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Reviews
The Gemini (2016)
It Stinks!
It stinks. Stiff, wooden, cringe-worthy "acting", wooden dialogue, a very strange, washed-out color palette that varies between two cameras with a sudden, brief change 54 minutes in, holes in the sound continuity suggesting very poor sound editing, a disturbing music track that often suggests something sinister or dangerous, exaggerated shadow imagery suggesting something monstrous, zero sexual chemistry between any two actors, a very strange plot involving a faked death on an airliner that crashed in the ocean and a hidden key to a safe deposit box, and an unbelievable story about two gay men who want to be together played by two actors who don't have the slightest idea of what being gay is about.
How to Get from Here to There (2019)
How DO you get from here to there (The End)? Fast Forward!
How do you get from here to there?
Start with a video camera and some cardboard boxes lined with aluminum foil and find another actor to hang out with you in a motel room so he can clean up when you get drunk and piss on the floor. You might need a third person to run the camera. Also a car to drive.
Then you need some production money to pay for the motel room, the camera, gas for the car, and maybe some costumes from Goodwill.
And you need a way to edit your film. Maybe you know a person with editing software. Oh yeah, you get to play multiple roles including a scary monster. Plus don't forget the beer budget so you can get pissy drunk and piss on the floor of the motel room.
All of this is supposed to have some deep existential meaning. After you've scattered your mother's ashes in the river. That would be a prop, so hopefully she has already died so you can get rid of her ashes this way.
I have no idea what the deep existential meaning is.
The Matador (2005)
Getting screwed by Pierce Brosnan
James Bond movies are really fantasy imagery for a male audience. Not a few men dream of being--or at least of bedding--the irresistible Bond, whose gloss comes in part from his amoral ability to do whatever it takes to screw the bad guys, not to mention the over-the-top spectacular babes.
Now comes an over-the-hill, washed-up Pierce Brosnan who lost the Bond franchise to fresh meat, but who's still trying to prove his manhood by screwing whomever looks good at the moment and taking out whomever he's paid to kill. In other words, the dark mirror image of the Bond character...and Brosnan's superb at hilarious comedic send-ups of the Bond imagery, as when he's humping a whore doggie style in Vienna while whore's little doggie, not to be outdone, is humping his leg.
This visually dazzling comedic riff on noir themes works because of the mutual seduction going on between aging hit-man Julian Noble (Brosnan) and desperate salesman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), an odd couple who are neither noble nor interested in doing what's right. Basically they'll do anything or screw anything to get ahead (maybe including each other--which adds some spice to their relationship!), mirroring the corporate culture that pays them.
Danny's on a learning curve in the school of hard knocks, and Julian will teach him a few tricks of the hit-man's trade in return for getting a little help in taking out a few targets. Meanwhile, Julian is dying to get an idealized home and family life, the one thing he's never had.
In fact, by the end of the movie, these two characters, who are so enamored of each other, have merged by trading places: Julian's the quivering, falling-apart guy while Danny's clearly in charge, and despite the intentional ambiguity of the story line, may indeed have been the trigger man to take out some bad guys, possibly including his competition for the big contract that will save him financially, not to mention Julian's employer when it becomes necessary to eliminate him as well. Basically you just do whatever you have to do to win.
So while the film is a very dark commentary on corporate mercenaries, it plays as a charming bad-boy buddy movie. And as Katherine Ross did for Butch and Sundance, we have Hope Davis supplying some heterosexual insurance for Kinnear's character as his faithful, hopeful wife.
In the final scene we have an Adam and Eve in the garden (actually at their dead son's grave), restored to their innocence as a couple, as the snake gets ready to make his next move.
Between the lines of the happy ending it doesn't take much imagination to get that Brosnan's idea of nobility, or perhaps of heaven, is to bed them both on a charming little Greek island with charming little Greeks.
In other words, he's permanently invaded the couple's relationship, and there's nothing, it seems, that they can do to get rid of him, even if they wanted to. He's as irresistible as Warren Beatty when Bonnie joined Clyde's gang.
I can't wait for the sequel.
Zen Noir (2004)
What is the sound of one hand NOT clapping?
Boring, pretentious, preachy, visually deadening, awful acting, terrible dialogue, claustrophobic, unsympathetic characters, fake spirituality, bad jokes, alienating music track, and the director hasn't a clue that he's not ready for prime time. What's not to like? The preview audience walked out either during the movie or during the final credits, and chose not to stay for the director's comments. The movie title promises something interesting: a noir story with a non-rational, zen twist or frame that takes the mystery into another dimension. But the director's style is just a parody of noir films, with a stereotyped detective investigating a presumed murder, narrated in voice-over. Only the sex makes it somewhat interesting. But maybe not worth sitting through 71 minutes.
Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)
Why I prefer the DVD over the VHS release
Both the DVD and VHS releases omit the fifteen minutes or so of important but secondary scenes that were included in the theatrical release. But the DVD restores a crucial closeup that establishes Mountain's decision to embrace his humiliation as a wrestler and cuts the distracting sequence (not in the theatrical release) at the end in which Maish warns a promising new boxer not to get into the business. See "Alternate Versions" for more details.
Forgive and Forget (2000)
More Forgettable than Forgivable!
Note: contains spoiler.... 'Forgive and Forget' is on balance, more forgettable than forgivable. Made for Scottish Television (and a boring, Scot version of a BBC drama) by a married female director from a screenplay by a hetero male film student and starring a hetero actor (get a clue here!), the story goes on interminably about how a working class Brit is hopelessly in the closet and jealous of his best mate's live-in girlfriend, whom he's out to undercut by exploiting her paranoia and dislike of his male camaraderie with her boyfriend. It's the British version of a Jerry Springer mentality in the working class subculture which leads, inexorably, to a disastrous coming out on a true-confessions-type TV show called (would you believe) 'Forgive and Forget.' What's sad is that our hero is so naive (and hopelessly inarticulate) that he thinks coming out to his romantic interest on TV will somehow produce a happy ending. No way, Jose. Hetero Sex Object wields a lead pipe and almost kills the guy before girlfriend, appearing miraculously just in time to stop him from murder, leads hetero heartthrob off stage (and, we imagine, to a 'happily ever after'). By this point, since she's already dumped him, she's almost a deus ex machina, and her appearance has no motivation except to save male heterosexuality from life imprisonment (where, no doubt, he would be forced to become some macho guy's 'sex object'). Sorry, but I really didn't like the 'film' (shot on video, no less), including the videography, which was brightly lit and boringly, competently uninteresting. Next time, I'll think twice about believing the hype (here's a clue: the video retailer--whose blurb rating the film I didn't question--is also the film's distributor) and give a movie the old eyeball before showing it to my friends. If you want a far better, and yet more gritty story of coming out in a British working class context, try 'Beautiful Thing'.