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Reviews
Tenure (2008)
A great comedy with some serious stuff inside
I was actually pleasantly surprised. For some reason, I find many comedies produced lately virtually painful to watch. I was wondering if this movie would be the same... I found it to be completely refreshing; great cast, quirky characters. May be not so over-the-top impressive characters but the main characters were very likable. Luke Wilson seems like a decent actor, in this movie I felt that I was seeing a person, so I felt more connected to his role than some of his other roles. I loved the "Bigfoot" characters. And I liked the ending, too-- good but not too good to be true. I also like to comment on the theme, getting tenure. I am a university assistant professor and the process is all that and more. It is a nerve-racking process. I will stop here because there is too much detail that goes into this, which would be of no interest to the general reader. The movie did do a decent job of showing some aspects of the system yet with a great sense of humor.
I Love You, Man (2009)
Not impressed
I watched a good chunk of this movie, haven't quite finished it yet. So, I guess I am finding it very hard to relate to any of it. The basic premise that having even a single good friend sometimes can be a challenge is a realistic one and one that may be interesting to write or talk about. However, I just did not get into the way that this particular movie goes about presenting the premise and the resolution. There just seemed to be a lot of cliché talk, some vulgarities and whatnot, and characters that had too little screen time and too few meaningful lines to really make an impression. Paul Rudd can sometimes be an engaging lead but he wasn't to me in this one. There was a certain air of fakeness that went with the whole movie, which I didn't appreciate; the most "honest" part of the movie was the somewhat profane language. All in all, I was left unimpressed."Role models", which is kind of similar seemed like a much better movie.
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Limbo (2007)
Not as good as I thought
I tend to like mysteries on PBS. They usually have a good representation of characters, some depth, some engaging investigation, and some "mystery". However, this particular episode of Lynley was not my favorite. First of all, the movie centered around the death of a young boy, which to begin with made the story more distressing than the usual. So in the first scenes we're first introduced to a lively child playing around and then the remains of a child's body,which was an uneasy start of a movie for me. The whole storyline as a result was far from uplifting and at the end, I did not have much of a sense of resolution even though the case was solved. There is a twist at the end but you kind of expected to see something along those lines coming, so it was not entirely surprising. As for acting, there were some scenes where Lynley and Havers had their good chemistry as a team but at times, the chemistry was entirely absent. Overall, I'd summarize that the movie was not bad, but it was not as good as I was hoping.
Frygtelig lykkelig (2008)
Intriguing but ultimately disappointing
This movie definitely has some intrigue in the beginning; a policeman is relocated to a small village because of a serious misdemeanor. There is an intriguing story in the background as he makes it into the village- a metaphoric story, which hints at the modus operandi of the village people. There is a missing person, an intriguing woman with an abusive husband, and several other characters that each has its own peculiar secret. So far, so good.
I stopped watching the movie when the weakness of the characters and bad luck took over the movie plot-line or rather- was it the plot that took over the "empty" characters? The characters started feeling/looking like puppets in the hands of their bad luck. I lost connection with the characters at this point and that left me feeling like an outsider.
At this point, I did not think that the movie would be intriguing but rather thought it is just trying to make a point for which the characters are only a vehicle. The message to me was that in the end weakness transcends all other values, that the social collective reinforces each person's individual weakness. True? Unfortunately, it is perhaps a brilliantly realistic point. Inspiring for a movie? Uplifting in any way? Not really. The movie had a point and made it.
Greta (2009)
Surprisingly good
This movie left me pleasantly surprised. I was not expecting much but it delivered. It does not seem like a high budget movie; the plot is not terribly interesting but there is a human story that really touched me. There is definitely a bright ray of hope in the movie. By the way, I was also very surprised by the performance of Hilary Duff, it was actually quite good. This is a great example of a movie with a cast that is not famous but who work together well to portray the characters. It is one of those movies that I may not remember all the details of but I will remember that it had some good meaning... Watch it, you won't regret it.
La vie rêvée des anges (1998)
Good but somewhat dark
This is not a bad movie; there is some real good and honest acting. There is an interesting human angle to the stories. But to me it was not a great movie. Both female characters were sympathetic in their own way but there was a feeling of gloom and desperation in the movie, which seemed to overpower the positive message of the movie. There is a tendency in European cinema drama to really go for what may be called a realistic sense of despair in the characters or the story lines. And that film is no exception. You can choose to focus on everything that can go wrong in life; and this movie sort of does that in its own way and to at least several of its characters. On the other hand, it also offers some positive turns and twists. There is some fruit for thought, some hope and some sense of joy but there was not enough optimism in the movie to really make it a great movie for me.
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Empty
This is one of the movies that I have liked least for quite a while. Although it has some potential including some good cast members, to me it totally fails to deliver anything meaningful. The whole story line left me feeling kind of empty. There was nothing to connect to in the movie on a human level- its main disadvantage to me was that it was simply not real and the story seemed to have no moral. On the positive side, it is not completely boring; there is some action (though too much senseless blood), there is some "witty" dialogue, some intrigue. But all in all, those advantages were not enough to offset the feeling that the movie had no real meaning. It is probably a question of individual preference.
Caché (2005)
Disappointed
A well-crafted movie for its genre. However, the moral of the story was told in a freaky way & some of the elements of the movie contradicted each other. For instance, at one point the Paris massacre of 1961 is brought up; in a sense, it sounds as if the viewers should feel sympathy for the repressed Algerians. But then one of the Algerian/French characters commits a violent suicide, which doesn't fit the repression theme at all (in my opinion). True, on a certain level I suppose this has to look like a "homicide" by the famous and greedy main character. But it just doesn't fit for me...Creepy it is; but psychological? The main characters, the rich and successful couple, followed a very predictable path and even by the end of the movie, I did not know why they should be of any interest at all. Could they teach us anything in this supposedly high moral story? I had high expectations b/c there was a lot of critics' hype about the movie. Simply a story that is so twisted that it may attract quite a bit of critics' attention toward the movie makers. But as a person who has watched the movie, I didn't feel enriched or enlightened by the script or the moral of the story.