Change Your Image
sahubbell3
Reviews
Knowing (2009)
Perplexing!
This movie stinks.
Cage gives a good performance here, as does the rest of the cast. The story, however, quickly devolves from intriguing premise to MIT-genius-running-around-with-a-gun, made even sillier by a reliance on tropes like 'creepy, staring child', 'mystery blood', 'shambling old house', 'bobble-headed big-eyed aliens', 'the end of the world', and 'religion vs. Cynicism.' Of course, all this rests on the most nonsensical idea EVER; aliens so superior to us that they can zip around the universe at will . . . *somehow*🙄 have major issues communicating clearly with earthlings. Really? There have only been a few modern sci-fi movies which examine this most obvious conundrum with any originality whatsoever - "Arrival" (Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner) comes to mind. Unfortunately, "Knowing" is stuck in a dumber sci-fi movie galaxy. I'm just glad I didn't spend a dime to watch it! 4/10 stars. Cannot recommend.
Welcome to Me (2014)
NOT About Mental Illness!
And if you think it is, you're too stupid to be mentally ill.
This is a movie about ALIENATION and how our unique pop culture can make us "crazy." Oh yeah - & money. How money can buy anything . . . including esteem, self- & otherwise.
Kristen Wiig is a national treasure, as far as I'm concerned. While 98% of actresses spend 98% of their energy fomenting an image of perfection, Wiig is a study in honesty & awkwardness. She doesn't manipulate, she just IS. She's carved out a niche no other actress working today has been brave enough to even approach. Of course, it wouldn't have been possible without her amazing comedic talent.
The rest of the cast is "perfect", as well. There isn't one performer I wasn't happy to see here - even ones I'm not too familiar with like James Marsden. Wes Bentley, Joan Cusack, Linda Cardellini, and OMG - Jennifer Jason Lee - fantastic! Tim Robbins plays a shrink who's weirder than his patient. If there's one cast member I couldn't abide in this movie it would have to be . . . *drumroll please* . . . OPRAH! I burned out on Her Guru-ness way back in the '80s.
So watch this movie as the unique little gem it is! DON'T go into it expecting a primer on "mental illness." Be brave, be awkward, laugh.
The Gunman (2015)
Strenuous Yet Lazy
This film seems to a combo Sean Penn vanity / testosterone trope project. It's insultingly stupid & witless. High production values, globe-trotting locations, & a cast of thousands. Marquee names including Javier Bardem & Idris Elba are criminally wasted. Maybe they roped Penn into this awful mess by appealing to his do-gooder side, I don't know. (That and a suitcase of money, surely.) The international theft of natural resources! A humanitarian crisis in the Congo! Corruption! Shadowy operatives straight out of central casting! The smiliest guy is the most evil guy! A low IQ hero with a convenient brain injury! A no-basis love interest, who - despite being a mature doctor - is totally useless, has the inexplicable name of "Annie", & is shamelessly referred to as "the/a GIRL!" Running! Shooting! Lots of phone calls & texts! Really bright fake blood! And OMG a BULLFIGHT! Squeeeeee!!!
I usually don't invest a lot of negative emotion into movies. Even when I think they suck, others might find them worthy, entertaining, or whatever. But I'm making an exception for "The Gunman." I really hated this film.
32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide (2017)
A Vanity Project
Full disclosure: my mother suicided and a sister attempted via OD (like Ruth), which landed her in a coma for a week. Personally, I've struggled with clinical depression for the majority of my 54 years - even as a child.
I didn't care for this film whatsoever. It comes across as a vanity project for Hope. Her deceased sister Ruth is the faded vehicle off-center, seen m/l as a stereotype: brilliant, beautiful (in the eye of the beholder), but troubled and ultimately doomed. Think Van Gogh and Sylvia Plath, and you'll be heading in the right direction. Oddly, however, this doc is actually less about Ruth than it is about Hope. She's in virtually every scene and her doppelgänger likeness to Hope is confusing at first. Is that the dead Ruth in the photo or Hope? We see Hope going moving a lot of her sister's things from storage unit to an expansive NYC loft - seemingly rented only for the purpose of reorganizing and examining Ruth's belongings. This is where I felt the first pangs of befuddlement. I absolutely understand wanting answers when a loved one suicides. Countless people kill themselves every year and leave little or nothing behind to explain their act of ultimate self-destruction. Second only to murder, suicide is the ultimate taboo in the western world and we want to know WHY, which equates to the more primal "HOW COULD YOU do that to yourself, to your friends, to ME ME ME?" There's simply no mystery in Ruth's suicide. She left behind copious materials detailing her feelings and reasons right up to the end. Multiple letters/notes, stacks of journals, photographs - even sticky notes attached to other forms of self-expression! Ruth seems to have been the ultimate navel-gazer, and that disquieting quality existed alongside a voracious need to be loved. Enough was never enough for her, according to family, friends, and associates. She was a bottomless well of need. Since that well could never be filled (and she recognized this), she ultimately decided to throw herself down it.
I saw similarities between Ruth and her sister. Hope is a recovering alcoholic of many years sobriety at the beginning of the film. As she becomes more involved in analyzing Hope, she 'falls off the wagon.' I wanted to feel compassion for her at this point, but my gut was telling me her return to booze was m/l an affectation to add drama. I mean, it's kind of hard to compete with suicide - right? For most alcoholics, a slip-up almost always leads to a full-blown dive into the sewer and a long, hard, climb back out. For Hope, it's almost dainty. She goes into a light-filled, gentile establishment and orders a double vodka on the rocks, two olives. She films herself drinking it, of course. Not much later, her husband follows her around his parents' home as she seeks out more vodka. They engage in a weirdly cerebral, removed conversation about Hope's mission. Then she has to get a glass for the vodka because her parents-in-law wouldn't appreciate her "lips on their bottle, would they?" Hope is in control, although she'd have your believe she's so distraught about the Ruth project that she's not. In a very odd way, I think Hope is envious of Ruth's ability to garner attention . . . all the while making a film - ostensibly - about her. And that's the rub of why I didn't care for this film: it's not really about Ruth anyway, it's about HOPE. Ruth is just a great excuse for HOPE to do some navel-gazing of her own.
The fact is the sisters were/are products of urban privilege and narcissists in their own ways. Hope is just more functional out here in the world, that's all. I think Ruth might have, and Hope could still benefit from looking outside - and this isn't an inference to religion (ifelong atheist here) for some perspective on life AND death. Neither sister is/was the center of the universe. It's a good thing to know that, imo.
My mother blew her brains out with a .357 Magnum in 1979. I wasn't quite 16, living in another state with my aunt & uncle. Mom was severely bi-polar (or whatever term is in use nowadays.) She refused to take Lithium or attend therapy. HER family - including my uncle, her brother - was small, cold, and upper-middle-class WASP-y. Outside of spotty monetary help, there was no warmth, acceptance, or support. They just wanted her to knock it off, pull herself up by her bootstraps, or whatever. Go ahead and pick your analogy. Of course, that approach never works. On the other hand, all the love, attention, and support in the world may not help, either - as Ruth's life and death demonstrates.
If you want to get an idea of the span and impact of suicide, I recommend www.suicidememorialwall.com. There you will find the faces of everyday people who killed themselves. Kids, the elderly, male, female, every color, age, & creed. For many of them, there are memorial pages linked - usually put up by family members. These suicides are your neighbors, classmates, the guy who works down the road. They're not famous/infamous and nobody makes films about them. They were part of a world in which most of us exist. Take a look, do some reading, think about them. My mother is there, but I won't tell you how to find her on the site. Just know that she existed for a while - that's enough.
Hesher (2010)
Nope.
Like other reviewers, I'm a HUGE JG-L fan. And Natalie Portman, of course. The whole cast does a great job, so my intense dislike of this movie has nothing to do with them.
I found this movie to be ugly, ridiculous, and pointless. And if there's anything comedic about it, I've apparently had a brain aneurysm because I'm totally missing that part.
The premise of "Hesher" is ludicrous as presented. Sure, it can be done - it has been done. "Down and Out in Beverly Hills', anyone? "What About Bob?" Remember? Taking a farcical approach to the "stranger upends family" trope is fine when it's a comedy. But a big part of the formula is that the stranger has to have at least a FEW redeeming qualities. If the stranger is a sociopathic character like Hesher, then it seems like the film would fit more naturally into a drama/horror genre'. Because I've got to tell you - I didn't crack a smile during this movie. Not ONCE.
Every character is pathetic or repulsive. Every action taken is ugly and violent. The setting is ugly and DEPRESSING (then again, I've never liked SoCal.) And the seminal figure - dead mom - is only known by one flashback scene, supposedly the day she was killed in a car accident. She is seen as a warm, supportive mother and wife. But even that heartwarming vision doesn't comport with the rest of the movie. We're supposed to believe in a two-month span that Dad has grown a massively bushy beard, become a pill-popper, and that he and the kid moved into sick, dotty grandma's trashy and cramped house? We're supposed to think that TJ was a relatively normal kid prior to mom's death, then suddenly becomes the victim of a pathologically vicious bully - and no adult knows or cares about it? (I am not counting Hesher because I'm not sure he does count as an adult.) TJ has access to wads of cash via ATM (why???) and chooses to try and buy the wrecked car - even though he knows he can't - instead of offering check-out girl more than $2 when she can't even pay her RENT? Seriously, whaaa? Not everything in a movie has to make sense, but in "Thresher", NOTHING makes sense. The "message" it seems the audience is supposed to take away can be had in 25 other, much better movies.
Sorry, JG-L, most of your projects are fantastic. But this one is a swing and a miss!