Change Your Image
DaTramp
Reviews
Je rentre à la maison (2001)
Great if you need a soporific!
Watching this film is like watching mud dry. Obviously I have a definite prejudice but its distinctly like "About Schmidt", another snorer in which absolutely nothing happens. I found it impossible to care about what happened with these characters other than to hope, as the film progressed, that they didn't linger in old age any longer than necessary. There were many extraneous scenes (the old actor walking, lingering on subsidiary characters in bars and coffee shops) as if these added in any way to advancing the plot or developing character. There appears to be an audience for films of this type but it is so far from important films about the challenges of advancing age like "Wild Strawberries", "Men With Guns" or "Ikiru", as to be a parody.
Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story (2002)
Not worth the effort!
And an effort it is watching this. This disjointed, almost incoherent film has no clear narrative thread and seems to have been assembled pulling together whatever bits and pieces that could be found in the local TV network's video files to make an hour's worth of film. The interviewing is unfocused, the narrative jump's back-and-forth and all-over-the-place without any seeming plan or intent. This is documentary journalism at it's worst, taking a sensational story and exploiting it without really looking below the surface. It meanders and then fades out into nothingness with lots of questions raised and almost none answered. Contrast this with "Bus 174", a fascinating case of a bus hijacking in Brazil that truly demonstrates how to show the factors leading to an act of urban terrorism.
The Perfect Storm (2000)
Good enough but coulda been better!
While there certainly is drama in this film it was disappointing to me that it was done so "Hollywood". Why the need to always embellish and change critical elements of a top-notch true story to make it into a more humdrum, been-there/done-that story? From the start with the rip-off "dramatic" score that we've heard a thousand times before, to making the ship captains into potential lovers needlessly these touchs reduce the story to Stormy XXVII. Better would have been to do as the book did, allow it to start slowly without beating people overs the head that "this will be a blockbuster"; let the music, characters and waves build without telegraphing "did you notice we spent $60M bucks on this." Come on Wolfgang, you can do so much better.