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mtulig
Reviews
To the Wonder (2012)
Third times a charm
Our third film by this director. They're all the same. Most films you see for entertainment and/or to learn something. This one you can't watch unless you fully understand the subject matter, because there is no exposition. The viewer has to know what must have happened in the missing hours or days based on where the characters are now and on what people do to get there. Olga and Rachel are somewhat wrecked by Ben. Ben is a dolt who might grow a little through his brief association with Javier. Javier finds purpose or meaning by assisting the downtrodden. If a man can't make up his mind between two women, they should both dump him, unless they have no other prospects. I guess Olga's girlfriend convinced her to betray Ben so that he would dump her.
A Kind of Murder (2016)
Suspenseful morality tale
It was gripping and believable until the end which I suppose conveyed the moral of the story. But I don't agree with it and it was awkward.
It was a well-constructed plot that provided barely enough to move it along, minimalist. The one actor and character that didn't fit was Jessica Biel as the housewife. They didn't give her enough dialog and she didn't do much with it.
As to the ending, the book store owner wouldn't have broken or engaged in high risk behavior for no actual benefit. The architect did not commit a serious crime, even a serious thought crime. But the film equated the two unjustly.
Over de rug van de Andes (2018)
More like getting to know some people and the native culture than a travelogue
Stef Biemans and his photographer visit six regions of South America meeting mostly indigenous people with ordinary occupations, covering basic themes of birth, life and death. He's a wonderful interviewer, who gains the trust of his subjects with his natural, low-key demeanor. Actually, the common man and woman are unassuming, accepting and open.
In one episode, Stef as the narrator says they asked him where he learned to speak Spanish. I couldn't tell that it wasn't his native language, but he speaks English with an slight accent, what kind I couldn't tell.
The landscapes and cityscapes were OK, interesting for a place I haven't seen much of, but the tight shots of his hosts were so natural, like a family get-together.
It seems like the native culture is as strong or stronger than the Church or Spanish influence.
Secrets of the Dead: The Lost Vikings (2000)
Ties up loose ends
What happened to a dozen boatloads of Vikings who settled the west coast of Greenland in the early Middle Ages, grew to a village of thousands of people, left mountains of evidence of their lives there but very few written records, and then disappeared? In less than an hour, you get a rather complete picture of many aspects of their lives. Who knew you could easily die in your 30's from middle ear disease?
I could extrapolate to similar studies of settlements of prehistoric man. The differences are thousands of years in the past and the lack of a handful of written documents. This settlement went extinct as have so many in ancient times, but the species and subspecies did not. Forensic and circumstantial evidence, and some writings, are sufficient evidence to prove that these were human beings. Actually the dating does and there is no question of that. But for earlier times and without writing, would the rest of the evidence be sufficient? Can you be a human being if you are illiterate? If all of your tribe is? If your colony evolved on a land mass isolated from places where their necessities prompted them to invent writing? As I indicated at the start of this paragraph, this documentary does not address this question, but their research parallels other such studies.
Xploration Earth 2050: Future of Food (2014)
Who sponsored the lab food segment, Bill Gates?
"How safe is it to eat?
"(Cultured beef) is as safe as regular beef. If you produced the tissue and you end up with the same tissue as beef, there's no reason to assume that its going to be unsafe. So you can just start to let people eat it."
So many qualifiers. This TV series was produced before Covid and its vaccines and Big Pharma's exaggerated unproven claims and the actual adverse drug reactions.
The beef is produced from stem cells from cattle in a lab. There is no actual digestive tract, or liver or kidneys. It doesn't graze like cattle do. How can it be the same?
Throughout the program a young hip attractive narrator says: Scientists say or Critics say, and then makes some unsupported claim. A casual viewer might think: So it must be so, and does not think: There's an unsupported claim. If he hears it often enough he'll believe it, propagandists say. But must it be so? Because of what the narrator looks like? Because he smiles and looks straight into the camera?
The episode ends with the closing argument and a smile: "No animal laid waste to a pasture. It sounds like a win-win."
Another half-truth and another qualifier.
The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
Sweet little Girls become Royal Personages, but how?
The Other Boleyn Girl is not as artsy as Anne of the Thousand Days or The Lion in Winter, which also have their shortcomings. TOBG explores the human side of these historical figures. As much as we might mock dead white men (and women?) they did have hormones, which demonstrably motivate state figures from Helen of Troy and Cleopatra to WJC.
I see Scarlett Johansson more as eye-candy than actress. While she has avoided sex-exploitation films for the most part, I feel she gets so many good roles in Hollywood due to her physical attributes.
Natalie Portman on the other hand, I've liked her in everything I've seen: The Professional, Mars Attacks!, Where the Heart Is, Garden State, V for Vendetta. In TOBG she displays more depth of emotion especially in the gallows scene - I can't recall having seen any done better. Sorry about giving away the ending but it's an historical fact we should all have learned already.
The last half hour of the film covers several years of history. Inserting titles with the date and place would have helped the audience with the scope and provided gravity which professional film critics eat up. There are titles at the end of the film which tell how the characters fared afterward. One or two more foils on the next generation's sweet little girls would have underscored the cruelty and suffering of the period: the Marian Persecutions and Elizabeth's year imprisoned in the Tower of London before she takes the throne.
There are some serious actors in supporting roles: Eric Bana (won the Best Actor at the 2000 Stockholm Film Festival and also the AFI 2000 Best Actor Award), Kristin Scott Thomas (won a 2008 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress of her performance in "Seagull" at the Playhouse), David Morrissey (worked at theatre such as the Manchester Royal Exchange and the National Theatre), Mark Rylance (nominated for a 2003 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor of 2002 for his performance in Twelfth Night)
all references from their IMDb bio's.
The Howards of Virginia (1940)
Not a documentary, but much more realism than Hollywood can capture today
Sad that so many Cary Grant fans had their bubbles burst. It certainly was strange to see him play such a character, but did anyone have any problems with the actors who played the other backwoodsmen? Grant could not have played his dapper persona while being from the Shenandoah Valley, especially in scenes with those crude and embarrassing frontiersmen and women. They must have been extras. I doubt if that kind of acting is taught at UCLA or Princeton.
One reviewer was critical of the director because the irony of Matthew Howard turning into a kind of Fleetwood Peyton was not portrayed. But from early on in the movie, Tom Jefferson and Matt Howard thought it would be grand to develop the 1,000 acres in the Shenandoah Valley into a PLANTATION. That was the American Dream, to achieve success through hard work. Then it meant that the most successful planter had slaves and went to Congress. But Matt Howard didn't want to run at first, and when pressed said he would go if only to improve the roads and bridges and repeal the Stamp Act. He had no thoughts of aristocratic power unlike Fleetwood.
Anyone see John Wayne in The Searchers? Early in the film he wanted to murder his niece Natalie Wood because she was kidnapped and lived with the Redskins. He too was playing a character from an earlier time when there were other mores.
Talk about provincialism! It's thriving even today.
Collectivism versus individualism is being played out today on these movie reviews. Am I being too critical to suggest that those who are most critical of this move are doing so on political rather than on artistic grounds?
July 4, 2009
I watched the film again this year on TV. It's becoming an Independence Day (don't call it the 4th of July) classic, something like Jimmy Stewart's the 25th of December classic, "It's a Wonderful Life."
I can't answer all the other reviewers individually here. Basically, I suspect that the "Cary Grant as Matt Howard" detractors are either in love with the suave Cary Grant or are against the political principles of Matt Howard. His performance in the beginning as a backwoodsman was energetic and realistic. He pulled no punches. The depiction of his friends as toothless and illiterate, and his love and respect for them was outstanding. His speechifying at the conclusion, espousing the distinctly American virtues of freedom, self-reliance and industriousness, sounded heartfelt.
I don't know what Cary Grant felt later about the film, but the film is essential now both as a political debate and a period piece.
Read the reviews at the Cary Grant web site: some of them written when the film came out in 1940 when we were allied with England in WW II. Think about today's political climate, what with tea-partyers (the original Boston Tea party was referred to in the movie) and the current debate on levels of taxation and government controls (the Stamp Act was also a plot element in the movie).
Also, in case there's some doubt, Cary Grant wasn't always perfectly elegant. Early in his career he played a heavy. "In a string of films he had supporting parts, including the heavy who nearly destroys Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus 1932) and Mae West's foil in She Done Him Wrong (1933) and I'm No Angel (1933)."
Later in his career, after he had established his elegant style, he played in a couple less-than-exemplary roles, costarring with Jayne Mansfield in 1957 in "Kiss Them for Me" and playing a heartless swindler and a Cockney in 1943 in "Mr Lucky."
I don't see why he can't play against type in this patriotic film. Maybe he was still trying to establish his bona fides as an actor, or he could have believed in the principles of Matt Howard.
In support of the second theory, Cary Grant became an American citizen on June 26th, 1942. Might not he actually believed the lines he was reading because that is what they were teaching our naturalized citizens in those days?
July 4, 2010