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joelparkes
Reviews
I Am Legend (2007)
So much good work in such a poor final product
This was the most frustrating kind of movie for me to watch, because I really wanted to like it, and every time I came close there would be a terrific clinker of some kind to completely pull my head out of the film. Mostly the clinkers had to do with setting up the circumstance that Manhattan had been physically isolated from its surroundings. Indeed, we see the destruction of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, and it's safe to assume the other bridges and the tunnels would have been destroyed as well.
Okay - Manhattan is cut off from Jersey, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. We are told that Manhattan was "ground zero" for the outbreak and was quarantined, after which most of its population became infected. Yet somehow it is infested with deer - lots of deer. Doubtful, but, I suppose, possible. We'll give you the deer. Then there are the lions who hunt the deer. Not good old American cougar, but African lions. How the hell did THEY get to Manhattan? On the A train? Last time I went to Central Park Zoo, there were no lions. Polar bears, yes. Lions, no. Oh, back to the deer for a moment. One of them, being hunted for dinner by Neville, does something pretty peculiar. Instead of continuing to flee down the street in the middle of the day, this particular deer runs into a multi-story building that is completely dark and manages, presumably at full-speed and on hooves that miraculously have the traction of sneakers, to successfully negotiate pitch-black hallways and stairs, and in total silence. Neville, on the other hand, has to turn on his flashlight as soon as he enters said building, and then proceed slowly and carefully through the halls and up the stairs.
Then there is Alice Braga's character, who drives to Manhattan from Maryland. How the hell does SHE get onto Manhattan if the bridges and tunnels are gone? And, according to her, she waited all day for Neville at the South Street Seaport, yet somehow managed to miss his setting up his ambush for the "dark-seekers".
This is just sloppy writing, backed up by a director who thinks his audience is stupid enough not to notice.
There's more, having to do with the survivors' colony in Vermont that Neville somehow is not aware of, even though he is the most tuned-in guy on the planet.
Rent "The Omega Man" if you just have to see a movie version of this. Otherwise, just read it. You'll save some money and get a lot more out of it.
28 Weeks Later (2007)
Wretchedly, wretchedly bad!
This is just a BAD movie on almost all levels, and does for "28 Days Later" (which I loved) what "Aliens" did for "Alien". In other words, it demystifies it, cheapens it, exploits it, and wastes it. While the first film had characters that you cared about (played by damned good actors), this film is immediately and obviously peopled by actors that have "cannon-fodder" (or in this case "infected-fodder") written all over them. The characters are so poorly developed that to call them two-dimensional is to give them the benefit of the doubt. Most of them are simply around to give the plot a half-hearted push and then die.
One of the hallmarks of a bad movie is that supposedly smart people do incredibly stupid things. That tradition is alive and well in this awful film. A high-security area along the lines of the Pentagon or the White House proves as porous as a sponge, and the holes in the film's logic are so big that a helicopter could fly through them. Which brings us to The Helicopter, the only one in the entire military that is flown by one guy, without a copilot or door gunners or anything. This proves important at the end, but I can say no more.
The violence is gratuitous and ineffective. As allegory to Iraq, the movie fails. This film should, and probably will, be studied in film schools as a bad example of a poor script poorly directed. It will also probably make a ton of money.
My last word - YUCK!
Sideways (2004)
Great book turned into poor movie
Some folks just have to tinker, and "Sideways" is a movie that got tinkered to death. It's frustrating, because so much good work went into the movie, but when all the good work is added together, it doesn't make a good movie.
The problem is that the book was dumbed down for the film. A book about two struggling winners and a loser has been turned into a movie about four totally pathetic puttzes. There is absolutely NO growth among any of these characters, and moments in the book that provide catharsis are in the movie played for cheap laughs.
See the film if you must, but then read the book. If you've already read the book, then skip this movie.
Apocalypto (2006)
No Cliché Left Unturned
You've already seen this movie, only you may not know it. I gave it five stars on the strength of its technical aspects and its universally fine acting. The script, however, is a laugher. A collection of cinematic and literary clichés (indestructible hero, community that pays no attention to warnings of danger, pregnant woman in peril, bad guys who think nothing of pissing off their gods, to name a few) from start to finish, it's literally the kind of movie where you can walk out after the first hour and pretty much predict what's going to happen between that point and the end. The more you know about history, and the more you take your film-viewing seriously, the less you are likely to admire this film. With that in mind, get a big soda and a giant popcorn and be amused.
The Boys of Baraka (2005)
Lessons to be learned for public educators
"Boys of Baraka" is a welcome antidote to the kind of "educratic" nonsense about child-centered education I see all the time as a public school teacher in Los Angeles.
The lessons are that any motivated child can learn if enough attention can be paid, and if destructive influences can be kept at bay. The teaching methods shown in the film are old-fashioned, the students are black, and the teachers are white, and education and growth happens.
This film should be mandatory viewing for all Superintendents, School Board Members, School Administrators and teachers of inner city African-American students.