haz22 Reviews

Shirley Valentine (1989)

Rallying cry for the selfish women

[3/10 · 19 May 2006]

There was a case recently of a woman who abandoned her child in England so she can be with her lover in Turkey. The inspiration for her must be this movie, a film that tells women to find their own dreams and damn everyone else, and gives them the rallying cry - the one that screams out "ME! ME! ME!!!" and only "ME!!!".

It is easy to do really, just think of your husband as a selfish brute, your children as whiny ungrateful spoilt brats (wonder how they got that way, could it be their upbringing? Oh perish the thought that you could be a bad mother). And you have this beautiful dream that just cries out to be fulfilled, and there are beautiful men in distant lands just there to service your deepest needs.

So now you find prematurely wrinkled ladies, inspired by the film, wandering around remote corners of the world like Zambia picking up young (and poor, why else would anyone think that these young men would make love to bloated or disintegrating bodies) local men to satisfy their desires. One comment I read from one of these used young men is that these women are like vampires, going to those countries looking shrivelled and saggy, sucking up the life-blood from them, before returning home looking all freshened and plumped-up.

So, cheers to Pauline Collins, a great service you have done to all the Shirley Valentines of the Western World, liberating them from their drudgery and care, and hello to freedom and great sex.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

How to write a bad review for Brokeback Mountain

[10/10 · 20 April 2006]

I watched this movie, but for reasons I can't put my fingers on, it left me somewhat dissatisfied. So I come to IMDb to check the reviews, especially the negative ones, to see they can help me see why I felt that way. But wow, am I surprised. Here's just a few snippets of the latest negative comments -

"For some reason the ranchers of Wyoming have been looked at as stupid inbread hillbillies by the eastren states", "perhaps the most immoral and evil film to come out of Hollywood", "most awful, pointless, boring and disgusting piece of trash", "boring"...

Are we to think that Brokeback haters are all ill-educated oafs who can't write a coherent sentence? Or numskulls with the emotional intelligence of a gnat? Or shrinking violets who get shocked senseless by the sight of Jake making out with Heath?

So here I'll try to write a negative review which I hope I can articulate my dissatisfaction, but also to help out the Brokeback haters hoping that it will inspire them to write reviews which won't make them sound like complete nitwits -

---- (contains spoilers) ---

Brokeback Mountain is a story of two ranch hands who met herding sheep in Wyoming in 1963. Quite unexpectedly, one drunken night, they began a sexual relationship. This lasted until their job finished and they went their separate ways. Both settled into married lives and had kids, but they resumed their relationship four years later which continued until one died many years later.

This film has been described as a "gay cowboy" film but that is completely misleading as the theme of the film is about fear and self-repression, and how this affects love and leads to loss. The director Ang Lee made a conscious decision to make this film rather restrained, almost minimalist in its approach. This is to the detriment of the film as it means that the central relationship between the two men is only roughly sketched. We are not sure as to why there is such a strong attraction between the two, or why their relationship lasted so long. There is nary a shy smile, a furtive glance, or a whispered endearment. Perhaps the director wishes to avoid the trappings of a typical lush romantic story, but it makes the romance between the two not truly convincing.

Another consequence of this is that the viewers don't feel engaged enough with the characters to empathise with their predicament. The leisurely pace at which the director tells his tale further add to the sense of ennui.

The performances of the central characters are far from perfect. Jake Gyllenhaal for example has a tendency to flair his arms around like an overacting school boy at moments of heightened emotion. Some of the supporting cast are below par - both the Twist parents are not well-acted, ditto for Cassie or the Basque who is just a caricature there for comic relief. Some of the scenes, such as the fireworks scene, are unnecessary and distracting and disrupt the flow of the film. The makeup for the actors is poor, at certain scenes it is so embarrassingly obvious that it threatens to turn a tragic scene into a farce.

--------- end -----

One important thing, Brokeback haters must also say that they hated it so much that they stopped watching it twenty minutes before the film finished. That last twenty minutes is the reason why it got a ten, it is the emotional heart of the film and where the genius lies. It hit me sideways, sent me reeling and left me choking with grief. If you have really seen it, but are still left unmoved and gave it a vote of a one or three out of ten, then yes, you are most probably an emotional cripple, an intellectually challenged Crash fan and a complete boor.

Queer as Folk (2000–2005)

A show that outstayed its welcome

[2/10 · 19 April 2006]

It is quite apparent now how much of the early success of this series was due to copying of the storyline of the original British series. Once it had to bring in entirely its own stories so that it can extend this series into 5 seasons, the poverty of ideas and trashiness of the story lines just made it unbearable to watch. It was good to watch it for the first series, but the second series was barely OK, the third absolutely dire and the rest never got better.

It morphed into a show that is empty of any real emotion, truthful observation of human reality or indeed any of the sexual insight that the original British series had, and turned into a vehicle for tiresome political activism, spiced with an endless parade of narcissistic gays who really all should go kill themselves off when aged 30 like Brian tried to do in the first season.

It is pointless to list the awfulness of the later series, the unrealistic story lines, absurd characterisations, poor scripts and dialogue, plastic emotion and farcical political agitprop. It became just a show for those who don't have too much inside their heads yet who like to think that they are watching a show about "real issues", but one that also allow them to goggle at male flesh at the same time. It is a show for the dim, the soulless and the sex-obsessed urban gays.

Thank god it is finally gone.

9 Songs (2004)

It's pornographic, but is it art?

[5/10 · 23 March 2006]

So some people claimed that this film is not pornographic. Really! Any film that shows explicit sex acts and has scene of male ejaculation is within the realm of pornography. Trying to split hair as to whether it is done in a "real and honest way" or "it's part of real life" is just plain silly, it only showed that the reviewers are quite ignorant of the range and diversity of porn. In fact you can argue that there are more realistic sex in some types of porn as they feature ordinary people - balding men and overweight women, not people with perfect bodies as shown in the film. The only question is whether this film can be considered art, and that, unfortunately, is entirely debatable.

According to the director, "it was about doing a film where you could genuinely try and capture the intimacy of two people being in love, the physical intimacy, and hopefully the emotional intimacy." If that is the case, he has failed miserably. There are plenty of physical intimacy alright, but what is striking in this film is the lack of emotional intimacy between the two main characters. Certainly the two are interested in each other sexually, but it's hard to tell whether they are in love or not. Perhaps the director isn't aware of the fact portraying love convincingly is more difficult than showing two people having sex.

I have no objection to a film which is explicitly pornographic, the only question is whether it works well as a film. Sadly, this film veers on the dull side, and if you are not interested in the music, it can be excruciatingly tedious. It is, I would say, an interesting experiment, and on this, and on this alone, I would applaud this effort. But when it doesn't quite hit the mark, I'm left more with concern for the actor and actress involved (well, perhaps not so much for the man, there is nothing he showed that he wants to be ashamed of, and the sexist world being as it is), whether their exposure here will come to haunt them in the future.

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Enjoyable romp among the dinosaurs

[8/10 · 16 March 2006]

OK, don't go to see this film if you are of the serious, straight-laced, humourless kind. If you are the sort likely to complain about human not co-existing with dinosaurs, this is not your kind of film. This is the sort of film best enjoyed leaving your brain behind - the plot is stupid, the acting practically non-existent, but hey, what an enjoyable romp it is. Raquel Welch is simply unsurpassed as a cave-woman in her best caveman-designed swimsuit. And whatever that may be said about it, the animation of the dinosaurs still looks good. So go gasp at the giant turtle, be amazed at the battle between the dinosaurs, cheer at the cat-fight between the cave-women.

Have a fun time.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Not as good as it can be

[7/10 · 15 March 2006]

As a avid fan of the H2G2, I was eager to see this film when it came out. However, I was somewhat disappointed with the film. It is not as funny as the book, however, we are not here to judge the book, and it is as a film that it must be judged.

I think the film could have been better if the film is better paced, as it is, it is far too frantic, rushing from one scene to the next. A few of the jokes falls flat on its face by being too hurried, or perhaps the it is the actors that didn't deliver the lines well - for example the false hope raise by Ford Prefect (What's this?..This is .. nothing..) when he and Arthur Dent were about to be ejected from the Vogon spaceship missed the mark completely. I think the fault mainly lies with the director, perhaps someone with a better track record in film making would have done a better job.

A few of the scenes, such as the spectacular lab for constructing planets in Magrathea, work well. Others are only so-so. I didn't like Ford Prefect and Trillian in this film, but the biggest dislike is Marvin, not entirely how I imagine him/it. It is a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours, but just don't expect too much of it.