Change Your Image
fabm777
Reviews
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Not up to Par with Jackass
I did not think this movie was up to par for its genre. The genre being a movie that broadsides people that basically have no idea they are being hoodwinked. Too much of the movie is "fake" in the sense that the reactions of too many of the victims and the victims themselves were staged. I would estimate that maybe only 10% of the film used real victims and the rest were staged to look like real victims. That is not enough for this type of movie to be worth seeing.
The yard sale scene was obviously staged since that is where he found the Pam Anderson book that is part of the ongoing plot of the movie. I believe the hotel convention scene was staged just from the cameras that were already setup inside in anticipation of their entry into the room. Also, too much of the movie was exposed on TV clips, talk shows, and newspaper write-ups.
For a movie like this to work for me, you really need real victims like you had in the Jackass movie that had no clue.
Eraserhead (1977)
Strange hodgepodge of BW images.
Eraserhead is a strange hodgepodge of black and white imagery. It is less coherent than a dream. David Lynch's first feature length film that consisted of 21 pages of script and was stretched out to 1 hour and 48 minutes of indulgent strangeness. I rented this so I can see what else the creator of Blue Velvet had done earlier. What I found was obviously an experimental piece that has less plot than a Kafka story. To say that one scene to the next is discontinuous is to be very generous. It is a nightmare more than a movie; a collection of scenes and fantasies thrown together under one roof for no apparent reason other than to see what it is like. It's like 20 different ideas juxtaposed in a collage with none leading to any conclusion or explanation. Interesting but why? If you like strangeness for the strange itself, I could see where it might be worth it if you had a joint or something with it. Unfortunately, I gave that up on the 70's.
The Sum of Us (1994)
Refreshing Movie
I found that the father was not selfish, but rather very open and embracing of his son's lifestyle. The first time he looks directly at the camera in the beginning of the movie while opening the door, I played it back to make sure I saw that. Of course, as it turns out, the father and sometimes the son talks directly to the audience throughout the entire movie to explain their life and situation a la Malcolm in the Middle. It works and I found it very refreshing. Even when the father is incapacitated later in the movie, he is able to go back to normal and talk the audience when the son leaves the room. Yet somehow, I was able to suspend disbelief and was glad that I was able to hear what he was thinking using this movie technique used in Ferris Buehler's Day off.
The father is extremely charming.
Stacy's Knights (1983)
Fascinating to watch Young Kevin Costner
I bought this DVD for five bucks. The video quality was poor but it was fascinating to watch Kevin Costner as such a young dude wearing a cowboy hat, playing the role of a young Reno native. The lead actress is a mousy easily intimidated woman with her her older ugly sidekick. The Casino management calls her the mouse. They can't figure out how she wins such a high percentage of games. "She counts some, but she also has a lot of luck working for her". After winning 12K from the casino, the owner invites her, her older sidekick and Kevin to take his private jet on an all-expense paid trip to his other bigger casino in Vegas. They figure there they could get their money back. But with major coaching and practicing by Will Bonner (Costner), for one week before she hit the circuit, (she won 82 out of 100 games in practice), she is unstoppable. She wins another 35k or more in Vegas.
Kevin Costner steals the movie with his natural in his own skin acting. The characters in the casino are also very realistic. As they watch her play, they send a guy to bump into her to see if she has any wires or recorders. The managers are bewildered by her ability to win. They send in a cold looking woman dealer to bounce her out using a short deck. As Stacy moves from table to table to get away from her, the dealer follows her with the short deck. A scuffle ensues as she demands to see the deck. The manager says they only show the deck to the gaming commission. They leave.
PLOT SPOILER: Kevin introduces set up a meeting with Stacy and this mysterious old man that is so good at winning, he has some kind of deal with the casinos where they pay him off not to ever come to one. She spends the night at the old man's house playing cards. He tells her to forget the counting, the percentages, the number. Instead, concentrate on the deck. The deck is alive. Let it speak to you. He starts out by dealing 5 hands and asking her to identify the strength of each hand without turning them over. She picks the 2nd best had. He said, close. By 4AM he has her calling the card names psychically before he flips them over. He says keep going. She starts naming every card without him even flipping them over. She can see the all the cards in the deck in order and therefore can predict the result of every hand dealt on the table. She is now unstoppable. He sees her off in the morning with the farewell message that he's waited many years for her to show up. He never thought she would.
The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
Another corporate bashing plot
I have not seen the original, but I heard that in that one the brainwashers and manipulators are the North Koreans. In this movie, the villain is Manchurian Global, a corporation with close ties to many administrations and the military. I am tired of seeing another Hollywood production picking up on the same tired old theme of the evil big business (maybe they want me to think Halliburton).
Had the movie made the Chinese the villains (they could have used the crew of the ship they held for awhile a couple of years ago) it would have been more interesting and they could have explored a lot more interesting plot lines.
I hope it bombs too.