Change Your Image
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Reviews
200 Motels (1971)
Better than "Head"?
Subtracting the obvious musical superiority Zappa has over the Monkeys, I think that the film "Head" is a better representation of the psychedelic era than "200 Motels". Maybe it's due to the fact that "200 Motels" is less of a total experience than "Head". It's essentially some nice, but barely connected videos, a few good gags and a few too many lame skits thrown in between. It doesn't seem to work as a feature length production. Personally, I'd like to see it re-edited for brevity and greater impact. It has potential.
By the way, does the dry but off-kilter humor remind any of you of Beck's series of videos for "The Information"?
Scared Straight! (1978)
Propaganda or a Matter of "Keepin' It Real"?
There is no denying that this documentary is really engaging, if only in a perverse sort of way. The grating, in-your-face approach was certainly ahead of its time and the ultimate message--however closely orchestrated and exaggerated--cannot be mistaken. It's interesting to note how we are assaulted with "good" here, rather than being assaulted with "evil", how we , as passive viewers, are pushed and pulled by the film without our own volition. We are "turned out" by the convicts and walk away broken but wiser. That said, the film reminds me somewhat of "Reefer Madness" and other such pieces of propaganda that force the audience into an ostensibly "real" hell-hole in an effort to scare us straight. Here we have a more street-wise but equally paranoid attempt to pummel at-risk kids with sordid tales that will lead them away from a life of crime. The kids in the film, although shown to be the focus of the warnings--the very center of attention, are really nothing more than supporting actors-- players, not recipients, of the message which borders on outright propaganda. The real audience is comprised of slightly rowdy and/or delinquent middle class kids who both are both fearful of and fascinated by deviant actions. For them, watching this film is equivalent to "slumming". It's "real" only in a very mediated way. With that in mind, it's arguable that this film's shock tactics do more to entertain than to instruct. Thus, on a fictional level the film is wonderful, but if we're looking for gritty cinema verite that just happens to coincide with governmental policies we will be disappointed.
An American Family (1973)
Paradise Lost?
One of the key aspects that makes this series compelling is the director's insistence that it somehow adheres to strict rules (if such are even theoretically possible) of cinema Veriee. So much of the "reality" we observe in this precursor to the current deluge of reality shows is very subtly contrived. Given the fact that Pat and Bill were on the outs well before the series started, plus the fact that Lance had already come out, much the seemingly real-time tension viewers experience is really quite contrived in much the same manner as a scripted soap opera. The show--even in all of its heavy handed scandal-mongering--does illustrate the strains present in many modern nuclear families and does elicit much interest if only for the fact that it captures the strange transition between the spontaneous daily drama of life as seen from a fly on the wall and the media's shaping of such drama to suit its own thesis. By watching Lance, who even goes so far as to tip off the audience by self-consciously parodying his on-stage persona, we can readily observe the innocent wonder years of PBS well before it grew into the great dictator of perception that it is today.
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Heavy-handed Rubbish
This is by far one of the most pompous and heavy-handed antiwar films ever. The plot is preposterous and the interaction between characters borders on sheer caricature. This sort of artificiality might be excused to some extent if the film itself did not beg--and I mean grovel, simper and then stamp its feet--for some skewed, hackneyed sense of profundity. The pretentious symbolism is enough to drive a viewer with the least bit of poetry in his or her soul far, far away. The allusions to far better war films and texts scream for attention like a six year old boy beside a GI Joe display in Wal-Mart. Cheap, cheap theatrics meant to evoke some cornball mystical view of a man's place in a conflicted world. The self-indulgent cinematography and story line make this epic and unbearable experience.