jordnthoms

I really enjoyed this movie. The three most valuable aspects of the movie are the music, acting, and story. I am a big fan of Jonny Greenwood and I've read a lot of complaints about the soundtrack to this movie. You shouldn't review a film if your idea of a good movie is Wall-E and you shouldn't open your mouth about music if your idea of good music is 50 Cent. I own the soundtrack to the film and I occasionally listen to it while studying or on the train. There are two or three songs that only belong in a movie, but the rest are excellent and all are fitting for a soundtrack to such an eerie and violent film. I honestly put the soundtrack in the ranks of "Amelie". As for the acting, Daniel and Henry Plainview were well played. HW Plainview and Eli Sunday weren't truly very convincing, but it wasn't devastating to the film. I truly felt the need to review this movie because I read reviews by so many people who didn't understand the story or thought the movie had no plot. Of course, like any good movie there isn't a linear plot built as predictably as a tunnel with a light at the end. I think many people didn't like the end because it was unsettling to their worldview. I think the director, whoever he is, was trying to give an accurate portrayal. Perhaps it is because I am an environmentalists but the character of Daniel Plainview is still alive and kicking. I liked the theme or religion throughout because it demonstrates how people will allow others to take advantage of them because their focus is on divinity and eternal life. Daniel Plainview is the man on top. He is easy to hate for no reason, but this movie gives plenty of reasons to hate him. The movie is an accurate representation of the aggregation of power and the path to success, especially in the business of oil.

Since it has been about 8 years since I first saw this movie, it may seem counterintuitive that I would review this movie now. If I had reviewed this movie 8 years ago (at 15), I would have given it 10 stars. It was the best movie I had ever seen at the time. I was way into the drug culture and had already experimented with half of a dozen. The ironic thing is that now that I have cleaned up (no drugs and no cigarettes), I find the movie to be an abstract piece of art. The abstract nature of the movie is why I give it three stars. The message is foul: drug addiction is a slippery slope and inescapable. My life experiences have shown this to be absolutely untrue. While Aronofsky does a great job with the visual and dramatic aspects of this movie and the Kronos Quartet empowers it with beautiful noises, the moral is dead wrong. It is almost as if the director has never done a single illicit drug. If you want a more realistic experience of drug addiction being inescapable and miserable, read or watch "A Scanner Darkly". If you want a more realistic experience of drug culture, watch "Trainspotting". In "Trainspotting" the characters clean up multiple times willingly and they almost make it look easy -- until you see that they slide back into it easily. The beauty of this movie is deceptive. This is the ultimate poison of the film industry. With dramatic elements, you can make a lie seem so unquestionably true. You can see this mentality seeping into modern film and 85% (according to the rank of this movie) believe the lie. The best analogy I can provide is to tell the tale of a vegetarian. This vegetarian killed a pig once and went around swinging the corpse and attacking people out with it, screaming, "Meat is murder!" How could something so beautiful be so wrong? Simple. Ask an American blonde to assimilate gravity into molecular theory.

Riddle me this:

You are given a movie with an exceptional soundtrack (Even though Lover's Spit did not make the OST cut and *fortunately* the OST version of The Scientist was the Danny Lohner remake), a big -- albeit obtuse -- screenplay, above average acting, and a remarkably cruel and beautiful premise. However, this movie fails miserably in all essences.

The beginning is quite confusing and failed to maintain my interest. I continued to neglect to pause when I left the room, which was actually the second bad sign. Bad sign number one: I LEFT THE ROOM. When I couldn't hear the dialog, I would rewind it to find that I hadn't missed anything of note.

By the time the pieces were coming together, I had really lost interest in the main characters and their Hollywood oblivious passerby scenes (ecstasy to the droning masses). You watch enough of these movies (MGM lion, jump in the lake boy... just about anything you recognize at the beginning of a movie) and you learn that they aren't going to bump into each other until the most climactic moment in the plot (with only the loveliest of songs playing). It is disgusting how predictable these movies have become.

While the characters were believable, the story failed to account for their actions or inactions. I was left with so many unanswered questions about motives because absolutely nothing in the movie escapes the barest and thinnest plot line. no auxiliary plots were present to cast insight into the behavior of the actors. "Simply take it as it is," you are instructed. But, for the house of cards built for the initiation and reinitiation of the plot... well, you simply cannot see their construction (nor can you recreate it without delicate and exhaustive rationalization).

I am so sick of this "delineate the plot from the story" philosophy. So it has been successfully done a few times (Pulp Fiction). It has been butchered at least ten fold as many times. It's more used up than a 50- year-old Philipino "call girl". The reason that this was successful in certain movies is because the content within the delineated sections are independently substantial and valuable enough to be taken alone. To use this method just to confuse people is an easy route to abuse the childlike nature of the workaday slug. People see it and think: Mystery! This is no Agatha Christie novel however, and -- like a 10 piece puzzle -- after collecting enough pieces you can easily see where each one fits, but when someone is slowly meting out these pieces, most rational people become a bit annoyed.

Leonard Shelby wakes each morning to find that he can't remember anything past the date he and his wife were attacked in their home. During the attack, he received permanent brain damage and is unable to store short-term memory. Memento is a film depicting his journey to track down and kill the man who raped and murdered his wife. You experience the movie just Leonard Shelby experiences life -- unable to draw on the past to determine how to perceive the present. Shelby is often confused and disoriented, but his drive to track down his wife's murderer gives him the ability to act on instinct and a few small notes and tattoos. The story itself is an incredible one, and you will certainly enjoy it. The telling of the story engages the brain in a unique way. As the film progresses, the viewer finds the information being presented explains scenes from earlier in the movie -- because the movie is presented basically in reverse. This style is similar to Pulp Fiction, but rather than a loose correlation of characters intimated in brief encounters, most people catch on to Memento's pattern rather quickly. This causes the viewer to desire sources of information that are the basis for Shelby's actions. The movie is an excellent story and presentation with a powerful climax, but some viewers may find the style of presentation tasking. I continually found myself waiting for information and paying less attention to the occurrences of the film. I truly sympathized with Leonard Shelby by the end of the movie, but since the presentation allowed viewers to know what the end result of each scene would be, I really had a feeling that I wanted the key element of the scene to appear. After that element appeared, I completely lost interest in the rest of the scene. Viewed linearly, the characters might be a little unrealistic. The musical score was extremely outdated -- it reminded me of something from a 60s or 70s film. The acting was excellent, with the exception of Guy Pearce -- incidentally the main character. I understand that it is very difficult to play a handicapped person, but I found his blonde hair and clean-cut look to be insufficient in compensating for his overly cool demeanor and emotionless performance. Watch this movie. It is a fair picture of a rare medical condition with a brilliant ending; however, I can only credit Jonathon Nolan with brilliance and Christopher Nolan with some pretty sub-par directing.

A Scanner Darkly is an amoral dive into drug culture and addiction. The story of the drug Substance D details the journey of an undercover agent, Bob Arctor, into a downward spiral of drug abuse and brain damage. The tragic revelations of Arctor's life show an unsuspecting man losing grip. The movie says something more though. It's impossible not to toss out Requim for a Dream in reference to this movie. Both are very much about the same thing. In A Scanner Darkly, however, one is given a imaginary miracle drug that turns the brain into mush. Actions are not results of depravity, rather results of a rotting skull. The end of the movie occurs a little awkwardly. Instead of climaxing, the story draws out with no real changes and fast forwards through the end of the book. The piece is incredibly emotional and Phillip Dick lays his heart on the pages. Director Linklater does an excellent job of portraying the story in his typical fashion of interpolated rotoscope, which is quite attractive. The movie is certainly not as good as Linklater's first, but the plot does seem to have more action. The animation is not as… animated… as Linklater's Waking Life, and the movie suffers from some very dry moments, but overall the film is certainly worth watching, and the experience is worth the time.

Having never seen a Solondz piece, an Italian friend though I should see this movie along with Palindromes.

I was engrossed in the film by the "fiction" portion of the movie, which was graphic and fast-paced. The questions posed by the students were neither uncommon nor unpredictable; however, Catherine and the professor force the story forward by asking the hard questions and giving the hard analysis. A majority of the students are stuck in their analysis of the piece (much like most viewers and readers): It is realistic? It is graphic? Is it rape? ... but Solondz named this piece "fiction" -- though one could easily interpret it as non-fiction (with the exception of the readers/listeners presented by Solondz). Without the select words of two characters at two moments in the segment (totaling no more than one minute each) the entire "fiction" segment would go nowhere.

"because once you start writing, it all becomes fiction"

Solondz then moves on to "Non-fiction." This segment was utterly unbelievable. A sociopathic 5th grader who manipulates his father, a homosexual teen with absolutely no psychological issues (or capacity, really), a filmmaker who settles for a clearly mundane subject, and a murderous maid -- all clearly fictional. Cliché mother, father, and brother figures aimed to fit the mold of non-fiction are tossed in with the unbelievable characters for some sort of contrast. However, the contrast is truly lacking without further probing of these characters. Again, I will point out that in the screening, the viewers (like most viewers and readers) are stuck in their analysis of the piece: Are their dreams realistic? Are they capable of achieving their dreams? Haha, simpleton.

The biggest message I got from this movie relates fiction and non- fiction. Both segments conveyed a non-fiction story, but the first was received as fiction and in the second the viewers so distanced themselves from the subject that it might as well have been fiction.

Overall, the movie confused me. I found most of the characters to be utterly unbelievable; I found the division into fiction and non-fiction intentionally deceptive; and I thought the bulk of the movie was anticlimactic and boring. I don't know how everyone is seeing an assault on political correctness. Vi was simply reflecting the racist (albeit positive) stereotypes her character has and was criticized for the assumption of the criticizers that her character was raped. I think everyone who has ever written about race has been called a racist. The maid was El Salvadorian... so what? The mother was Jewish... not relevant.

4/10