Change Your Image
ErikOD
Reviews
Babel (2006)
A forced story, not a fluid one
The first hour of this film was engrossing. The four different families, four different cultures, four different stories, held my attention, and moved along well. But after that first hour a sense of tedium set in as we sensed how the stories would be connected and how they'd end. At some point I fast-forwarded the DVD because the editor seemed trapped in his own sense of timing and awed by his director's brilliance, rather than in paying attention to storytelling.
Furthermore, the Japanese component felt entirely disjointed. That rifle could just as easily (and more convincingly) ended up in the Morrocan's hands through Pitt's largess (he'd been on a trip there before and wanted to show his pissy wife the place he'd hunted), and just think how much tighter and more meaningful the story would have been. And shorter, so as to allow us to care about the characters instead of seeing them as cameos.
All in all, a promising effort that failed to deliver a strong and sound story.
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
A fatuous effort at dramatizing something more dramatic
I was disappointed in every aspect of this movie. The events that were supposedly depicted, including the background of genocide in Rwanda, were insipidly portrayed, pure Hollywoood hokum. The casting was mediocre, especially Nick Nolte, but also including most of the smaller parts, although Don Cheadle and his wife were portrayed competently. It was an obvious attempt to take a single series of events--the actions of this hotel manager--and parlay them into a typical movie format, when the Rwandan genocide deserved, indeed deserves, much more significant treatment. The one redeeming feature of the film was its portrayal of the cowardly and bigoted manner in which the West dealt with the tragedy, but even that was done without impact. Not a major motion picture at all. A major disappointment.
Ask the Dust (2006)
Wandering dust
This is a movie that demonstrates that mood and music and texture aren't enough to make a good film. Sure, the viewer is treated to numerous fine scenes of Los Angeles in the thirties--I especially liked the view of the trolley approaching the tunnel, and the tram rising up the hillside--but in a sense this fine cinematography is self-defeating, because it creates a mood that "something's going to happen"--and nothing does. The script too keeps feinting toward some plot or action or trauma--and time after time not delivering. Not even delivering the (I assume) theme of the movie, the characters' essential misfit. The lead actors, both too pretty for their roles, didn't convey any repression or agony, and the script didn't expose us to any.
Now, Donald Sutherland? That's another story. His character was so well fashioned, so perfectly played, that I wanted the camera to follow him.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
What's worse than "awful"?
This movie is swill. A linear, boring plot; weak, silly dialog; self-conscious, odd editing; poor acting--especially the poorly-cast Uma Thurman; and that's the good part. That remainder of this review, which I'll truncate in the interest of self-restraint, deals with the subject of this trash. It appeals to the basest components of the culture that has been created by the visual media, exploits those ugly forces and allows QT to laugh all the way to the bank, which I am certain was his only purpose. Fortunately, he's done such a poor job, proving once again that he's a two-and-out moviemaker, that he'll lose his butt on this garbage, ensuring that we needn't endure volume 2.
At least I can hope.