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Don't Watch This: Friendship Bracelet (2018)
The only short worth watching in Don't Watch This!
Acacia Marquez is a gorgeous actress and she managed to elicit a sort of quasi empathy as the weird kid with big aspirations and little social grace. The premise is a little shaky as she gets her dangerous idea from cheesy photo frame and parrots the sentiment back at her would-be friends as she bears down on them menacingly. Beyond that, there's not much more to this 9-minute short, but it does feature some pretty decent gore effects.
The Bleeding (2011)
Ignore the bad reviews, watch for yourself.
Apparently a lot of people missed the point on this one. If you need a movie to lead you by the nose and explain every little thing, then don't watch this movie. The premise is really simple - a family, living on a farm on the outskirts of town is trying to find normality in their lives again after a tragedy. When they're visited by a man in a seersucker suit who claims his car broke down, they react predictably - the mother fears the unknown while the father wants to extend hospitality. Initially, the mother doesn't want to take a chance that her desperately normal life would be impacted by the stranger, but, after hearing his eloquent rant about Christian neighborliness in these dark times of trusting no one, she relents and allows him to spend the night. Her motives are clear - she wants to see her family through the eyes of a third party who hasn't prejudged them from their earlier bad acts. Maybe if he sees how good they are, he will spread the word in the community that has ostracized them and they will be accepted back like lost lambs from the wilderness. In order to portray this family goodness, the mother constantly harries the daughter who immediately interests the stranger. As the stranger reveals himself to be a doctor, the mother opens up to him about almost everything but what's wrong with the daughter. Of course the stranger is there to harm them for their misdeeds and quickly subdues both parents before it becomes a cat-and-mouse game between him and the daughter. More back story is revealed about the tragedy which brought the family to the farm and the stranger to their door. While being a touch predictable, it is still finely acted and the characters' motivations are crystal clear.
Rôjin to rabudôru: Watashi ga shochô ni natta toki... (2008)
Two Good Ideas, One Bad Movie
This seemed like the director didn't know which movie he was filming - a soft-core sci-fi porn about a robot serial rapist or a really sweet movie about a boy who grows up loving his maid robot. As it stands, either would be okay in it's own genre (soft-core vs sci-fi fantasy), but this movie just comes across as confused. There are several scenes that are hilarious if you're not easily offended by nudity and mimed sexual acts.
The plot which the movie is named after is about a man, Ueno (possibly Hiroshi Fujita?), who gradually falls in love with his prototype maid-bot, Maria (played by the adorable Akiho Yoshizawa). She coaxes him to at least attempt to fall in love with a real woman and get married, but he can't stand how greedy and mean real women are in comparison to his submissive and ever-willing-to-please maid-bot. He spends almost his entire life with her even when her battery dies.
In stark contrast from their love, we get to see an Otaku, a Japanese Fanboy, get berated by two single women on television for playing with dolls instead of cultivating real relationships. He finally has enough of their taunts and mean-spirited jabs and beats them up, claiming that real women want rich, handsome men and have no time for him so why should he bother trying to impress them when he can find comfort with a doll. We see him later in a hilarious scene where he tries out the newer version of maid-bot. Whereas Ueno loves Maria, the Otaku substitutes a real relationship for sex with the doll.
While the Otaku samples Maid-Bot, the female detective tracking the serial rapist robot is in the next room talking to a ghost-in-the-shell puppet man who explains the difference between what men want in a partner versus what women want. The puppet also explains the drive to preserve one's life and how it applies to the rapist. The detective gets her answer and is able to solve the case.
I gave this a four out of ten simply because it didn't seem like a really coherent story when meshed together. Sure, the two messages are opposite sides of the same coin, but the movie suffered from having to show both sides. I might have scored it higher if it had just focused on the old man trying to buy a new battery for his Maria.
Sister Mary Explains It All (2001)
still funny but with a message
Movies aren't made to affect everyone who watch, though they try to hit at least 90% of their audiences. Any movie in the history of cinema has both those who sing its praises and those who condemn it as trash.
I enjoyed "Sister Mary Explains It All" because I recognize the difficulty in making a movie with limited props. Diane Keaton spent almost the entire movie under a spotlight on a stool in front of an "audience" with no other actors to rely on for guidance or tone until the very end. The tough love no-nonsense nun bad guy stereotype never fails at comedy in any genre (ie. "Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys").
Now, where it separates itself from all the other genres is when Laura San Giacomo et al walk in depicting the Nativity and how that all turns out. Yes, it villanizes the Catholic church, but that has become a plot device used more and more recently concerning the many controversies surrounding that particular institution. The movie tells a story of cause and effect through stereotypes.
When Giacomo drops her character's life story bomb on Diane Keaton's character, the movie shifts gears into a drama and the rest of the cast spill their life outcomes with equal bang. This is no light heart scene of reunion. And then, the film fades in typical stage play fashion after a long-awaited climax - an excellent way to end the movie without really ending to the characters.