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yilgarn
Reviews
Dark Heart (2006)
Hit and miss films
A low budget film, with nods of approval from a couple of respectable film festivals. Rumours of controversy. Topical. Good production values.And yet the DVD is consigned to the $2.00 bin. There are plenty of films with plot holes,continuity problems, and wooden acting which light up the discussion boards. Clearly, this one didn't. I suppose ultimately reviewers cannot suspend their disbelief enough to ignore several minor and a couple of major plot and character absurdities. The writers in their partially successful attempt to make a character-driven claustrophobic commentary on small-town America were unable to fashion a realistic story to support the actors. This is why pre-production is so important. Why would the mill workers actually believe the returned soldier knows of, or is carrying, a huge amount of money ? And why the leap from the shock of impending unemployment to murder, bloody murder? Why were they (more or less) happy to kill everyone ... except the soldier, who was merely cast into a well (and presumably "with one gigantic bound" escape, to avenge the innocent). Are there some tax scams available to film investors: here's a few hundred thousand,spend a few weeks cobbling something together,and make sure it isn't released, and loses money ? If so, they're insulting the craft.
Raid on Rommel (1971)
Who makes these decisions ?
What an awful mish-mash of a movie. Lacking direction, mediocre acting, appalling editing. One wonders who approves the making of films like this. I can't even put this kind of propaganda in context (1971)- hooray the West democracies can win sometimes ? Surely movie-makers have some respect for their craft, and even with low-budget pot-boilers they'd bother with script,continuity,plot and character development ? Why were the (British) propaganda war films during, and just after, World War 2 so sophisticated and nuanced and yet so many rubbish war films made from the 1970s onwards ? So much for the linear-development of cinema as art. Some genres have 'naturally' petered out, such as Westerns. Hollywood only rarely re-captures the wit and humour of pre-war rom-coms. "Art house" films are mere pretension and few are both experimental and touch the audience. "Serious" war films are one-dimensional. This film doesn't pretend to be serious, but really...it should never have been made.
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Nearly a classic
I was accidentally given this movie instead of the 2007 re-make! And I am grateful. For modern students of cinematography the 1950s Western genre may initially seem somewhat arcane, but movies like this demonstrate how movies of that era reach for a higher plane, not just in terms of the craft, but philosophy as well. This effort is almost perfectly constructed, and worthy of a student's close analysis. It could have been 10 minutes longer, to develop the characters of Ford and Heflin, emphasise some of the sexual tension, and to develop the relationship between protagonist and antagonist. Perhaps some back story should have been implied, too, between the gang and its leader (civil war loyalty ?) And incidentally, I was amazed and pleased how briefly, intensely and satisfying was the connection between Ford and the barmaid.An amazing scene, of just a few minutes - which surely must have shocked adult audiences of 1957 (and passed over the head of children).
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Sub-Text is important
Ignore all the silliness - Dirty-Dozenish Jews; blonde-blue eyed dairy-farming Jews; Hitler and Goebbels as caricatures from Batman; all Germans are Nazis. This silly, childish comic-book movie would have sunk without trace if it were not for the publicity generated by having Tarantino as director, and to a lesser extent Pitt as a main character. But it's not pointless. As cynically pointed out Ricky Gervais, any Hollywood film to do with Jews and World War II will earn an Oscar.
First of all, a Hollywood film about the war will reinforce American belief they won it. Alone. Secondly, and this is more recent but vital: that World War II was all about the Jews. Now we have another film whereby the Jews won the war. The film's plot is about cinemas and the importance of Jews and Hollywood is unhidden - so pay attention to what's being said: Jews of America control the media (not just Hollywood) and the media is how you receive the world's reality. The most telling scene is when a German officer has his head bashed in by a baseball bat. The Jew ("Jew-Bear") proves he is quintessentially American with his self-congratulatory mock-heroics afterward, baseball representing this. Hollywood wins America. "America" has been reinvented by Jews. They won the war, the anti-semitic Nazis lost. Saxons lost. Anglo-Saxons lost.