Posts tagged Movie Reviews
“Like Crazy” an Unconventional Love Story
Nov 26th
“Unconventional Love Story”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Like Crazy has a very simple plot: Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back.
Or does she?
You see, complicating this “simple” love story at first glance is something that we all have encountered at one time or another: bureaucratic red tape, which is more serious in this case because it prevents the girl from getting back into the United States so that she can be reunited with the boy she fell in love with.
Anna is British, Jacob is American, and they meet at a college in Los Angeles where she is studying journalism and he is studying furniture design.
They share a writing class together, and Anna initiates their “meet cute” when she leaves a note to him underneath the windshield wiper of his car in the parking lot.
At the bottom of the note, Anna writes, “P.S. Please don’t think I’m a nutcase.”
So, they get together, discover they have a few things in common, and the first time Anna invites him in for a quiet drink, Jacob remarks that the chair she uses for all her writing is uncomfortable.
Then after we see a series of scenes showing them on numerous dates, having fun, enjoying each other’s company, and obviously falling in love, one day Jacob gives Anna a wooden chair that he designed and built for her, and he shows her that underneath the seat he engraved the words “Like Crazy.”
Well, unfortunately Anna’s student visa is up at the end of the school year, and she is scheduled to go back to England for the summer, but young love prevails, they agree that 2-1/2 months is too long for them to be apart now, and so Anna rashly decides to stay and tells Jacob that they can spend all summer in bed.
However, after Anna does return to England, she gets a job with a magazine, but then when she has a chance to come back to the United States to see Jacob, she is held up in Customs because she had violated her prior visa, and she is immediately sent back to England.
They make half-hearted statements over the telephone to be just friends, but they also both get involved with other people.
Like Crazy is an unconventional love story, and I wasn’t crazy about it.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“J. Edgar” Guilty of Overdirecting and Overacting
Nov 19th
Official Website
Movie Trailer
“Overdirecting and Overacting”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
J. Edgar tells the story of J. Edgar Hoover, longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it is the latest film directed by Clint Eastwood, and it is a big disappointment.
First of all, the movie stars Leonardo “Pretty Boy” DiCaprio as the diminutive Hoover, DiCaprio is six feet tall, Hoover was five feet, 7-1/2 inches tall, and although there is one scene that refers to Hoover’s short height, except for when DiCaprio is paired with Armie Hammer, who is six-foot five, Hoover doesn’t look short at all.
Second of all, the movie takes forever to get started, jumping back and forth and in-between in time for no apparent purpose than to try to impress the audience with Eastwood’s cleverness. Eventually we learn that this is the design of the entire movie, but until we realize that, the audience can be asking, “What is this? A history lesson?”
At any rate, I got bored right at the beginning and saw it as too much style and not enough substance, especially when clever cuts between scenes were designed to impress and the continuity became confusing. Titles showing what year we were in would be a considerable help, but I guess Eastwood thought that DiCaprio’s makeup showing him as an old man, young man, and middle-aged man would take care of that problem.
And third of all, the movie confirms only one of the three so-called “scandalous” facts that we now know about Hoover, that he was a mama’s boy, but still leaves open for speculation that he had a homosexual relationship with his longtime Number 2 man, Clyde Tolson, played by Hammer, and that he enjoyed wearing women’s clothing.
Hoover’s mother is played by Judi Dench, and I even yawned during the scene in which after she dies, DiCaprio puts on one of her dresses.
Naomi Watts is unrecognizable as Helen Gandy, Hoover’s longtime private secretary and keeper of the secret files that Hoover maintained on various celebrities and politicians.
And the film keeps going over the famous kidnaping of the son of Charles Lindbergh in endless flashbacks, flashforwards, and flash-in-betweens even after it reveals what the ending of that case was.
Finally, DiCaprio even manages to overact in the scene of him lying dead on his bedroom floor.
J. Edgar is guilty of overdirecting and overacting.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Take Shelter” Confusion for Confusion’s Sake
Nov 7th
“HOT SHOTS” LOOKS AT A MOVIE BY DAN CULBERSON: Take Shelter is an award-winning, critically acclaimed film that just might leave you wondering what all the awards and acclamation was about.
Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain star as Curtis and Samantha LaForche, they have a 6-year-old daughter named Hannah, who is deaf, and they all live in a small town in Ohio.
Curtis is a crew chief for a sand-mining company, but then things start happening to him that causes him to worry enough to go see a doctor. He is having bad dreams in which weird things happen to him and make him take action about them afterwards in his waking life.
Then he starts seeing things and hearing things during the day, which causes him to question his sanity, considering that he is 35 years old and his mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia 25 years earlier when she was 30.
And then one day Curtis says, “I’m thinking about cleaning up that storm shelter out back.”
So, without telling Samantha, he gets a home-improvement loan for $7,000, borrows some equipment from work, and then begins expanding the small storm shelter into a larger, fully equipped bunker for him and his family to wait out the apocalypse that he believes is soon coming.
Curtis articulates this as he is afraid that something “not right” might be coming, he promised himself that he would never leave Samantha and Hannah, and he is doing everything he can to make that come true.
So, are the events that Curtis is experiencing and interfering with his life real or imagined? The audience has to decide that for the time being.
When warning sirens go off and the family hides in the storm shelter to avoid the danger, Curtis doesn’t want to open the door after the danger appears to be over, but Samantha tells him that he has to open the door or else nothing will change.
Now, some critics have said that the final scene in the movie explains everything, but even that is left open for interpretation and speculation.
Take Shelter takes every opportunity to include unnecessary details that just add to the confusion, it is a movie that eventually can cause the audience to question their own sanity, but in the end, you can conclude that it is nothing more than confusion for confusion’s sake.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”