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wbohrer
Reviews
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
So real you want to commit suicide
I can't say I *liked* this movie per se, when I saw it in the theatre. This movie is a big wrecking ball of depressing reality smacking slam into the center of your psyche. It's not that it's *bad*, it's just so real it makes me want to go shoot myself in the head for the flashbacks it caused.
It's suburban New Jersey dysfunctional Jewish family life at it's most appalling, with the stereotypical nerdy clarinet playing older brother , the precocious and spoiled darling little sister, the miserable middle child, who is the focus of the story: an unattractive girl who is not particularly bright and is the class "dog" that everyone in her school taunts, the forgettable father ruled by his wife, and the oh so true to character mean, belittling mother who is constantly berating her middle daughter while doting on the smart oldest son and the cute younger daughter.
The rest is really just a slice of life of this poor girl's depressing existence, centered around getting a crush on an older good looking high school boy (Eric Mabius, "Ugly Betty"s boss), her friendship with the boy next door, and the constant stream of abuse from her classmates.
Whew. It does for teen comedies what Goodfellas did for Romantic Mafia dramas.
¿Qué pasa, U.S.A.? (1977)
I remember it as being hilarious
Like most things, the show tarnished a bit with age, but what I remember most was that this show could be watched by people who only spoke one or the other of English and Spanish, and still be enjoyed and understood.
I was in high school when this show was on PBS in the NYC area, and my father's mother was living with us. My grandmother and I were watching the show and laughing till we choked, some slapstick scene with the grandmother and the dishwasher is all I remember now, 30 yrs later. What I remember most vividly is my father walking into the TV room to find his youngest kid and his mother laughing themselves sick, over a Spanish language TV show when neither of us spoke or understood Spanish. He talked about it for days, told everyone he knew at work about it. All we could tell him was, "it was FUNNY!"
A Home at the End of the World (2004)
Kind of a Chick Flick for Guys
I guess it's supposed to be a relationship movie for guys, where emotions and actions and the motivations behind them are never explored. The audience is given a snapshot of events in the main character's life, and then left to fill in the blanks.
I could never decide if Colin Farrell's character supposed to be a bit... "slow"? He's naive, in a Forrest Gump sort of way, but without any of the typical affectations of the mentally handicapped. His mother was a partier, and he was a young boy in the Summer of love; I guess that's supposed to explain his shallow hippie-dippy "it's just love, man" affect.
Sissy Spacek was wonderful, and surprisingly soft and beautiful as his lover's mother.
If you enjoy post-modern, present-tense, explain nothing novels, you might enjoy this film. Unless you're homophobic, it's certainly an inoffensive movie that tries to be a character study, but comes of as merely a character sketch.
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)
Such wasted potential
This movie based on the book by Chris Fuhrman could have been so much better. It wasn't a bad movie, but I wonder why they chose to excise the entire bit about the main character Francis' horrifically abusive alcoholic father who regularly beat the crap out of him. It helps explain the drinking and drugging and the fact that this 14 yr old kid is out of the house all them time, day or evening, during the school year. It would explain his bond with the messed up girl, his bond with Tim who's parents are f***ed up differently. I did like the mix of comic and action, that was really well done.
The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000)
It's been done, it's been written, it
"The Boys in the Band" was groundbreaking because it was made in the 70s. The kids get laid all the time and noone talks about AIDS. The guys are cute so it's fun to look at, and we all know guys like these, but, like, it has SO been done already, this "story". There was "Diner" for straight people. There was the Big Chill for whiny old yuppies. There was "St. Elmo's Fire" for whiny 20-somethings who thought they should be yuppies already. Now we have the Broken Hearts Club: same story, different demographic. If that's what you're looking for, the original English "Queer as Folk" tells this same story so much better. And hotter!