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Reviews
Forrest Gump (1994)
Sugar-coated Trojan horse
This movie uses all the sappy, sentimental tricks in the book to sucker the audience into believing in poor, disadvantaged Forrest Gump: the sick mother, the bad legs, the innocence of incomplete mental capacity, the bullies, the girlfriend, etc.
If that's as far as it went, however, I wouldn't be writing this. The dangerous thing about this movie is its sweeping generalizations and stereotypical portrayals of events, groups, and people in recent American history. Because the filmmakers have succeeded in getting the viewer to pull so strongly for Gump, they can then pass off their revisionist version of the past few decades with little objection from the viewer.
Yes, it's just a movie, but images like these shape the way people think. The anti-war movement in the sixties and seventies and the Black Panthers, for example, were much more complex than portrayed in this movie. Using tiny, value-charged episodes to paint with such broad brush strokes, in settings that are designed to pull the viewer to Gump's side, is deceptive and manipulative.
Conceiving Ada (1997)
Worst I've seen since 1979.
I haven't seen anything this bad since I walked out of the James Bond movie "Moonraker" twenty years ago. I managed to sit through the entirety of this one only because of Tilda Swinton, but there was nothing she could do to save this beast.
As a cross between "Pi", "Orlando", and "Tron", this movie failed miserably in every aspect of moviemaking. The characters were cardboard and unable to evoke any kind of sympathy. The plot was wholly unbelievable. The acting was, with the exception of Swinton, amateur. The computer graphics were worse than in "Tron." Timothy Leary was extremely annoying. I could go on, but what's the point.
The only good thing I can say about this film is that Tilda Swinton was in it. I have no idea why an actress of her caliber consented to appear in such a dud, but she most likely regrets it now.
Don't waste your money or your time on this stinker. There's nothing worth seeing here.