Change Your Image
Mark-159
Reviews
China Cry: A True Story (1990)
A very well done and important movie
This movie shows the evils of totalitarianism, and the triumph of the human spirit.
The Communist Cultural Revolution in China is illustrated through one young woman's moving life experience. The themes explored are relevant to us in the West today, as our systems become more and more socialist and statist.
You think it can't happen here? It's happening already. See if you don't agree.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
It sucked. It is exploitation. It is a stunt. It is crap.
I was so looking forward to The Blair Witch Project, due to all the "buzz" from film festivals, and from Roger Ebert. I had to buy a ticket a day in advance to get to see it here in Houston. The seating line was around the block, and the theater was packed.
The movie started out well enough, but by the halfway point I was beginning to see the movie as just ... depressing. Then morbid. Then pointless. And to top it off, the movie has no conclusion. Even Alien had a point. Even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a satisfying conclusion. Same with Halloween.
This movie is nothing but exploitation--at or below the level of Friday the 13th. There is no sense of good versus evil, no sense of meaning. There is no depiction of human courage in the face of fear. There are just demoralizing depictions of human depravity and hopelessness.
Don't go. You're a mindless wonder if you like this movie. And you probably watch Fox's "Worlds Most Amazing Car Crashes," too.
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
A pretty good kids' movie.
This is a pretty good kids' movie. It also brought a tear to this adult's eye at the end.
There's no character development or dialogue to speak of. And the beginning is so corny and Disney/Hollywood hyperbolic that I thought I would gag and have to walk out. But then it became kind of like Black Beauty, and you had to root for the cute animal with deep, dark eyes. I did, anyway.
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
TV-like episode, as usual
Morlock from Orlando was right on target, on all counts!
The current Star Trek producers couldn't be cinematic to save their lives, apparently, either in story or photography. The opening credits of Insurrection provide one example of the latter, the long continuous pan of the Ba'ku complex--an unwarranted and overlong pan (it reveals nothing), this shot was a poor artistic choice for inclusion in the opening credits.
To compare films, Insurrection does feel a wee bit more visually opened up and cinema literate than First Contact. But really, can they not afford a cinematographer?
To speak of story flaws, the movie totally lacks a denouement, a conclusion. Boy, is that a glaring technical problem! You don't just turn up the lights and call that a conclusion! I could tell the people in the audience were discomfitted by the sudden and inconclusive end to the movie. Kind of a collective low laugh.
I still would like to propose a boycott of this movie. I posted a suggestion in this forum to boycott this movie, before I had seen it, just judging by a negative Houston Chronicle review I had read and the lame tv ads I had seen. But then, of course, I went and saw it on the second day. I'm weak!!!
The only reason Paramount, or any other studio, keeps cranking out mediocrity, is because they know they can make money. How do they know they can make money even with a mediocre Star Trek movie? Because Star Trek has a "built-in" audience. That is to say, us suckers. But we have the power to change that via a boycott. If we change the money part of the equation, maybe they'll change the quality part. And I'm not talking about post-production.
Yes, the ship is a dud. Visually uninteresting. Fake-looking because it is all computer generated. Guys, go back and look at Star Trek II to see what the Enterprise is supposed to look like. Use models, for God's sake, and real explosions, like Morlock said.
I can picture Rick Berman screaming like the character of Ru'afo in the movie, after reading all the reviews for Insurrection. Or maybe by this point he has become a cynic and doesn't care, just like the studios.
Velvet Goldmine (1998)
Style in search of substance.
The movie is absorbing, for all its images and tableaux, but in the end it wants for a plot.
What's more, I could discern no clear meaning from what little story there was. It was more like an extended music video than anything else, yet it was less sensible than most music videos.
The movie does have something to say about the righteousness of rebelling against a sexually fascist society (read: homophobia). And it is largely pleasantly engrossing and deeply moody, at times almost hypnotic--again, like a music video. I am put in the mind of the "Don't just sing it--be it" sequence at the end of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
However, I can't recommend the film very highly, because it was neither documentary, nor true-story, nor (real) music-concert, forms which could conceivably have excused the lack of a coherent story.
(6/10)
Pleasantville (1998)
Fuzzy-headed morality play/fantasy
I was disappointed. Once again I was hooked in by a clever ad campaign. "Film itself is reborn"? Please.
The movie starts out (without an exposition, unfortunately) as a fantasy. Then it becomes dramatic as the teenagers cause problems in Pleasantville with their modern influences.
But then the movie starts mixing too many meanings together. It turns into a pastiche of progressivisms, and gives some mixed messages. The only consistent meaning I could take away from it is: "It's bad to deny your own nature or feelings".
Also, the movie lacked a conclusion. It even devoted much of the final scene to close-ups of a character whom we had not even seen in the whole rest of the movie. A serious breach of cinema rules.
Like another commenter, I was confused by the two men on the park bench switching at the end. It made no sense, and seemed apropos of nothing.
I can't recommend it too very highly.