Change Your Image
Lunarsilver629
Reviews
Strangeland (1998)
Rubbed me the wrong way
I admit the acting is a little mediocre and some of the torture scenes made my skin crawl. But none of that disturbed me as much as the ending did.
I didn't like Mike at all throughout the movie. I was sympathetic to him because of his daughter's predicament, but that quickly faded half-way through the movie.
I hate it when the town tried to lynch Captain Howdy. Here's a guy who seems to have genuinely turned around and they string him up based on suspicion. And Mike by all means as an officer should have stopped it. But he didn't. He just sat there and watched them drag him off.
The whole attempted lynching and the aftermath just proved to me how sick the whole town was. I couldn't see them as mere "upstanding citizens" as they stood there laughing as he choked. Even more so, the guy leading the mob after leaving him forgets completely about his own "missing" daughter and goes home to watch kiddy porn.
Of course, because they tried to kill him his evil side re-emerges and he gets back to his old ways, this time by torturing the people who tried to kill him. I almost wished he'd taken Mike along, and the fact he kidnapped his daughter again for torture irked me completely. Then again, I can imagine that's the best way to hurt him.
Anyways, onto the ending. After rescuing everyone, Captain Howdy and Mike get into a typical fight to the death. And here's where Mike's sick side comes out; he beats Captain Howdy to a bloody pulp and instead of arresting him as, you know, a cop SHOULD do, he murders him. Viciously. Sadistically. Like a monster, NOT the cop he SHOULD be. I can't even watch this movie all the way through anymore because of this. It was even more sickening afterward when his COP comrades commend him for it!!
I'm not denying Captain Howdy deserved justice for the horrible things he did. But he didn't murder anyone. And the horrible way he died wasn't necessary. All this movie did was show me that "normal" people can be just as monstrous, if not more so, than the very criminals they scorn.
The Affair of the Necklace (2001)
What a crock!!
When I first sat down to watch this movie, I thought it was positively brilliant. Hillary Swank is great in everything she does...hell, the whole cast did a bang up job! But mostly I liked it because I thought it was the truth. After all it matched all I had learned in high school.
Then I found out what a big lie it all was.
This whole 'Affair' was completely romanticized and history rewritten to show the world yet again how _terrible_ the Monarchy was. But since I'm armed with new information, I might as well inform everyone who thinks the same way I thought of some key facts.
Fact 1: The Monarchy NEVER killed Jeanne's father. Her parents were LONG dead before this whole affair even took place. Her rage at the Monarchy stemmed from the pension she was suppose to receive from being a blood royal. Her rage at Marie stemmed her apathy, yes, but because she did not really sympathize with Jeanne's plight.
Fact 2: Jeanne was not born a noble. True, she was illegitimately descended from royalty but all her nobility ties and titles came from her marriage to Nicolas. In fact, she was quite well off in her marriage, but that didn't stop her from sleeping around with the likes of both the Cardinal and Rétaux.
Fact 3: Buying the necklace was all the CARDINAL'S idea. But Jeanne went along with it readily, but her greed got in the way. She ran to _sell_ the diamonds off the necklace in London and keep the profits for herself.
Knowing what I know now, I'm infuriated at this movie not only for falsifying history but trying to tell us this is exactly what happened. Marie Antoinette was the true victim in all this (something Joely Richardson tried to convey in her performance) and Jeanne was exactly what the Monarchy said she was; a petty whorish thief. There was no honor in what those people did, they all had their own selfish reasons. I'm just sad with the pile of historical information we have at our disposal no one seems to want to use it.