Posts tagged drama
Chernobyl Diaries – Movie Trailer
May 29th
Chernobyl Diaries is an original story from Oren Peli, who first terrified audiences with his groundbreaking thriller, Paranormal Activity. The film follows a group of six young vacationers who, looking to go off the beaten path, hire an “extreme” tour guide. Ignoring warnings, he takes them into the city of Pripyat, the former home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, but a deserted town since the disaster more than 25 years ago. After a brief exploration of the abandoned city, however, the group soon finds themselves stranded, only to discover that they are not alone…
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – Movie Trailer
May 12th
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel follows a group of British retirees who decide to “outsource” their retirement to less expensive and seemingly exotic India. Enticed by advertisements for the newly restored Marigold Hotel and bolstered with visions of a life of leisure, they arrive to find the palace a shell of its former self. Though the new environment is less luxurious than imagined, they are forever transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past.
“Damsels in Distress” Causes the Audience to Be in Pain
May 12th
“Audience in Pain”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Damsels in Distress is the fourth movie written and directed by Whit Stillman, all of them have received favorable reviews, but I thought this was the worst movie I have seen in a very long time.
The story takes place at a school called Seven Oaks University, and it begins during new-student orientation at the start of the school year when three girls approach a new girl attending the school and one of them says to her, “We’d like to help you.”
The three girls are Violet, Heather, and Rose, and the new girl is Lily, who is a sophomore and is transferring into the university.
The leader of the group is Violet, and she does most of the talking, which takes place when they are walking, which takes place when they are dancing, and which even takes place when the girls get into bed at night, where they all sleep in the same room.
Violet, Heather, and Rose volunteer at the Suicide Prevention Center, where they help some students to get over their depression with tap dancing.
Incidentally, when Violet herself gets depressed later in the story over a boy she thinks she is in love with, she doesn’t like to use the word “depressed.” She prefers to say that she “is in a tailspin.”
The university has social fraternities on campus, but they make a point of saying that they aren’t Greek fraternities, as there are on most college campuses. These are Roman-letter fraternities like DU, where the girls all go to a party and make fun of the members of the fraternity, whom they call morons and think of their attending as “youth outreach.”
There is no dramatic arc in this movie, just a dramatic plateau. No, make that a valley with no drama at all, because it never reaches the level of a plateau.
I wondered if all the people making this movie were as bored making it as I was watching it. I kept thinking, “Why don’t they just stop talking and do something?”
Violet’s ambition is to start a new dance craze, and the movie ends with a big musical dance number. No, two of them, but by then it is still too late.
Damsels in Distress is so bad that if I never see it again, it will be too soon.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
