Reviews
Donnie Darko (2001)
a great movie of questionable design. if you're a theoretical physicist, get bent
Alright, alright. The people complaining are right: the treatment of theoretical physics in this movie is terrible. But who cares. The acting is universally solid, and exceptional in some cases. Patrick Swayze didn't blow me away, as he appeared to for many folks here: he played a slick scumbag for 95% of the movie, then cried with his face hidden in one scene. This shows better role selection, perhaps, but is not conclusive evidence of any great dramatic talent.
Richard Kelly's strengths are natural plotting, dialogue, and attention to detail. The use of a very specific date in the 80s would be a cheesy exercise in cashing in for most filmmakers, but here the time and place is captured in a manner comparable to Richard Linklater's Dazed & Confused.
*spoilers* What I am not as convinced of is that Kelly coherently understands his own plot. I've seen the film a few times and listened to the commentary track & deleted scenes -- in his commentary he talks a lot about the jet engine needing to be returned from the "parallel universe" in which most of the film unfolds. While I can understand this interpretation, I think ultimately it's a bit lame, and in particular brings up the issues of satisfying relativity that so many other posters have been complaining about. Declaring Donnie a "superhero" with special powers also doesn't do it for me.
But Kelly repeatedly encourages his audience to interpret the film individually, so here's my take. A deleted scene involved Frank revealing himself pretty clearly as being an agent of God. I think the events of the film are a private justification -- from God to Donnie -- for why Donnie has to die. It's almost like God wants to prove to Donnie that the world isn't as terrible as he suspects -- despite the fact that Donnie is going to have to give up his life to save others.
This interpretation brings up some questions -- is it better that Cunningham's proclivities would remain a secret? Doesn't the agent of God revealing how Donnie's presence in the world is destructive also the one who prompts him to much of that destruction?
But I do think it's more satisfying than some of the jet engine nonsense.
Kôkaku kidôtai (1995)
Beautiful, but sorely lacking as a film
Although this movie is unquestionable breathtaking from an animation standpoint, it leaves much to be desired as a cohesive narrative. The plot was not too confusing (other than trying to keep track of which government agency was Section 6, which was Section 9, and which was Section 8 -- I just gave up, and it turned out to not be particularly important), but it never really did anything with the premise it established. The action? Well, it was good, but there wasn't much of it. The philosophy? It wasn't particularly well developed, and the dialogue behind it was horrifically expository. The moody, atmospheric montages? Well, they were dead-on, but those simply can't define a movie by themselves. The filmmaker would have done well to have chosen a single theme and developed it in both cinematic sequences and the occasional burst of dialogue rather than only the latter. As it stands, the movie is painfully unsatisfying, and stands as a purely aesthetic achievement in my eyes. Oh yeah -- and the voice acting in the English-dubbed version was quite bad; particularly that of the protagonist. The philosophical exchange on the boat? She is inexcusably bad there. Not that the dialogue provides much to work with...
Frogtown II (1992)
I want 90 minutes of my life back
Ahh, Frogtown II. I caught this thing on USA around 2AM last night... I honestly can't believe this thing was only 90 minutes. They didn't even show that many commercials... yet I was up till 5:30 watching it. Oh GOD it hurt, but I had to sit through it. Intensely low-budget fx, a hero with a really weird jaw and about three crappy scifi movies' worth of premises jammed into one make for... well... somethin. Really, I can't believe this was shot on film. It's tremendously awful... no one had any idea what they were doing. My personal favorite is the four-minute long song sung by the frog-person band, apparently just to express the movies' animosity toward the teenage mutant ninja turtle franchise. But I don't want to sell short the evil twins, cyborg frog heads or texas rocket rangers. So I'll just say... save yourself. Cause once you start watching, you'll be forced to sit there "waiting for the good part", to make sure the universe makes sense, because nothing that bad could get worse, right? Well... let's just say I don't know what to believe in any more.