Change Your Image
zenjen71
Reviews
Agora (2009)
Amazing film
I can't say enough about this film. Great script, acting, and directing. Its a vision of the past that has been covered up for centuries. Its this vision that needs to be studied and learned to save our present and future.
Those same forces are still at work all these centuries later, suppressing knowledge and promoting ignorance as faith but as Hypatia and the pagans knew everything is cyclical.
The fearful and power hungry of society can't keep science, math, reason and a good woman down forever. :)
As an American I know why many scholars compare the Roman Empire to the United States. The Christians took over Rome and are attempting to do the same to the United States. This film is a wake up call.
Sex and the City 2 (2010)
Enjoy SATC. Detractors STFU.
The backlash against Sex and the City has begun! Now with accusations of racism. I guarantee most of people who have rated the film poorly or wrote negative comments haven't seen the film or the TV show. Its a knee jerk reaction to a successful women centric film.
God forbid Hollywood make a film geared toward adult women. The nerve of Hollywood not gearing 100% of its films to teen age boys or men who still think they are teen age boys.
Sex and the City is a fantasy film for women, but keeps its feet on the ground. Instead of super powers or explosions, women get to explore a fantasy world of designer clothing and fabulous locations.
Yet the issues faced by each main character is rooted in reality. Miranda struggling with sexism at work, while trying to juggle work and family life. Charlotte dealing with the stress of being a mother. Samantha tackling menopause. Carrie adjusting to the reality that she will never have kids and how to keep the "sparkle" in her young marriage going. All of these issues are played out in comical and sometimes moving ways.
These are real issues that women are confronted with that men will never have to contemplate. This gets to the heart of the negative comments and bad reviews. If you're a guy who didn't like the film, that's too bad. The film wasn't made for you. Men will never know what its like to be a woman, not even gay men.
The accusations of racism are also ridiculous. Its a reality in the Middle East that views on sexuality and women are way more conservative. Each character responded to that reality in different ways. The more conservative Miranda was the most keen on honoring the traditions of the area and continued to remind the other characters to keep their Western ways in check. Meanwhile the most sexually liberated character Samantha struggled with those differences and eventually lost her cool.
The Middle Eastern characters were never portrayed as "bad guys". Abu Dhabi was portrayed as a community struggling to deal with its traditions and modernism. That was a metaphor for the struggles of the main characters as well.
Chloe (2009)
Insulting and tired stereotypes about lesbians
I agree with the other reviewers that they wasn't much of a script. It was predictable. It was hard to get emotionally invested in any of the characters. There was nothing really between the two main characters in particular. Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) was an empty vesicle used by Catherine(Julianna Moore) to play out her mid-life crisis. The film simply added a lesbian twist on a very formulaic Fatal Attraction type story.
As stated above, the whole script seemed to be designed as an excuse to see two beautiful women in a love scene. But the love scene was in no way satisfying. Catherine we are lead to believe was only interested in using Chloe to get back at her husband. It was inferred through Chloe's symbolic comb gift giving that she was playing out her "mommy issues" with Catherine, which is just another cliché.
Chole completed the trifecta of gay female stereotypes by turning into a creepy stalker and inevitably dying at the end, (which may or may not have been a suicide). This is the same fate shared by so many other countless lesbian and bisexual characters. I really wish straight people would stop making films about lesbians. Films schools really need to make the documentary "The Celluloid Closet" required viewing to avoid these tired and destructive gay stereotypes.
The film seems to be adding another dimension to the "Female Chauvinist Pig" phenomenon as written about by Ariel Levy. Moore's character was a chauvinist with her treatment of Chloe. Chloe was never a real person, she was just a means to an end. Its hard to tell if that was intentional or not by the film makers.
Side note: I found it amusing that Moore's character was a gynecologist. You would think after looking at so much vagina all day long, she wouldn't be all that interested. ;D
I'm looking forward to Moore's next lesbian film with Annette Bening. Amanda is turning into a great young actress. She brought a lot of emotional weight to an otherwise under-developed character. Following her career should be interesting.
Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)
Campy (But in a the bad way)
I was looking forward to this film as a Buffy the Vampire fan, anime and martial arts film lover. I was disappointed from start to finish. To call this a B Movie is an insult to B movies everywhere. It had a good premise, but terrible execution.
The film is supposed to take place in Japan in 1970. I'm not sure if the filmmakers intended to use the technology from the 1970s to make it seem more authentic, but the special effects were laughable. The demons looked like something out of the old Sinbad films from the 1950s or Clash of the Titans in the early 80s.
The acting, storyline and "special effects" can only be described as campy. The best kind of campy is unintentional camp ala the movie Showgirls. From that standpoint I should have enjoyed this film, because it took itself way to seriously. Despite the camp factor, I was bored out of my mind and happy to see this film end.
"No depth, no emotions, pure blood and gore. Just the way the Americans liked it, and what the whole hype was about." The above is such a vast generalization. Not every film being made in Asia is a work of art, nor our all films made in America shallow and gory.
There are plenty of sophisticated films and television shows made for American audiences that, doesn't rely on "blood and gore", nor are they "devoid of depth or emotions" and that includes anime cartoons. They are made in Japan and dubbed in English, and shown directly on American television. They don't change the story lines to suit the American audience, and they don't suffer in popularity as a result.
The fact that this film was terrible had nothing to do with the American audiences "likes or dislikes." Perhaps if American filmmakers were involved in the project they would have helped with the special effects and improved the poor dialogue. And they wouldn't have hired English actors to do bad North American accents either.
The Hong Kong film makers and French director only have themselves to blame for making a film of such poor quality.