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Reviews
Dog Park (1998)
canine excrement wrapped in celluloid
A truly dreadful movie in just about every way. Atrocious, amateurish dialog, bad acting by good people (how well can yo act when you have to spout those horrible lines), not a shred of reality or truth to anything that transpires. And the concept, if one can call it that, is warmed over Woody Allen with the dog thing - because let's face it - dogs are cute and people who like dogs or have dogs or want to have dogs - well, they're already swell people, aren't they? Miss this movie unless you want a crash course in how to write trite, unoriginal, cliché-ridden, sloppy, boring crud. So, no, I didn't really care much for it.
Crash (2004)
Spectacularly Awful in just about every way
Terrible writing, highly contrived, from a "do-gooder" who knows absolutely nothing about race relations in L.A., or the USA in the present day. The gushing positive reviews are a mystery to me - but could only be provided by folks who think that someone's "good" intentions should be applauded regardless of how shallow, simpleminded and just totally unrealistic the results are. If you want to see a film which deals realistically with modern day L.A. race issues - the movie you need to see (and probably already saw) is Pulp Fiction. There's more honesty and realism regarding race in any two minutes of that film than there are in the full 4 hours (oh I'm sorry, it just felt like 4 hours) of this stinker.
If anyone ever needs proof that the path to hell is paved with good intentions - then this is the movie for you.
Der amerikanische Freund (1977)
Another "classic" that should be debunked
I consider myself to be a Wim Wenders fan - sort of. I liked Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas. But The American Friend, despite some great location and architectural camera-work, is really a failed experiment. The problem is that Wenders seems unsure about whose point of view he is really taking. Dennis Hopper's Ripley is certainly more intriguing to him than Ganz's poor sad sack - and he tries to tell it from Ripley's point of view. But Wenders never really gets a handle on what makes the character tick - he's just Hopper doing crazy stuff. Ganz's character is really the soul of the movie - faced with uncertainties and painful decisions, and being at an existential loss to know how to live out his life. His story is the compelling one - and his character is the empathetic one. But we keep bouncing back to Ripley for unconvincing "character arcs" and increasingly more preposterous scenarios.
There are some exciting and suspenseful moments in the middle of the film, but the prolonged and (unintentionally?) comic climax left me disappointed and disengaged. I don't mind films that are ambiguous. In fact, I relish them. This film is seeks to be ambiguous and open ended, is actually crippled by inconsistencies, contradictions, and just plain undeveloped and vague scenarios.
Hopper is hyper-kinetic and is more amusing than threatening. Ganz is the counterpoint, with his quiet, soulful performance.
C'est arrivé près de chez vous (1992)
interesting but no work of genius.
This is a pretty horrific movie that is also very funny. What works is that the serial killer is charming (sort of) and intelligent (sort of) even though he's also a sick degenerate. The flaws, however, are numerous and suck the interest, energy, and empathy from the film. First of all, it's at least a half hour too long. What starts as a startling and audacious film becomes, in the end, repetitive and tedious. You know the filmmakers are just trying to see what they can possibly come up with next that will further repel the audience. it's like, "OK. OK, I get it, I get it." Where I disagree with some other reviewers is that I think the movie really has no meaningful larger context that it operates in, say the way Taxi Driver or A Clockwork Orange does. And the fact that it was made after these classics further diminishes the point that it might actually have something to say about post modern society, the influence of media, blah blah blah. It does, however, say a lot about the people who made it. But that's about it.