Reviews

I blame my initial reaction to this film (I originally scored it a 1) on the totally inept criticism it has gotten in the press. The critics totally missed it. I love a good scare: "Les Diaboliques", "The Innocents", "An American Werewolf in London", "The Shining" "Psycho", "The Thing" (original version). But this is NOT a horror movie. It may, on the surface be considered a psychological thriller, more like "Se7en", "Mulholland Dr.", "Lost Highway", "The Wicker Man", all but the last I loved. Several critics seemed to be going in this direction, but even they didn't get it completely right, I don't think. With "Midsommar", when the movie was over and I was leaving the theater, I felt like I had wasted $11 (senior price) and 2 hrs and 20 minutes of my remaining life by seeing this movie. Some things in the film just ticked me off, as they would have in any movie: I don't like it when the director *manipulates* scenes--such as the camera angle going into the commune. "Hey, viewer, watch out, your world is going to be turned upside down now." Talk about telescoping an idea!! Could it have been motivated by a shot of the main character looking up through a sun roof in the car? Yeah. Maybe I missed it, but just flipping the view like that was intrusive--"Look at me, Mom. I got a camera for Christmas and look what I can do!" And if you're going to psychedelically CG a shot, focus it: the table spread at one of the dinners was magnificent, but the CG effect bled all over the screen: everything moved. It was distracting and pulled focus from the scene. And now I'll jump to some other silly stuff: in a ceremony that was supposed to be so revered and holy in that "culture", it is ended with a sledgehammer. Oh? Yeah, the director and writer(s) say it really was a custom in days of yore in Sverige. Ok, people have always been nutty all over the world. Welcome to Anthropology 101. But next: what the stupid set up for the bear just to be used that way in the end. Why? What was the connection? But the writer(s) did build that lack of motivation right into the script: one of the characters asks about the bear and a local says that he doesn't have the time to explain everything or want to. But without some connection, I felt that it would have been better if they had used an ass. That would have been more symbolically appropriate. But is that too much of a sledgehammer too? And that sex scene was absolutely the most ludicrous, gratuitous, but hilarious sex scenes I have ever seen. According to an interview with the director, it was supposed to objectify men, depict the vulnerability and ways used to portray women in horror films. But, hey, I counted about 12 pudenda and only 1 penis. So maybe this scene worked for the character (and the actor), but it was gratuitous for the audience, I felt. And when that one old Svenska assisted our hero in performing, I thought I'd lose it. I was the only person in the audience laughing out loud; others were sniggering, like they were embarrassed school children at the zoo watching animals copulating. Was this what the director wanted? I say YES! and he succeeded. So as I sat there I suddenly realized that I was not watching a horror film or a psychological thriller, but a black comedy. The critics had this movie all wrong. It was supposed to be funny, uncomfortably funny, laugh out loud funny at the absurdity of the whole thing. All cultures do stupid stuff. And then at the end, there's that big clump of May flowers with our heroine, the "May" Queen, peering out (uuuhhhh "midsommar"?) crawling in front of the camera in front of that burning building. Not only do the hills have eyes, but the flower arrangement walks and talks! She looked like the Duck Lady at the end of "Freaks" or a float in The Mummers' Parade (Philadelphia culture). And why does our heroine romp around the maypole like a native-born Swede? It's a ceremony to purge the psychological demons from her psyche. And what about all that angst and grief over her family? Listen to her wail to her boyfriend for consolation in the first part of the film. Remember it when she is joined by a chorus of women in the village at the end. The women begin by mimicking, it seems, her grief, but then genuinely join her. How wonderfully Euripidean. Only women can console this woman, more than that ass, I mean bear, of a boyfriend could. I therefore mistakenly hoped something would wipe that stupid expression off her face (see publicity photo of film). "Ah, Flo? Give me your best expression of Liebesschmerz. Great! Now hold it for half an hour or so." And the group's manic reaction at the end was a nice comment on bravado expressions of grief. It is therefore my plan NOT to read reviews ever again before I see a film. Had I gone in totally unaware of what the critics had said, I would have laughed my unprompted ass off and enjoyed the film. I probably would have scored it higher, but I didn't enjoy the film as much as I could have while it was happening because of the mis-advice. (And now I'll preach to the choir master: I aint gonna review no pictures no more. I'll take a bit of my own medicine, thank you very much.)

I didn't like this film, and I didn't think Anniston's performance as a straight actress was anything to write home about. I found her portrayal very one-note. I found the plot rather disjointed, and because of that I became disinterested in the story, the people, and their interactions. Anniston's struggle wasn't of interest to me, because I didn't see much of the cause, knowing only that she was using pain-killers excessively. What the connection between her suffering and the previous suffering of the suicide in her support group didn't come across to me. More than being a revelation of character and empathy and sympathy, the ending just made me feel like she somehow miraculously became either pain-free or drug-free.

This is a dull, boring, one-note movie. There is nothing at all interesting about it, except perhaps the sets! The plot plods. Most of the scenes are monotonous, repetitive, and the actors seem to be sleep-walking through the script. I was totally disinterested in the two major characters. They both seemed lifeless. In terms of the plot, everyone by now knows what it's about, but what bothered me was that the very premise of a relationship with Grey was not completed and yet the relationship proceeded. This was contradictory, unexplained, and didn't seem to fit the character of Grey at all. Perhaps this is better brought out in the book, but here, it just makes for a very confusing impression of one of the main characters. At several points Grey makes a point about his sleeping pattern, for example, but then completely contradicts himself by doing what he says he never does. Is this supposed to depict a person in turmoil, in conflict? In transition? To me, it just seemed like an inconsistency in character depiction. I kept checking the time to see how much longer I had to endure this film.

The director's cut is the only way to watch volume 1 and volume 2. It's rough going, particularly volume 2, but the full version gives such a total depiction of the characters that is lost in the shorter cuts. Volume 1 features a somewhat short but mind-blowing performance by Uma Thurman. She gives such a staggeringly marvelous portrayal of a cheated-on wife that steals the movie. At the end of her scene, my jaw dropped. I gasped. I laughed. I caught my breath. I was mesmerized during it. It was perfect! But be forewarned: this movie is extremely sexually explicit, whether prosthetics are used or not. As the credits indicate, the "stars" do not have penetrating sex scenes, but their doubles sure do. So avoid this film if you are in any way offended by explicit sex and nudity. The story is interesting as it develops and we see how the main character, a nymphomaniac, develops and handles her life. The narrative has an interesting structure, and the division into chapters is extremely effective. Volume 2 is excruciatingly graphic. Again, there is nudity, and the sex is explicit, but there is also a graphic depiction of a medical procedure that grates, shocks, and disgusts, no matter what one's moral or political beliefs are. This was the first von Trier film I had ever scene. It is indeed shocking, but he creates mood and feeling like the best: Lynch and Jodorowsky come to mind.

Well, I must admit I got sucked in because Kelsey Grammar was hyped in the ads as part of the cast. The made-for-TV film started out interesting, in a way, with Kelsey stumbling manically with throbbing boiled forehead o'er the ramparts of Jerusalem. OK. He is sufficiently disturbed, and does an OK job. What else do you want from Herod? Next, we get a believable-looking Jesus. Yeah, somebody who could be from that region of the world, not some white-washed European version on a holy card. Oh, some may say, but that ain't the Jesus I pray to. No? I think Jesus was Afro-Asian or Hamito-Semitic, not a bearded Caucasian. There is a difference. Anyway... Good casting, but his wig was frightful. Didn't look like real hair at all. Was that on purpose? The story actually started out pretty good. It seemed like this wasn't going to be just a simple parroting of the story many, many people know by heart. There was character development in the beginning and interesting interaction between the characters, but then as the story progressed, it was as if the plot got away with everyone and things were hurried up and sped up to get to the conclusion. One weirdness is that when Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter, one of the (what I thought was one of the lesser educated) apostles says in an aside to another apostle (and so the audience gets the reference) that Peter is the Greek word for "rock". Well, aside from the fact that there is some debate on the real Jesus' knowledge of Greek vs. poetic license of the authors of the gospels, it was interesting what the script writer and director "left in" and what they "left out" of this Biblical depiction of Jesus' life. I also found the last scene in which Peter gets a boat- load of fish like once before and deduces that "He is risen" or does he say "He's back!"? laughable.

That title is the worst of a bland movie. Why is love strange? Because it involves two geriatric men? Some of the story just didn't make sense, e.g. the couple's adamant decision to settle for their living arrangements after the employment episode. Hey, you could rent a studio walk-up in Bayonne, for God's sake! But at least then you'd be together. And couldn't a lawsuit have been brought up for job discrimination? Not knowing the legalities of their relationship in New York, at least the writers could have thrown in a line or two just to clarify that issue. But yeah, as a former New Yorker, I'd balk at having to live in Poughkeepsie, too. But things just didn't connect. Some scenes were intrusive, e.g. the letter-writing to the students. And the last very LONG LONG skateboarding in the final scene with that sun-going-down sepia tone. Was that manipulative or what?

The performances of Lithgow and Molina, however, are very subtle and nuanced. They're worth the watch. And Marisa Tomei does a nice, supporting role. Darren Burrows as Eliot just didn't gel for me at all. Eric Tabach as Vlad was quite good. Charlie Tahan was annoying. Cheyenne Jackson and Manny Perez seemed to walk through the movie, as did John Cullum. Granted, the latter 3 had small roles, but I guess when you see an actor with a name, you expect something a little bit more.

I wanted to like this film, because of the subject matter: an old gay couple facing senior problems. But I felt the director pulling and pushing, and not letting the story happen.

Last night I watched a documentary I had recorded previously on HBO: "Night Will Fall". It is a documentary of the filming of the macabre consequences after the Holocaust by Alfred Hitchcock (and Billy Wilder secondarily). It is positively harrowing. As a film, it isn't well put together. Like another reviewer here, I couldn't rate the film itself higher because I just didn't think it was assembled very well.

It has a sub-text in which the British and Americans vie over the making of the actual documentary which isn't told very well. It's scattered, superficial, and in the long-run rather pointless. But as for its major subject matter, the extermination of so many men, women, and children, it is relentless. It is brutally blunt, and in that there's a point: how the hell can you put together images of such atrocities artistically? You can only record (document) the horror. I cannot get those images out of my head.