danz radikle reviewz

This was surprising on a few fronts. First the two leads were pretty bad I thought. Berenger was ok, but just didn’t fit the intensity of the role I thought, and Sheen was just bad. The other surprising thing was the limited scope. I guess I figured with the other Stone movies I’ve seen this was going to be more about trying to indict the powers that got us into Vietnam, but this was a lot more just about personal ethics so that was pretty welcome. Also there were a lot of scenes that didn’t seem to reach the intensity they should have or tried to. The line drawn between potheads-good people, drinkers-bad was pretty lame, as was the narration of letters home to grandma.

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I think I put this in the queue just cause I was getting everything Defoe. Then when I realized it was a prison movie I regretted it, but it was still ok for me. The Lurie score was the best part. I liked the very little bit of setup so we kind of have to discover who the characters are on our own, but then they do some clumsy ‘I’m not a punk’ type development that took away from that. It was pretty funny how far out of their way they went to explain it was not sexual. And de-fanging Earl in that way kind of de-fanged the whole movie. I would have liked it if they kept things ambiguous and there was more of a possibility that Earl was a scumbag just waiting for his chance. When the ending turned to all about escape it got pretty boring.

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Solid enough. The extensive fetishism is annoying. The first flight attempt should have been way more fun, like the Incredibles was. The soundtrack was as interesting as you can get in this size movie I suppose, where a Suicidal Tendencies song is still pretty out there.

It was annoying how they had ol baldy Bridges selling directly to the terrorists. Without that they were stepping into some more interesting questions.

And something is wrong if I have a better soldering iron than Tony Stark. Well two things are wrong, really.

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I enjoyed this quite a bit. There were a lot of misses - pretty much all the Neil Patrick Harris stuff (though I thought he had a good intensity for the part) for one. The racial stuff all missed for me too. They seemed to try and have it both ways with it and felt very forced in both directions. But the 2 leads I thought were good and helped maintain the right energy for everything - also maintained by them smoking pretty much every other scene. I also really liked that they did ‘oooh!’ takes every time a breast was about to appear.

It’s a shame the W. actor looked so strange, cause he and his mannerisms were pretty funny to me. The slump in the chair and the hand flick really made me think ‘that dude is high!’

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There was a lot that was too overwrought here, especially the lead, but more than enough beautiful moments besides. My favorite was early on the shot of the lead at the bottom of the stairs after his son disappointed him. The way the lead slumped I really liked too - I guess being static he couldn’t overdo too much. I really liked the ellipsis to after his death, but felt that the constant repetition of the shot of his photo and all the flashbacks diminished some of the power of the jump. The too-thorough validation for the lead was too much too, but I loved the progression of the drunken wake.

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hundreds of classics rotting away in the vaults but here’s what’s been digitally mastered for our enjoyment.

• - somehow i’ve never seen this
• - more sonny chiba. whitney’s looked better
• - arch hall jr!
• - an incredibly mcclure-esque title.
• - it’s odd how many films there are about fixing point shaving
• - what can you say.

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another catchup post - i think i saw this a month ago. like everyone else i really disliked how fake the seekers looked. and i really stopped paying attention once plot kicked in. that whole butterfly thing completely missed me and i was just waiting for it to be over.

i like the idea of the beginning a lot - alone in the city with little dialogue or anything, just doing shit - but they were so broad about things i thought they missed a lot of opportunities. the best example of this is when he’s going through the apartment and finds the baby room. you’ve got endless opportunity for some great bittersweetness but instead they go full throttle with the most obvious tragedy possible. and will smith too - he did a good job for sure but there’s just something too corny about him for me to buy into any deep notions. i was also annoyed by the broadness of the bob marley songs. the ironic ‘don’t worry about a thing’ and calling a compilation the best album ever recorded. i do think the video store scenes were incredible. especially the ’say hello to me’ bit as some sort of ‘alone in a sea of people’ metaphor.

the final two things that annoyed me - his dog in the front seat as he’s chasing the deer - that dog would be smacking his head on the dash every gear shift and turn. and that he passed up his chance at boning anna! damn, that’s why you are dumbass.   

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ok, what do i remember about this…i remember it had a lot of interesting angles on its shots but these were undercut by a pretty hokey score to me.  the nice thing about this as opposed to my problems with ray and walk the line was that they didn’t hide from his dark side.  that restaurant scene was pretty ugly, for sure.  and i want to go to that restaurant where you just nod at your glass and they pour you a fucking tumbler full of whiskey.  then you make a scene and embarrass everyone and nod for a refill and get it chop chop. 

i guess my other problem is i never got much of a sense of his art or writing.  other than his sense of humor i had no idea what the themes of his art were.   

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that’s almost how long ago it was that i watched this. i remember i thought it took a while to get its footing - some of the ‘dormitory life’ blocking seemed a bit forced, and the first shakey handheld as we follow otilia to the bus felt a bit out of place. but i really appreciated the payoffs on both of these. the handheld bit set up the tense creepy walk at the end (and after that scene when they finally have a small cut in time - whew, what a relief that was.) but most compelling for me were that all the relationships i thought reached the level of realism they attempt in the opening scene. otilia and her boyfriend - especially during the dinner party when he’s whining in his room. the abortionist and both the girls - how they each have a different level of trying to keep the relationship normal. gabita with her cakes, otilia with her nervous attempt at a conversation (’i was afraid we would miss each other…’) and the abortionist with how he treads the line of helping them but still letting them know he has zero sympathy. the centerpiece seemed to be otilia and gabita, and much of the point seems to be to slam gabita for her weakness and how she uses her weakness to get her way.  so i found that particular relationship annoying in its purposefulness but it was so well-observed and sharply drawn i still appreciated it. i also really liked marinca as otilia.  something about her expressions and rushed casualness really helped the feel.

i did think it was a bit too much to have otilia agree to the abortionist’s demand.  maybe it was realistic for that time/place and what needed to happen, but it felt unnecessary to the narrative.  yes, otilia had her own concerns in mind, but she was already going to ridiculous lengths to help gabita.  and tension and weight-wise i thought things were pretty tight and heavy as they were.  when otilia finds the knife that was enough for me. 

gabita’s dinner was also pretty awesome. 

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i guess in any movie about kids i’m most concerned about authenticity and minimal manipulativeness.  antoine is pretty believable - not too smart or too cool.  his defiance at school compared to his submissiveness at home rounded him out pretty well.  his parents are pretty believable screwups with some texture as they each change their attitudes.  but all the other authority figures left me skeptical.  maybe that’s really how things were, but it was just hard for me to buy that the teachers are so clueless, the social workers are just like ‘yeah you can’t handle him, let’s throw him in juvie’ and the cops just put him in jail with a criminal.  it seemed an unnecessarily harsh and manipulative string of events that were hard for me to buy.

i like with movies about kids the freedom and necessity to change tone scene to scene to an extreme.  the music when they skip school is maybe over-the-top happy-go-lucky but it’s still fun.  the mischievous touches like ‘bonjour madam’ helped these bits seem less forced.  i also liked the patheticness of their grand plan to steal a typewriter.  that seemed like the real deal to me.

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