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Milkweed
Reviews
Magnolia (1999)
SO DISAPPOINTING I'M WEEPING
**WARNING!! SPOILERS AHEAD!! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU'VE ALREADY SEEN THE MOVIE!!**
This movie had great actors, great performances, a great soundtrack, great cinematography, great camera direction, great DIRECTION overall, a great story, but it still SUCKED GOAT BUTT!! Why? because the end made no sense at all, and even on the level that it's supposed to make sense (coincidences happen, etc., etc., blah blah blah) it still doesn't gel with the rest of the film! I mean, at the beginning you've got some crazy, funny scenes about coincidence that are entirely PLAUSIBLE IN THE REAL WORLD, then you get into a really amazing, intricate set of stories for the next three hours that keeps you emotionally overwhelmed and in love with everything that's happening on screen. And then at the end frogs start falling from the sky!! PT ANDERSON, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?! what you missed is that the situations at the beginning are crazy but PLAUSIBLE, while the frogs make NO SENSE!! If you had just been clever and thought of some crazily intricate EARTH-BOUND schematics for everything to tie up in the end then the movie would have satisfied everyone AND you would have made your point that crazy things happen in the world and that's the way it is! But a biblical Armageddon reference of frogs falling from the sky? There's no advance notice for this, no buildup for it, no other biblical or fantasy elements in the picture to get the audience to thematically expect something so revelatory! Even the characters in the movie don't seem to make a big deal out of it! How can you expect us to then? MAGNOLIA is the most disappointing movie I've ever seen, not just because of the friggin' frogs, but because the friggin' frogs were the ONLY PROBLEM in the whole movie, but they still ruined everything else! You can't get much more depressed about film making than when you see so much acting, so much story, so much pure TALENT poured into a picture, and then one little smattering of ego in the wrong place causes the whole enterprise to fall flat on its face. In a place full of as much ego as Hollywood, this is a definitely not a good sign for the future. If one movie can completely screw me over after I got so emotionally wrapped up in it, how can I ever trust movies in general enough to get swept up in one again?
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Anyone else notice Cusack's resemblance to Tim Burton?
Maybe it's just me, but this whole movie seemed like a parallel to how a director's life in Hollywood is. How they have to create their artistic visions with the use of Hollywood celebrities, how they're supposedly complete losers who make it big and then are insecure for the rest of their lives about losing that success, how they're supposedly easily manipulated by beautiful women into giving them parts in their movies, and how supposedly they make movies because they are for some reason unable to live normal lives so have to live vicariously through characters that they can control, unlike the characters in their lives. And when John Malkovich goes through the portal whoah!! That was just the perfect visualization of the egocentric actor's desire for the world to revolve around him becoming a nightmarish reality. And then with John Cusack being a dark, crazy-haired, unshaven nerd who likes playing with puppets (Tim Burton an his "Nightmare Before Christmas", anyone?) this whole director metaphor seemed to suddenly be more than just a wild rant in my mind but to actually have something to do with the story behind this seemingly non-sequitur film.... or am I just crazy? If anyone who's reading this knows anything about what the writer and director of this movie meant when they created this please email me, or even if I'm on the right track at least email me to reassure me that I am! I'm pretty sure "Being John Malkovich" is supposed to be just taken at face value, but where's the fun in that?
Totally F***ed Up (1993)
lives up to its title
This is one of the all-around worst movies I've ever seen. It says nothing you haven't heard before, it says it in a contrived, obviously scripted, cheesy "teen-talk" format (ie extensive use of words such as "grossorama" and "whatever" said in the most scripted way possible), the acting is awful, the cinematography is completely flat and uninteresting, and even though the movie is only 79 minutes long it drags more than anything I've ever seen. It felt like over an hour had gone by but when I checked my watch I realized I had only gotten ten minutes into the film! This may be more because of the terrible narrative structure than the bad acting and production values, but hey, those obviously aren't going to help much. I can't think of one reason for anyone to see this and I beg you not to do so, or your perceptions of the depths of badness that a movie can reach will be as "totally fu***ed up" as this movie is.