Change Your Image
Bravo419
Reviews
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Decent
This film has an interesting concept. While Lars' character may have seemed extreme for 2007, I believe there's an ever-increasing subset of shy, socially awkward, "loner" men that he speaks to today.
The casting for this film was excellent, though Gosling naturally carried it. I believe there were some missed opportunities with his character, however. This film had a few exceptionally good scenes, such as Lars performing CPR on Margo's teddy, and him putting on the Talking Heads vinyl record, which I'm not surprised to learn were improvised by Gosling. Outside of these, what we're left with is an underwhelming hour and a half of Lars casually lounging with and talking to "Bianca".
I'd have also liked to see more than one instance where someone calls out Lars on his delusion, rather than everyone gossiping before simply going along with it. We tend to be polite and timid in certain parts of the Northern U. S., but if a man goes walking around in public with a blow-up doll, women aren't going to be rushing to his defense left and right... quite the opposite!
Another aspect of this film I enjoyed was the relationship between Lars and Dagmar. If you're interested in psychology, I believe you'll appreciate this too. Dagmar was perhaps the only woman I found to be "believable" in this film... Karin, Margo, and the ladies around town, on the other hand, stem from male fantasy. Karin wouldn't have realistically been going along with housing and caring for Lars' blow-up doll and shaming her husband Gus for his thoughts on the matter, but rather demand that Gus find a solution to this problem. It's not the dynamic I expected, though I suppose that's what makes this film the off-beat comedy it is.
Likewise, I can't see Margo being attracted to Lars after the blow-up doll enters the picture, let alone pursuing him, even if he happens to be a slightly chubby Ryan Gosling. From what little I know of female attraction, I know enough that ladies typically don't pursue men, particularly if they're extremely antisocial, dressed like Fred Rogers, and "in a relationship" with a blow-up doll. All the ladies in general being overly nice and welcoming to Lars and "Bianca" is totally implausible, but again, it does make for interesting comedy.
The ending came as no surprise... I saw that coming from the second Margo was introduced. This was overall a decent film, even if underwhelming at times.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
A unique film, albeit overrated
In an age where drug abuse has become an increasing problem and "normalized" throughout much of society, this film's portrayal of addiction and the progressive decline it brings is a refreshing one. The lead actors, especially Burstyn, gave notable performances. I found myself often comparing her character to my own mother, and how I'd hate to ever see the latter fall into the same drug addiction spiral. I sympathized greatly with Connelly's decline, and couldn't help but resent Leto for his active role in that, while at the same time neglecting his mother throughout the film.
Those are the good points. The hype for this film may have set my expectations a little too high, however. I personally didn't find it as revolutionary or disturbing as other reviewers made it out to be, with films such as "Grave of the Fireflies (1988)" being much more impactful in that regard. An IMDb rating of 8.3 is entering "masterpiece" territory... and while it has a powerful message to convey, this is no masterpiece.
The constant close-up cuts of "needle, eyeball, pill, mouth, eyeball, needle, eyeball" etc. Were intriguing at first, but ultimately overdone. When you consider the average 100-minute film has 600 scene cuts, while this one has 2,000, you get an idea of just how overdone it is. This, along with certain special effects, didn't age well at all, making it (at times) come across as a film made in the late 1970s (and all the cheesy SFX that entails) rather than a film set in the late 1970s.
While it's fascinating to watch the train wreck that is these characters' lives reach its climax in the end, the film did go a little over-the-top with certain scenes (e.g. Being violently electrocuted while awake during a simple ECT procedure), but others are much more realistic, such as one drug addict remorselessly prostituting his girlfriend for drug money and a woman being severely degraded in an adult film to feed her drug addiction. The message hits home and I'm sure many viewers can sympathize or even relate to the pain and suffering we see in these characters' lives.
7/10 for a film that ended on a powerful note and is even more applicable today than it was over 20 years ago, even if certain aspects of it left something to be desired.
Outlaw King (2018)
Very "average" film that should've been a TV series
This film was off to a strong start, and it didn't take long for me to get drawn in. The brief duel, catapult scene, and interpersonal interactions between characters were awe-inspiring. 10 minutes in, I was fully prepared to learn more about each character and their development as the story progressed... development that ultimately never happened. I never got to know Robert, his wife Elizabeth, his child, or much of anyone, for that matter.
Oddly, I found myself only showing interest in the young Prince towards the end of the film simply because he was the only character who had some depth to him. For that reason, instead of a two-hour long film, this should have been a one-season TV series spanning 6 hours. What we were given instead is shallow and screams "missed potential".
The first scenes between Robert and his new wife Elizabeth were painful to watch. I get that the film wanted to portray the awkwardness of an arranged marriage, but they went over the top in that regard; after the wedding ceremony, Robert gets placed squarely in the friendzone, given the cold shoulder, and otherwise humiliated by Elizabeth in front of their subjects for the first half of the film, and naturally Robert is going along with this treatment like it's deserved (as if arranged marriages weren't the norm back then).
If that wasn't enough, the writers then topped it by having the 14th century wife go on a 21st century boss chick rant before finally saying "I choose you (Robert)", which nearly made me turn off the film. Talk about being historically dishonest and disrespectful to Robert and his legacy, to say the least. I don't know what the writers were thinking with this awful relationship dynamic, and I also have to question why Robert and Elizabeth were deliberately portrayed as being as ashamed of their Catholic faith as they were their arranged marriage, refusing to make the sign of the cross at one point, among other oddities. I can only chalk these things up to being modernist tripe.
Between the dismal relationship dynamic and lack of a plot, by the 45-minute mark of the film I couldn't care less about the "plot" and was practically begging Elizabeth to give poor Robert some much-needed relief. Boy, did it come in the most redeeming scene of the film at the halfway point. I practically stood up and cheered Elizabeth on once this happened, and this alone is responsible for two of the four stars I granted this film. Suddenly, Elizabeth wasn't so bad from here on out, and Robert appeared to be grinning more throughout the film.
There were a couple of decent action scenes in the second half of the film, but nothing too remarkable, almost being a carbon copy of the battles in Lord of the Rings; great for the early 2000s, but I'd expect something more original 15 years later.
This is a film that has a couple good things going for it, but it underperforms in most other aspects, making it yet another cookie-cutter modern film that does nothing to stand out from the crowd and thus, average at best. I would recommend Braveheart instead.
Equilibrium (2002)
An ironic and semi-prophetic film
Equilibrium presents us with a future that was, at the time, far too unbelievable. Despite its parallels to The Matrix (1999) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), I found this film to be unique in its own right. Many viewers may see the totalitarian society in which this film is based and think "Boy, am I glad we averted that dystopia during the 20th century."
Enter the modern day. We are now living in a time where a wide array of emotional blunting (or otherwise mind-numbing) medications are touted as a solution for society's ills and prescribed like candy; "(words / silence / other forms of free expression) are violence", and a serious crime in many Western countries; we've grown desensitized to violence; efforts to prohibit any kind of weapon ownership among the populace, no matter how nonsensical the legislation, has been a favorite of the totalitarians in government for some time now; art and books that are deemed "offensive", especially that which is historical and might trigger negative emotions, are prohibited, defaced, burnt, or otherwise destroyed; we are undoubtedly living in a surveillance state.
For all this film gets right, I do have one complaint: For someone who is perhaps one of the most gung-ho in his persecution of sense offenders, Taye Diggs gets far too excited and emotional in his role; had Diggs simply spoken his lines in a calm voice, rather than unnecessarily shouting at people standing five feet away from him, this rather obvious plot hole could have easily been averted.
The Last Duel (2021)
Decent film
I felt there were some miscasts with The Last Duel; Damon looks and acts too much like a grunting brute rather than a temperamental knight, while the equally unkempt Driver lacks the good looks the women in the film doted about, instead carrying a puffy and sour expression on his face at all times, which sadly cannot be helped. Comer played her role very well, on the contrary.
The film could've easily been shortened to just two accounts instead of three, combining Damon and Comer's versions of events and thus placing this film below two hours. Comer's version simply further elaborates on and "corrects" some of what she told Damon after all, and with history telling us that the real Carrouges (Damon) did anything but challenge or choke his wife after her accusation, despite the film portraying otherwise, this would have been truer to life as well.
What we're left with is a film where the men are portrayed as violent savages, and the women are helpless victims caught in the middle of it all. Nevertheless, we do get the long-awaiting duel in the end, complete with grappling, half-swording, and other combat techniques of the Middle Ages that were pleasant to see and made up for what preceded the duel, particularly in a film that got several other aspects of this period wrong.