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Reviews
Conversations with God (2006)
a damn infomercial
The quality of the writing and production is about that of a reasonably good TV movie, and the acting turns particularly wooden every time someone has a moment where he "gets it." I wasn't familiar with Walsch's books at all, and after this movie I don't think I want to be. The opening lecture scene makes it all too clear whose "love versus fear" tripe was being lampooned in "Donnie Darko," and I seriously thought it was a self-parody that was going to turn out to be a nightmare sequence.
The treatment of physical suffering in the story is particularly dishonest. In the "conversations," one of Neale's first revelations is that all suffering is created by reaction to circumstance and not the circumstance itself. Up to this point, he's been portrayed as simply toughing out all his physical sufferings as though they made no real impact on him, with one moment of exception when he suffers the shame of finally breaking down and eating from the dumpster. It's rather poignant when he seems to recognize the soccer mom and her brat who look at him in disgust as part of the society he was working to build before he lost his job, but the whole thing is cheapened later by the insistence that his suffering really came only from his reaction to them.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
FORGET IT.
Read "The Sun Also Rises" instead, if you must. NOTHING HAPPENS. This movie is nothing but one big monster truck rally, just without the oversized tires. And mysogynist to boot--instead of the dogged fighter we had in Linda Hamilton, this time around we get the female terminator that disarms her victims by enhancing her boobs, and the Clare Danes character with absolutely no purpose in the story but to stick by her man's side and fulfil his destiny.
The Others (2001)
The Sixth Sense for Objectivists
In the afterlife, the greatest good is property rights.
The beautifully dressed sets kept me watching to see if anything else would be right with this movie. No such luck. The ending turned out to be even more dumb than it was obvious.
Meet the Parents (2000)
Could have been wonderful, but was ineptly directed
I liked the story, I liked the actors (even Ben Stiller, who I had thought would be weak playing against DeNiro), but through most of the film I was wondering why I was still sitting there. It got pretty good in its serious moments, but the humor was all thoroughly botched--most gags were telegraphed, delivered without buildup, and then diffused by other business as soon as they arrived. I think the only things I laughed at in the whole film were sight gags involving the cat.
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976)
a thoroughly surreal series
We're constantly bounced between real life, where Perrin consistently says
"hippopotamus" instead of "mother-in-law," and his fantasies, where he
actually sees the hippopotamus in the jungle. Over the course of the
series, Perrin fakes his suicide several times, each time taking more
people
with him and starting more absurd endeavors. After the failure of his
shop
"Grot," where everything sold is guaranteed to be useless, eventually his
entire department from his ever-changing workplace follow him to start a
health spa based on self-indulgence.
My favorite moment was a passing comment about his necktie on his way out
the door to a fruit seller's convention. His wife admires the emblem,
which
he describes as "very unfortunate, two apples and a banana."
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976)
a thoroughly surreal series
We're constantly bounced between real life, where Perrin consistently says
"hippopotamus" instead of "mother-in-law," and his fantasies, where he
actually sees the hippopotamus in the jungle. Over the course of the
series, Perrin fakes his suicide several times, each time taking more
people
with him and starting more absurd endeavors. After the failure of his
shop
"Grot," where everything sold is guaranteed to be useless, eventually his
entire department from his ever-changing workplace follow him to start a
health spa based on self-indulgence.
My favorite moment was a passing comment about his necktie on his way out
the door to a fruit seller's convention. His wife admires the emblem,
which
he describes as "very unfortunate, two apples and a banana."
Cheap (1974)
I thought the full title of this was "The Down and Dirty Duck"
I wish I could find a copy! This is an outstanding piece of sexual satire and general weirdness by Flo & Eddie, with a surreal sex scene that's an obvious and direct precursor to the one in The Wall. I managed to save an audio tape of only part of the song with our favorite lines: "Dogs, horses, or a guy, Give someone DEAD a try!" and Willard's creation of his artificial girl.
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Eto zhe samyi glupyi fil'm ya smotrel vo vsyu zhizn'!
First let me say that I like Sam Raimi. I loved The Evil Dead, and we even named our cat after my big sister's favorite Warrior Princess. And I love satire. If this movie had been even vaguely successful satire or even self-satire, I probably would have loved it. But no, it just rambled on pointlessly, as though it was SUPPOSED to be satirical.
We saw it on the plane on the way home from Istanbul. My non-English-speaking Georgian friend, a major film buff, seemed absolutely entranced by it. I tried to get some sleep, but it was just too naggingly insistent visually (which is, of course, exactly what made The Evil Dead so compelling)--even through the blindfold! I tried plugging in the earphones for a while, but that just made it worse. Turns out Zaza was not so much entranced as stupefied. At the end he turned to me and, before I could say a word, told me it was the absolute stupidest film he'd seen in his whole life. I could only agree. Five years later, I still want those two hours of sleep back.