Change Your Image
bobshef
Reviews
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
A Political Cartoon
I think you can appreciate Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 best by thinking of it as a political cartoon rather than as a documentary or, as Michael Moore himself suggests, an op-ed piece.
You don't look for objectivity in a political cartoon. You don't even look for truth. You expect to see the cartoonist's opinion. You expect his opinion to be expressed in extreme hyperbole. The images in a political cartoon are caricatures. They are easily recognizable, but they are not intended to be accurate depictions.
So, this is what Fahrenheit 9/11 is: it's a political cartoon, and a very well done one.
The Majestic (2001)
Cliched, predictable, corny, sappy, WONDERFUL!
In the '50's this might have been considered a great movie. Sure, I knew how it would end and could predict almost every step along the way. The only thing I missed was I thought the background music at the end would be "...a hundred yellow ribbons 'round the old oak tree." But I cried and cheered anyway. Ok, so it's schmaltzy. We need more movies like this, especially after 9-11.
When Billie Beat Bobby (2001)
Outstanding performances
Holly Hunter as Billie Jean King gives her usual great performance, and Ron Silver is absolutely brilliant as Bobby Riggs. The story told me a lot I didn't know about the things that went on leading up to the match. One major revelation was what Bobby Riggs inadvertently did for women's tennis and women's liberation.
Two Family House (2000)
Kathrine Narducci is outstanding
All of the performances in this movie are superb. After reading other reviews, I felt I had to comment especially on Kathrine Narducci's performance because most reviewers either didn't comment on her performance or disliked either her performance or the way her character Estelle was written. I think her character and the way it was written and her performance were all extremely well done. Estelle is multifacited, and Narducci played all the facits perfectly, I thought. Most obviously, Estelle's a shrew and narrow-minded. But she cares about her place in her community, her husband, and about others (Mary) in trouble (up to a point). And she was afraid. She was afraid to go beyond her community. She was afraid of what others might think of her and her husband. The fear caused her shrewishness. And I think Narducci showed all these things extremely well.
Jungle Fever (1991)
In this movie, Spike Lee shows he knows people
Jungle Fever will make my top 100 easy. It's characters and their relationships are all so true. How does somebody as young as Spike Lee was when he made this movie get so wise? He especially has down the differences between men and women in how they view the world. Flipper's wife says he left her when, in his view, she threw him out. When Flipper says that the woman he was unfaithful with means nothing, it's true as far as he's concerned in the context of his relationship with his wife. But no way can he and his wife communicate these feelings. Women have a world view where everything is relevant to everything else. Men compartmentalize.