Change Your Image
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Reviews
Xiang ri kui (2005)
I loved this movie.
Sunflower is everything a first-rate film experience can be. It is a moving and wonderful story and beautiful to watch. It engaged me in every moment. The music is perfect, the casting and acting uniformly outstanding, the technical and aesthetic skills and intuitive choices of the writer, director and crew all add up to a superior artistic and emotional experience.
The story of the struggle between a son and his father is universal, (but not always limited to sons). The historical, familial and societal structure in which the action takes place are uniquely Chinese. It is a multi-leveled experience to watch; the deeply personal, the historical/societal and the universal. To one degree or another, we can all relate to or have engaged in behaviors that take place in the context of this story, with friends as well as family.
It is food for lingering thought and conversations about families, China, and how we are affected by the rapidly changing societies we live in.
It is, as the person who sat behind said on his way down the aisle, "Well, that's one of the best movies I'll ever see." I agree.
Idiocracy (2006)
The "mystery" of its release is proof of what the movie portends . . .
This is a good movie, I enjoyed it. When we got to the theater (in LA) there was no poster, no title on the marquee. I thought it wasn't playing there till my grown son filled me in; no marketing, no trailer, no poster because the corporations satirized in the movie are PO'd about how they are portrayed. The corporations will or have filed suit about their images in the film, reason enough to go see it. The filmmakers have touched a raw nerve, obviously, and it is the nerve of truth.
The society of the movie's future is here. Anybody who sees this movie will recognize it as soon as you leave the theater. It may be less apparent in some other parts of the country, but in LA it cannot be ignored. Stupidity is revered, the thin-skinned denizens often react like toddlers without thought to everything that "offends" them, vulgarity rules, concepts of community are abandoned in favor of the selfish and adolescent. People no longer have or use critical thinking skills against the voices of "authority," which are the few mega-corporations left which control everything. See summary. I enjoyed the huge-voiced, '50's style narration. Viewers would do well to pay serious attention to its message even more than the messenger. But you won't leave depressed; it's a laugh out loud in places, and a caveat. Go see it.