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scottforschler
Reviews
Good Girls (2018)
Good characters, dumb plot holes
The show had great potential, and the characters are excellent, although one of the most surprisingly interesting ones, Mary Pat, disappears without much reason after season two when the writers could certainly have done much more with her. Aspiring to be a female-centric Breaking Bad, the show unfortunately tends to be both too derivative thereof at many points (Rio is just BCS's Nacho in Detroit; and Beth's pleading that her gang be kept alive because of their technical expertise copies Walter White's similar scene in Gus's underground meth lab). It is also much less believable--the crimes and methods are implausible, law enforcement is close to them quite early on yet somehow mysteriously manages to not nab them for a very long time (can you say "plot armor"?) A key character is shot 3 times and left for dead, but shows up in the next episode pulling three flattened bullets from his pockets to impress his attacker but otherwise no worse for wear, as if he just rested a bit at an inn a week to restore his D&D hit points. At its best there are a few very specific, unique jokes--IMO, you can hardly top the recurring appearances of the "explosives expert" in s4, which always result in deadpan, unspoken, face-slapping hilarity, and was well worth waiting for. But after the girls' schemes result in the brutal death of one completely innocent person in s3, it is hard to still sympathize with them as we are supposed to, especially as they forget about this too quickly except as something they might be caught for (they are never presented as complete anti-heroes the way Walter White becomes, we're supposed to still like them, but that doesn't really work, especially when they throw away every opportunity to kill the real bad guys). I keep watching because I really do want to know what will happen. But I expect only occasionally highlights as a reward.
Sundown (2021)
Thoughts of "Wakefield"
Several here have suggested that the story echoes elements of Camus' The Stranger (aka The Outsider). It may also echo parts of the 2015 film "Wakefield," based on a short story by Hawthorne and later updated by E. L. Doctorow. In this, a wealthy man disappears from his family, who eventually think he has dead, though in fact he hasn't gone far and is spying on them, trying to understand his former life by, in a sense, viewing his absence. As in Sundown, the family superficially appears normal and loving, but the man suggests various cracks in the facade as he narrates his experience, perhaps without ever truly explaining let alone justifying this strange withdrawal from life.
I hope this connection helps someone understand Sundown better, as beyond this, I don't have any deep insight. Obviously some of what we see isn't real; I'm not clear on how much, if any of it, was real, or how we might figure this out. So this leaves me both intrigued and a bit frustrated.
65 (2023)
Could have been better? Well, maybe not.
I watched this for 1) Adam Driver, and 2) thinking it might have been a time-travel movie. But this is Driver's worst movie, and it's just about an ancient spaceman with incredibly advanced technology who also somehow can't fly his way out of a meteor storm, and can land on the only habitable planet for many light-years without knowing where he is.
Dinosaurs attack, frequently and randomly, even small ones who idiotically attack humans 10 times their size. But that's not enough; they had to crash land just about a day before the dinosaur-killing asteroid crashes into the Earth. And they have to escape just seconds before the asteroid hits, and only because their mis-aligned spacecraft is attacked by yet another dinosaur who, most improbably, tilts their ship into take-off orientation.
The only suspense in this movie was wondering whether the pilot and the girl would not escape the planet in time, but would somehow slip into a cave or underwater, emerging after the destruction to become the first two humans to populate the planet--which would have been monstrous since Driver must be 3 time her age, and scientifically wrong as it would be around 65 million years too early. But I was half expecting it given the other goofs in the movie. Glad they got out in time, and before I had watch yet more random dinosaurs or meteors.
Liars, Fires and Bears (2012)
Potential was lost
I was particularly looking forward to this indy film as the trailer and premise sounded so promising. The half hour it took for the two main characters to meet could be justified with sufficient character development for each. Unfortunately this wasn't done very well, especially for Eve. Neither the trust she puts in Dave, nor her shockingly violent arson, seems clearly justified by anything we even see hinted at. We later learn it was just a badly-planned disappearance in her 9-year old mind, but it clashes with any attempt to portray her sympathetically. After getting separated, there was a seemingly perfect explanation for how they could meet again, as she disappeared with Dave's coat and wallet. But instead of looking for him at his house she simply reappears one day in his car again, at a different location she could not possibly have known to look for him in, so this just seemed like bad writing. I also expected a road trip movie, but we have another half hour of rather stupid incidents before they briefly hit the road, giving us just a few minutes of serious revelatory conversation before they reach their intended but disappointing destination, and there's little connection after that, or justification for what connection there is. I feel that the actors have some significant potential, and did what they were told to do, but they were given an inadequate script. The crimes Dave is (falsely) increasingly suspected of build up almost comically, but the mood is never truly funny nor truly realistic. The final resolution could have been from a Disney movie, but feels tacked on to an otherwise non-Disneyesque film.
Come True (2020)
Odd in a good way
I agree with many here that the plot was confusing and many characters underdeveloped. That makes it less satisfying to watch than it otherwise could be. OTOH, what struck me as most interesting is that the final twist leaves us with great uncertainty about what's real and what isn't without tying it all up in a nice bow. If she's in a coma, when did it start? The sequences and plots turns seemed to get increasingly unrealistic as the film goes along, leaving each viewer with their own choice of when to suppose the coma started. Or was everything in the film part of a coma dream? Or (and here my head exploded when I considered this) perhaps none of it: maybe she's having a really bad dream at the end, and the "message" is just part of her nightmare, not a real message from outsiders. Well, this is more just speculative interpretation than review, but I like that there's a lot of ambiguity to go around.
The Visit (1964)
Morality Play
Someone's comparison here to a Twilight Zone episode is very apt. It is certainly a kind of morality play, where the characters are a little unrealistic and abstractly drawn, but this doesn't take away from the drama once you see it is intended to be that way. In this respect it also reminded me a little of Our Town, some of Brecht's works, any number of German Expressionist films, or a Greek myth being interpreted on a stage.
The sound sometimes seemed a bit off, as if a great many scenes had the conversations recorded in a studio rather than live when the action was filmed. I know this happens in many films to some degree, but usually the matching is better. Still, this almost adds to the mythic quality of the film.
Some reviews say this is an "unknown" European country; note that the references to Trieste along with the Cyrillic characters on many signs suggest that it was supposed to be somewhere in Yugoslavia, which is a little odd given that this & nearby communist nations would hardly have been open to a rich capitalist lady coming in and making the manipulative offer she gave the town. But again, this is more myth than realism. Most conversations were in English, which we could simply assume meant the film translates the local dialect for our understanding, except that a few background characters sounded like they were speaking in some Slavic language. Perhaps we are to suppose it occurs in a tiny non-communist country which uses a Slavic language and English side by side, an overlooked geographical footnote like The Dutchy of Grand Fenwick which bears little resemblance to its overpowering neighbors. But this is not explored or suggested in the film itself, lending further mystery and mythic quality to the story and setting.
Ted & Venus (1991)
hard to find the humor
Bud Cort's earlier movies often addressed serious issues (car theft, suicidal ideation, murder, etc.) in humorous ways. I was hoping to find similar dark comedy in this one, but frankly it's harder to find; mostly it just seems dark and stupid. Ted's obsession is entirely unreciprocated, his target wholly undeserving of his harassment, and no one in the end learns any lessons or receives (or deserves) any redemption. His lawyer's bafflement in the courtroom and a few other scenes are mildly amusing, but do little to liven the overwhelmingly unjustified threat Ted poses.
They All Laughed (1981)
Cute, amusing
Apparently I saw this movie a few years ago and forgot most of it, and watching it again didn't recognize anything until minute 40 or so when I suddenly heard Christy (Colleen Camp) addressing "Charles!" in her very distinctive way and putting his name at the end of every sentence as if throwing it at him. Which means, I suppose, that the movie is mostly made out of little tidbits like this, and is not very deep, but fun for all that.