idea is brilliant and, on the whole, it is a brilliant movie.

The Frankenstein Theory (2013)

Excellent!

[10/10 · 5 September 2013]

If you are expecting the usual horror movie, according to formula, you will be disappointed. If you are open to something different and thought provoking, you may enjoy this movie, as I did. Acting and dialog were excellent.

WARNING to people who tend to motion sickness, like myself: the filming is highly reminiscent of the "Blair Witch Project", which I could not watch because of camera shake. I got a bit nauseous with this movie, too.

So, Johnathan Venkenhein, a scientist and a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, believes the Frankenstein monster is real, thinks he knows where the monster lives, and has an elaborate theory about the true nature of the monster, never having actually met it. Venkenhein's insistence and persistence on this theory has lost him his girl friend and damaged his professional reputation, and the only way to rehabilitate his reputation (and maybe get his girl back) is to go up to the Canadian arctic with a film crew and make a documentary about the monster.

Plenty of warning signs that things will go badly, but Venkenhein is a monomaniac and an egomaniac and he blithely puts himself and everybody with him in mortal danger. In other words, Venkenhein is totally absorbed by a theory not based on reality.

And that, I think, is the true message of the movie. It is a scathing, and funny in a very dark sort of way, indictment of people, mainly academics, who construct grand theories without bothering to check reality (Barack Obama comes immediately to mind).

As the people on the film crew are killed, one by one, we look for reasons, mainly that they somehow startled or threatened the monster in some way. Towards the end, we think that, well, maybe Venkenhein, who understands the monster and is sympathetic to it, will be able to communicate with it. Finally, we imagine that the monster killed the men to get the one lone woman.

Nope. It's just a monster.

Cleanskin (2012)

Thinly Veiled Propaganda

[2/10 · 25 February 2013]

I give this movie two stars, not one, because it is well made thinly veiled propaganda. The acting is excellent, the directing is crisp, the dialog is smart. There is much to like about the movie, but what is the point of it?

Ah yes, the point. So, a British secret service agent is out to kill a Muslim terrorist. Ewan (Sean Bean), is the grim, vengeful agent who wants to do the right thing but is a loose canon (ie, a danger to himself and to people around him) once he is set in motion. And his superiors know this. Ash (Abhin Galeya) is the terrorist, filled with doubt but who goes on with his mission to kill the kafirs (unbelievers).

Just as Ash is manipulated by the nefarious Nabil, Ewan is manipulated by the sinister Charlotte. So, who are really the bad guys, here? The British intelligence service is just as bad as the Ayatollahs.

***Spoiler Alert***

And, the icing on the cake is that the one secret service agent who was sincerely trying to do his job, and was assassinated by Ewan who was manipulated into it, was himself a British born Asian.

Get it? The jihadis are out to get us, but since we are just as bad as they are, should we really be defending ourselves? Hadi Hajaig, the writer and director, thinks not.

You will not be too surprised to learn that the movie was made with the assistance of some public funds (maybe a lot of public funds).

Arranged (2007)

Death By Political Correctness

[4/10 · 5 January 2012]

So, two girls from traditional families, one Jewish one Muslim, discover they have much more in common than anyone imagined. Sadly, this movie is nothing more than the heartfelt wish, of the writers and director, for how the world ought to be, not how it really is. Do not confuse this movie for reality.

The girls are attractive, the acting is good, the sentiment is sweet, and I enjoyed the scenes of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, a place I know fairly well. But to call the movie sophomoric is to give sophomores a bad name.

Yes, of course, individuals are the same everywhere, but this explains almost nothing about the world we live in. If everybody wants to be left in peace and to mind his own business, why are there wars? Why do husbands beat wives? Why do mothers abandon children? Ethnic cleansing? Jihad? Crusades? Etc., etc., etc. The world is more complicated than two young women who want to marry for love. Considerably more complicated, and a lot nastier.

Rachel and Nasira teach 4th grade at an elementary school in Brooklyn. Early in the movie, the children wonder about the teachers working together, and one students asks, "Don't the Muslims want to kill the Jews?" and the movie is off and running with its basic message that people everywhere are the same and all the unpleasantness is just a terrible misunderstanding.

There is no misunderstanding. Lots of people have lots of ideas, and not all these ideas are sweet and generous.

One poignant moment came when Nasira rejected the first suitor her father chose for her. Her father understood (so arranged marriages are alright). Well, fathers sometimes do understand. But twelve year old Afghan and Yemeni girls marrying 40 and 50 year old men is proof that fathers sometimes do not understand.

If Stefan Schaefer and Yuta Silverman (the writers), and Diane Crespo (the director), want to do more than "imagine world peace," if they want to strike a blow for world peace, they would do us all a favor by telling how it really is, rather than concocting a fable of arranged marriages.

Death to Smoochy (2002)

Genius

[10/10 · 2 December 2011]

The casting is perfect, the acting is superb, the dialog is sharp, the story is ingenious and hilarious, the editing is crisp (Bravo! Danny DeVito), and the music is just great. I loved it. You will, too.

It is very hard to do justice to this movie in a summary. First, "Smoochy" gives a dark twist to children's TV programming and especially to children's charities, portraying them more as crime syndicates than do-good organizations. In one scene, Sheldon (Ed Norton), who is "Smoochy the Rhino", declines to do an ice show, thus cutting off expected revenues to a well known children's charity. He is severely warned, "They are the roughest of all the charities."

Ed Norton is superb. You first meet an impossibly sincere, saccharine character who sits at a bar drinking orange juice spiked with liquid alfalfa---and gets buzzed. And you believe him. But, there are a couple of moments when he reveals the potential for insensate rage, and you learn that one time in his life he had to learn anger management, thus giving an entirely different spin to the character.

Norton is exquisitely supported by all the others. Catherine Keener is a revelation. Early in the movie, Nora (Keener) is a hard-bitten TV exec who puts Sheldon (Norton)in his place,

"I didn't discover you. I delivered you. I have a bigger emotional investment in my nail polish."

Later, she reveals a vulnerable woman who was used and hurt by the cads all around her in the children's TV business. Rebuffing Rainbow Randolph's (Robin Williams) suggestion they take up where they left off, years ago, Nora ripostes,

Nora: I was young. And stupid.

Randolph: And limber.

The acting quality runs deep, including the bit players. Michael Rispoli is masterful as "Spinner" Dunn. And for sheer visual impact, the prize goes to Vincent Schiavelli. What would a lecherous, heroine-addicted clown, hired to assassinate another clown, look like? He would look like "Buggy Ding Dong". You have to see him to believe it. You will burst out laughing.

That the critics hated this movie brings up what I call the "Bulworth" effect, which I first noticed around 1998, when that awful movie came out. So, Bulworth is to movies what shoe leather is to filet mignon. But for the young Halle Barry, Bulworth would be unwatchable. However, it is politically correct, and that is the only possible explanation for the raves it got from critics.

"Death To Smoochy" is politically very INcorrect. And that is the only possible explanation for the hammering it got from critics. If you have ever wondered why your own impressions of a movie differ so greatly from that of the critics, politics is the likely explanation. Movies like "Death To Smoochy" and "Bulworth" make it very clear that many of the critics are looking at the movies for something other than a great story and great acting.

Super (I) (2010)

Brilliant

[29 October 2011]

"Super" is a seriously twisted movie, and I mean that in a good way. So Frank Darbo (Rainn Wilson) is a loser, always has been. For one brief moment in his life, Frank punches above his weight when he marries Sarah (Liv Tyler). But, that only happened because Sarah is a recovering drug addict.

Early in the movie, Sarah falls back into drugs and falls in with some bad guys. In his tortured despair and desire to rescue Sarah, Frank sees a vision and becomes a crime-fighting superhero. Except that his only power is a pipe wrench, which he swings to good effect. He is helped in his efforts by the psychotic Libby, brilliantly performed by Ellen Paige. I must say that Libby, turned on by Frank's persona and costume, delivers one of the strangest, and sexiest (without being explicit) scenes I have seen in a long time.

If you prefer standard issue Hollywood boiler plate, you will be happier with "Defendor". If prefer a smart, quirky script and some great acting and directing, watch "Super".

Barney's Version (2010)

A Big Nothing

[5/10 · 20 October 2011]

I agree with another reviewer (Geoarr?): this movie is not much of anything. The acting is excellent, the dialog is sharp, you have Minnie Driver and Rosamund Pike to look at but, in the end, you just don't care.

So, it is pretty obvious why Panofsky (Paul Giamatti) wants to be with the 2nd Mrs. P (Minnie Driver) and Miriam Grant (Rosamund Pike), they are beautiful, lively women. It is not at all clear why they want to be with him, and not just because Panofsky is nothing to look at. Panofsky has no redeeming qualities.

Furthermore, the movie blurb says Panofsky is "impulsive, irascible and fearlessly blunt". Put another way, he is unfeeling, moody, and obtuse. As for the "fearless" part, you never believe he is any real danger of anything. For example, when it looks like he killed his friend, you never get a sense of dread that he might be going to jail. Therefore, the fearlessness is meaningless.

Listen, you could do worse than look at Rosamund Pike for an hour (Minnie Driver has much too little screen time), or you could go get a cup of coffee instead.

Paul (2011)

Swill

[11 August 2011]

Okay, so here is the worst thing about this movie: unless you still laugh at fart jokes, and gratuitous profanity, the movie is not funny. Also, I am sooo tired of anti-American, anti-Christian crap-for-movies.

In this movie, aliens---of both the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial varieties---are all good, and Americans are bad. You cannot miss the fact that the two main characters are not American, at all. They are English, while Sigourney Weaver, a very American girl, plays "The Big Guy" and she is the chief bad guy in the movie. Early in the movie, Graeme and Clive meet two Americans in a diner and they are---yup, you guessed it---humorless, dangerous, red-necks.

The only passably humorous scene is a bit later, when Graeme briefly talks to a state trooper---a classically American man in looks and speech. The trooper marvels that English police are not armed, "How are they supposed to shoot anyone?" Graeme mutters diffidently, "They try not to." Ha, ha, ha. Oh, at the time I am writing this review, England is burning with riots in several major cities while the government is trying to figure out if the police can use water canon. Ha, ha, ha.

Finally---and here is one spoiler, so you may want to avert your eyes---Agent Zoil, the man you are thinking for most of the movie is the all-American agent of the American government and the main bad guy, turns out to really be the good guy, Lorenzo Zoil, which suggests he is of Hispanic, probably Mexican, extraction.

Americans, bad. Aliens, good. Get it?

The anti-Christian aspect to the movie needs no explanation. It's like they are hitting you in the head with a 2X4. Moses Buggs, the father of the girl they accidentally/stupidly/pointlessly kidnap, is (1) American, (2) Christian, (3) dangerous, and (4) a buffoon. Of course.

But for the anti-Americanism and anti-Christianity, there is literally nothing to the movie. The propaganda is coarse and, oh, did I mention it is not funny?

Defamation (2009)

Slack-jawed stupidity

[1/10 · 30 May 2011]

So, Yoav Shamir wants to get to the bottom of anti-semitism. Does he go undercover with the KKK or the neo-Nazis? No. Does he examine Turkish TV dramas that promote the Blood Libel? No. Does he take undercover video of Friday night sermons in Palestinian mosques? Nope. Or examine Palestine school books or any of the Saudi funded programs in mosques all over the world? No. Or the speeches by Hamas and Hizbullah about killing Jews (not "Israelis", but "Jews")? No. Does he discuss the United Nations, which has passed more resolutions against Israeli than on any other topic, including genocide in Darfur, genocide in Tibet, mass murders in Congo, oppression of Christians and Hindus in Pakistan? No, no, no. And he is totally silent about Iran which (a) wants to "erase" Israel from the map and (b) is busily building atomic bombs with which to get the job done.

Instead, our brave Yoav looks for anti-semitism in New York City, the cultural capital of Israel's only friend on earth and a city that holds more Jews than any city outside Israel itself; he looks for it among a group of Israeli teenagers on excursion to Auschwitz; and he examines his own grandmother for anti-semitism.

Why do you think Yoav did not find anti-semitism?

Another reviewer thinks "Defamation" is "Moore-esqe", i.e., that it has the qualities of a Michael Moore documentary. He sure got that right.

Body of Lies (2008)

Same old same old

[3/10 · 1 May 2011]

Okay, so Ridley Scott is directing Leonardo DiCaprio, Russel Crowe, and an all around strong cast. Cinematography is great, the story advances at a good clip, and when it is all done you are going to wonder what and why. Why did they bother making this movie and what could you have done, instead of wasting your time watching this annoying movie?

According to Ridley Scott and the writers, Westerners cannot be trusted while Muslims are noble, sincere, committed, and always tell the truth. As best I can tell, that is all there is to this movie. Hmmm, now where have I seen this before? Ah yes, Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven". I am sick of it.

Even Muslim women are better than American women, according to Scott & Co. So, Ferris (DiCaprio) admits to his new love interest, Aisha (Farahani), that he was a bad husband but the woman he divorced was a worse wife. Of course, Aisha (coincidentally (?) the name of the 6 yr old girl that Muhammad married when he was about 54 yrs old, and who was his favorite wife) is transparently in the plot so that she will be kidnapped and so that Ferris will have to sacrifice himself to save her. Pointedly, something Ferris's boss, the backstabbing Ed Hoffman (Russel Crowe) would never do.

Oh, and Ed Hoffman, who works out of CIA at Langley, hates his kids, whereas Aisha loves her nephews. Honestly, the more I think about this movie, the worse it gets. I should have shaved a star off my rating.

So, as a movie, you could do worse. Personally, I am tired of Hollywood vilifying and denigrating Western Civilization, always to the advantage of others.

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Beware! Art!

[1/10 · 3 April 2011]

Nicolas Winding Refn, the director, thinks his movie is art and he wants you to think the same. The main character never speaks a word, the plot is undiscernible or indecipherable, and we are treated to long, long camera takes of unmoving scenes, instead. Yup! It's art.

About the only sense I get from the movie is that Christianity is bogus and Christians are hypocrites. So, in an age when Christianity is all but spent as a religious and cultural force, and the world is looking into the face of a new Dark Age in the form of a resurgent Islam, this piece of anti-Christian film flam is just what we need. Not.

Oh, as a movie, let's see: no plot, no character development, no clever dialog, no internal story. Not much of a movie, really. Lots of blood and guts, though.

City Island (2009)

Almost Great

[7/10 · 4 December 2010]

Each person in the family has a secret (except the wife, played by Julianna Margulies, who is just angry and unhappy). The movie builds up to a cataclysmic confrontation in which everybody learns everything.

So, the movie does have its slow moments, but the idea is charming and the acting is excellent. If you need aliens from outer space or axes in heads, etc., this movie may not be for you. But if you like excellent acting and quirky characters, you may enjoy the movie as I did.

There are some defects in the movie. For example, the father's deep dark secret is that he wants to be a movie actor. Keep in mind that Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) has had this dark desire since he was a kid, he has lived in NYC all his life, he takes acting classes in NYC, so he has been surrounded by the life of the theater forever, he has teachers, he talks to actors. We see him reading a book on acting (it looks like "An Actor Prepares" by Stanislavski). And yet, somehow he has no idea what a casting call is. Even I know what a casting call is and I have nothing to do with acting.

To hide his acting ambition, Rizzo tells his wife he is playing poker. She thinks he is cheating on her. But, if he were playing poker, surely the wife would know some of his poker buddies, she would know where the game was played, would not the game be sometimes played in their own home? And, if she thinks he is cheating, why would she tolerate it for so long?

Perhaps one of the strangest scenes is where Rizzo has to borrow Tony's idea about how to play a tough guy, during his casting call. Why on earth would that be? How could Rizzo have been a prison guard for years without himself being a tough guy or, at the very least, seen plenty of prison tough guys in action? Why, of all things, does he have to make this up?

I could go on, and it is these and other defects that give the movie the feel of a film school project and keep it from being great. My advice: forget the defects and enjoy the movie.

Agora (2009)

A Film Whose Time Has Passed

[3/10 · 26 November 2010]

I, too, love Rachel Weisz, but just as many reviewers have already observed, this movie is slow and choppy. Don't know how anyone can say the acting is good, since the actors have little to do but stand and deliver their lines, almost like a bad high school play.

However, my main criticism is that this movie was obsolete before they rolled cameras. It is about religious zealots who stone women and murder their opponents. I understand how the life of Hypatia was interesting to intellectuals, over the centuries, but in the year 2009 (when Agora was released), if you want to make a movie about murderous religious zealotry, there is only one religion worth the trouble: Islam.

That Alejandro Amenabar chose to focus on 5th century Christianity, well, I cannot stifle my yawns.

The Infidel (2010)

Sweet Nothing

[6/10 · 19 November 2010]

Omid Djalili plays Mahmud, a decent, easy-going family man of very moderate Islamic views (does not pray five times a day, does not really fast on Ramadan, and takes more than a sip of alcohol now and again). It is the highly sympathetic and humorous Djalili, with his wondrously expressive face, that holds the movie together.

Mahmud thinks he is a Muslim through-and-through until he is stunned to discover that he was born of Jewish parents and was adopted, weeks old, by a Muslim family. A sincere man, he wants to find his birth parents, and this immediately throws him into the nexus of two worlds: Muslim and Jewish. The possibilities are endless. Sadly, while the movie produces some very sympathetic sketches, and it is good for a laugh or two, you will regret what might have been.

The fundamental premise of the movie is artificial. First, Islam does not recognize adoption as we understand the concept. Second, Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular live in a semi-tribal system of extended families, so there is no chance such an adoption would be a secret. Third, the rabbi's behavior, when Mahmud tries to visit his very old and dying birth father, is inexplicable by any Jewish principles. Finally, Islam is a proselytizing religion, so having been born Jewish would not make Mahmud any less Muslim.

Do not imagine, therefore, that by watching this movie you will come to any deeper understanding of Islam or Judaism. In the end, the severely artificial premise of the movie corrupts it irretrievably.

You should watch the movie for the performances, all which are very good. You will have a laugh or two. You will enjoy it. Then forget it.

Robin Hood (2010)

Opportunity Missed

[5/10 · 29 October 2010]

The movie is beautiful: Russel Crowe swinging a sword (or shooting an arrow, or something) and, God knows, you could do much worse than watching Cate Blanchette for 2 hrs. But the story of Robin Hood is completely re-told, and not in a good way.

There is no one story of Robin Hood, it is a collection of legends. The premise of all the legends, however, is Anglo-Saxon resistance to their Norman conquerors. The vision of the writers and director of this movie is fully revealed at the very end when Marian speaks approvingly of living in the forest as outlaws, saying, "No tax, no tithe, nobody rich nobody poor, fair shares for all at nature's table." In other words, the writers see Robin Hood as a socialist parable rather than the nationalist one everybody else took it for, all these long centuries.

Indeed, you feel the socialist sensibility throughout the movie, beginning with its hard imitation of the miserable "A Knight's Tale", in which a commoner impersonates a knight, and gets away with it. In this movie, Robin Hood is a yeoman who impersonates a knight, then actually impersonates a son and husband. How so? Well, it seems his father was a visionary stone-mason who made a big impression on Sir Walter Loxley, the socman of Nottingham, and single-handedly rallies a divided nation against yet another French invasion...Really, I can't go on, it's just too preposterous.

My first premonition of a movie that steps out of imagination into the absurd was very early on, when Robin tells his king, Richard, that God is not pleased with Richard's Crusade because of the massacre Richard committed at Acre. This is pretty good, until Robin explains that he knew it had all gone horribly wrong when, about to murder a young woman, the woman looks up at him and he sees pity in her eyes. Yes, you see, the woman who is about to be murdered pities her murderer---because he thereby becomes "Godless". Is this the kind of thought going through the mind of a person about to be murdered? Maybe, if that person is a saint. Otherwise, I don't think so.

But wait, it gets worse. The point of this little episode is to reveal that Richard The Lion-Heart was, in his own way, as big a bastard as his notoriously bastard brother, John. And the point of that is to show that there can be no salvation, for the common man, in kings. According to Ridley Scott and his writers, a classless society, living on Nature's bounty, in the forest, is the only way. Where is George Orwell when you need him?

Finally, I love Cate Blanchette so it pains me to say this, but she is a tad old to play Maid Marion. Although, in this telling of the story, Marion is no maiden. Bah! I should knock off another rating star just for that.

The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008)

Less of a movie, more of a documentary

[10/10 · 28 May 2010]

After this movie, see "Osama".

Regrettably, I must agree with the criticisms of the movie as a movie. The women are beautiful, the acting is good, the scenery is spectacular, the cinematography excellent. The movie is beautiful to look upon. However, there are no plot twists, no character development, no internal dialog, etc., etc., etc. It is not really a movie, it is a documentary.

As a documentary, and despite some important defects, it is spectacular and a Must See. It is a window into another world.

There are some things that do not make sense to me. I do not understand why Soraya has to agree to a divorce since under Muslim law the man can have the divorce any time he wants it. The divorce is the central tension of the movie: the husband wants it, the wife refuses. So, the husband conspires to have the wife murdered by law.

The one major problem with the documentary is that the writers, of the book and the screenplay, seem confused about their own project. At the end, the movie talks about the problem of the stoning of women. This is bizarre. Would the story of Soraya M. be any different if they had hanged her, instead? I think not. From Nigeria to Indonesia, the common thread in the oppression and murder of women is Islam.

Yet "The Stoning of Soraya M." inexplicably lets Islam off the hook in at least two ways. First is the imposter imam. The two central figures in the murder of Soraya are Ali, her husband, and the Imam. So, Ali is a murderous cad, but he needs the imam to put his murderous plan into effect. How does an imposter become the Imam of the town? We are never told.

It is not the stones but Muslim law that is the murder weapon. But, since the imam is an imposter, we are allowed to suppose that it is not really Islam that is the problem.

The second character in this exculpation of Islam is the Mayor. He has a nagging suspicion that something is wrong, and Soraya's beautiful aunt, Zahra, is telling him the same thing. Just before the stoning, the mayor prays to Allah for a sign of what to do. At the stoning, he is given a sign---the first several stones miss, and a woman yells out, "It's a sign". But the mayor allows the murder to begin.

Again, the implication is that it is the failing of one man, not of Allah's law, that is the reason for the murder of Soraya. And I might accept that if it were only Soraya. But it isn't. There are a whole lot of Sorayas in the Muslim world, the only difference is that no on has written a book about them.

500 Years Later (2005)

Oh! The Irony!

[1/10 · 18 January 2010]

Imagine being lectured at by Muslims on the awfulness of slavery. Being lecture at, in other words, by the people who were trading in African flesh centuries before the Europeans reached Africa, who taught the Europeans the slave trade, and who are trading in African flesh today in places like Sudan, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger.

This movie is produced by Halaqah Media. Although the movie's Islamic flavor is kept tastefully toned down, you cannot miss the message, since you will get hammered by it from beginning to end, for the whole of the movie's seemingly interminable 116 minutes. The message: the Atlantic slave trade is the worst thing that ever happened.

And why, exactly, the Atlantic slave trade was worse than the Muslim slave trade? Hey, why don't we ask some African slaves to see if they think so. You will have to go to some Muslim majority country to do that.

Naturally, our Muslim documentarians do not do this. They explain that when an African was ripped from his family and from his community by Europeans, this was awful, awful, awful. But when Muslims ripped an African from his family and his community, he just became a member of a new family. Really. That is what they said in the movie. No kidding. In other words, Muslims come with guns and knives, raiding and killing, because they love Black people and want to take Black people into their families. Unlike the Christians who must have been very bad people.

Finally, they manage to interview just about every race hustler in the U.S., including some representative of the Nation of Islam. My favorite was Frances Cress Welsing, author of the book, "The Isis Papers". I read that book some years ago and I am sure Welsing is mentally ill (she thinks the word "semite" comes from the Latin "semi" meaning "half", as in "half a man"). You will not get that impression from the movie, however, since they did keep her appearance mercifully short.

Well, if you want to see how propaganda is done, this is the movie for you. Otherwise, go have a cup of coffee, instead.

Corpse Bride (2005)

What's The Point?

[4/10 · 22 September 2009]

I too was intrigued by the idea of a Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonam Carter, and Christopher Lee. In fact, the movie is technically excellent. But, the music is so-so, and at the end I could only wonder why they bothered.

Everything about the movie says that it is better to be dead than alive. The Land of The Dead is colorful, the dead are cheerful and sincere while the living are greedy, deceitful, and colorless (lifeless?). What on earth does this mean? Does Burton want to say that only good people die? Or that bad people become good when they die? Although that last does not seem to be the case when Barkiss joins them, at the end. Perhaps there is another level of dead, because it seems the dead were going to do something terrible to the shade of Barkiss.

Even a fantasy has to make some kind of sense. Not this one. Sadly. "Corpse Bride" is not an awful movie, but the music is not good enough and the jokes are not funny enough, so you could do better things with your time than watch this movie.

What Dreams May Come (1998)

omg

[1/10 · 12 June 2009]

Oh, my God. This is the worst movie ever. It's worse even than Barbra Streisand's remake of "A Star Is Born". There! I said it.

I found the movie in the science fiction section of my video store, so let's get one thing straight from the get-go. This is not a science fiction movie. As Isaac Asimov once explained, good science fiction has to be good science and good fiction. This movie is bad fantasy.

The theme is: Love conquers all, even Hell. I thought I was in Hell watching this movie. It is S-L-O-W. With long, long looks into the camera and frequently whispered I-love-you's. The Heaven and Hell scenes remind me of the Harry Potter movies; Heaven is not bliss and Hell is not agony. Somehow, in this movie neither life nor death are played for keeps.

Real life is as preposterous as the Afterlife. Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) is killed by a flying car (like in the James Bond movies) in the Lincoln Tunnel between NY and NJ. A flying car in the Lincoln Tunnel? I don't think so. The Lincoln Tunnel is usually so jammed with cars, it is a parking lot most of the time.

And how did heaven become one of Annie's (Annabella Sciorra) paintings? It's just stupid.

I don't know how this movie got made. Maybe the book reads better than the movie plays (this happens). And they got Robin Williams and Max Von Sydow?? How did that happen? Well, the presence of Cuba Gooding, Jr. (who seems a likable enough human being) should be enough to warn you that all is not well with this movie.

"What Dreams May Come" is an adolescent girl's fantasy of eternal love. My advice: go get a cup of coffee, instead, or go hang by your thumbs in a closet. Do anything except watch this movie; you will never get your 113 minutes back.

Taken (I) (2008)

Rollicking good movie but I will pick some nits

[9/10 · 18 May 2009]

Go to the cinema or get the DVD and see the movie. If you like action packed thrillers this movie is for you. As another reviewer said, it will be the fastest 93 minutes you have had in a long while. I loved every minute of it.

Like most great movies, the plot is clean and spare. The bad guys have messed with the wrong girl. Daddy loves his little girl, he is coming to get her, and too bad for anybody (including former friends) who stand in the way. That said, I want to pick some nits.

First, so far as I know Liam Neeson is a nice guy who loves his family, is kind to animals, works hard, and deserves whatever success he can get. I am glad "Taken" is a winner for him. But the movie offers a couple of scenes where a really good actor could have delivered an Oscar-winning performance, and Neeson does not measure up.

For instance, Bryan Mills (Neeson) is a man who knows the world and the evils it contains. When he hears on the phone his little girl screaming as she is being brutally kidnapped into sex slavery (NB: this is really not a spoiler since this scene is in all the trailers), Neeson could have shown us something more than a dead-pan face that passes for steely resolve. Where was the horror? The pain? The anguish?

Another scene is when Mills discovers the brothel full of kidnapped girls. They are innocent things, just like his own daughter, imprisoned by thugs and drugs and practically sold by the pound like so much meat. Yes, Mills is on a mission to rescue his own daughter, but does he not have an ounce of sympathy for these forsaken girls who are the daughters of other fathers and mothers? It is true that he kills a number of the Albanian sex slavers, but it is not at all clear that he is doing it out of sympathy for these other girls or only because they are slowing him down in his mission to rescue his own daughter. As I said, I think Neeson could have done more, and it would have been much the better for him and for the movie.

My second nit is language. One mark of a really great movie is when the English speak English, the French speak French, the Germans speak German, etc. In a couple of scenes, had Neeson spoken in French, I think the movie would have really sparkled. Too bad about that.

Finally, there is Maggie Grace who plays the daughter, Kim. She is a beautiful woman and I wish her only success, but not for a moment did I believe she was 17 yrs old (which she is not). From Paris to Hollywood, Pierre Morel could not find an actress who looks 17? Really? To me this is an inexplicable casting error. Maybe Morel used the same guy who cast Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, so this is not the only such mistake, but damn! Talk about unforced errors.

But for these unforced errors, I think "Taken" could have been Oscar winning material. We will just have to settle for a rollicking good movie.

Pathfinder (2007)

Bad, Bad, Bad

[1/10 · 1 August 2007]

Uninspired throw-back to the bad old days of stereotyping and demonization, except the people being demonized in this worthless film are Europeans.

Young Viking lad is left alone and scared on the shores of N. America and is adopted by the natives. Almost before the opening credits have finished, we learn that the natives are noble and the Vikings are savages. In fact, the Vikings do not even have faces. Even in the rare instances when they take off their bizarre helmets, you cannot see their faces through their beards and their encrusted filth. The natives, of course, have kind, open, beardless faces that radiate warmth and understanding.

Years later, the boy is all grown up, just in time to fight another gang of Vikings, who appear to want nothing but to butcher the natives. The end.

Plot: not much. Character development: forget it. Music: can't recall. Direction: pointless. Action: dull (yes, there is a lot of blood and gore, but somehow you just don't care).

Blooper: early on, Ghost explains to his tribe that the invaders wear a kind of skin that cannot be pierced by stone arrows (i.e., armor), but for the rest of the movie we watch natives killing Vikings with---stone arrows.

Really, if you want to see some great historical fiction about the Americas, forget this tripe and try: "Black Robe" and "Apocalypto" (I know there are some others, but I can't think of them right now). In fact, you might want to compare movies to see how great the others are and how awful this one is.

The Last King of Scotland (2006)

It's Alright

[4/10 · 30 June 2007]

Less wooden than "Hotel Rwanda", but neither movie really does justice to the nightmare of Africa.

Movie revolves around Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scotsman who becomes personal doctor to the mass murderer Idi Amin. Evidently, Garrigan is an idiot because he does not perceive the human misery all around him until other people (one of Amin's wives and another doctor) tell him. Furthermore, as Amin's personal doctor, Garrigan is supposed be doing something to improve healthcare for all Uganda, but he seems strangely untroubled by the fact that he never does any of that work. Since we see Uganda mainly through Garrigan's eyes, we only start to feel a bit of the horror of Amin's Uganda towards the end.

Part of the problem is Forest Whitaker. I have seen Whitaker in other movies and he seems to be a sympathetic and likable man, but his performance as Amin is inexplicable until you hear him interviewed in the special features section of the DVD. Whitaker is obviously confused about Amin. I.e., Amin talked of Ugandan, and African, freedom from colonialism, and he was a funny figure, offering aid to England and other such nonsense. At the time, lots of people lapped up that sort of thing. Oh yea, some 80,000 Asians were made destitute by their expulsion from Uganda---and they were the lucky ones since Amin proceeded to ruin the economy, slaughter about 300,000 Ugandans, and terrorize the rest in a decade of butchery.

Maybe some people did not realize the full magnitude of the Ugandan horror, at that time, but Whitaker has no excuse. Listening to Whitaker's sympathetic comments about Amin was quite like listening to someone make excuses for Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. It is shocking and demoralizing. And, it is also an explanation, I think, for why the movie is missing a lot of the vibrancy it could have had.

I should add that a few other people, both Ugandan and English, who are involved in making the film and who are interviewed in the special features section of the DVD, seem similarly ambivalent about mass murder and the mass murderers who perpetrate it. It is inexplicable. Fortunately, several interviewees do not suffer from this moral blindness, but the damage is done.

A really great movie about Africa remains to be made.

V for Vendetta (2005)

It's Official

[1/10 · 25 September 2006]

If the Matrix movies made you suspect the Wachowskis are political morons, this movie makes it official: they are political morons.

Their ultimate symbol for popular resistance to oppression is blowing up the English parliament buildings while one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie, the naive homosexual Gordon Deitrich (played by Stephen Frye), is killed for harboring a 14th century Koran in his home.

"Are you Muslim?" asks Evey (Natalie Portman).

"No, I'm in television." Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Deitrich keeps a Koran because he is moved by its poetry. This is quite like singing "Deutschland Uber Alles" because you like Haydn's tune. (I wonder just how poetic a real homosexual finds the Koran's attitude towards homosexuality.)

So, the world is filled with fascism and oppression, most of it not in the West, and the Wachowskis' brilliant idea is to blow up the very prototype of parliamentary democracy, that one thing that virtually defines freedom. File this movie under "C" for Cowardice, right beside the movie of "Sum Of All Fears", whose real terrorists are magically converted into fake terrorists.

Yes, yes, I know the movie is based on a comic book (you can hardly miss that message), but the Wachowskis had a choice to make. By their choices do we know them.

But for the fact that nearly every word, every move, is predictable from start to finish, the movie itself is technically good. Even Portman manages to emote, just a little, although you never really believe she is ever in serious trouble.