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Open Range (2003)
Gonna need some crackers for all that cheese!
This is a rather simple, straightforward western. You know who the good guys are, you know who the bad guys are, and you know why they're fighting. You'll also be able to figure out what's going to happen each scene and how it's going to end.
Overall, it's a pretty generic western. But that's okay, sometimes you need a flick where you can turn off your brain and not think. I liked the film and glad I can remove it from my Watch List.
Negative: It does drag a bit in the middle. Costner can be stiff and wooden at times. It's predictable.
Positive: It has a happy ending and all the loose ends are tied up. Duvall is great as always.
Worthy mention: There are no sex scenes, zero nudity, and mild language. The violence isn't gory or excessive but there's no skimping on it.
Capone (2020)
Good movie, but I see why a lot of people didn't like it.
Summary: The movie centers on the final year before Al Capone's death. He suffers from dementia caused by advanced neurosyphilis.
While his wife, brother and sister in law, son, and old friends try to care for him, his mind wanders back and forth from his current state to haunting memories of his gangster past.
The setting, hair, makeup, costumes are fantastic. The movie takes place in a small universe - Capone's Florida estate. There are scenes outside of his estate, but largely it's focused on Capone and his family trying to care for his ailing health. This is because, in the final year of his life, his entire world IS the estate.
His hallucinations are largely due to dementia and a second stroke suffered during the movie. I think this is where audience members take issue with the movie. Some have criticized the movie as disjointed - but that's because the mind of a person with dementia is disjointed. Likewise, when the name Capone is mentioned, it almost always conjures up the image of Capone in his young years - a tough, shrewd, criminal that loved to indulge in parties, alcohol, and women, and was the genius mastermind behind numerous robberies and schemes.
Instead, what is presented to the audience is a disgusting, weak, demented old man who sh.ts the bed and pisses himself. His eyes are perpetually bloodshot, most of the time he's only capable of grunting or growling a few words, he walks with a doddering stumble, and his skin looks like death warmed over. These are actually symptoms of a person suffering from a neurodegenerative disease. Tom Hardy does an excellent job at portraying Capone in this manner. If you're familiar with caring for a person with dementia or mental decline, you would find his look and behavior eerily realistic. This also makes his hallucination/flashback scenes more realistic - and thus, why they have an element of "horror" to them.
It is also a very slow movie. It's anticlimactic. That is a valid criticism. It was a good watch, but I'll never watch it again. I got the main take away that Al Capone had a miserable few years at the end of his life.
The Swarm (1978)
1970s rebuttal to the Cold War
Others have written much better synopses than I can. I'd rather give some historical context to this movie.
There was a shift in cinematography in the 1970s as a response to the loss of the Vietnam War, the distrust of government following Water Gate, and repeated environmental disasters like the Cuyahoga River Fire. This movie, albeit cliché and contrived, exemplifies this: the bees are an environmental mutation, the military just wants to nuke the bees, but the scientists refuse, and the protagonists shouts down the general stating that the bees annually pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops and people would starve. The nuclear power plant manager ignores the scientists' advice creating a nuclear explosion.
The miltary is heavy handed and incompetent. The population is under threat because of the environmental disaster of migratory and mutated bees. Nuclear power is dangerous - even if just used for electricity generation. The towns people themselves are oblivious and helpless to what is happening to them. Even the end has an ominous warning: "if we use our time wisely, the world just might survive."
If one wants to watch this from an analyticals perspective regarding subliminal take on popular culture's turn against the Cold War dominating the United States for the last 3 decades, have a gander. Or, if you like cheesy monster movies, give it a spin.
But otherwise, it's overripe with a flimsy, cheesy, and predicatable plot, generic dialogue, and a laughable premise. As such, I'd tell most people to pass on it.
Of Mice and Men (1992)
Sometimes the right ending is a sad ending.
An adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella of the same name, it captures the bitter reality of skewed justice pre-World War II.
Others have done a better job at discussing the plot line. This is just analysis of the story's ending.
Spoiler below.
But also, in knowing what would happen to his companion Lennie, George understood that it would be best his duty to carry out the inevitability of killing Lennie. Much in the same way of Old Yeller. Would it have been better to let a vindictive and vicious man like Curley to kill Lennie? Or for George to do it himself? Either way, Lennie would have been executed. That is the bitterness of reality. Real life can be just as bitter today as it was in the story.
American Graffiti (1973)
Teens are obnoxious every generation
Yes, this movie is a coming of age classic. Most of the other reviews have done well to give a synopsis of the story. Instead, this is a take on the content of a depiction of a generation enshrined in premature nostalgia.
The storyline is full of angst, insecurity, and idiotic decisions. But what amuses me most are complaints from older generations about the two youngest generations. Teen culture of cruising in cars and loitering, drag racing, loud music, bullying, raging hormones, and rebelling against their elders is copy and pasted for every generation after the boomers started it. Sorry to anyone attached to the era, but the seventies were better and the nineties had the best music.
Sometimes They Come Back (1991)
Main Character Isn't Even Likeable
Jim, the protagonist, is just an unlikeable character. His only emotions are flashbacks, then bouts of self pity, and anger when dealing with everyone else. His temper is easily triggered. He is sloppy in how he deals with others - ham fisted and brusk. It is hard to sympathize with him. Which is a shame because the premise of the film has potential. But that's what you get when Stephen King is allowed to write the screenplay and have any kind of influence over the direction. His ideas are great, his execution is terrible in film. I had to increase the playback to speed just to get to the end of the film.
Splice (2009)
As predictable as an episode of Scooby Doo
This is a standard Frankenstein's monster in the twenty-first century. A couple of gifted, but morally bankrupt, genetic biologists continue a human/animal genetic splicing experiment in secret once their department is axed by the CEO - who, is more concerned for ethics, if only for PR sake, than the scientist couple.
Clive (Brody) and Elsa (Polley) use an amalgam of animal genes, to which Elsa adds her own, to create Dren. As the old maxim goes, anything that can go wrong, does go wrong as the scientists scramble to keep up with Dren's accelerated growth and development. As such, they are forced to move Dren to Elsa's conveniently-never-before-mentioned-to-her-souse-until-just-right-now family barn.
Dren magically and conveniently evolves any time she needs anytime a challenge to her mortality presents itself. Need to breathe under water? Magically she has gills! Need to not die from falling off the roof of a barn? Now she has wings! Need to rape her mom/Elsa so she can impregnate mom/Elsa to ensure there will be a mini-Dren (and possible sequel)? Sequential hermaphroditism to the rescue and now Dren is male!
The implication of hubris and genetic engineering are very obvious, but this plays out more like a monster flick than an actual commentary on genomic ethics. I think part of this is because the plot proceeds rather quickly - out of necessity rather than poor directing. This movie would be a much better book so that there could be more character development and more emphasis on the science rather than the monster. However, it was not a book and even if it were a book, I would pass on it.