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Summer of Sam (1999)
What a crime!
For a director who complains about African-American stereotypes in Hollywood, his depiction of Italian-Americans in this film in equally insensitive. The characters are cartoon versions of these young men and women living in NYC. The writing seemed high-school level and by someone who never met an Italian-American in their life, which can't be true with Spike Lee. The dialogue was cliche and I should know I grew up in the Bronx and Yonkers. There's honest and true vernacular and there's TV dialogue meant for clueless audiences. This film had the latter. The plot was disjointed. Some of the scenes seemed put in just for the outrage or some strange sense of comedy. I lived through the Son of Sam days. It was frightening. One of the victims had attended my college. I feared for my girlfriend who fit the profile of Berkowitz's victims. I was living in Yonkers at the time. Lee seemed ignorant of the real effects the serial killer had on the community. I expected more of Spike Lee. Not this garbage-filled, hateful film. Imagine if the same treatment was given to African-Americans or any other minority group, in a film? There would be outrage, and for good reason.
Teenage (2013)
Too adolescent
Nearly seamless cuts between archival footage and simulations of teenage social activity using actors, while various narrators give voice to a universal teenager and their trials and tribulations. The archival footage is quite amazing. The film disappoints in its portrayal of teens by ignoring some of the background of the events it covers. It tells of the exploitation of youth without delving deep enough into psychological aspects of young people and what drives them. They are just victims faulted for just wanting to have fun. Some footage of dissident youth, including anti-Nazi groups, but its not true that the political movements of the 1960s were totally engineered by the young. Of course, the draft mobilized many, but at the helm were adults with the needed maturity to bring understanding and run the show. But this is not to say the youth culture was not innovative and important in the 1960s antiwar movement. Many of these "radical" youths went for the money in the 1980s and became "Yuppies" on Wall Street. This film, purporting to be a documentary on teens, ends up being another young adult novel or creature feature where the teenagers save the world. Those tales are fun but life is more complicated than that.
The Wanderers (1979)
Puppet show
I grew up in the area of the Bronx where The Wanderers was filmed. That was very nostalgic. That was about it. The "Italian Gang" were portrayed as lascivious dopes with even their backstory looking very cliche and insensitive. The Italians are portrayed as buffoons and not sympathetic characters of whom many in real life in that neighborhood grew up in poverty and with tough family issues (not the lascivious father kind, either). Just throwing in a pregnancy doesn't make it real. The "Baldies" are equally comical. Gang fights in the film were silly and for some reason, when Hollywood depicts the Bronx, it always results in TV's Happy Days. There's one good scene where the protagonists find themselves in a rival gang's turf; but even the foggy atmosphere couldn't make up for the nerdy looking gang members. I have to say some of the smartest kids in my neighborhood were Italian. But the dumb, whop is a stereotype that emasculates the men and vulgarizes the women of a vibrant culture. The film does not take a lesson from its own classroom scene where the teacher tries to deflate racial stereotypes. He fails and so does this film. The African-American students are treated less callously, and they are more likeable for that. The film is not worth the time. This is not West Side Story.
Five Corners (1987)
Not the corner I remember
I grew up in the Bronx and this is not the Bronx I remember, or rather a TV version of it. Shanley is a Bronx native but some things don't make sense. The feel of the characters seemed more like the 1950s. The Beatles with their long hair had already made their mark on America. The film was shot in Astoria, Queens, so right there the feel was incorrect. People standing in front of burning barrels seems a cliche better suited for the Bowery. The film's characters were unlikable and though John Turturro is great, I thought he was a little over the top in some scenes. The characters seem something out of TV's Happy Days. Many of the performances were good, but the scrip detracted from any pathos for the character. I have even heard of people getting shot with arrows but it seemed contrived. The craziness of the Bronx? It was crazier. Again, the locations were wrong. Five Corners is much tighter, more claustrophobic than what they showed in the film. Silly film. It's like Potsy and Fonzi on a bad night.
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Exploiting an important issue
A predictable and exploitative tale concerning a troubling issue among college-age men and women, rape. The film wants us to believe, and through one-dimensional characters, that all men are rapists aided by female enablers. You can read a lesbian relationship into Casandra's relationship with Nina, or is it just the exclusive camaraderie between woman. The film: male friendship, you hide the body; female friendship, you sacrifice your life for them. The film brings you along on a sugary sweet romance between the protagonist and her beau, only to predictably destroy that false hope. False hope seems to be what the filmmakers want you to feel. Nothing real in this story to be worth paying to watch it. It only exploits headlines and hopes to do the same with impressionable viewers who can't get past their emotions and look deeper in the societal causes of why some men objectify women and why some women lose sight of their vulnerabilities.
Sex: My British Job (2013)
Excellent Documentary
Great work by Hsiao-Hung Pai and Nick Broomfield in their investigation into the exploitation of Chinese and other immigrants. This is not about Miss Kitty working the saloon on Gunsmoke. No romantic view here, just the ugly face of reality in a brothel run by vipers and scum, possibly themselves exploited and abused at one time and have themselves sunk to even lower depths than the women they exploit.
Well, worth the watch. The film is suspenseful, sad and interesting at the same time. The film moves by real drama. It was much better than I expected, better than many of the other documentaries on the subject of prostitution.