pegasus3 Reviews

Remembering the Pentagons (2015)

A Waste of Time

[1/10 · 18 June 2017]

Amateurish and mediocre photography pretentiously masquerading as some sort of arty Proustian remembrance of a Middle Eastern environment as a child. Most of the images bore no resemblance to the various textual comments about the author's childhood which were inserted at various points in the film. Many images were either poorly lit or accidentally or intentionally blurred which the author unconvincingly tried to suggest as some sort of symbolic representation of "blurred memories." Only 22 minutes but still a waste of time.

Poison (1991)

Tedious and Boring

[1/10 · 25 May 2017]

Difficult to understand why this film has been accorded such praise, except perhaps due to its being an early film explicitly addressing gay issues. 26 years later, it seems crudely made and quite tedious, with much of it impressing this viewer as a very poor attempt at recreating the atmosphere of old Hollywood Film Noir or a 50s TV melodrama. Each of the three stories seemed like caricatures with little of any compelling interest.

Desire Will Set You Free (2015)

An Engaging and Visually Captivating Film

[7/10 · 27 April 2017]

What begins as a sort of Felliniesque exploration of the LGBT milieu in contemporary Berlin slowly morphs into a poignant tale involving a young gay male writer, his lover who transitions to being transgender, and his lesbian friend who after much philandering ultimately goes straight/bisexual and becomes pregnant. The director creates a wild merry-go-round in a kaleidoscope of dazzling color and visual compositions. The only drawback is its oftentimes distracting mixture of dubbed English and German dialogue. A better choice would have been to have the dialogue all in German with English subtitles, which would have given the film a more natural and convincing flow. Nevertheless it still succeeds as an engaging and visually captivating film.

New Jerusalem (2011)

A Rehash of The Builder

[1/10 · 19 April 2017]

Basically a rehash of the same theme--- the world of a depressed individual--- that was explored in THE BUILDER, a film Alverson produced a year earlier. Only this time everything is transferred to a used tire shop. Lots of day to day minutiae, images which offer little of any substance with which the viewer can begin to understand what is transpiring in the protagonist's mind or what, if any, message the film is intended to convey.

The Builder (I) (2010)

A Plodding Sequence of Images

[19 April 2017]

A plodding often-times unrelated sequence of images supposedly attempting to capture the depressed state of an individual but mostly a visualization of minutiae whether it be chipping away at wooden beams, making coffee, brushing one's teeth, washing dishes, or muttering some sort of unintelligible conversation over a beer or on a cell phone. The viewer is somehow expected to connect the dots from building a house in upstate New York to suddenly taking a train to Richmond, VA to be a dishwasher. Not any kind of cogent approach to storytelling cinematically or otherwise.

The Hawk Is Dying (2006)

A Pretentious Waste

[1/10 · 15 April 2017]

A film which never seems to rise above being simply an insufferable excursion into one individual's obsessive road toward insanity, all of which is supposed to be metaphorically described by his training (more realistically torturing) a hawk. Even the acting talents of Paul Giamatti and Michelle Williams are insufficient to save this pretentious waste of cinematic effort.

Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies (2008)

More Confusing Than Clarifying

[4/10 · 10 April 2017]

The film offers some interesting archival clips of the early history of cinema as well as many of Braque and Picasso's cubist works. As to whether these beginnings of cinema and the revolutionary art forms which evolved in Braque and Picasso's cubist art are intimately connected is never convincingly outlined. Instead the viewer is left with a lot of abstract critical pontifications which end up more confusing than clarifying.

The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

Sentimental Mish Mash

[4/10 · 28 March 2017]

Geraldine Page won the Best Actress Oscar in 1986 for her performance in this film as Mrs. Watts, a doddering old lady who seeks to return to her old homestead in Bountiful, Texas amidst the grumblings of her son Ludie (John Heard) and termagant daughter-in-law Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn). One afternoon, she runs out of their apartment in Houston and gets on a bus where she meets a sympathetic young woman, Thelma, ( Rebecca De Mornay), who provides some solace and support along the way. The film throughout showers the viewer with lots of maudlin pontifications emanating from Page's stagey characterization, one that seemed like a rehash of Faulkner and Tennessee Williams roles she may have been involved in over the years. This film gets a lot of praise, but I found it a sentimental mish mash about aging amidst rose colored memories of the past. Page's performance impressed me as very repetitive and ultimately a bit tiresome, creating a character to whom I found myself engendering little compassion. On the other hand, Heard and De Mornay, I thought, put in quite creditable performances that in many respects outshone Page.

Arranged (2007)

An Amazing and Charming Film

[8/10 · 26 March 2017]

Rochel, an Orthodox Jew, and Nasira, a devout Muslim, are two teachers at a Brooklyn elementary school who become close friends. Both are facing attempts by their respective families to arrange their marriages according to each individual's respective religious customs. The situation is made more complex by virtue of the fact that both women are strong willed individuals, and, along with the arranged marriage issue, also face together the conflict of social prejudices from people within each of their ethnic backgrounds in conjunction with their close friendship and association. Rochel is the more rebellious of the two, chafing at the bit when her parents engage her in the Orthodox Jewish ritual of matchmaking while Nasira is a bit more accepting of her religion's marriage customs. The film subsequently develops into an amazing and charming dissection of their experiences both as friends and as members of two quite different cultural and religious backgrounds. The actresses who play Rochel and Nasira are outstanding and give the film the necessary impetus to fully engage the viewer and achieve acceptance of what eventually leads into a happy ending for both women.

About Sunny (2011)

A Depressing Saga

[3/10 · 26 March 2017]

A most depressing saga which examines the minutiae in the bleak life of a sad and pathetic woman who abuses not only herself but especially her young child. It's difficult to fathom whether or not the film might be attempting to romanticize in some sort of bizarre manner such a degrading existence as it offers no resolution but rather leaves the viewer wondering, as the film concludes, whether or not these two lives will continue to spiral down their seeming path toward self-destruction. And while the cast puts in creditable performances, they fail to overshadow the grim situation portrayed nor are able to engender any real compassion for the characters by holding out any possibility for some sort of positive resolution.

Bella Vista (2014)

Tedious Collage of Unconnected Scenes

[2/10 · 25 March 2017]

Mostly a tedious collage of unconnected day to day life scenes in Missoula, Montana, ostensibly centered around a lonely teacher Doris who seems unable to relate to much of anything whether it be other people or her immediate surroundings. While the viewer may be led to suppose the film will offer some degree of plot denouement, the scenario abruptly drops Doris at the end and the viewer is left simply with a couple of scenes involving one of her Japanese students, Yuri. A bizarre ending that is as disjointed as everything that preceded. Perhaps that disjunctive quality is exactly what Ms. Brunner-Sang intended. The only saving grace in the film are occasional stunning photographs of the Montana landscape, both rural and urban. I had expected something far more interesting that this amateurish, minimalist effort.

No Home Movie (2015)

Cinema of the Absurd

[1/10 · 2 January 2017]

An insufferably boring film consisting of meaningless imagery, and mundane conversations, all of which, I suppose, Ms. Akerman construed as some kind of artful exposition of her relationship with her mother. While Ms. Akerman may title the film "No Home Movie" it nevertheless comes across as a most pretentious "Art House Home Movie" and could well qualify as some sort of archetypal example of Cinema of The Absurd. You may love it if you are fascinated with five minutes of a tree blowing in the wind, a shirtless obese man sitting in a park, a broken down lawn chair in a garden, long stretches of desert scenery jaggedly photographed from a moving car, or ridiculously superficial conversations of no concern to the viewer filmed through a doorway or in the dark.

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

All Style and No Substance

[3/10 · 8 February 2016]

From the previews of this film, I had a high level of anticipation for the Coen Brothers' latest venture, expecting it to be an hilarious and satiric romp through the halls of 50's Hollywood. The Coens are excellent technicians so the riffs on MGM, 50's Hollywood Stars, and the general machinations of the studio system were very well done. But I'm afraid the film's achievements were pretty much relegated to this dimension and overall the film remained in the category which I term "All Style and No Substance," clever but ultimately delivering a thin story. Along the way there are some wonderful bits, especially Channing Tatum singing and tap dancing in a suggestively gay sailor dance routine, Tilda Swinton playing twin columnists, Alden Ehrenreich doing some hilarious cowboy stunts on a horse and with a lasso, and Ralph Fiennes directing in a sort of prissy manner. However, none of the plot lines ever yielded anything substantive. I found it difficult to figure out just what the Coen Brothers were attempting with this film.

Advantageous (2015)

Tedious and Pretentious

[1/10 · 29 June 2015]

This tedious and pretentious film is simply a story about an Upper East Side matron who has lost her job while trying to get her daughter into an elite Manhattan prep school glossed over with half-baked science fiction imagery such as CGI altered urban skylines, minimalist contemporary office entrances, and a lame storyline about transferring consciousness to another, younger body. There are lots of angst ridden shots of the mother with her overly precocious daughter as they banter about with each other in their posh apartment or on the way to school. In the end it's all about money as the new mother Version 2.0 goes about seeking funds to keep her daughter on the fast track in prep school.

The Decent One (2014)

An Amazing Chronology

[9/10 · 13 June 2015]

A documentary film combining letters and diary entries made by Heinrich Himmler and his family along with extraordinary archival footage involving most aspects of Himmler's life from his birth as well as concerning the rise of the Nazis in Germany from the 20s on through to the end of WWII. The letters and diaries were from a cache of materials discovered in Himmler's home by American soldiers at the end of the war. An amazing chronology made even more vivid by the recitation throughout of Himmler's actual words from his letters and diary entries, and enhanced even more by archival photography which I consider to be some of the best I've ever seen in films about the Holocaust or WWII.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Bizarre Example of Trying to Have It Both Ways

[2/10 · 26 July 2014]

This film has a couple of exemplary aspects, fine cinematography and an exceptional performance by a very young actress, Quenzhane Wallis. However, I found the story put together by the director and screenwriters to be a bizarre example of trying to have it both ways. Merging an Alice in Wonderland/Little Red Riding Hood sugar-coated and romanticized fairy tale fantasy with a bleak and despicable landscape of desolate poverty filled with incorrigible alcoholics, an abusive father figure, and a company of prostitutes, while an intriguing possibility as a work of art, when manifested on the screen comes across as jarring and dissonant. Perhaps it was some sort of dark satire of the fairy tale genre, but how is the audience to react positively to a pathetic child, orphaned for all purposes by an absent mother (whether she died or simply ran off abandoning her daughter is never explicitly revealed) and a deranged and alcoholic father who is never quite present and when he is, is continually abusing his young child, either yelling at her, hitting her, or at one point in the movie, engaging her as his drinking partner. Had he been less incapacitated by his health, one could only have expected him to be sexually molesting his daughter as well. Finally realizing he may be dying from his leukemia, Wink in a moment of absurd wisdom, suggests that when he is gone, Hush Puppy can be taken care of by Walrus, an equally incorrigible friend who, along with his wife, drank himself into oblivion the night the big storm hit. Throughout this nightmarish existence for any child, we are expected to have a "feel good" experience as Hush Puppy "sails along" "getting in tune with Life" by listening to the heartbeats of various animals around her or fantasizing about ancient giant boars. Such a scenario reaches a strange climax when Hush Puppy and three of her childhood friends end up at some sort of floating saloon dancing with prostitutes, a scene I assumed was somehow designed to be some sort of symbolic representation of Hush Puppy "finding her mother." Finally as Hush Puppy torches her father's floating bier and sends it down the river, she may, indeed survive, but under the fold of Walrus and his wife, even her Giant Boars may well abandon her……………..

I simply can't understand what the creators of this film were trying to accomplish with such a confusing mix. I would have preferred a more honest and direct approach to the situation, much as was achieved with the marvelous film PRECIOUS which developed a comparable saga of a child trying to survive in an extraordinarily abusive environment.

Nebraska (2013)

A Tedious Cartoon

[3/10 · 2 December 2013]

While the film has generally received anywhere from positive to rave reviews, I am decidedly in the opposite camp. It would appear that Payne was attempting to create some sort of dark comedy, but in my opinion the result turned out to be simply a tedious cartoon. All of the characters with perhaps the exception of the son Dave played by Will Forte, seemed very two dimensional with little, if any, depth unfolded or transformation effected by the conclusion of the film. The character of Woody Grant never moved beyond a sad and pathetic 75 year old man with a brain addled by a long history of alcoholism and cursed with the onset of Alzheimer's. Payne painted this in broad brush strokes with the character mostly gazing off into space, saying "Huh" when spoken to, and daydreaming with his mouth open. His wife Kate was something out of an Al Capp comic strip, a sort of overdrawn termagant wife played by June Squibb who usually yelled her lines to the camera, sort of like Olive Oyl as the ultimate bitch. The minor roles of the aging townspeople in the fictional town of Hawthorne, NE where Woody and his family visit en route from Billings, MT to Lincoln, NE in his quest to collect a $Million in a scam magazine sweepstakes, were equally as shallow and simply included, in what seemed to be a cynical stereotypical portrait of a small town in Nebraska, a collection of quasi Grant Wood American Gothic zombies, who do nothing but drink at the local pub and watch football on television. Local Nebraskans will tell you that older people in these communities are far more in touch with the world, and not living any kind of isolated life that may have existed 60 years or so ago or the bleak kind of picture of the past which Payne seemed to be trying to paint.

I might subtitle the film as Nebraska: A Road Trip in Circles. From what I could gather, the storyline was supposedly intended to trace the process of family bonding (primarily that of son Dave and father Woody) through a bittersweet road trip revisiting family and friends along the way. Usually road trip movies offer some degree of character transformation by the conclusion. Here there seemed little if any change. Woody was still living his life in a hazy daze though now possessing a new truck and generator purchased for him by his son when they arrived in Lincoln and discovered there was no prize money. While his wife Kate exhibited one fleeting moment of tenderness toward Woody near the end of the film in a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, there was nothing to suggest that there would be any difference in their ensuing lives together. Perhaps the son Dave may have felt a bit closer to his father after the trip, but heading back to Billings, there seemed little sense of that. Again, I have no idea of what exactly Payne was attempting to accomplish with this film. It was anything but comedic or tragic or any kind of subtle ambiguous satiric mixture of the two. There was, however, some wonderful shots of rural landscapes, but unfortunately, the fine cinematography didn't prove quite enough to redeem the film overall.

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (2008)

Give This Football Film One Big Pass...........

[2/10 · 15 January 2009]

This was about one of the most boring documentaries I can recall ever seeing. Despite being a Yale Grad during that vintage decade, I could barely muster enough interest to watch the entire film. I had hoped for more than a bunch of aging males reveling in their past football exploits. To be sure, the game was dramatic and close, quite obviously by the final score. Despite an occasional foray into other topical issues of the era, the seemingly endless mechanics recounted by team members from both sides left one wishing for more depth and intelligent commentary by those having attended such august universities. And to see one of the Yale team gloating over his attempts to injure a key player to get him out of the game only gave this viewer a sour taste in his mouth rather than any admiration for such macho antics. In addition, one of the key celebrity participants looked like he had come off a month long drunk, pitching comments like some sort of arrogant poseur. The final puzzle of the film was the title. Am I missing something? A tie is a tie. Games are all about points and you're not a winner unless you score more points than your opponent. Notwithstanding some cutesy philosophical point that the director Kevin Rafferty might be trying to make, the title seems to fall flat as any kind of sophisticated summation of the movie's content.

Redbelt (2008)

Mesmerizing Tour De Force

[10/10 · 12 May 2008]

REDBELT is a mesmerizing tour de force. There are so many story elements intricately tied together. Causal action relationships bump up against arbitrary chance events. The honor code of the Samurai warrior meets up and does battle with the criminal scams of a greedy Hollywood film and sports culture. Mamet frames his film with the world of martial arts and yet it is at the same time the classic Greek warrior's noble struggle, "arête", which thus becomes a fascinating fusion of Eastern and Western cultural traditions. The jiu-jitsu instructor's (Mike Terry) caveats to his students in the opening scene in how to marshal their forces and extricate themselves from entrapment by their opponent ("There is always a way out, you just have to find it") all return to test him as the movie unfolds and he becomes ensnared in the dishonorable world which surrounds him. The acting throughout is marvelous with a cast that reflects Mamet's refined sense of individual characters. Chiwetel Ejiofor is superb. While he dominates the film, the other members of the cast are more than impressive, especially Ricky Jay who plays a scumbag fight promoter. If I were to have any criticism, it would be that Mamet sometimes moves too quickly in the exposition of his "magnificent puzzle" and at times during the film, I felt a bit frustrated and confused. But that is a small price to pay for such a challenging artistic experience. The camera work is fascinating. Mamet uses lots of unusual close-up shots, not just of faces but also segments of the landscape in which significant action is occurring. It's a very painterly approach to film. This is a film that stimulates one to see it several more times, hopefully on the big screen. I've not elaborated on any specific scenes, as I don't wish to spoil the challenging denouement of the film. REDBELT is brilliant film-making.

Snow Angels (I) (2007)

An Absolute Gem!

[9/10 · 5 April 2008]

SNOW ANGELS is a absolute gem! It is an example of a small scale indie that is as near perfect as I could have imagined. All throughout the movie, I was reminded of a line from the poet W. B. Yeats…………"things fall apart, the center will not hold." The film is a complete recreation of this concept in visual terms. With the exception of the two young high school lovers, everyone's worlds in SNOW ANGELS is slowly but surely disintegrating, and ultimately it gets very dark. But all along the way it is so beautiful. The acting is superb, the photography is compelling, and the editing technique, I found, was expert, continually dramatizing the story by powerful visual cuts. I don't know why some reviewers have complained about Kate Beckinsale's beauty as being out of place in the film's setting, a criticism that makes no sense whatsoever to me. She is wonderful in the film and seemed so right for the part. The fact that she has a very natural beauty only enhanced her role both realistically and symbolically. Sam Rockwell's performance I found extraordinary. His past roles have always reflected a broad range and the character he plays in this film may well be one of his very best. This is a movie that carefully and honestly dissects dysfunctional lives in a small, insulated world. What was so amazing to me was the film's ability to create a combination of a storyline being so very sad and bleak while at the same time that storyline's expression being so beautifully and artistically realized. Also, I don't know when I have seen such a honest exploration of young teenage love as the portraits Green draws of the young boy and girl, Arthur and Lila. The two young actors are marvelous as well and their relationship gives the film the necessary lift above and beyond the despairing tragedy of the story.

Goya's Ghosts (2006)

A Costume Melodrama

[3/10 · 2 April 2008]

Perhaps I missed something, but I found GOYA'S GHOSTS to be a tedious costume melodrama. As to the story it was trying to tell, I found that a confusing mish-mash that went off in all directions. And perhaps it should have been made by a Spanish director with the appropriate languages subtitled rather than in unconvincingly accented English. I can't judge the historical veracity of the story but it seemed to move along with a similar "artist's model's tragic fate" plot line as GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. Was the movie a commentary on the religious injustices of the Inquisition, false piety, torture then and now, or what???? I never seemed to be able to figure that one out. Natalie Portman's various characters also seemed ridiculously stereotypical. And ultimately the movie was crowned with the concluding melodrama of a disheveled Bardem's head and body hanging on the edge of cart heading off into the sunset…with Ines and Goya following along behind………Can't Milos Forman do better than that?

Stop-Loss (2008)

John Wayne Rides Again

[3/10 · 30 March 2008]

This is one of those so-called "Hollywood Social Commentary" films that wants to have it both ways. And believe me, in this film, both ways are clichéd and stereotypical. STOP-LOSS is a 21st Century John Wayne Film dealing with some anti-war sentiment but clearly ending on the note that "If you are a MAN in today's society, you get your act together and march off to war with your buddies." In many ways the film was a great sequel to TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE as it portrayed a military equally as insane and out of control, a quasi FRAT PARTY/ANIMAL HOUSE extravaganza mixed in with a Texas Red Neck world of repressed homo-erotic proofs of masculinity. This movie had it all in one scene after another of clichéd imagery. And then rebellious military deserter Ryan Phillippe goes on a "Road Trip" with best friend's girlfriend, an artificial storyline manipulation to visit families of dead servicemen, maimed soldiers in military hospitals, etc. and finally to broach the issue of fleeing to Canada or Mexico. But male honor and patriotism win out in the end, as all freshly scrubbed and handsome, he rides off into the sunset on a bus with his buddies back to Iraq and a world that a few minutes before he assured everyone he could never again tolerate. FULL METAL JACKET meets SANDS OF IWO JIMA . But in the end, John Wayne rides again! And a Hollywood Blockbuster ultimately gets to keep both sides of its audience in the palm of its hand…….at least it would like to think so. As far as I was/am concerned, just take me back to the more convincing reality of IN THE GARDEN OF ELAH.

Starting Out in the Evening (2007)

Romanticized and Clichéd Portrait

[4/10 · 30 March 2008]

I'm not a player in the literary world, so I can't really, perhaps, accurately judge the validity of the story line. But it all seemed a bit of a fraud to me and more a romanticized and clichéd portrait of a precious literary world in New York City than any deep exploration of a writer's mind or process or even any kind of relationship with an admiring critic. Overall the acting was good but very uneven. Langella, Ambrose, and Taylor had good moments but in many places went overboard and out of control in jarring, angry overacted histrionics. Ambrose as the naïve graduate student seemed terribly stylized throughout and mostly came off as an obnoxious twit I thought, and someone that Langella as the accomplished writer would never have allowed into his space, much less become attracted to. Taylor and her neuroses as a 40 year old childless woman seemed a bit tired and overdone as well as a significant thematic distraction. The actor I thought stole the show was the fellow who played Taylor's boyfriend, Casey. His character was always consistent and convincing and seems an impressive actor. But overall the story always seemed like some sort of stereotypical view of the literary world manifested by an old writer sitting at a typewriter keyboard, pecking away on 8 1/2x11 sheets of paper. That's such a sentimental early 20th century image and barely seems realistic to me in today's world, even if you are supposed to be 70 years old or thereabouts. And Ambrose's character always seemed to be more the "star idolizer" than any serious graduate student writing a thesis. So I left the theater feeling that I had seen some sort of modern TV soap opera about "Henry James", rather than a serious portrait of the interaction between any literary student and master.

Grace Is Gone (2007)

Intense Film with Exceptional Acting

[9/10 · 10 March 2008]

This is a very intense film which unfolds in a paradoxically low-key fashion throughout. And behind the arras subtly lurks a searing indictment of the numbing and emotional wasteland of middle class suburbia with malls, discount stores, and plastic hotels/motels, all of which form a pervasive and repetitive landscape in which the characters attempt to deal with matters of far greater depth. Cusack does a marvelous job as a semi-robotic employee at a "Home Store" (Read WalMart) who leads his fellow employees in vacant cheers each morning before they walk through the swinging doors from the store room to the showroom. The young girl who plays Heidi, his daughter, Shelan O'Keefe, is equally outstanding and in many respects is the real star of the film as she slowly begins to realize something is radically wrong with her father's stoic behavior (he delays telling his daughters of their mother's death in Iraq as they motor to "Enchanted World" in Florida) and attempts not too successfully to somehow bring him out of his shell and find out what really is going on. A small role by Alessandro Nivola as Cusack's anti-war brother is another fine moment in the film.

The Barbarian Invasions (2003)

It Takes Lots of Money to Die "Gracefully"

[7/10 · 13 March 2007]

Denys Arcand is a wonderful director and this film is also a testimony to his subtle and trenchant style. But ultimately the movie suffers by a seeming obsession with the upper crust and dilettante world of his story where medical care and ease of dying can be bought by a financial trader and where "self revelations" and cosmopolitan discussions are achieved amidst fine wines, fresh truffles, and of course the perennial pate. Throughout the film, I kept feeling it was "My Dinner with Andre" meets "As I Lay Dying"(with veins occasionally laced with heroin). Perhaps Arcand is really saying that the "barbarians" are in fact not the "invaders" but, in fact, quite comfortably at home in Montreal living as insufferable, self-indulgent natives where the seriousness of one's state of mind and physical health appears to be measured by passing up scrambled eggs and fresh truffles.