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mtomm
Reviews
Northfork (2003)
it tries hard to be an art house film, tries too hard.....
this film could have been great. it's visually stunning and very well-casted, but it screams of wanting into the polanski / lynch / cronenberg camp. it's kind of like watching a kid jump up and down yelling "i'm cool too!".
the story has great potential, but is poorly told. i found the timing very troublesome and a few more hours with a storyboard could have helped immensely.
i found a lot of the kind of obtuse allusion that can result in overkill; especially the dog.
some very successful imagery, though. i found the scenes towards the beginning of the film concentrating on the excavated graves very moving. all in all, a film with a lot of potential that is poorly realized.
Lord of War (2005)
Good, a little moralistic...
very good performance by both cage and leto although the show is stolen by eamonn walker. he plays an incredibly believable tin pot dictator in baptiste. the intensity from his character in oz is not lost. walker has those crazy dictator eyes that seem right for the role.
the moralistic overtones are a little much, but it's a decent movie; a good rental. i quite like the little twist in the end, not what you expect...
that being said, i did find myself doing some thinking about some of the implications of arms dealing and western influences on developing nations; not something a Hollywood production generally invokes.
a couple problems with realism but nothing too bad. the lines of coke were a little big :) and there is no way a grenade can cause as much damage as we saw, but that is pretty common so i can't fault too much for that...