rsg2033 Reviews

The Dark Knight (2008)

Not a good film, but Heath delivers

[7/10 · 24 December 2008]

The only reason I even gave this movie a 7 was because of Heath. He single handedly carries this movie. Everyone else in this film gave a terrible performance, not to mention Christian Bale basically wasn't even in this movie. It was completely focused on the Joker, which makes sense since Heath gave a performance worthy of an Oscar. It is without a doubt the best batman movie, but come on. That's not really saying anything... I mean look at the previous batman movies. Other than Batman Begins, which I think was actually better than this film, there haven't been any good Batman flicks. Unless you count Clooney's performance in Batman Forever.....in which he pulls out his "bat-credit card" and spouts the line, "I never leave the Batcave without it."

Priest (1994)

Controversy Handled Tastefully

[9/10 · 29 October 2008]

Priest was an interesting movie. When I read about it in Down and Dirty Pictures I expected it to be a tasteless assault upon the Christian religion, but to my surprise it wasn't, and not only was it not tasteless it turned out to be a pretty good film. I felt like it treated its subject matter fairly delicately given that it was an independent film and it was a Miramax production. I thought that this was an excellent movie about a priest who is doubting his own profession and the fact that God was even real. Honestly I thought that his relationship with the girl who was being molested by her father was more interesting than the fact that he was gay. At first I even thought that him being gay was overkill and the movie would have been better if it were just about his relationship to the girl, but by the time the ending rolled around I realized that it was necessary for him to be gay for this movie to work. If it were not for that touching scene in which she is the only person to receive the sacraments from him I would say that his being gay was totally inconsequential to the movie. But those very few moments absolutely make this movie. But now that I have discussed the "gay" factor I would like to concentrate on some of the movie's other strong points. This film was truly hilarious. The gay priest's relationship with his fellow straight priest was another high point in the film. Their conversations about, "What does God care about what a man does with his dick?" Were particularly funny and the scene in which the older man they are staying with chaperones them is just hysterical. There are two other scenes that stick out in my mind about this movie. The first being when the molesting father is in the confessional and you only get to see his face, that man was simply terrifying. He seemed to be so evil in that one scene, he really nailed the part. The second scene that I thought was particularly powerful was when the gay priest was praying and telling Jesus that he had it so easy because He knew everything and basically yelling at God for being God—if that makes any sense—God was answering his prayer by exposing the girl's father as a molester. Overall Priest is a superb movie and it is rather unfortunate that some people will avoid this film simply because of its premise.

Kids (1995)

Kids is Little More Than PSA on AIDS

[6/10 · 1 October 2008]

I don't think I've ever been more grossed out by an opening scene in a movie. The main character is tongue kissing what appears to be a thirteen year old girl over and over. The noise that it was making was particularly disgusting. Telly is only seventeen years old, but he is already a real dirt bag. He steals money from his parents and tries to deflower as many girls as he can, typically preying on girls that have just finished going through puberty. It is here that the main conflict of the movie is introduced. One of Telly's former conquests contracts HIV from him and tires to stop him from spreading his disease to his unsuspecting victims.

Over the course of the movie at least three people are given the HIV virus from Telly: the first virgin that he deflowers at the beginning of the film, the second girl at the end of the film and the guy that they beat up in the park. But what I found troubling was that the girl who knew she got AIDS from him decided to just take some ecstasy and forget all about the fact that she was trying to stop him. She herself even becomes an instrument to spread AIDS by the end of the movie due to her irresponsible behavior. This is where the movie kind of just became an ambiguous story about how teenagers behave and forgot all about its own plot.

Overall this movie mostly just felt like a public service announcement about the dangers of unsafe sex. I'm sure that back in the 90's when AIDS was an automatic death warrant this movie was very shocking and even more terrifying, but in the twenty first century where AIDS has lost most of its potency due to modern medicine this film is little more than a friendly reminder that condoms can save you from a lot of problems.

Kids is still a good movie and it's worth watching just don't expect to get any life changing message from it. Much of the point that it was trying to make back in '95 is just common knowledge nowadays, but I would say that it is still worth a watch.

Go Fish (1994)

Go Fish: Not Worth Multiple Views

[4/10 · 23 September 2008]

This movie was somewhat interesting. The characters in it were well rounded, but the acting had a lot of room for improvement. This film revolved around dialogue and there was plenty of it. For the most part the dialogue was funny and somewhat interesting, but overall this film mostly felt like a dirty version of Sex and the City: Lesbian Edition. I did think it was interesting that the film included real depictions of lesbian women and didn't just have classically beautiful women in it pretending to be lesbians. It also wasn't afraid to show uncensored lesbian relationships, which a great number of people in 1994 would have found repulsive.

The film also included a variety of shots and wasn't afraid to play around with camera angles, but this wasn't necessarily a good thing. A few shots in particular were simply annoying, for instance: the laundry room shot from the drier and the conversation between Max and her black friend in the coffee shop. The transitions in the movie also didn't seem to have much relevance to the plot of the film. Some transitions would be kids playing in the park and others would be up close images of hands—there is one exception—when Daria and one of her sex lackeys are making love it shows Evy splitting some bread in half, but other than that the transitions do not have any relevance. Overall Go Fish is not a bad movie, but it isn't a great one either. I personally would not watch it again given the opportunity.It is a somewhat interesting movie, but it leans heavily on the lesbian aspect and given that this is the twenty-first century it doesn't carry the same shock value that it did back in '94. Don't get me wrong, if the characters in this film were not lesbians it probably wouldn't be interesting at all. In fact it would be the same romantic comedy that we've all seen over one hundred times now.