Change Your Image
hxamaranth
Reviews
Dispatches from Elsewhere (2020)
Soured by egotism
This concept had great potential. The cast was really good other than Segal himself. Even the script and timeline of the story was good. The creative and somewhat surreal scenes and sets were an interesting way to engage viewers even if most of these were taken from the real-life game that it was taken from (according to what I've read by other critics.)
The problem was that about half way through the season it became more and more about Jason Segal's character and eventually about Jason Segal himself. Breaking this cardinal rule of self-importance has ruined many shows. I'm thinking of "Law & Order: SVU" which has become more about Mariska Hargitay's character once she began producing the episodes and of Brit Marling who starred in and created "The OA". I'm not against delivering a personal message through a show but making it specifically about the creator makes it not about us, the viewers.
Sexology (2016)
Comprehensive and Engaging
Gabrielle Anwar's openness about her experiences was one of the best assets of the documentary. It's rare for a woman to reveal so much personal information into their thoughts with anyone other than their intimate partner. This insight helps women and men to understand and/or relate to their own relationships.
There was an almost too eclectic array of experts involved but I think they succeeded at least in not letting them contradict or distract from the lessons learned from them. It's a bit surprising to me that people don't understand that for women, the sexual experience is primarily something that occurs inside their own minds/hearts and that they have ultimate control of it.
Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
The ending (again)
Yes, it could have been the cult coming after her and yes they might have forced or coerced her to return or killed them all but it could also have been no more than some stranger that they almost hit and the rest could be Martha's intensifying paranoia constructing what we were seeing.
The goal though was to get the audience to ask these questions but I think Durkin failed in defining the intent of posing this question which was to illustrate Martha's own confusion and uncertainty about her paranoia, not the audience's confusion about what happened. I could possibly suggest that he use a tighter close up on Olsen to capture the nuances of her expressions showing her fear and uncertainty but I think he tried to use a different tactic...
Note that at times of her most paranoid, she is visually alone in the scenes. In the back of the car we don't see Ted and Lucy in the front seat. At the dinner party she is alone with the bartender despite the fact that there were dozens of people nearby. During her final swim she is alone when she sees the man sitting across the lake watching her. Even when she awakes in a panic and pushes Ted down the stairs we don't see his face or Lucy until after the fact. When she breaks the window on the black SUV, when she hears the pine cones hitting her window at night... she is alone.
I think we as an audience just weren't offered a way to tie our own questions with Martha's state of mind. Maybe if there was a scene in which Martha asks these same questions to Lucy. Maybe if they shot from a first-person perspective. I don't know but it just didn't quite work for me.
The Face of an Angel (2014)
Poor presentation and nebulous message
The movie failed utterly because it had nothing to do with either the events of the crime nor with the trial involving Amanda Kercher and Meredith Knox so viewers who are expecting any enlightenment about these events (and who wasn't) are left short-changed from the start. The characters are clumsy in their purpose to display some sort of point or message for the film so we are let down even more.
I would blame this more on the script and directing than the actors but if the actors did a good job then it did not show in the way this story was presented.
If I had to guess then I would say that it tried to tell us that the truth of the story was not the thing that people should be focused on but that a beautiful young girl who was loved and had a happy life was lost. Try watching it with this concept in mind and it makes all the poorly presented scenes a little more tolerable.
I wonder if Thomas' pursuit of the truth to the murder (as he gets more directly involved with the solution to the case by trying to locate the knives) is what inspires the drug use and silly CGI scenes as a reflection that he was falling into the same unimportant issues that everyone else is. I think his longing for his daughter also parallels the loss that the Kercher family was feeling. Thomas' strife with other journalists may also be a sign that he did not like the opinions of other writers because they were focused on the case and the girl on trial but not on the girl who died ("Strange... when I think of Face of an Angel I always think of Elizabeth. But you all mean Jessica." - Thomas)
After writing this review I watched a Q&A by Mark Salisbury with Michael Winterbottom (director) and Paul Viragh (writer) and right off the bat they confirmed what I struggled to believe was the message of the film. I'm sorry that they missed the mark so egregiously and that they used such a high-profile trial in a way that fails its potential as a who-dun-it.