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Reviews
Donnie Darko (2001)
As much about time travel as good vs evil
So, I've seen this movie three times now, the first two were the original version, and this last time, the director's cut. Having already "figured it out" (as much as one can) after the first two viewings, I spent more time on this third viewing trying to catch the subtleties and symbolic references. What I think I learned is that Richard Kelly is going for something far greater than a sci-fi time travel flick. Initially, I didn't care very much for the first 30 minutes of the film - I felt it was unusually and unnecessarily rough with foul language and discussions of Smurfs having sex for a few cheap, misogynistic laughs. My view has changed - Donnie lives in a dark, evil world. This 30 minutes tries to drive this point home. The Chinese girl who is always getting harassed, in some ways, I now feel is a central figure in the movie. It's no coincidence that she always wears ear muffs. It's no coincidence that she plays an angel in the school talent show. This is the same "angel" that students are hoping gets "molested", a line one of the characters sneers in her direction at the bus stop. And it is especially no coincidence that she has Donnie's name written on her notebook when Donnie confronts her and tells her "someday, everything's going to be alright." He then puts on the ear muffs. She's the Clarence, and Donnie's the Jimmy Stewart. I think one of the previous posts is dead-on with the "Last Temptation of Christ" and "Evil Dead" signpost that was left for us. This movie is up there with some of the best Hitchcock ever produced - every scene matters, right from the start, even if you think it doesn't. Every line is important. Every scene change and dissolve is planned, and is meant to tell us something. If you've seen this movie once or twice, and think you have got a feel for the plot and what is happening, try looking for the good-vs-evil relationships. I definitely have gained a deeper respect for a movie that I already felt was one of the best I have ever seen.
By the way, I think the original version was a tad better - the director's cut takes a bit of the fun out by explaining things, although there's still plenty to talk about. It just seems a bit less mysterious this time around.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Perfect acting and direction in a film with something for everyone
Again, I have to write to whole-heartedly disagree with what others have said about this film. It is brilliant. Of course it doesn't completely get the whole story right, but Hollywood is not about 100% autobiographical pix. Watch E! True Hollywood Story for that. But it does do an amazing job of capturing the mood and madness of schizophrenia. The photography is brilliant, the directing subperb, and, while I wasn't a real fan of Russel Crowe before seeing this film, I don't think anyone could have done a better job of interpretting a man confused by his own genius. And it is that genuis that ultimately nearly destroys him. It raised interesting points for me, namely that geniuses see the world altogether differently than the rest of us. And so do those suffering from mental illness. And, in a way, aren't these two qualities in a person really the same thing?
I never saw the pace of this film as slow, and I was thoroughly captured from the very beginning. I DID find the Jennifer Connelly character and storyline rather unbelievable, and was shocked to hear that she won for best supporting actress. Russell Crowe desrved it much more - probably one of the more challenging roles in the last 5 years for any actor, and he pulled it off flawlessly.
Don't miss this film. A chilling but ultimately heartwarming and unconventional story that is full of everything - action, plot twists, nostalgia, espionage, romance, and human frailty.
9 of 10
Unconditional Love (2002)
A trainwreck of a movie with no focus
OK, let me just say that I registered for IMDB for the sole purpose of expressing how bad I thought this movie was. Laughably bad. One comment on this board said "I can't believe I never heard of this movie - it couldn't have been a straight to video release." While I was watching this movie, I actually wondered how it could have possibly made it past audience screening and into the theaters in the first place.
I really enjoyed the first 30 minutes of this movie. It actually seemed as if we were going somewhere with the arc of the story - a woman loses favorite singer and husband at the same time, and sets off for England to find meaning in her life. Fair enough. She meets the relatives of the singer, and finds that he wasn't exactly as advertised. We have some really funny revelations and interactions at this point. But then they (Kathy Bates, and Vincent Fox's lover, Rupert Everret) travel back to the US to try and hunt down the killer, and suddenly it turns into an amatuerish whodunit. The bulk of the characters' actions, especially by Everret, at the end of the movie are completely out of character from what we have learned about them in the first half of the film. It's as if someone stopped editing the script at the midway part of the film, and the whole thing goes flying around with arms waving until we have a completely unconvincing and painful Barry Manilow/Sally Jesse Rafael singalong at the end. It took more than 2 hours to eventually tell us that, well, I don't really know what it told us. Maybe there's a message here, but it was clouded by all of the incredibly superfluous action in the last 45 minutes.
I see that the working title of this movie was "Who Shot Victor Fox", which suggests a grossly different kind of movie than does "Unconditional Love". That's perfect - even the writers didn't appear to know what the point of this movie was.