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Reviews
My Surfing Lucifer (2009)
Awful. Just awful.
I saw this short yesterday at the Sundance Film Festival, and let me just say, this could possibly be the worst thing that I have ever viewed on the big screen. This abbreviated look at an upcoming documentary about Bunker Spreckels, a teenage surfing phenom turned millionaire party boy who died at age 27 in 1977, is like a poorly thought out Hunter S. Thompson vignette. In it we get to see Bunker surfing, smoking, big game hunting, parading around in tight jeans, and yes, urinating (full frontal, now that's art!). The score (if you could call it that) is straight from a bad 1950's sci-fi movie, and the psychedelic video effects are just pointless.
Sous les bombes (2007)
A film all Americans should see
We were fortunate enough to see this film at the Sundace Film Festival, and I have rarely seen a more accomplished effort at portraying one of the worst atrocities of the past decade. Director Philippe Aractingi's ability to bring two feature actors into Lebanon on the tenth of thirty-three days of brutal Israeli bombing is nothing short of magnificent. Before seeing the film, I thought it may be a better case study of the war-torn environment left by the indescriminate bombing of civilian areas by the Israeli Army, with some actors thrown in at the last minute in a patchwork attempt to create a feature film. I was painfully wrong. This film is a compelling character drama told through the eyes of real people experiencing the worst kind of hell on earth. With unbelievable footage of the actors in the middle of the ongoing conflict, international media coverage, and the U.N. relief mission, Aractingi deftly (and powerfully) combines his fictional characters will real life survivors to tell the story of a mother trying to find her son in the ruins of war-torn Lebanon. The main character's decision to hire the initially lecherous, but ultimately compassionate and sympathetic taxi driver Tony to take her on her journey results in a touching tale of humanity and the place of individuals in a world beyond they're control. When asked about his filming techniques in the Q&A after the movie, Aractingi expressed his desire for the movie to be seen for the message it carries, as it should be.
Bottle Shock (2008)
Great story that falls prey to formulaic film conventions
We live in Salt Lake City, Utah and get a locals package to the Sundance film festival every year. With the locals package we choose, we have the opportunity to see ten out of around 300 films, so we try to choose carefully. Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman, Denis Farina, and an uplifting story about a winery in the emerging Napa Valley of the mid 1970s winning a prestigious French wine-tasting competition sounds like, yes, a commercial film most likely greenlighted due to the popularity of Sideways, but a potentially good, entertaining film nonetheless. After the first ten minutes, however, it was clear that this was going to be a painfully predictable and clichéd films. It was. The acting was stilted, the dialogue was a rehash of every come-from-behind-underdog-win film made in the last decade (Ex. "If there's one thing I know, it's people.") Let me reiterate, I wanted to like this movie, but aside from the normally good actors falling prey to a bad script/direction/decision-making, the extraneous blonde, sexually promiscuous eye-candy character(Rachael Taylor, in her defense, most likely just trying to get ahead in a cutthroat business)is downright offensive.
The Lake House (2006)
So Bad
Wow, I had low expectations for this film and was still sorely disappointed. Cliché after cliché after cliché, pompous, stilted dialogue, the always horrible "acting" of Keanu Reeves. I spent the whole movie waiting for something novel, something surprising, something inventive to happen, but it was not to be. Trite, unimaginitive, downright boring story coupled with an astoundingly simple minded predictability makes this a total waste of time. Christopher Plummer, the only real actor in this film is obviously phoning it in, and every plot "turn" can be seen from a mile away. Whatever meaning that was meant to be conveyed in this movie is lost in the sheer and total ambivalence for the characters. I couldn't wait for something bad to happen to any one of the characters.