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garrettwhaynes
Reviews
Como agua para chocolate (1992)
A beautiful story of love, and food
By no means a perfect movie, but it's a beautiful one. Family, love, betrayal, death, magical and wonderful foods, star crossed lovers. It is a love story, a coming of age story, and a generational family drama all woven together. It's a movie that I would watch again. I feel like it fumbled a few times though, especially at the end, but my guess is this was due to editing. There seemed like there were pieces missing and a few plot points here and there that needed better transitions, but like I said they may have been there and were edited out possibly due to time constraints. Would be great to see this movie in a more filled our version. Wonderful film.
Paths of Glory (1957)
A Beief Treatise on War and Humanity
Wonderful film, however I wish it was longer. The themes could have been explored more deeply. Not merely a war flick, but a look at how war brings out the various aspects of our humanity. Idealism, patriotism, courage, justice, duty and also baseness, lust, dishonesty, greed, and vain ambition.
I love the scene at the end where Kirk Douglas is standing outside the tavern. As his men whoop and holler, lusting after the woman on stage, you can see Douglas losing his faith in humanity with every lecherous cheer. Then quietly at first, the woman starts to sing. The men slowly pause one by one, as the simple familiar song brings to them feelings of home, family, childhood, innocence, purity, as only the softness and warmth of a woman could evoke.
Then the camera returns to Douglas, and you can see as he hears the men hum along, that a glimmer of hope returns, and he knows there is still humanity in his men, there is still something in all of them worth living and fighting for. One of his men comes to him with news that they are to head back to the front the next day, and the colonel puts on his hat again and resumes his command and returns to his office. There is enough hope to fight another day.
The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
Soooooo disappointed, worst than imaginable.
This movie is one giant piece of disgusting, messy, "meta" garbage. If I could give it less than 1 star I would. I couldn't imagine this movie being worse. It makes me think of a college student who is trying to make his first movie and had this grand idea and doesn't know how to pull it off and it ends up a ridiculous piece of garbage that anyone who is trying to like it will say that it's "avant-garde". It's hard to believe the same man who made Citizen Kane has any connection to this trash. The small aspect ratio feels way too cramped. The erratic, jumpy editing style makes you feel sick, not just from all the jumping around but the meaningless of it all. The dialogue is awkward, cheesy, tasteless, and worst of all pointless as the movie has no plot. The movie being made within the movie is awful, full of amateur porn like scenes, long awkward glances, and pointless running around in the desert. What's worse than watching an awful movie is watching an awful movie within an awful movie. Hannaford, a hemingwayesque character, is an old foul lecherous jerk who people worship for unknown reasons. Maybe that is the point of this movie? That people worship this disgusting alcoholic shell of a man even though he really doesn't deserve it. And the midgets? What is with the midgets? No, I'm not making this up. Absolutely awful. Really, do not waste your time with this garbage of a film and keep your respect for Welles and remember his better days.
The End of the Tour (2015)
A Real Guy
The thing I most enjoyed about this movie was that it appears to portray David Foster Wallace as he really was, a real, normal, regular guy. I've never read any of his work so I don't know how much of a genius he may or may not be, but everyone wants great writers to be like geniuses, not regular people. It's more exciting, alluring, and sexy. David knew this and hated this tendency of people. He knew that even if he was just behaving like himself, people would see it as an attempt from him at trying to appear like a regular guy, like he just pretends to be, when really he is a genius holding back. The fact however is that it is not an act. His realness is real and he wishes people knew that, that he wasn't acting or putting on. The realness of it, not the fiction, not the spin, not the story, or the scoop. Not so that he can prove some existential point but because it matters to him to connect with people.
What matters is to connect with someone, to love them, to do something kind for them, to talk with and be close to them. This is what's good, this is what matters. Not so that others can see how good of a guy you are and how loving you are. It's better to not have anyone see you love someone, so that way the only thing you have is the goodness felt with that person, that pure unadulterated goodness.
Hope and Glory (1987)
Classic Coming of Age Story
Well written, shot, and enjoyable classic coming of age during World War II autobiographical story by Boorman. I gave it 7 stars because some of it seems so standard for coming of age stories due to their ubiquity, but still enjoyable and better than many nonetheless. Love how the film ends with the bombing of the school and the grandfather laughing and the sweetness of stolen summer days.
The Tree of Life (2011)
Abstract Art on Film
If you are a fan of abstract art you may be able to like this movie. I, however, am not a fan of abstract art and did not like this film. To me it was incredibly boring, over bloated with quick cuts, and took over 2 hours to tell a story that could have been told in five minutes. There was basically no character development, story arc, or background on the family and therefore any drama that Malick tried to portray was meaningless. I didn't care about any of the characters because I didn't know anything about them. The montages of 'discovery channel' type imagery went on way too long and didn't add anything to the film for me one bit. From what I could tell they were not even original images, but looked like they were just borrowed from space and nature documentaries and strung together with quick cuts. The only reason why I gave this 4 stars instead of one is because visually the film is very beautiful and well shot (if you can even see a shot long enough to tell with the incessant quick cutting). Also, even though the actors had next to nothing to work with, you could tell they did their best to portray deep emotion and so I give them credit for that. Regardless, merely filming close-ups of emotional facial expressions, no matter how deep looking, is not a substitute for quality writing. If there isn't quality dialogue and character development along with the deeply emotional facial expressions, then they become almost comical, same as if you saw someone on the other side of a window with a funny expression on their face. You laugh because you have no context to understand why they are making that face. Hopefully this stream of consciousness, new-age, abstract style is not a new phase for Malick and he will return to quality film making that actually means something.
X+Y (2014)
I usually enjoy kid prodigy films but this one was... meh
The person that this movie was based on I am sure had a really hard time losing his dad and dealing with his autism, however in the movie the performance given by Asa Butterfield is as one dimensional as you can get. The majority of his scenes were him saying nothing at all, just sitting there with a dumb look on his face. FYI, please don't start criticizing me for this comment, I completely understand that he is portraying someone with autism and that they have a difficult time relating socially with people, what I am saying is that his portrayal just doesn't make for an interesting character in a film. His character was really boring. I am sure it is being true to life, but even at math he wasn't the best, he was just pretty good, at least good enough to get into a math Olympiad but barely! I am not sure what is supposed to be fascinating or interesting about this character?
Even with his autism the portrayal of him in the movie was of a shy socially awkward teenager who says mean things to his mom and isn't as "clever" as other boys. This could have been any number of normal awkward teenage boys, even though this one happened to have autism, it didn't add anything unique to his character. They tried to show some scenes of him walking around and seeing all of the lights in the city in double, I am assuming they were trying to show his light sensitivity or his synesthesia but it wasn't portrayed very vividly or in any way where a "normal" person could go, "oh is that what that is like? wow!". It was just him seeing some "blurry" lights. The other character, Jake, was actually way more interesting and deep than Asa's character. He had real issues and was actually interesting. He said things, he struggled, he fought with his peers, he fixated on that Monty Python film clip, he scratched himself. The scene of him in the bathroom was great. Real emotion, depth, and struggle. However in that scene, Asa didn't even say anything!! He just stood there, again, with a dumb look on his face.
I won't continue on and on, but I will just say the majority of the rest of the film was also cliché and slow. Girl meets awkward boy and falls for him anyway. Chinese girl who feels pushed to "succeed" for her family. Cliché idealized back flashes to main character and his dad. Etc. Etc. Overall really disappointed in this film.
My Old Lady (2014)
Mediocre Film
This film has a great cast, and seems to have potential with the DVD tag line reading, "A Classic in the Making". Maybe the person who penned this tag line was trying to be generous but they couldn't bring themselves to call it "An Instant Classic" so they were clever and said "A Classic in the Making" which is ambiguous and not necessarily critical, but does seem to imply that this film has not quite arrived.
I believe the director is to blame for this not being a better movie. He needed to bring more depth and emotion and realism out of the characters. The actors gave clichéd and strained performances and there was plenty material for this movie to play off. Set in Paris, secret lovers for decades, uncertain paternal origins, and tragic suicide. The impact was not there and although not a bad movie, it left much to be desired.