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dr-strangeprk
Reviews
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
Movie = Novel.
I gave the movie a '10' because I read the book (some time ago), and the screenplay captured to mood, the dreariness, the hopelessness, the dialogue and the characters inch perfectly. As you read a novel, you come to picture in your mind the characters the author has created. The characters played on the screen by John Hurt, Richard Burton and Suzanna Hamilton are the 100% embodiment of what Orwell intended. The novel is not compromised in plot, dialogue, or character portrayal whatsoever.
The finite movie run time of 113 min. did not allow the movie to deliver all the miserable detail of a limitless novel. E.g., the novel devoted much time into detailing "Newspeak", which was the devolution of the English language into a dumbed down simplified version of itself in step with the dumbing down of it's citizenry into a mindless mob. But in defense of the movie, that detail does not readily lend itself to the screen because it requires no characters or dialogue.
It remains a mystery to me why Orwell (real name Eric Blair), who was a devout socialist, would portray the outcome of socialism in the honest manner that he did. Nevertheless, my bottom line critical analysis is that the movie = the novel. If that's what you're looking for in a novel based movie, you will give "1984" a '10' also
Collateral (2004)
Remarkable parallels in plot to...
..."The Terminator". Vincent (Tom Cruise) was the terminator, Max (Jamie Foxx) was Kyle Reese, and Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) was Sarah Conner. Vincent shows up outta nowhere and moves about LA at night systematically murdering his victims who are related as being witnesses in some sort of pending drug case (phone book killer, anyone?) until the cops finally figure it out. He is ostensibly relentless, unstoppable, focused and efficient (terminator like?) in his single mindedness. Sound familiar? Until finally, he is stopped by our hero, who saves the girl. Plenty of thrills, chills and spills, plausible action. I'm not hollering "plagiarism". And don't get me wrong, "The Terminator" was one of my all time fav's. Just wondering how many others saw the plot similarities. Cruise was totally credible in his role. Jamie Foxx deserved the Oscar nomination for his work. And critically the end, which is where so many otherwise promising flicks go down in flames, did not disappoint. Buy it...I did!
Eraserhead (1977)
Worst "movie" of all time!
Just watched this yesterday and it now replaces "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" as my personal choice for worst flick of all time. Throw in equal parts of Monty Python, Alien, Charlie Chaplin, George Orwell and Andy Kaufman into a Cuisinart, puree for 10 minutes and dump into a toilet and you have you have the plot. There is virtually no dialogue, much less meaningful dialogue. Since it has no plot, the "action" is excruciatingly painfully slow developing to whatever extent one would considered that it developed at all. The end befits the rest of this abortion, it just truncates in mid-frame. Oh, and I was not ever fooled into thinking the damn thing was ever going anywhere, one reaches that conclusion within 60 seconds of the start. But you have time invested, it's a crappy weather Saturday afternoon, so what the hell. The one thing I concluded very early on from this waste of an hour and a half was that the director was attempting to play a prank on his audience, mocking anyone gullible enough to pay money to see this "masterpiece". Only in that sense could it ever be considered the "cult classic" that it has evidently become.
Cocaine Cowboys (2006)
Miami 1980: The Real Deal
I lived in Freeport, Bahamas from 1980-1983. All television and radio was out of Miami and West Palm Beach, and Miami was only 30 minutes away on a 747. I often attempt to describe what it was like there to friends: the Haitian boat people, the Liberty City riots, the Mariel boat lift and the Colombian drug trade. But my anecdotes fall short of the mark. Prior to seeing "Cocaine Cowboys", the best I could do was tell them "watch 'Scarface'...with the exception of the final scene over-the-top hokey shootout, it was dead on." "Cocaine Cowboys" captures the true picture of the era there. Daily you would wake up, turn on the radio and get the body count: 3 men found in the trunk of a burning car; or a headless corpse found floating in a canal; or 4 men killed in a parking lot shootout, 2 civilians wounded in the crossfire. This was followed by an ad for Lanson's, a high end men's clothier, advertising a bullet proof men's dinner jacket, "What the best dressed Miamian is wearing." Driving down Flagler St. in Miami, you see a bus stop bench with an ad on the back: "Protectar usted y su familia" punctuated with pictures of an automatic pistol and a machine gun. The movie speaks for itself just like "Scarface". I have no doubt the individual narratives are accurate and non-hyperbolic. The movie does credit the cocaine "business" with cash infusion into the area and the resulting uplift of the overall economy. However, it omits the psychological impact on ordinary citizens, who saw little of the cocaine bucks: fear of getting caught in a crossfire and the depression of living in a combat zone. Also omitted from the storyline were some of the Colombian weapons innovations: the Colombians came up with armor piercing bullets and laser sighting long before the cops had them. Then the feds showed up en mass and the tide turned. I gave the movie a "9" only because it was a documentary and had no plot, no real acting. But if you wanted to know how it really went down then and there...this is your movie!