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Electroboy (2014)
Cult Classic?
Cult Classic. In search of a Cult evidently.
I rushed to the IMDb review site to see what the reactions were!
None.
I'm surprised because I found Electroboy unusual and refreshing. It's a multi-layered biopic with many twists. Yes, there are some uncomfortable parts, but they all add up. Masterfully done.
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper
Such a promising story, such a promising movie. Sigh.
Casey Affleck is, as ever, a joy to behold. A perfect performance, worthy of Oscar nomination. But Michelle Williams, who I adore, couldn't bring a single tear to her biggest scene. Her dry-eyed performance reflects the hollowness of its too-highly crafted story. If she can't spare a tear for what she's gone through and how badly she treated Patrick, how can we? The scenes of the Massachusetts coastal towns and waters are beautiful and lyrical, which might have led to the movie's worst blunder-- the music. It sounds like it wants to a Jane Austen historical epic and is distractedly inappropriate for the story.
Moonlight (2016)
Moonlight-- Best Picture in this and many years!!
Moonlight is going to be Best Picture of 2016 and Best Sound and Best Score and Best Cinematography and several Best Actor and several Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay and Best Director-- what am I leaving out? It is a movie filled with HEART-- as perfect as a movie can be. It's a movie to watch six times and discover ever more depths than the last viewing.
As Best Picture, the Academy will make up for repeated slights dealt over and over again against two communities.
Everyone knows that Brokeback Mountain was and is far superior to Crash (who even remembers it?), but the implicit bias against LGBTQs disqualified it.
The Academy has shown its implicit bias against Blacks so many times I've lost count.
The Academy can embrace two birds with one Best Picture statuette. And the more Oscars the better. They are all well-deserved.
Moonlight. Overcome your own implicit biases and see it, my cinema friends! You'll be better people for it. And we'll arc toward a better, more inclusive, society.
(Plus it'll make the racist/homophobic Trump-Pence administration choke.)
uwantme2killhim? (2013)
Not even a near miss
Being familiar with the February 2005 Vanity Fair true story from Manchester in 2003 by Judy Bachrach and with the opera "Two Boys," adapted from her article, I've eagerly anticipated this movie for quite some time. What a huge disappointment it is.
I urge you to read the VF story; it is so much more complex and engrossing. Evidently with the complicity of Ms. Bachrach who co-produced the movie, the story has been scrubbed and sanitized― stripped of its deep, and deeply interesting, teenage psycho-sexual complexity. This is an especial shame given the casting of two top-caliber actors, Jamie Blackley and Toby Regbo who could've made the movie sing.
What we're left with in this poor adaptation is simply a clever boy who is so depressed as to desire to kill himself by proxy and an uninteresting, gullible proxy. Sad story, but no barn burner. And this movie could've blazed!
The flesh of the true story offers so much, and we're given the mere bones.
Five out of ten is being generous, and I give it mainly to the cast. To the screenwriter, the director, and co-producer, I'd give a one of ten.
In some misguided attempt to not shock or challenge the general movie audience, they forfeited creating a highly-rewarding film, even a cult classic. I can't wait for Todd Haynes to remake this story!