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Reviews
Choking Man (2006)
Quiet film
I appreciated this film a lot. The focus of the story is a quiet, shy person named Jorge who has a connection with a new waitress at the diner where he works as a dishwasher. Every night, he goes home to a small sad apartment where a man "lives". Note: in my opinion, this man is a hallucination, and Jorge likely has some serious PTSD or other debilitating psychological problem.
His problem is an allegory for the choking man.
At one "explosive" point in the movie, he does something that frees him, and he banishes his demons. However, working up to that point, he appears painfully shy, possibly homicidal at times (because he cannot express what he wants to say/do) and at the very least very angry or desperate. But how he reacts is to quietly observe, dash away, hide, and wait to be found.
I loved the story unfolding, I loved the odd daydream-like animations (note, many of the animations flow into "demon" shapes, and his hallucinatory "roommate" has some perverse sexual imagery that Jorge tries hard to block out, but the animations are otherwise about bunnies and sweet things.) Score is great, as has been mentioned.
I thought this actor was extraordinarily good with a part that has very little speaking. This is a guy who can act with this eyes. Supporting cast is appropriate, desperate, have small stories that are additive and round it out.
Good film if you like awkward, flawed characters. It's just stories about sweet, flawed folks playing out over a Thanksgiving. That's what was so great. I don't think the fact that many are "immigrants" is important in the story, they just happen to have accents, and it adds to the sweetness.
The Burrowers (2008)
Great monster/western, a genre all its own!
Ever since I saw Blood Red Earth (a freebie on Fearnet/on demand), I've wanted to see the actual film. Blood Red Earth was a prequel, 20 minute short film, that introduced the "burrowers" without ever showing or naming them, and I was so intrigued by the native American actors and the idea of a spooky prairie monster in the wild, wild west, that I was actually waiting for this to come out in the theater.
I found it at Hollywood. Straight to video, which is a shame.
It's a dark film, so if you're like us and have a DVD-to-TV that plays darker, it's hard to watch. That's because all the action and spook is at night, by moonlight or campfire light.
There is some violence in this that may be disturbing, although the human on human violence is very historically accurate, but I think most middle school and older kids would be fine watching this. The question I was asking myself was "who is the real monster?" Anyway, the creatures are not that exciting, except for what they do. The CGI was hard for us to see, so maybe it was spookier because our DVD plays dark shots without much contrast, we watched it on "vivid" and nothing helped.
I think it could have been filmed in a way so that it would have played better on DVD, if they intended to go straight to video, that's my only real complaint. I loved the vistas and the creepy loneliness of the prairie. There was some artistic cinematography that worked for me (camera angles) and a few devices I think are homages to Peckinpah and Eastwood style westerns. I think it's a smarter film than other "creature features" and was more enthralling than most westerns.
As far as creature features, my taste runs towards Pitch Black/True Blood and my horror runs towards Event Horizon/The Exorcist, and my sci fi is Star Trek/Firefly type stuff. Indian/Westerns I like include Jeremiah Johnson/A Man Called Horse/Windwalker. My guess is, if you are anything like me genre taste-wise, you're really going to enjoy this flick and it's well worth at least one watch, but play with the DVD player to get the best dark.