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Reviews
Stevie (2002)
A devastating look at a life without stability.
I just saw Stevie today at a film festival and it really blew me away. Its harrowing to see the life of someone who was passed off from person to person and only rarely got a glimpse of a happier life. He is used as a pawn in the relationship between his grandmother and the mother who didn't want him (and took it out in abuse). Later he is sent through the foster care system where he is eventually raped. Bits of his medical record reveal the degree to which we can predict the effects that this sort of instability will bring to a person's life, which makes it all the more angering that noone was there to prevent it.
In one particularly powerful scene you see Stevie reunited with the kindest of his early foster parents and the joy it brings to him. There is almost a complete regression in him to a childlike state, like he is trying to restart his childhood at the point where he was happy.
Steve James does not try to excuse the heinous crime Stevie has committed, rather he forces you to see the complicity we all have in (including in a very real sense himself) allowing a system that ignores the needs of children.
Waking Life (2001)
An Overwhelming Movie Experience
Very rarely does one leave the movie theater feeling smarter. By and large I exit the local cineplex feeling ashamed that i spent 8 dollars on something that actually reduced my intelligence. Such is not the case with Waking Life.
This movie truly makes you think. Not in the sense that one thinks about an issue picture or a documentary, but in a whole other way. For me this movie awakened me to thoughts I had within me but had not fully expressed, or had never taken the time to express. The whole movie I felt cerebrally linked to the hero of our story, which I find to be an amazing thing.
Many will tell you that this is a pseudo-intellectual picture, with mixed messages and a stoner's sensibility. I on the other hand feel that the only thing that separates an intellectual from the rest is passion. Passion of subject and passion of self. Waking Life had both of these things in spades. If you don't feel a renewed passion for life after seeing this movie than I personally will give you a full refund.
Der letzte Mann (1924)
So moving its absurd
This really is the perfect film. Each shot is handcrafted like a sonnet and equally mysterious. The sets are grand and daring and emil jannings brings the role of the porter to life with so much poignancy that every movement seems fitting, no matter how over the top. Every film fan should be forced to watch this movie or they havent truly lived.