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Reviews
Falling Sky (1998)
Brit Murphy's Super Short Mini-skirt
One of the worse films I'd ever seen! I'm also on a quest to see every Brit Murphy film: She is a memorable performer and under the hands of the right director can bring to life the most adorable and unique characters (who can forget 'Daisy' or 'Elizabeth Berkins'!), but here she follows routine dialogue. The movie doesn't attempt to achieve believability- the way her character is dressed is contrary to her personality, how can they afford a decent house with the scraps they earn, how does someone like mom get a job so conveniently, etc.. Further more, we aren't surprised that they drive a classic car, we are not surprised that the daughter is the brightest kid in literature class, we are not surprised that her mother becomes a filthy ugly stripper in some drunken sleaze-hole, and we sho-as-hell wuzn't surprised nor entertained or even cared that the mom is dumber and more childish than the teenae daughter. Of course- every teenage girl movie must have an arsenal of dumb hormone driven male teens who cause trouble and one of them has to be a cute boy that she absolutely must fall in love with. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the plot being so unoriginal as long as the movie adds fresh material to keep it entertaining (this one doesn't). It lacked the most basic composition of every film- visual style. The music is cheesy. Things happen in the story simply because they'd already happened in other movies of the same formula. The subplots concerning the teenage boys and some hookers were pointless. I don't know why "Falling Sky" was made. Maybe it looked good on paper but then the entire project simply fell apart; probably because neither Brian J. Depalma nor the cast had any vision or enthusiasm for it.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
A PART OF OUR AMERICAN CULTURE!!!!!!
This movie is so famous, believable, and intriging that many rumors are circulated about it as if it were more than just a movie (which is basically all that it is). PULP FICTION is a perfect example of how effective a good film can be while becoming a part of American culture. It's one of those times when you want to seek the director and badger him with questions only to not recieve answers because shallowing a deep masterpiece would only take away the magic. PULP FICTION is not an exercize in creating thick plots but one in creating believable, charasmatic characters. All they do is talk simply because they're cool, funny, charming fictional people whom we love to see talking. The movie's primary way of entertaining us is by showing us how each person talks uniquely. And like every great film, it relies heavily on performance. It's one of my top ten and I give it a ***10****.
Gladiator (2000)
TOO MUCH HYPE
I haven't seen many of the films that came out last year, but there's no way the AMPAS is telling me that GLADIATOR is the best one of all of them. Anyway, I thought the movie was okay. I don't think I'll ever forget it, but it wasn't that good. What I like was the sense of masculinity I felt while watching it. The costume design was awesome, the score was good, and the set decoration was also good. But the cast was sort of boring, the characters didn't have a sense of humor and all of them were always bitter and they all act the same. Russell Crowe did a good job though. I thought Joaquin Phoenix's character weeps and wines too much; how could a great cesar raise someone who's the exact opposite of him? And how come he is always kissing everyone? And the battle scenes could've been better. I didn't enjoy them too much because they're built on messy close-ups of blood rather than strategy. No one in the audience could tell what's going on during the fight scenes because the camera was always pointing in the wrong direction and when it was pointing in the right direction, the scene would change chaotically. For example, when the horses on the chariots kept crashing, I was too busy trying to figure out why they're crashing instead of enjoying it. And the sound kept skipping too! I thought HOLLOW MAN should have won best visual fx instead. But who cares!
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
*RYDER AND JOLIE WERE KISSING!!!!!!!*
I absolutely loved this movie!!!!!!! I fell in love with it instantly. Now it's my second favorite of all time! Winona is the BEST actress in Hollywood. She's way *hotter* than all of them, and that includes Jennifer Lopez!!!! This is probably her best role. It is based on the psychiatric memoirs of the writer Susana Kaysen of the same title (published in '93). Ads for the flick boast that it is based on a true story, though none of the things that happened in the movie were in the book. They even go as far as changing the hospital's name (it's not really Claymoore, it's McLean). It's a fascinating book that i highly recomend, but let's put that aside and look at the movie. Ryder plays a teen entering womanhood when she attempts suicide for no apparant reason. She lives in her head, is always day dreaming, very immature and childlike, and doesn't have female friends but has many boyfriends. Look closely at the first chapter. After the therapist talked to her for only what seems like less than an hour, he sentences her to a teenage girls' mental hospital. When Susana goes into the cab, she notices her luggage had already been packed and ready to go. And her mom is across the street in a car waving quietly (just the Mom, but how about the dad?). She doesn't even step out to hug her daughter good bye! How suspicious. The fun really starts when she gets to the hospital and meets all of the crazy chicks. Her roommate is a cute, nice girl named Georgina who reads THE WIZARD OF OZ all the time. And then we get our first impression of Jolie's character being dragged back to the isolation room after a two week escape attempt. Her name's Lisa, and she's the most prominant of the all patients. She seems to poccess all of the answers concerning the way the world works and how people think so she becomes Susana's idol. The first half of the movie goes deeper and deeper into Susana's mind, and then the second half becomes 'The adventures of Susana and Lisa', but i didn't mind. Their adventures were incredibly fun. At some point Susana doesnt wanna leave because for the first time in her life she has real friends. What you'll remember the most is the cast, they're the best collection of characters ever assembled!!!!!!!! Each one is perfectly played by loveable actresses like Brit Murphy and Clea Duvall. You'll also fall in love with the original score. But what's the point of this movie? Well, i think it was trying to show as a girl's unwilling passage into womenhood, and how her childishness earned her a one and a half year vacation from the real world. But at some point, she realizes that the vacation can't last forever because it would lead her life to a dead end. It's also about friendship.
**I GAVE IT 10/10*. FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME!!!!!!!!!!!**
The Matrix (1999)
APPARENTLY, THE RABBIT HOLE AINT DEEP ENOUGH!
I almost liked this movie, though the rest of the world liked it way too much! In either case, it won best visual fx at the academy (i thought STAR WARS:EPISODE ONE deserved it) and it won best sound fx (FIGHT CLUB should've gotten it without a doubt). The last time i checked, when someone gets kicked in the rib cage, it does NOT sound like a pillow being wipped with a recently used condom! Anyway, this movie is fairly simple; it is very easy to understand because everything is repeatedly spelled out for you. As a matter of fact, I already knew what the movie was going to be about when i first started seeing the commercials for it. And it was so predictable, everything i saw in that movie, i wasn't surprised i saw it because i knew (after seeing the first 10 minutes) that it was going to happen later! Keanu plays an average shmuck who works as a cubicle drone. He knows something is missing from his life as strange dreams echo to him from the real world. He of course uses his computer hacking counterpart named Neo to find an answer. As he gets closer, he recieves a myterious cell phone one day while at the office. It rings. A mysterious voice starts giving him instructions that would eventually lead him to the window ledge 80 stories above the street. To overcome his fears and climb down would mean that he is willing to dive into a dark, dangerous, and mysterious adventure into the unknown of reality. They should have made the rest of the movie the way that window ledge scene was written- MORE ACTION, LESS YAPPING. But why is the rest of the movie so slow moving? It treats as like we're nine-year-olds! It would've been better if they gave us few hints that we can use to figure out the theme of the movie. If i were still seven years old, I would have liked this movie a lot better, but now I'm seventeen and i've already gone way deeper down the rabbit hole than this movie has taken me. It's also formulaic- perfectly designed to get rebelious type teens to empty their wallets at the box office. It is also written based on marketability rather than art so the movie ends in a visually stunning shoot out rather than tying up lose ends or giving a satisfying ending. But what disappointed me most was the characters, they're incredibly dull. None of them caught my fascination and the acting is so weak that when Neo said "Morpheus was like a father to me", it wasn't until then that i realized that he felt this way. If the acting is any good, then we would have known that before he said it out loud. Even the Oracle lady was nothing but useless clutter on the screen. I GAVE THIS A 6/10
Boys Don't Cry (1999)
THE RAINMAKER'S EXIT
Hilary Swank's performance is awesome! She convinced me that Brandon Teena is really a man. I don't think any other human being could've done a better job. The same goes to director Kim Peirce. This is my favorite movie of all time! Before I saw this movie, I never thought that the art of film making could reach such perfection! This story is not only true but it is very delicate, a single second of bad acting would've ruinned the entire project! And we never saw that single second of bad acting from any of the cast members! The movie doesn't focus on hate crimes or being a gender case study, instead it portrays Brandon as a lone drifter on a doomed quest for happiness. He moves to a different town to start a new life and then moves to the next after his secret is discovered; and so the cycle continues. The setting is a trailor trash town where everybody is almost the same. No one seems to have a future or even any enthusiasm for life. Brandon stood out from everyone by being nice to girls and by being optimistic. His most obvious feature is that he's not very smart so he's always taking the wrong risks. He has thousands of dollars worth of speeding tickets, is wanted for 18 counts of grand theft auto and has a bunch of fake IDs; he tells his new found friends in Fall City that his mom's an actress and that his sister is a supermodel (we know he's lying). We notice that he never thinks far enough ahead so he's always getting into trouble. We also realize that when we as human beings are troubled, lonely, and in search of sanity; we are willing to take such risks. His whole life is one wreck after another. Despite his police record and web of lies, he's a really nice person who's always running away from his past. Which is full of suicidal memories and mistakes he needs to be forgiven for. I think the point of the story is that happiness is just an illusion. Think about that scene when he gets physically intimate with his girlfriend. And then the next day she's thinking about him, and she kinda knows that he might be a girl. Instead of trying to find out the truth, she pushes the thoughts into the back of her mind and refuses to think about it. Why? Cuz if he is a girl then the romance is over and the nicest young man she's ever known will cease to exist. And as for Brandon, as long as he keeps up his charade of lies, he's okay; but at some point the past will catch up with him. And then we realize that there are those who have to pay a large price for only a brief moment of happiness.
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
THOUGHT PROVOKING
As of right now, society has little tolerance for homosexual behavior. And as we go further back on the human timeline, this tolerance gets less and less so in the movie's setting, it is treated like a desease. The two girls in this film live in their own little world together. And the more time they spend together, the further away they drift from society. It's as if they're mutually-schizophrenic. They create a fantasy world of their own in which they're the only ones aloud to enter. They would sometimes walk around seeing unicorns and medieval castles as if they're actually there. This movie reminds us of how people behave differently when they are together, and how they would do things that they could only do with the back-up of each others confidence. Each of the girls is nothing when she is by herself, but when they're together they're stronger. We realize that when two people are the perfect soulmates, they could live inside each others' mind. In this case, they fit together so well that they act like one unit when they're together. Kinda like Beavis and Butthead, who are like one person altogether. .....HEAVENLY CREATURES is the perfect love story!
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)
DYKES ROCK! Y ISNT THERE A SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE?
It's a very funny movie. It's most obvious feature is that it is not well polished. It's also number 8 on my top ten list. I think the cast of characters are cute and the two romantic leads are loveable. In case u didnt know, the movie's director is a lesbian, she's also the creator of TV's POPULAR. Anyway, u'll notice that the movie is remeniscent of Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and also of America's sterio typical depiction of suburbia(which is sometimes seen in television shows like DENNIS THE MENACE). The cinematography is so well-fitting because it is goofy. You see a lot of extreme camera angles. But the most memorable part of this film is the original music. I loved all of the songs so much. I've searched in several places for a soundtrack CD. But why isn't there one? Even dumb movies that nobody has ever heard of have soundtracks available in stores! Anyway, BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER is a cult classic! I know I'll never forget it! Maybe some time in the future, while watching tv in the middle of the night, I'll see it playing, and then I'll say "Hey, I remember this film!" and then smile.