LIBERTY:
Review of Bronson:
I had the opposite problem with Bronson’s trailer than I had with Robin Hood’s. It was very well cut and made me want to see the movie, which turned out to be far less coherent and enjoyable. I actually didn’t finish watching it—I fast-forwarded through about the last 25 minutes. The cinematography was nice and Tom Hardy was excellent as Charles Bronson. His performance was riveting and there was one scene, where his face shifts from being drugged and vacant to suddenly present, that riveted me. He embodied his character and held each scene. The major issue that I had with this movie was that it didn’t have a good narrative; the story wasn’t clearly explained and jumped around with little explanation to the point that I wasn’t sure what was going on. I knew Bronson’s story from real life, so I was able to follow, but the movie was disjointed. The tone of the film was very dark and relentless in violence. Some people might enjoy this movie, I suppose—the first 20 minutes are okay—but it was not for me. It disturbed me and the story was not compelling enough for me to stick around through over an hour of endless violence and jail scenes.
JORDAN:
Review of Splice:
This movie was utterly disturbing. When I heard the early reviews, I did not believe them, thinking perhaps that it was a traditional horror movie and that it had rubbed some people the wrong way. My perception of this movie was that it was akin to Alien, where the actors and actresses would be running around trying to avoid death by monster (albeit, I presumed Splice had some extra “blame the meddling scientists” rhetoric thrown in). However, when we started watching, the storyline turned out to be quite different. For the first half of the movie, I was enthralled by the theme of reluctant parenthood; though the female scientist does not want children with her male partner, she goes to all lengths to create a human/animal spliced creation and keep it safe once it is born. Yet, around the time that the male scientist attempts to drown their creation (and discovers it has underwater breathing capabilities), this movie took a turn for the worst. Although there may be a subculture that fantasizes about having sex with monsters, I was profoundly disturbed by the scene where the male scientist cheats on his wife with their creation – I felt it was unnecessary and gross, mainly because it was near incest in my mind since he had created and nurtured this thing. As well, when the female scientist gets raped by the same monster, I was horrified! Talk about complex plot devices and extravagant insanity… I felt, in the end, that this movie had potential to be great and that the special effects were astounding, yet the final material freaked me out and soiled my positive outlook on sex for a while.
Review of Bronson:
Honestly, I wondered why this movie needed to be made. I liked the way they put together the scenes and explored the internal desire of this man to be famous through a metaphorical clown act in his head, but most of the movie I spent questioning what was going on. There appeared to be no plot other than to showcase his bloody fights and that resulted in boredom and repetitiveness after a while. I felt that the main actor was very talented, however, because he portrayed the madness that accompanies Charlie Bronson quite well. I just did not feel that this movie provided anything but a crack in the door of violent crime pictures. Many films have gone far and above this movie in portraying the hard life of criminals while preserving some cinematic cohesion.
Review of Women in Trouble:
Another movie that had little plot and echoed the stylistic choices of movies like Paris, Je T’aime and Crash but without the same skill. This movie took you through the lives of 10 women who were all tangentially connected though they led radically different lives. In the end, only three women graced the screen (the accidentally pregnant porn star, the mother of a 13 year old who had left her in the care of her sister, and the 13 year old daughter who believed herself a witch), and I honestly feel that these were the only women I wanted to learn about anyway. Less is more is the mantra I would apply to this film. The woman who was being cheated on and the other porn stars who were mixed up in a crazy love triangle just did not have the skill of those three actresses and were not interesting to watch after a while. Interestingly enough, another movie has been made about the pregnant porn star (a sequel to this movie) called Elektra Luxx. I am really interested to see if this movie benefits from the focus on one character and her juicy storyline or if it falls into the same pits as Women in Trouble.
Review of Black. White.:
This mini-series was perhaps the best thing that I watched this weekend. It was made four years ago and details the lives of two families as they participate in an experiment where they trade races (via extensive makeup). A black family and white family come to live together in California and go through experiencing the race of the other family to see if and where racism exists in our society. I found that they focused a lot on the white experience of being black for a few days more so than the black experience of being white, while the black family was shown in their relations to each other and towards race as a whole. This served to show that this black family, at least the parents, had an awareness of race that the white family just did not have and needed to discover. I also found it interesting that some were profoundly changed by the experience of living in the other person’s skin while others found their beliefs to be staunchly correct. It is very hard to go into all the details about this intricate experiment, but I think that it was an enjoyable and thought-provoking mini-series that is a great discussion starter – even if it just gets you wondering about what it would be like to don that much makeup every day.
Make sure to take a look at the other movie reviews Liberty and I wrote and our other collaborative work: comic alterna-history zine The Bearniverse.