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A Quiet Place Part II (2020)
Blind Aliens Don't Walk Into Trees
Quiet place 1 and 2, decent horror if you don't hold it accountable to it's implausible facts. It keep your attention, in a universe all its own, possibly a disguised spoof, like a disguised Shaun of the Dead or disguised Army of Darkness. Perhaps we have seen so much in general that we have to go to the implausible to be entertained, similar to all the time travel seen in sci-fi shows. There is one implausible fact I haven't seen mentioned but I didn't read everything. Besides the glaring fact that the family didn't go live in a noisy place such as near rushing water, how is it that the monsters can walk around freely without bumping into trees and buildings when they're blind? They can only locate humans by their audible sound. Perhaps they walk run climb safely by echolocation? But if the monsters used echolocation like bats, which is part of hearing, how is it they couldn't use echolocation to locate people walking down sandy trails? What's amazing is, it kept my attention and I found it entertaining to a point, but not believable, at least in retrospect. The writers must have discovered we'll chase anything that makes a good sound.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993)
Undecided
This applies to DS9 in general. Though I did not watch every DS9 show, my first impressions were that DS9 was not as good as all the other starship centric Star Treks. My impression now is that perhaps the first few seasons of the full DS9 run are not so hot. But by the 4th season it is much improved, and seasons 5 and 6 even moreso. I recommend you check out the DVD from the library. It might take a while to grow on you like it did me. And you don't have to watch it in proper chronological order if you don't want to. You can always catch up with missed story info by pausing and reading Wikipedia for two minutes.
A Hidden Life (2019)
Great spiritually themed WWII time period movie
Great spiritually themed WWII time period movie of a family farming in a small village in Austria when war breaks out. Gorgeous scenery. Much of the story remains in that home, land and with the local people, the rest takes place in prison situations. One of Terrence Malick's best. The main character Franz Jägerstätter was recognized by the Catholic Church as a blessed which means "those who have lived in the fame of sanctity or died as martyrs". His wife was very heroic also, she stood by Franz even though at first she did not share his point-of-view, and she stuck with their family home amidst the hardship and ridicule. Only two things of which I didn't care for: one is the use of super wide angle lens for the entire film. The lens distortion is less than pleasant for an entire movie, especially when panning, and it isn't kind to faces, though great with landscapes and covering tight room shots. Second thing: a sometimes excessive use of slow moving plot. Of course I'm sure other's disagree on the plot speed and will say it sets a mood or tone and it adds rather than detracts and for part of the film the slower pace was fine but it was used throughout, at times you feel like you are riding on a glacier or watching grass grow, typical of Malick. That's how I knew it was his movie before reading about who created it. Other than that it's a great film, worth watching, even repeatedly. It has a very heroic theme and is a very inspirational biography drama. Recommended.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Tapestry (1993)
junior science officer
Time travel always has problems and Tapestry episode is no exception. Others have mentioned some of this so I'll add another perspective to it. When Picard returns to the past and chooses to not fight the Nausicaans and ends up a junior science officer why does the show assume he'd be unhappy in that role? If the course of his life choices took him to become 'junior science officer', took him anywhere, why would he not like it there or at least why not blame himself for it? Instead Picard becomes a perpetual whiner. If he got there by his own his choices, he'd find a way to accept his state in life, whatever it is. But Picard plays the whiner to Riker and Troi because he isn't on the fast track to a command job. It isn't realistic. On the other hand, if his whining was rooted in the fact that the time traveler Picard had all the skills of the Picard we know at the beginning of the show, then why wouldn't the time traveling Picard up and do what it takes to get a command job immediately. The story really falls apart if you think about, as all time travel shows do. But I won't say the show gets ruined by these failings, TNG is one of the best so I forgive and try to look at what it was trying to say which was that some of our personal regrets from growing up may be misplaced. And don't be so sure we totally understand how we are best shaped. Also it was certainly fun to watch Picard out of place, beneath those who are usually his underlings. The turn-about was entertaining even if it didn't add up.
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1991)
human spectacle
This film needs to digest, it has a shock factor but without using adult content. The acting is great, glorious even. What stands out is the relationship between a man and woman. Other actors play key parts but the characterization of the couple, first Vanessa Redgrave (Miss Amelia) and then her man Keith Carradine (Marvin Macy) plus a third wheel are at the center. It uses gothic elaboration on southern stereotypes, larger than life, and so maybe tempting to dismiss what it says about couples simply because it's freakish. Other 'reality' couples films out recently like 'Marriage Story' by Noah Baumbach suggest falsely that an angry separation is either heroic or acceptable. But The Ballad of the Sad Cafe doesn't lie, the shocking human spectacle remains.
Harlan County U.S.A. (1976)
Union History
Raw footage about the coal mining unions forming in east Kentucky in the 70s. It was a hostile environment. I recall my mother talking about how the tensions between unions and companies were often extremely nasty but I never experienced it much or saw the news much in those days. So I feel like I watched today what I was too young to take in at the time it happened. But this really wasn't that long ago. This documentary was produced and directed by a woman. She did great work.
Nema-ye Nazdik (1990)
Filmic Ick
A film in love with itself, created by a director's director or an actor's actor, saying little, but the filmic ones pretend that whisper is profound. Reviewers trying to explain why they love this stuff also perform dishonestly. "Close-Up" (1990) echos the silent "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928), also a lauded by critics story on the crime of impersonation but that one ends in burnt offering. Obscurantism.
Hesburgh (2018)
'Aiding The Enemy' would be a better film title
Fr Hesburgh being arm-in-arm with MLK is amazing, but as a priest, his career at Notre Dame overall, was secular, not priestly. At his worst, he betrayed the Catholic Church, he broke with his vow of obedience and called it good. This documentary tries to makes him look holy, blessed, a counter cultural hero. At times he probably was those things, but his life as presented here, does not get my vote of 'hero'. He more often or more strongly has likely contributed to the disintegration and immorality of universities in America. If the documentary admitted these things, or offered an opposing viewpoint, I'd have rated this film higher. The opening preview trailers on the Hesburgh DVD prep you with rapid fire impacts from the political left. These are several 'Music Box' films previews which could have been funded by wealthy Democrats. The Hesburgh documentary is very left leaning, Nancy Pelosi is insightful, Nixon the villan. Most of the talking heads and historical figures mentioned loved Fr Hesburgh without question. A bit lopsided. Hesburgh is shown in this documentary as not choosing sides, as being a bridge builder, but that's just a ruse of war.
Nature: In the Valley of the Wolves (2007)
Wolf Pack Story
This short movie was an unexpected joy to watch. It's about a wolf pack that lived in the richest valley of Yellowstone for many years, you get to see how they interact and how they survive and then the pack went through changes because the alpha male and female got too old. A rival pack comes in and takes over and ousts them. The group now in exile becomes stronger and unwittingly, by that relocation, avoids serious circumstances that dwindles the pack that took over their Valley. The rival pack became so feeble and reduced in number that they had to leave and go back to their old digs and the original group came back with a new unexpected leader. Other events get shared as well like interactions with a wandering wolf, the goings-on of foxes and coyotes, wolf hunts for large Yellowstone game. It was just interesting to see how they live, like a society, it's a whole story, it makes the Wolves seem very intelligent, and even under the watchful care of a benevolent Creator. Recommended
Gui lai (2014)
Devotion in Marriage
Deeply moving drama. In Mandarin. Recommended. I haven't seen any foreign film quite as stirring regarding a married couple in love. Maybe a tearjerker for some but of the best kind. Not overly sentimental. Touches on political repression and family dynamics involving their daughter.
Barbara (2012)
Ok, not great, on par with 'Phoenix'
The story setting in the cold war East is realistically interesting but the Nina Hoss character wears on me with her brooding ill humor throughout the entire movie and enough eye makeup to mistake her for Natalie Porter of Black Swan. It seems the Stasi have already gotten the best of her and she has the mood of the people she hates. And the ending with Stella suddenly appearing at her door is way too convenient. It did keep my attention but I'm not interested in watching it again.
Captain Fantastic (2016)
Au Natural Whimsical Eccentric
Are there any spoilers in this review? It's impossible to spoil something that sets the standard for everything tainted. Captain Fantastic is an American freak show, it's so far left it might drag you into outer space. Ben (Mr Captain Fantastic), the father of a large family living off-the-grid, would agree that only calling it "interesting" would fall short. I call it honeycomb tripe, stomach lining that pretends to be food. Better to let 'Captain Fantastic' just be a 1975 Elton John album title.
You don't have to be Christian to dislike how the film unnecessarily and unconvincingly complains about how bad Christianity is, because it only creates inconsistencies in the movie. For example, how is the singling out and negation of all of Chrisendom, compatible with the syncretistic (fusion) thinking of the Eastern Religions, which the family in the film embraces, along with Native American religions?
Next, the movie's intended theme of individualism and off-the-grid living as a preference over free enterprise, a Jefferson vs Hamilton scenario with a nod to Jefferson, is out of sync with the philosophies that the movie presents as what the father (Ben) uses to base his childrens' indoctrinations on, namely Plato, the Bill of Rights and others.
Good points were mentioned at times regarding the presence of excessive modern American corporate controls, prevalence of shopping addiction in our culture, video game addiction, the physical obesity of the well off, placing value in home schooling and natural foods, and even showing sympathy for unaware sheep by the end of the movie, though the presentation is often excessively talkative, coming off like a speech or pictoral homily in a religion of a man's own making instead of an authenticly filmed story, it's just rhetoric.
Ben (Mr Captain Fantastic) the father of the family, practices nature worshipping as taught from American Indians, the son eats a heart of an animal kill as a rite of passage and decorates with things that look like Indian amulets. Individually, his family members were allowed to pick any religion for themself except Christianity. They are taught the 60s 'stick it to the man' mind set which is not necessarily bad depending on how or in what situations it is carried out. Asian or Eastern religions and thought are also favored along with American Indian. They oppose Western preachers but are preachy themselves. Ben thinks the Bill of Rights gives him the Right to plan a family trip around stealing food from farmers and grocery stores when he is an obviously capable person under no immediate handicap. His demeanor is presented cool on the outside, calm and collected, and has an answer for everyone and everything, while living in contrast to American norms.
The described behavior of Ben's suicidal wife and seeing several of his freakish children behave, suggest he does not really have the answers he'd like you to think he has. The father was hoping his wife's being close to nature, living like Indians, would cure her mental illness, but it did not. So there seems to be some admission, late in the film, that their 'dreamcatcher' plans had holes in it. The living daughters were depicted to be of very stable mood, the opposite of their dead mom whom we never meet. One of them, the youngest girl, maybe 1st or 2nd grade age, is straightforward, unrealistically smart and quick minded beyond her years, beyond anyone's years, and she's polite but with odd ideation, she made a Pol Pot shrine in a tree fort which is less of a surprise considering dad teaches with duplicity, that is to hate haters. She also liked to either wear a gas mask or a hat of an entire animal skin that includes its skull on top her head. Stronger yet are the frighteningly weird males. Ben's eldest son acts very naive and quirky when meeting a female his age and later told his dad he had raised freak kids. Later the same son travels to Africa on a whim. A younger son also seems unstable, he's rage prone and with constantly shifting loyalties. The father's kids don't always like Ben but in the end they don't betray him either. In general, all of the kids seem to know they are on stage, they do not appear natural, they come off rehearsed, and given the back-to-aboriginal theme, that is ironic.
By the end of the movie, after some successes and failures when interacting with greater society during the trip for the mother's funeral, Ben has perhaps tempered his enthusiasm for his lifestyle, giving somber long looks in the mirror while shaving his grizzly beard, perhaps thinking of compromises, and probably having dread feelings of assimilation. As the movie progresses, beginning to end, the family home landscape switches a few times, moving from mobile rustic Teepee living toward a slightly more permanent rural American homesteading look with cheerful blue exterior house paint. The bus that was used to go to the funeral is transformed into a chicken coop. Maybe by the end the father is more even minded in our eyes but we do not get any living examples of this change. The family is still isolated in a rural house, that's all you are left with. I can't help but also think how that picture of life at the end, at least on the surface, reminds me of the self imposed isolation from the world of the monestaries and convents of Christians, groups that Ben supposedly abhors. Perhaps if his life was lived more like that kind of religious life, his wife would have lived longer. No similar admission, is ever made by the movie. The film expects you to think that Ben is an innocent and all of his troubles, all of his inconsistencies, are the fault of the wider society. At an earlier point in the movie, to prove this further, they disgrace a corpse by flushing its ashes down a toilet in a ritualized ceremony. Another time Ben shocks an elderly couple in public by standing nude while ridiculing them for their narrow mindedness. This lower than school bathroom humor is all this film offers to explain itself.
The Company of Wolves (1984)
Avoid This One - Confusing Plot, Gross Imagery
Vulgar and disturbing imagery in numerous scenes including a person ripping their own skin off his head and being exposed as raw muscle, other times wolves ripping out of human bodies, naked women converted from a wolf to seduce a priest. The story is very confusing, it's a disconnected collection of tales involving werewolf themes. The only thing I liked about it was the other imagery of the woods with the fog, the other animals, the peasant neighborhoods and people had very well done props, cinematography and settings. Only one wolf-human transformation scene was ok, where some aristocracy were having a wedding feast and the gluttonous wedding party all converted into wolves, that was not too vulgar but all the other wolf-human transformations were simply gross. Don't think it will be tame just because Angela Lansbury is in it. And any point it's trying to make is lost because it's so utterly convoluted. The plot is beyond confusing irregardless, if it is looked at symbolically or literally, it doesn't matter. It's supposed to express a dream-like female sexual coming-of-age story but fails. You have to spend numerous minutes looking at a young teenage girl with extremely bright red lipstick laying on a bed, writhing about. Avoid having your brain seared by this film.
The Twilight Zone: A Thing About Machines (1960)
Came Here Wanting To Know If It Was OK To Like This One
**minor spoilers** Viewing each episode from TZ Season 1 Episode 1 through to "A Thing About Machines" had me scratching my head over its ending. I played back part of the episode's intro several times during the start up trying to understand Serling's remark "adherents to the cause of tart sophistry" which I thought was funniest thing I never understood from him. Finchley (Haydn, Sound Of Music) is a hit, he can act well. The episode's overall absurdity was more profound than previous episodes, and it very much had me laughing. I loved the dancer in the TV set making sport of Finchley. But then it seems to end unfinished, and especially in that manner, it's unlike any other previous episode. Reading other reviews here about the history of when this was made explains some of the show's finish. I'm now taking that as part of the fun in it. Maybe I didn't want it to end.