Change Your Image
geoffingeorgia
Reviews
Scientism Exposed (2016)
Religious nonsense
Looks like a student film. Someone who has basic, but not advanced skills with editing software, a paltry budget, and little creativity.
I plays like advertising propaganda. Attacking provable facts with nonsense, and fails even the slightest hint of critical thought.
Religious tautologies abound, science is treated as belief, but religion is treated as unquestionable.
The creator(s) poorly understand the concepts of biology, genetics, astrophysics, chemistry, evolution and dozens of other fields that have continued to bear out proof through repeated experimentation, as well as the basic terms used to describe them.
When addressing predictable, repeatable evidence the cross their arms and say, "nuh-uh" then whatabout a lot of nonsense that has no bearing.
It's like someone explaining how a young-yo works and they reply by saying, "but tuna fish isn't like that! Checkmate 'science'!"
Only the most feeble understandings of our natural world and the rules that it adheres to would be impressed by this craziness.
Everything Will Be Ok (2006)
A masterpiece of animation
This is one of the most amazing films ever. It grabs you quickly by using Hertzfeld's charming (and disarming) stick-figure style, makes you laugh at (protagonist) Bill's simple social flubs, that progress into something much darker and more real. More important and desperate.
If you or a close loved one have ever thought you might be going mad, it will certainly touch raw nerves, drawing you into Bill's confusion, helplessness, feelings of inadequacy and depression. No small feat for stick figures. I am someone who gets totally absorbed in movies and must admit I was moved to tears at more than one viewing (I was fortunate enough to see this on a large screen at two separate film festivals and finally ordered my own copy from Bitterfilms.com, the only source for DVD's of the film).
In my defense I was not alone, I paid special attention to listen to other patrons. It was amazing to watch a whole theater so quickly laughing and then to be moved just as quickly to sympathy by what are in essence line drawings. I struggle to think of another animator who can so readily evoke such feelings. Perhaps Adam Benjmin Eliot's black & white claymation comes close.
Those familiar with Hertzfeldt's earlier work might notice a similar emotional pattern to "Meaning of Life" in it's building intensity that rises to a deafening, maddening din, only to take a long silent reflective pause towards the end, before returning to the original story. Much like the musical structure of many classical operas.
Likewise it shares "Meaning"'s use of many beautiful "in-camera" effects to awe inspiring ends. By various method of folding, crumbling, burning, staining and otherwise distressing the paper that the animations are being produced on, Bill's whole world is shown to crumble around him, both in his reality and ours.
I don't think there is one frame of this that isn't completely enjoyable. The editing keeps us constantly looking to another area of the screen to catch up, and I don't think there's one shot where we see the entire screen filled with one image, further showing the frantic thoughts of our hero.
For some reason one of the images that sticks with me is what (I imagine) is footage of rain on a black garbage bag. Another is of an rubber pig, hand puppet filmed out of focus.
Fans of animation will like this easily, but I've already made new fans of other friends who are are almost film snobs and normally wouldn't choose to watch what they call, with a noticeably condescending tone, "Cartoons".
I can't wait to see what Hertzfeld does next
Mercy (1995)
Horrible, Terrible and then even worse than that.
The beginning of this was interesting, though we've see other "Ransom gone wrong" films before (Ransom, High and Low). But this quickly went south and never came back.
Sam Rockwell was good but both his dialogue and screen time seemed purposefully short. The "Ruby" character was played well enough for the viewer to buy her as genuinely crazed, though there is little pity felt for her once the full story is learned. The daughter stands out as one of the best performances in the VERY few lines she has, Also the maid was well played, and her dialogue important and tense without sounding phony or trite.
The biggest problems i felt were 2. Firstly that the main character was NOT a good person and this wasn't reinforced in a way that made you either despise him or empathize with him in spite of his shortcomings. The director clearly couldn't ably spend so much time focusing on the character's plight in trying to reclaim his duaghter from the kidnappers and still portray him as overall despicable.
The viewer is left feeling that even though he did something truly bad that no one really cares.
Secondly is that the last 20 minutes of the film are ABSOLUTELY, COMICALLY BAD. BAD BAD BAD!
The main character sinks into a despair (which wasn't explored well enough) and ends up in the ghetto buying drugs he's never tried and then ends up in the care of a truly crazy man. Here's the toss-up. I can't decide, myself, whether it was really bad writing or if they actually got a crazy subway guy to play the part of, well, himself.
I say this because most of the actual street crazies i've run into in my life (and i seem to attract them like a magnet) are loud, self interested and their craziness is usually completely boring. They seem to more often be stringing together words that make no sense together or railing diatribes about ideas which they themselves haven't fully thought out. Like they're randomly talking just to be noticed. Such is the character we see at the end of this film. It's SO BAD we can't decide whether to laugh out loud or just push eject.
I rented this one as a fan of Sam Rockwell's and wanted to see some earlier stuff. Whoever made this movie should NEVER BE ALLOWED TO USE A CAMERA AGAIN! Ever. No one wants to see what he's got to show, or hear what he thinks he's got to say.
It was like watching spiders with half their legs pulled off trying to escape a glass bowl.
That's all i have.