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Reviews
Reckless Indifference (2000)
This may be an unpopular review but here goes:
I enjoyed watching this movie, but not from the standpoint "Oh those poor defendants were railroaded - the injustice!!" I was watching with fascination over the fact that, if the defendant Brandon was not a gorgeous white kid, this movie wouldn't exist. If Brandon was a dark black skinned kid, and had participated in robbing a lady, then physically threatening the lady when she demanded her wallet back (with the help of his four friends), and immediately afterwords ganged up on two kids, tried to steal their stash, four against two, and even with those overwhelming odds, produced a knife and stabbed both of the two kids and fled the scene, NONE of these talking heads (except maybe the parents) would be preaching as if they were the voice of all good people everywhere in the world. These wretched (but gorgeous) kids robbed a mother with her two babies and threatened her and then killed a kid and almost killed another. The parents in this documentary, blaming the dead kid's father, blaming the judge, blaming the jury, blaming the world, were FASCINATING. And dangerous because they will never take responsibility nor demand responsibility and this creates monsters.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
This Movie Is Worth Investigation
I didn't understand this movie until the third time I saw it and after reading the comments here. I wasn't sure if I liked the movie before I understood it, but now I love it. To me every second of the movie makes sense now and the investigations were worth every minute invested.
**SPOILER -- QUICK SYNOPSIS*** There are three sections of the movie: the blonde's dream, her flashbacks (what really happened), and her suicide. There are much better descriptions in this forum; I just want to make mine quick: Dream: In her dream, she flies into Hollywood from Kansas and is quickly discovered by the director. She brushes off the director to go back to the brunette. The brunette is helpless and at her mercy. The director loses his job, all his money, and his wife is sleeping with the pool man. The hit-man is a bumbling idiot. When they break into the apartment in the dream and find a dead blonde on the bed she almost wakes up from her dream (cheap visual effects, holding her head, premonition of her own suicide). Etc...
Flashbacks: When she wakes up and finds the blue key on the table, she goes to make some coffee and the flashbacks begin. We learn what really happened: her girlfriend (a successful actress) broke up with her and got engaged to the director. She was still in love with her girlfriend. She hired a hit-man to kill the brunette.
Suicide: Then in the last minute of the film she realizes it's over (because the blue key is on the coffee table): the brunette is dead, and she goes to her room and kills herself.
***Why This Is One Of My Favorite Movies*** There is so much more to this movie than just the (unconventional) story line.
I like how the director in the dream was required to say 'this is the girl' to some bubbly charismatic girl who was doing an okay but not great job lip syncing to that bubble gum pop song. (Did she sleep with the producers to get the part? Or is she related?) But then in Club Silencio, after the M.C. (who also runs the seedy motel) announces several times in several different languages that 'everything is pre-recorded' we are still surprised when the singer passes out behind the mic and her voice carries on. So the bubbly little girl gets the A movie part for whatever reason, and this amazing singer/actress is lip-syncing to a mostly empty theater behind a seedy motel. Great commentary on the movie business (as experienced by David Lynch) and commentary on art in general, and perfect casting of Rebecca Del Rio.
I also like how all the scenes that involve the blonde actress in the dream sequence leading up to her 'audition' seem mis-spoken: listen how the landlady describes the kangaroo and listen to how they talk back and forth: the ennunciation and rhythm seem like 'bad acting'. (Or is the woman who plays the landlady just a bad actor? Well, investigate that by looking her name up on IMDb -- hmmm.... this is getting deeper by the minute). This 'bad acting' not only contributes to the 'dream' feeling, it also causes the blonde's audition to really punch you in the stomach when she nails it.
I could go on and on... there is so much depth to this movie, in similar ways - not just the image and story, but casting and history and the director's experiences etc...
Please don't dismiss the comments from people who love this movie as pretentious, because when you've seen the movie a couple more times after some investigation it will make sense. Once it makes sense, that's just where the fun begins, because then it gets REALLY good. And the more you investigate, the better it gets.
The songs I like the first time I hear them usually don't please me for more than five or ten listens, but my FAVORITE songs (just like this movie) keep getting better every time I listen to them (like Tina Turner singing 'Edith and the Kingpin' on Herbie Hancock's latest). But I digress. Thanks for reading this.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Everybody knows the top three moments in their lives that most affected them.
My number one moment was when I was seven years old. My parents suspected that I might be gay and had sat me down. I knew I was in trouble and I was crying, and my mom could barely speak and said, "I don't know what to say. I feel like crying too." And then they just looked down on me, barely managed to hold their tears, and let me cry.
But in those few moments I had a little meeting with myself, and I said to myself, "I have always been the same person. I may get older and wiser, but I bet I'll always BE the same person."
Another thing most adults remember is the moment when they realized that their parents weren't always right, and not right in a 'you can't have the candy now' kind of way but right in a 'wow - I'm more enlightened than my parents' kind of way. And I've asked friends about this and they remember being about 20 or so and passing up their dad in math or 25 and having a higher salary than their parents ever did or being 18 and their mom asking for relationship advice. Well that moment for me was the same moment, right there at seven.
As confident as I am about who I am, I can still identify with the main character and feel lucky that all that my parents did was sat down and watched me cry. Reading these reviews and seeing how many lives have been ruined in similar circumstances enrages me. Unfortunately the people who would most benefit from seeing this movie are the ones who don't want to see it: the ones who are ruining lives. But thankfully, the people whose lives could be ruined ARE seeing the movie. If this prevents just one child from being born into an unhealthy dishonest relationship then the world is that much better off.
I still am amazed at my insight at seven: I still sit down again for periodic meetings with myself and find that I'm exactly the same person with an expanded vocabulary and an older body.