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The Relic (1997)
Old stuff but not so bad...
I was expecting to switch off the movie within minutes of watching it... as it looked like an old 80s horror flick. Yes it *is* a horror flick of more than a decade ago. The special effects are dated and no doubt unimpressive by today's standards. The main actors, I barely know. However the movie isn't that crap. I didn't turn it off and instead it kept me watching all the way till the end. What this movie has are some good (though sometimes cheesy) lines, plot development, and very importantly, pace. It is fast-paced, and things don't take forever to happen. They just happen so fast! For what the special effects technology lacked in those days, the actual murder scenes showing the remains of dead persons (and there aren't that many in this movie) are not realistic or scary. Instead, most of the murders are shown as "suggestions" of what gruesome stuff might have happened to the victims - loads of blood splattering about, the look of terror on their faces before they met their maker, the frantic but failed attempts to escape, etc. - those scenes were what made the movie more realistic and gory. Also I stayed on to the end because the main characters were interesting to watch - they all had like very distinct, strong personalities - not always likable or pleasant people, but a bit eccentric, quirky, rude, irritating at times. And there is a bit of mystery about what that horrible "thing" really is and what caused it to be that way... and you'll know if you watch till the end. Anyways, not too bad a film for a late night staying in.I wouldn't recommend purchasing it though, but if you can watch it for free, its not too bad.
Derailed (2005)
B grade film
At first I thought wow, Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston, 2 big names. Might be good. I was a bit disappointed. Aniston's character is very flat and one-dimensional in the movie - very forgettable. Clive's acting is convincing, but the plot sucks. The villain (Vincent Cassel) looked pathetic and hardly scary. Even though he commits lots of violent acts in the movie, he really doesn't inspire fear in me. He actually looked more convincing dressed up as an office colleague of Clive Owen's in one particular scene, than when he's dressed as a street thug. Perhaps its because he's a bit too skinny and his skin is too good, perhaps its because his facial features looking more like a 17th century European aristocrat than some Chicago street thug. I think he'd probably do better acting as a psycho-killer rather than a professional thug.
By the end of the movie, I was really unimpressed. Yes the plot didn't really turn out like anyone had suspected, but its more of a "oh right, so what?" feeling I had, rather than a "oh my god. I can't believe it" feeling. By then I was just waiting, sitting there, hoping that something good - something really good - better come along soon, because I've not even gotten excited yet. But it never happened - and I never got excited or scared once throughout the whole movie.
I really wouldn't pay to watch this at the cinema - it would be like when I watched SWAT at the movies a few years ago. It feels like my money would be better spent elsewhere. Probably okay to watch this at home if you didn't have to pay like full price to rent this - if this movie was in the bargain bins somewhere in the video store.
The Machinist (2004)
Gripping
First off, I almost could not believe that Christian Bale lost that much weight to play the part. It looked like 2 completely different men. That's a lot of dedication put into the acting - I think. Secondly, I really didn't expect to be drawn into the movie quite as much as I did. The atmosphere throughout was dark, gray, chilling, never quite knowing what to expect in the next scene. I found myself trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together alongside Trevor, as weird thing after weird thing happened. The sense of hallucination from a severe lack of sleep is very well-portrayed here, and you can sense Trevor's frustration as images seem to fade as quick as they appear, and he feels he's losing his grip on what's real and what's not real. Its a bit like a horror movie, except there are no real ghosts in this show, just "ghosts of his past"...
And when the show comes to its conclusion, it all makes sense, and you also feel (as Trevor must feel at the end of the show) a great sense of respite... though the movie did seem rather sad too as I realised what was really happening, at the end. I felt sad for Trevor's life.
Closer (2004)
Silly, unrealistic, and bad character development.
This film is all about its main characters getting themselves confused between sexual attraction and love. Love in such relationships obviously involves sexual attraction, but what this film doesn't do well is to portray these characters as human beings who can, for one day, just understand love without having to talk about sex at *all* times. Everything they do and talk about in this movie about sex. That's not a bad thing in itself, but this movie addresses boy-girl relationships in a very narrow way. These characters just can't wait to jump each other, and then later torment each other with endless interrogation made up of repetitive boring unrealistic questions about what they experienced during their sex acts while cheating on each other. I say the word "unrealistic" here a lot, because half the time I was amazed (in a bad way) at how silly the way these characters talk to each other. I mean, come on. Who talks and asks each other such endless repetitive boring meaningless questions day in, day out anyway? I say "meaningless" because these questions are often in the form of "Did you cum?", "Was he a good f***?", "Now that you've f**ked him/her, who do you love more??" LOVE?? Since when did real love have to be judged on the basis of one's sexual performance during a romping session?? I don't know. It just seems like a pretty shallow movie to me. Perhaps that's what the director wanted to portray : shallow human beings who dominate our current world, where good looks and a cunning ability to manipulate and control other people makes all the difference between a "loser" and a "winner". However, the poor character development fails to redeem this movie. The juxtaposition of time in this movie doesn't help either. Basically every other element in the movie helps reduce these main characters to mere pretty but bland creatures with a very one-dimensional quality to their personas. We are not told anything more about what these characters do outside of their bedroom affairs and their non-stop meaningless chitchat about their sexual preferences. BORING. Considering they have quite a strong cast in this movie, the director could have made more use out of them by tweaking the movie script a little, focusing on more things in life and not simply the one-dimensional focus on sex and chitchat about sexual preference. Its simply not realistic at all. Okay, movies are allowed to be fantasies, they are allowed to be non-realistic, and they can still be good (Look at "Amelie", for example!) But this show is NOT fantasy at all. It can be real, if you live in such a narrow world where you spend all your time manipulating 2 different girl/boyfriends, jilting one for the other periodically, and then getting angry when they do the same to you, and then endlessly bombarding them with boring repetitive questions like a pseudo-psychiatrist. But I don't live in such a world. So I can't empathise.
Not only that, people who want to see this movie thinking its a sexy film with pretty nude bodies may be disappointed to realise after watching this, that the closest thing to sexiness in this movie is seeing Natalie Portman prance around as a stripper in the strip club towards the end (and don't get your hopes too high either. She never really strips, not even reveal her bosom, LOL!) Basically just a really pointless silly movie. After I watched it, I felt disappointed. Yet because I remembered seeing so many glowing reviews everywhere raving about this movie, I thought I must have missed out something great about the movie, so I tried to rehash the movie in my head, trying to see some hidden great meaning, some hidden gem of a great truth that I failed to see whilst watching the movie. Yet hours have passed by, and nope. I still fail to see what's so good, "intelligent", or "real" about the movie.
I will give this movie 3 points out of 10. One point for Natalie Portman's performance. She can easily be touted the best actress in this whole movie, especially considering how young she is, her performance is spectacular. One more point, this time for the somewhat unpredictable ending. I like unpredictable endings in movies. Unfortunately this is probably the only thing that kept me watching this movie all the way through, because the movie simply sucks in most other respects. One more point, this time for the great soundtrack. You know, there's not one single song I heard in the movie that I disliked. In fact, most every song I heard, I wanted to hear it a second time, a third time, etc... In fact, I think the soundtrack for this movie is so good, it actually helps (alongside the unpredictable ending) to pull the whole movie together, to make the movie more tolerable.
If I want a dose of reality, I take a walk outside of my house and interact with people. Depressive as reality may sometimes seem, its still nothing as bleak as the reality which this movie portrays and would have us believe. People sleep around, yeah but not to the extent of living like the sick unlikeable people that this movie is all about. Overall, a movie which is not that likable, yet not that unlikeable, but I tend a bit more towards it being unlikeable.
Gloria (1980)
Cult classic??
This movie is similar to Leon's storyline. Tough loner streetwise gun-wielding woman with connections to the Mob saves a kid from a family-murder committed by the mob. Mob goes searching for kid because he is "evidence" for the police. Woman starts to really like the kid and goes to great lengths to protect him, at the cost of her own safety. The only difference between Gloria and Leon, is that Leon's protagonist was a man, whilst in Gloria it was a woman, and that in Leon, the main protagonist dies in the end, whereas in Gloria she lives.
Gena Rowlands, the main actress in Gloria, has a face which reminds me of Jane Curtin (who acts in Third Rock From The Sun)! The boy whom she looks after comes across as a smart aleck who always has something to say about everything. He's not awfully natural in the way he talks though, because his lines may be rather adult-like, but he says them as if he had spent days memorising them and had to regurgitate all of it on the film set!
The movie is rife with one-liners which sometimes really come across as cheesy, but some people like watching movies with this type of dialogue, and as I had nothing much to do one night, I had all the time in the world to try and appreciate this late-night movie on TV! I have to say though, that although I initially was quite put off by the cheesy dialogues, Gena Rowland's character began to grow on me and I eventually started to like every single cheesy line that spouted from her gob. She doesn't appear to me to be a terribly "tough-looking" moll though, and its telling because somewhere in the middle of the movie, the boy had to say to her "You're so tough..." - is that an attempt by the director to try and project to us the audience that Gloria really is a toughie, even though she fails to project to us by her own performance and appearance that she really is tough??? I don't know, yet I can see how this movie is destined to belong on those video racks classified as "Cult Classics". Its soundtrack, for one, is very very typical of the era in which the movie was shot. We never get movies which play music like that anymore. This is point one which makes it a possible cult classic. Another point that makes this show a cult classic is the cheesy one-liner Mafia scripts. Surely there's pleasure to be had in enjoying one of these movies every now and then! We can even learn a thing or two! Heh! Third point is the strong feminine gangster character which is the centre of the show. There are probably people out there who love watching movies which feature a strong streetwise heroine as a winner in the end. Other such movies that come to mind include Jackie Brown, Crazy in Alabama... need I say more?
I'd recommend this movie for anyone who likes Mafia movies or for those who just love to see a tough gun-yielding woman win the day!
Artemisia (1997)
Good film but historically inaccurate
I'm normally a sucker for romantic films which are well-filmed and well-acted out. This is a romantic (period) film set in 17th-century Italy, but filmed in French with English subtitles. The fact that it is a period film means it will inevitably be slower-paced than films set in the modern day era, so it Will bore some. If you can overlook that fact, it is actually a really good film. The scenery, the costumes, and the cinematography are beautiful, and the main actors and actress are very compelling in their portrayals, projecting the intensity of the emotions that are running through the plot. The story is like a sad love story with an unhappy ending. Its easy to believe that this is an accurate portrayal of the real-life characters. In spite of the fact that I was really moved by the main characters and the storyline, I decided to check out the validity of the story and found out that the main theme of the movie's story - that of an sad unfinished love story - was completely fabricated.
In real life, Artemisia was raped by Tassi initially, rather than submitting to his advances willingly and passionately as the movie had portrayed. She continued to have sexual relations with him only because he had repeatedly promised to marry her. When they were in court, he had *not* admitted guilt of rape out of pity for Artemisia's torture (unlike what the movie portrays). In reality, he had tried to portray Artemisia as a loose, promiscuous woman with insatiable sexual urges. In the movie, his sister testified in court that Tassi had a wife and had sexual relations with his sister-in-law, and Tassi's character was all the while made to appear as if his sister had been slandering him regarding his alleged affair with his sister-in-law (although he admits to having had a wife back in Florence). Needless to say, in reality it wasn't really like that at all. In fact, far from it. Tassi was really responsible in the planned murder of his wife, whom he had begotten from rape. And to add to that, Tassi really had sexual relations with his sister-in-law, impregnating her in the process, but all this wasn't really mutual as well - again, he had raped his sister-in-law before.
So now we have a clear picture of the real Tassi as a multiple sex offender, what do we make of the film Artemisia's portrayal of him as a lover? We take it as an attempt to make this movie into a romantic film... that this film was never made to be historically accurate... Apart from these points just mentioned, there were other historical inaccuracies like in its interpretation of Artemisia's art (in real-life, she was never really influenced by Tassi's painting style, and she was actually considered a much better painter than Tassi ever was.) One thing remains true and its the fact that Artemisia Gentileschi has been credited as the first woman painter in history, and although her mastery of the art rivalled many of her male peers, she had always experienced difficulty in getting enough credit for her work because of her gender as a woman, in 17th century Italy.
Enjoy this film for its own sake, for it is a pretty good romantic drama, but take its historical references with a grain of salt.