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knm5
Reviews
Finding Graceland (1998)
bad, bad, bad
I found this on the shelf while housesitting and bored. How can people possibly give this a 10? It's not just that it's supposed to be a feel-good redemption film (I think), because it doesn't work on that level either. Weak plot, bad dialogue, terrible acting; there's just nothing there. Harvey Keitel is decent, but has nothing to work with, and Bridget Fonda and especially Johnathon Schaech are just terrible. The plot progression (especially the relationship between Byron and Ashley) makes no sense. It seems like the writers wanted the plot to go a certain way and made it, without actually writing in the necessary bits to make it flow. It's only an hour and a half, but that's 90 minutes of your life you'll never get back.
Bloody Sunday (2002)
What's the point of a great movie if you can't watch it?
I left this movie after about 10 minutes with an intense headache. Not only the handheld camera but the rapid cuts among several threads were extremely bothersome, even if they didn't make me sick. Also, the words are difficult to understand not only because of the accents, but because the sound is terrible; it's very muddy, so that you'd never be able to hear what's being said no matter how loud you turn it up. I don't think I'd understand the words even if they were spoken by Americans.
I don't doubt other peoples' comments that it's a very moving film, but it seems like a wasted effort if it's difficult to impossible to watch. Sort of like the Dogma films, which were similarly often good stories ruined by (intentionally) bad cinematography and sound (though at least when shown here they have subtitles).