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Reviews
Predestination (2014)
A Mind-Bending Movie for Time-Travel Lovers
This one belongs in the low-budget, complex time-travel genre of "Primers" and "Time Crimes." Like them, it raises questions of causality and sequence. (Hawke is understated, weary, and subtle; good job!)
The time-travel device is simple, unlike the high tech of "Timeline," although it does create a blast at both ends and degrade the traveler's mind and body (as in "Timeline").
This is pure sci-fi: assume the science is possible and take it from there. The movie creates loops and paradoxes, raises another question even as it answers the previous one, and is built around an unusual answer to "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
As the title implies, the movie raises the question of predestination: must things happen in a certain way? I leave you to find the answer. See this one.
Under the Skin (2013)
Cure for insomnia - and a failure of imagination
I am so glad that cinematophiles got off on this movie, which is apparently rife with symbolism and directorial homages.
I, on the other hand, found the movie to be a colossal failure of imagination - and of courage. The courage to tell the ghastly tale in the book, which, many years later, is still unforgettable to me. The film-makers apparently lacked the imagination to depict the truly horrific events in the book (which are also a vicious satire).
This movie has nothing in common with the book. Never have the words "based on" been used so loosely. Has anyone read the book? The only thing they have in common is a young woman driving around Glasgow picking up unattached men. What happens to them then is what the book is all about.
If you have not read the book, please do so. Maybe someday, somebody will make a movie of that. If you have read it, you'll know that it is one of the most hideous horror premises you'll even encounter. And you can skip this over-arty sleeper.
House Hunting (2012)
Weird, creepy, puzzling, and very entertaining
I don't agree with the reviewers who thought the premise wasn't anything new: the movies I've seen where people can't escape from a place are usually set-ups by a diabolical character/psychopath who's deliberately trapped them there, and we know that from the beginning. Not so with "House Hunting."
Part of what kept me watching (along with great performances by all) was the question of who or what malevolent force was confining the two families and providing them with sustenance in the form of cans of no-brand beef stew, one can per person, with the number diminishing as the characters die or kill each other off. Is it the house itself, its evil incarnated in the creepy "realtor" and the chirpy recorded voices that provide a guide to the property, over and over? (The ending -- I watched the last 30 sec. three times -- provides an answer, but I won't give it away.)
And what's the point of having the two male leads hold conversations with alternate versions of themselves?
The pacing was excellent, by which I mean that the audience doesn't figure it out any faster than the characters themselves. Despite holes and questions, this was a very satisfying trope on the descent-into-madness movie that starts from the most mundane of activities -- house-hunting -- so if you don't need everything neatly tied up at the end, I would say, go for it.
Jobs (2013)
A PR puff piece
I spent 20+ years in corporate PR (not Apple), and if we'd wanted to spend big bucks to lionize the founder, this would have been the result.
Oliver Stone should have made this movie. Then we would have seen the egomaniac who treated people like slaves and threw them away (for me, the measure of an executive is as much his/her respect for other human beings as the products that result).
We would have seen Jobs' lordly apathy towards body odor (mentioned once) and license plates, as if he weren't subject to the rules that mere mortals have to obey. We would have seen the famous eye-to-eye stare, as if The Master could force obedience just by looking at you.
We would have seen Jobs' obsession with closed systems (I've heard that Apple products are difficult if not impossible to physically open), as opposed to Gates' openness.
We would have seen how Jobs' monumental ego doomed him to death: his cancer was initially operable, but he didn't want people cutting open his precious body, so he opted for one strange diet after another, as if he were exempt from the principles of medicine and nutrition.
Maybe Stone would even have thrown in a scene from "The Simpsons" episode in which Lisa tries to see "Steve Mobs" about her astronomical usage charges, only to find him in a secluded, godlike glass chamber. He offers her a job, but it turns out to be a menial one - standing on the street handing out Apple fliers.
The movie spent only a few minutes on Jobs' dark side, which was just as important as his gadgets.
As I watch people entranced by the toys he created (and crashing their cars and killing each other as they do so), I realize that there is no way he is in the same league as Edison or other industrial giants to which he has been compared, and I recall the words of an article in The Atlantic: "we are all Jobs' slaves now."
And that's exactly how he would have wanted it.
Scenic Route (2013)
great flick, curious ending
One of the best two-man shows I've ever seen. I agree with the reviewer who said that abandoning the vehicle was a terrible mistake (causing the men to miss TWO rescue opportunities) and that you can take various conclusions away from the ending. The cell phone rings, (as the other reviewer said) probably a hallucination, and it appears that they're rescued and go on to live the idyllic lives they always wanted. Even the lighting sends that message.
So what was the meaning of the last 10 min.? Was the director showing us some sort of a posthumous brain-imagining? And if so, how do the men have a conversation in this dreamlike state? This was a 5* movie without the ambiguous ending. Missing the rescue opportunities would have been enough irony, and if they'd just died (actual rescue would have been too Hollywood), the movie would have been equally satisfying.