Change Your Image
david63
Reviews
White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007)
Never again indeed
Well said, Dream_seeker. I saw this film when it originally aired on HBO and it affected me profoundly. I watched it again today for the second time and was just as moved. It is as gut-wrenching as any film I have ever seen, fiction or non-fiction. It will make any grown man cry, even a hardened one, as long as a heart beats within him. This is an astounding piece of film-making and should be required viewing for high school students all over the world.
{SPOILERS} Why? The common theme from every one of the survivors interviewed is the same: Never again. As another reviewer noted, George Santayana's observation that "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" couldn't be more apt here. Indeed, the first scenes of interviews of young Japanese persons on the street drive home this point right away as they reveal that they have indeed forgotten and are clueless about the all-too-recent history of their elders. The survivors and those who died as a result of the bombings suffered horrors that should be unimaginable, but were and are still all too real and painful. As one of the survivors noted, those emotionally and physically painful experiences should end with them. No human beings should ever have to face those horrors again.
This is mostly a Japanese production (just watch the credits). Despite the obvious temptation to do so, the Japanese filmmakers deserve tremendous credit for exercising grace and restraint by not engaging in historical revisionism or anti-Americanism. They ensure the viewer sees and hears the survivors of the atomic bombs almost universally placing blame for their cities being bombed at the feet of the Japanese government for starting the war and for keeping Japan in it long after all hope for victory was lost. Some even became activists to petition the Japanese government to own up to its role and grant them medical and other benefits.
The filmmakers are so even-handed as to allow the surviving crew members from the Enola Gay to express no regret for doing their duty, without making them appear callous or cold. The filmmakers also portray an officer from the crew warning young yahoos who might be hawkish about nukes today that "nuking" someone is something no one should ever have to do, or even contemplate ever doing again. There is a surreal bit from the 1950s television show "This Is Your Life" in which a captain from the Enola Gay appears and expresses regret and remorse to a kind Japanese reverend on a humanitarian mission for women disfigured by the atomic bombings. "My God, what have we done?" he tells the reverend and the TV audience he thought after the crew flew away from the flash, the mushroom cloud, and the devastated city below them.
One remarkable Japanese woman who was horribly disfigured by the bomb even shares that when she saw him on TV, she cried for the American captain from the Enola Gay because of the enormous guilt he obviously bore when he appeared on "This Is Your Life." I found it very moving and admirable that after everything she endured, that gentle woman still possessed the humanity, grace, and compassion to feel for one of the Americans who took part in causing all that death, despair, and destruction. She cried not for herself and her own painful experiences, but for him instead. Wow.
Despite all the sadness and horror portrayed in this film, there is a ray of light in the humanity and dignity the survivors display. They were each very brave to bare their tremendously personal and private pain in a film for public consumption, but none of them asked for pity, and none of them stood on a political soapbox. The only message they wanted to convey was simple and selfless. Never again. {END SPOILERS}
The filmmakers have made a film that not only is impossible to forget, but one which does the whole human race a public service as well. They have portrayed in a way as honest and unvarnished as possible just how horrific is the reality of the personal costs of using nuclear weapons. Let us hope we listen to the survivors and remember their cautionary tales. Never again.
Matchstick Men (2003)
Good little movie; there's another movie that should have been made
I enjoyed this film very much. Nick Cage and Bruce Altman (in a supporting character role) turn in terrific performances, as always. Sam Rockwell, an actor with whom I was not familiar, was very good as well. Alison Lohman, however, was spectacular. What an electrifying and mesmerizing presence she brings to the screen. I honestly couldn't take my eyes off her. The words "charming," "beautiful," and "sweetest little thing" do not begin to do her justice.
The con man story is fine enough. There was a much better story which could have, or perhaps should have, been developed more thoroughly, however. It would have made for a beautiful film all by itself. That is the story of the bonding which takes place between Roy and his supposedly previously unknown 14-year-old daughter.
Roy and Angela (Cage and Lohman) have such chemistry as father and daughter who meet for the first time and instantly hit it off. The sweet parental love story that develops should have been the movie itself. There was no need for a larger plot involving the con games. I wanted to see Roy and Angela do more things together. I wanted to see a heart breaking crisis develop between them, and for it to be resolved in the third act. I was disappointed to find that the screenwriter and the director had something else in mind.
This is still a very good con movie. Maybe someday someone will make the father-daughter film I was hoping it would turn into.
7 1/2 out of 10.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Title Says It All
This film is brilliant, but very dark cinema. It is also highly stylized, as is Aronofsky's other film I have seen, the terrific Pi. It is not for everyone's taste, and due to the gruesomeness of its imagery and unsavoriness of the consequences of drug addiction depicted, it is very difficult to watch. Nevertheless, the depressing, but realistic message--that reality has an unfortunate habit of killing our dreams--is one which is seldom tackled to this effect in the Hollywood land of fairy tale endings.
The cast is terrific. Ellen Burstyn is wonderful and haunting in her Oscar-nominated role as Sara Goldfarb, the pathetic, lonely Brooklyn widow who just wants to be liked and needed by others. Her dream is to be a contestant on a television game show. This will enable her friends and the rest of America to see her in her best red dress--that fit her 50 pounds ago-- and to like her. Burstyn perfectly captures the naivety inherent in Sara's dream, and the desperation she later experiences in her realization of its elusiveness and ultimate loss after she loses her grip on sanity from taking too many diet pills.
Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans turn in excellent, gut-wrenching performances as heroin addicts. Their stories also depict dreams which turn into nightmares, as the unforeseen consequences of addiction (or obsession, to the exclusion of a well-balanced and more sober approach to life--take your pick) snatch attainment of their dreams from their grasps. Sean Gullette, who portrayed the protagonist in Pi, reappears as a low-life shrink. Keith David, perhaps best known as Mary's stepdad in There's Something About Mary ("Son, is it the frank or the beans?"), does a great job with his small role as Big Tim, and Christopher McDonald, usually a great movie foil, is spot-on as Tappy, the Tony Robbinsesque smarmy TV host. Louise Lasser and Dylan Baker also appear briefly.
Several of the reviews here have expressed that this movie is about the horrors of drug abuse and addiction. Well, perhaps on the surface this is true, but not really. The broader message, and one which is much more depressing, is that real life has a way of killing our dreams, whatever they may be. Few of us actually attain everything we hope and dream of. Few of us live as the idealized versions of ourselves that we aspire to be. The reality under the surface is often fraught with ugly habits, dirty little secrets, scandals, disappointments, failures, and just plain old banalities. Hence, the title--Requiem for a Dream.
The running gag of the film--the Tappy Tibbons infomercial game show Sara watches incessantly and dreams of appearing on--is the analog of the promise of the dream life. Here is everything you want and can have. Just send $39.95 to the P.O. Box and cut out red meat, refined sugar, and whatever #3 was. What actually happens to each of the four principal characters--that they spiral into their own individual tragedies--however, is analogous to real life. It's not pretty. Each of us lives with disappointment and despair from time to time. Each of us is going to die.
This is very heavy stuff. Not recommended as a date movie or for anyone with a terminally sunny disposition and simple approach to life.
9.5 out of 10.
Desert Winds (1994)
Showcase for Heather's gorgeous face
I saw this charming little film on cable late at night in 1996 or so. It was the first time I noticed Heather Graham, and I was spellbound. Watching her face with those huge blue eyes and full red lips was absolutely mesmerizing.
The film itself was strangely alluring. The cinematography, especially the fire-lit facial close-ups, was very pretty. I felt compelled to watch it. Also, I was intrigued by the unusual device of having the characters being able to communicate remotely via a "wind tunnel." I agree with the other poster's comment that it allowed the two principal characters to develop an intimacy that would have been unlikely otherwise.
Those looking for plot development or action needn't bother. This is a study of two characters and how they get to know each other in an unusual way. It's a nice alternative to most Hollywood crap.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
More than just a black comedy--delightful and poignant
First, I have to admit I am a huge Wes Anderson fan. I own his other two movies on DVD and will certainly purchase this one when it is released. Second, I'll echo what many other posters have already said: There are two types of people in the world--those who get high-brow absurdity, and those who don't.
I saw this movie yesterday for the second time. I have to say that much of the enjoyable experience is lost if you happen to be in a crowd of persons largely falling into the latter category. The first time I saw this--and I saw it fully expecting to see what I did--more than half the audience, consisting primarily of middle aged white folks, got it. It was a thoroughly marvelous movie-going experience. The second time, however, the crowd was made up of a bunch of stiffs and low brows expecting Ben Stiller to talk out of his butt a la Jim Carrey. Few persons laughed, other than me and a woman sitting about three rows behind me (I wanted to hug her). I found myself feeling embarrassed and self-conscious for laughing alone while everyone else sat in stone-faced silence, apparently waiting for something amusing to happen.
The Royal Tenenbaums is loaded with humor, but you have to engage a little of your brain to find it. Don't misunderstand; it's not mentally taxing, but you can't wait idly for the jokes to fall in your lap. Someone else remarked that this is a movie for all ages. I have to disagree. I doubt many ten year olds, or even teens, possess the life-experience or sophistication necessary to understand why so many of the characters, situations, and scene backdrops are absurdly and hysterically funny.
The laughs come not from catchy one liners. This is more high brow. The humor is sometimes visual, as in the riotously funny paintings in Eli Cash's living room. Sometimes it's in the form of a running gag, as in the omnipresence and broken down appearance of the Gypsy taxicabs and the contrasting Greenline buses. Other times it is found in absurd character depictions or dialogue which isn't innately funny, but is uproariously so in the context of the situation. For example, when Royal, a long-absent family patriarch, meets his grandsons for the first time they are exercising at a neighborhood park. He asks them how often their dad makes them exercise. One of them, about eight years old, replies with a deadpan, "At least 16 times a week." If that is funny to you, as it is to me, then you should get this movie. If not, then stay away; you are wasting your time and money.
Anyone who goes to this movie completely blind may be forgiven for asking what the plot is about. Those who have even a passing familiarity with Anderson's previous collaborations with Owen Wilson should be ashamed for dwelling on something as tangential as the plot line.
This isn't a movie about plots. It's modern day theater of the absurd meets poignant, almost Hallmark, moments, set in the context of a family with grown up, washed up whiz kids. (I have to believe Anderson is a student of Beckett or Ionesco.) The poignancy abounds as much as the humor and absurdity. Nowhere is it more pronounced than in a scene from near the end of the film between the titular character and his wife. Royal, portrayed expertly by Gene Hackman, is walking in the park with his soon-to-be ex-wife Ethel, played equally well by Angelica Huston. The actors' performances masterfully convey that these are spouses who have a long history together and, although they can no longer live together, that they obviously retain a tremendous affection for each other. Royal gazes admiringly at Ethel and tells her that she has more grit than any woman he's ever known. She smiles approvingly, moved and flattered. It was a moment of rare cinematic honesty between two principal characters that rang so true and touched me so deeply that I almost choked up.
Anderson has a gift for shooting and editing his films so as to create a sense that the viewer is being voyeuristic. We are watching someone else's bad dream unfold. An example of this is seen when Ben Stiller's character pulls Hackman's into a tiny closet full of long-discarded Milton-Bradley board games. They stand face to face, occupying the full screen, and shout at each other, obviously bitter from years of conflicts with each other and a years-long silence between them.
Often, Anderson breaks the proscenium with his title cards and the little interstitial shots of quirky bit characters from a central character's "back story." These are great moments in his films and help create an easily recognizable signature style. Anderson's and his writing partner's Wilson's characters are always at least slightly out of step with the larger world around them. This is evident in their wacky wardrobes and their askew appearances. Although most of them are flawed and some are downright bitter or mean, Anderson and Wilson manage to imbue them all with a certain pathos. They find an essential redeeming goodness and inherent likeability in each one. Their characters tend to reconcile their differences and apparently to learn to live with their conflicts in the end. Stiller's and Hackman's characters reach this point of reconciliation and mutual understanding near the end when Hackman buys Stiller a replacement dog (appropriately a Dalmation like the Dalmation mice Stiller invented as a kid) after Eli runs over Stiller's dog. Stiller thanks him, hugs him, and declares, "It's been a bad year for me." It's touching and honest.
Finally, Anderson's use of background music is so unconventional and perfectly in tune with what's happening on screen that the music itself takes on the part of reflecting the characters' emotions, while also evoking the appropriate emotions in the audience. How often does one hear music as eclectic as that of modern French composer Erik Satie, Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, and Jackson Brown and "Christmastime is Here" from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, sewn seamlessly into one film?
Personally, I find Anderson's works, and especially this film, to be at once hilarious and delightful, and poignant and hopeful as well. I hope that he continues his collaboration with Owen Wilson and that together they enjoy long and prolific film-making careers.
Eye of the Beholder (1999)
Incomprehensible and incoherent plot
I'm sorry, but count me in the minority here. I simply cannot agree with the other writers who believe Beholder is "Hitchcockian" or a thinking person's movie. My friend and I kept looking at each other throughout the movie and shrugging our shoulders in confusion. We both left the movie asking, "What???"
Although I appreciate gazing at Ashley Judd's beautiful image as much as anyone, even her looks and talent couldn't save this loser. I cannot imagine what Judd could have been thinking when she agreed to do this project. Similarly, Ewan McGregor, a terrific if offbeat actor, completely misses here.
We never identify with either of the two main characters, those of Judd and McGregor. They are two-dimensional and they behave inconsistently, mysteriously, and without coherent motivation. We never learn what makes either of them tick and we simply don't care.
This movie is enigmatic at best. Why is "The Eye" (McGregor's super-secret British spy) surveilling Judd's Eris character? Never does the movie explain the connection between The Eye and his official mark and Eris. Why is The Eye drawn to this despicable woman? If The Eye can follow Eris all over the world for years using his ultra high-tech spy gear and the resources of British intelligence, then why can't he find his missing daughter? Baffling.
I found myself constantly checking my watch and wishing all the pretentious nonsense would end much much sooner than it did.
Better luck next time, Ashley.