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Reviews
Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Shyalaman's Best Work in Two Decades
Shyalaman creates a brilliant and menacing philosophical question. Is humanity worth saving if three people who love each other most wouldn't sacrifice one of them to save all like them? It's a cruel choice for any family to confront. But would not any family choose that humanity is worth saving if we were all worth saving? This is a judgment on human progress. And not social justice necessarily. Any three people who love each other in a bubble could be sitting tied up in those three chairs, and the existential choice would remain the same.
The most important choices Shyalaman makes is to trust that the very nuanced decisions he makes will build the suspense. First, his casting choices. He makes a muscular tattooed physically threatening man the least menacing character of the antagonists. Secondly, by rotating news channels that broadcast the foretold events, it . And, finally, Shyalaman detonates the final twist once the timer strikes 0:01.
This is Shyalaman's best film in two decades.
Goodfellas (1990)
Greatest Film I've Ever Seen
There are great films and then there are films so great, they are ahead of their time and still time hasn't caught up.
The Godfather is corporate mafia version, the national office if we're talking about a fortune 500 company.
Goodfellas is the mafia at the store front of that same company.
There isn't one part of this movie that is lacking. From the usual brilliant direction from Scorsese, the score, the casting, performances and pacing, the film delivers on all levels.
This is the best film I ever seen and is to this day re-watchable.
Very Bad Things (1998)
Very Dark Things
This is not a movie I would suggest you present to a large crowd of friends and family for group viewing. It is darker than pure coffee.
Berg bravely goes all out for a brutally unapologetic dark comedy not holding anything back. At times, the results are uncomfortably hilariously. By the end of the film, I felt a bit sad and depleted from the experience.
You will find cruel dark laughs in this film that will make you feel like hell is your next destination for laughing. By the end, for most people, the consequences of those laughs will be felt.
Good movie, unique, but not for most people.
The 10 Million Dollar Getaway (1991)
Horrible Take
This movie is an apology for Jimmy Burke, who clearly was responsible for the murder of most all associates involved in the robbery and was, according to his partner in crime Henry Hill, responsible for some 50-60 murders in his criminal career.
It's like expository for a criminal psychopaths lies and that makes the movie both fascinating and infuriating.
Pleasantville (1998)
Great Film Written in More Enlightened Times
Towards the late 1990s, films were starting to point to a more positive direction where movies could themselves contain tragedy, yet spawn hopeful messages. A good comparable for Pleasantville would be American Beauty or even the Ice Storm. This theme is a lost distant art that is really needed in these divided and troubling social media times.
This movie succeeds at the philosophical level in showing how change is inevitable and very necessary, because (1) a world that never changes would be be boring and (2) while change brings some of its own sets of problems, it is a natural residue of any free society, like the hot embers and suffocating smoke of a beautiful camp fire.
Where the movie is at its best is lampooning and contrasting the late 90s or modern culture with innocence of a hopeful and conformed 1950s public. The scenes at the basketball court, the scenes satirizing the wife's role in the 50's and other scenes are simply brilliant well-executed comedy.
The film is not perfect. The movie suggests that rhetoric alone permits change, yet this is a simply way to accelerate the plot to its inevitable conclusion, and not even close to any reality we are familiar with. Hence, Pleasantville does not wrap up in a neat and tidy bow and observant viewers are left with more questions than answers.
Overall, however, the film is highly entertaining, makes some interesting and valid observations and comparison, well-acted and very funny.