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mechteldehuning
Reviews
Jusqu'au déclin (2020)
Not believable Spoiler Alert
Spoiler alert
The guy running the survival camp has been doing YouTube videos for 10 years. He invites 6 people to learn survival skills for two weeks. Although he's supposedly off the grid, he uses propane tanks to cook. He keeps fuel in an underground tank. In the middle of a Canadian winter, with about a cord of wood, he heats his huge plastic sheet dome greenhouse, a separate chicken house, and a large two story log home. He's organized to the hilt, and calm when his students work with explosives, but screams at someone who wastes kitchen faucet water, which comes from a river. A water pump uses much less energy than all his heating. Even if it didn't, a guy who loses his mind over water couldn't have been running a successful school for 10 years. And then within a couple of days, a bomb accidentally goes off, killing a camper. Rather than call an ambulance and alert the cops (who haven't known what he has been doing for 10 years?), the teacher burns the camper's body and then shoots one of the other campers in the leg to keep her from tattling. In 10 years this hasn't happened several times?
Just a survival movie with the inherent dangers and deprivations of living (realistically) off grid in the winter would've been exciting enough without a cuckoo running the camp.
Oh, and although the teacher warned everyone about the booby traps on the paths around his property, the still-alive campers nonetheless race down the paths to escape. Within a minute one is killed by a snare. And because all the snares are connected to the teacher's cell phone, the teacher knows where the campers are, which they already knew before they ran down the path. And these guys think they could survive the Golden Horde?
I had to turn the movie off at that point, about 35 minutes into it. If it suddenly becomes Oscar worthy at minute 36, I apologize for kvetching.
Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)
Less than trivial
This was an attempt to cash in on the then-new lesbian-or-is-she? trend with a Woody Allen-ish chatty, yet vacuous, script for teenage girls who haven't seen Annie Hall yet or didn't understand it. Kissing Jessica Stein (Stein--surprise!) came off just plain annoying. Of course the two girls are beautiful, their hair, make up, and dress perfect in every scene. Good thing, because the conservative Jewish Stein strings along the horny femme fatale Helen like a virgin on prom night, only this prom night lasts forever. Suddenly, after great sex, hysterically blacked out, Jessica decides she wants the Jewish male co-worker she has spurned for years. See? She got to experience something out of the ordinary, but then, like a good girl, she returned to her normal life. Whew! That was a close one! I was so afraid the pining co-worker was going to go home alone! And thank goodness Helen quickly got a new girlfriend so we don't feel sorry for her either.
Livvagterne (2009)
My, Denmark is a busy place.
Here is the spoiler alert: After watching the first season, I went out and took a firearms class. These bodyguards in The Protectors are public servants who without question are willing to protect politicians that are not worth giving up a life for. I appreciated them just for that, but these people are also sensitive husbands and fathers and lovers. So different from the cop shows we Americans watch week after week where the families only show up to help push the story. In The Protectors, family is essential to the plot in every episode.
I found this series on Netflix. I had passed it by week after week and then finally gave in and watched the first episode. There was plenty of story to keep me coming back. Over the last week, I have watched a season and a half. That's donating way too much of my time, though, so I just skimmed the last part of season 2 to find out what happens in the Jasmine/Rasmus story. Another spoiler alert: Rasmus has one dyno-mite body.
I also enjoyed spending several hours listening to Danish. It's one of those "mouthful" languages that require every odd shape of the tongue and lips to pronounce correctly. And they say I love you almost the same as Swedes. Oh, them Vikings!
Main Street (2010)
startling good script
I was watching it, cringing at Colin's Texas accent and wondering why the people raised in the same town wouldn't have been coached by the same voice coach. They all had different accents. And why when the long haired daughter yelled her boyfriend's name over and over it went from southern drawl to Pennsylvania standard. Harse, Harrsse, Har ris, Harris! Southerners don't speak northern to each other in order to be understood better.
Anyway, I also heard the script as I was judging the accents. Holy smokes, those are great words, I thought. They are simple words that act as symbols and metaphors in little this story about so much. At the end I watched the credits: Horton Foote wrote it? I loved Shelby, just loved him. How can there be so much talent in one family, even though they were just third cousins? I loved how guileless everyone was. Or even if they weren't telling the truth, they believed for awhile what they said.