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Reviews
Finding Vivian Maier (2013)
What a great discovery
Thank you, John Maloof, for collecting Ms. Maier's work, making it available to the public, and compiling information about her for this documentary.
With regards to her work itself, I would give it a 10 out of 10. In my opinion she was a better photographer than Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, and Steve McCurry, other photographers who took portraits. Just do a Google image search with her name. Wow. The things that make her work stand out are the purity of the art, the lack of self consciousness, the art for art's sake feel that immediately takes you to the subject and the story and does not draw attention to the artist herself, the prolificacy of the body of work. It spoke immediately to my heart. I have never encountered a better photographer. The fact that she remains relatively obscure is unfair, but I have a feeling she wouldn't mind. I think she did it all for the sake of the art itself and nothing more, not money, not fame, not attention or admiration from others. This approach to the work shows itself in the result. No other way to approach the art would have generated an equivalent result.
The reason I give the film 7 out of 10 stars is that I feel that the film views her from a bit of a condescending point of view because of some of the ways in which she was eccentric and self effacing, but I won't go into details lest I generate spoilers.
I wish everyone who is into photography would check her out. She deserves more credit than she is getting, not that I think she would have cared, but it is the world that loses out if it doesn't pay more attention to her work.
L'homme qui plantait des arbres (1987)
Should be a classic
I can't remember the last time I was so moved by an animated film. It is truly a work of art, lyrical, and inspired. The story is a very nice parable, but the way it was told by the artist here is incredibly moving. Many years of work (eight?)by the team of animators headed by Frederick Back created this 30-minute film. Only the loving product of the heart and of the right brain could yield art like this. Christopher Plummer's voice evokes the wise elder of the film's subject, and the music provides a background that blends well with the gentle crayon and charcoal drawings that form this work, but it is the drawings that are the centerpiece, in my opinion, although some might say it was the story. The work moved me to tears without any of the manipulation of most modern films. I could imagine children and teenagers being inspired and moved by this, also, and I think it should be shown to all children. I echo other viewers' recommendation that this would make a wonderful gift for someone you love, at any age.
Love Actually (2003)
Actually, a lot of it better not be called "love."
I give some credit to this movie. The visual editing was creative, especially at the end. The acting my Emma Thompson was, as usual, excellent. The rest of the acting wasn't bad, either. And the movie tried hard to justify or find a rationale for an innately unconvincing argument, and goes halfway toward succeeding with me, until some of it just became so forced as to become preposterous. Thus the premise lost all credibility, and the movie became ridiculous in its shallowness and condescension.
The premise of the movie is that impulsive lust is actually love. Most people will protest that such a premise is false, and that love is something more noble and deeper than just a stirring in the loins. And I am of that mind.
But it seems to me this movie is arguing that such a stirring, based on nothing but something as superficial as laying one's eyes on a low-cut shirt, is actually "love" that one feels and therefore justifies, no, demands one to abandon one's home and family and break other societal rules or laws to satisfy that stirring. As though that stirring would last. As though that stirring were love.
But love, the real thing, that is, does not evaporate when one lays eyes on another "love" object, which in this movie could be just a cleverly designed piece of revealing clothing or a glimpse of cleavage or flesh, or some other thing equally trivial and superficial. If this were love, then it flits from one object to another. That is not love. To call that love really defiles the word.
The Politician's Wife (1995)
Biased and plays to a vindictive fantasy
After seeing the high ratings, I was upset to see the kind of movie this turned out to be. My guess is that it might have appealed more to me if I had a spouse who hurt me AND if I were the kind of person who would go to any length to see that person destroyed.
Now, this is not to say that cheating is justified, especially by someone in high office. We hate swinishness in successful people. Swiny people should not succeed and definitely should not rule a country, and they should pay for their crimes, but not if someone has to commit yet other crimes to make this punishment come about. In reality, crimes will eventually get exposed, all crimes, and anyone who commits a crime should get exposed.
The protagonist in the movie did not manipulate and scheme her husband's destruction because she cared for her country. Her only reason was personal spite. She did not try to expose any crimes or amorality. She simply relentlessly schemed to destroy her husband by creating falsehoods and entrapping people into situations they were not aware had illegitimate implications that she herself designed. That is not anything close to honorable. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
People do bad things sometimes, but to intentionally deceive and plan their destruction with illegal and amoral means is to stoop down even lower than the perpetrator of the original bad deed and is just plain against anything I deem moral behavior.
There is such a thing as the high road, and honesty and communication would achieve much better effects, especially in personal relationships. If one really cared, one would figure out how to do this. But if one doesn't take time and care to figure out how to do this but instead just plans destruction, well that is just weak or lazy or just plain impulsive and psychologically and morally problematic. In real life, behaving in this antisocial manner would inevitably bring destruction on others and oneself and cast a pall on any part of society exposed to such a amorality.
It is a very Machavellian way to justify dishonesty and malice. The end does not justify the means. To do a dirty deed makes one filthy. In the end the protagonist of the movie filled me with disgust and pity for the level of self-deception required of her to feel good about herself after the things she did. I think this same self-deception must also exist in the producers of this movie, who sympathize with the protagonist. What a sad spectacle.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2003)
Uplifting
It has been rare to see this kind of innocent movie lift one up as much as this one did for me. I would place the movie in the same category as the March of the Penguins, except done with a much less polished style, which adds its own charm.
It's a documentary about a simple man, who, because circumstances estranged him from mainstream society, is sort of forced to seek a much humbler and more simple means of connectedness, and in the end finds a much greater connectedness, i.e. with nature and life in general. He achieves a synergy with nature that is rare to achieve unless one is really in harmony with it, and it would be hard to do that with something as simple as wild birds coming up to one's backyard unless one has a lot of time, a certain amount of introspection, and a definite extroversion to nature, or i.e. inclination to get in synch or in touch with the nature that is host to the place where one lives. This nature is so often taken for granted or under-appreciated.
It's a beautiful and simple movie that gets at what I think is a basic truth about our existence, i.e. our underlying connectedness, and is very uplifting.