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Reviews
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017)
What a disappointment
I was so excited to see this movie, as the book has been on my list to read for awhile. I had not gotten around to reading the book prior to seeing the movie & perhaps that would have helped?
The movie is disjointed & makes little sense. It is primarily about Henrietta's daughter & her relationship with the book's author. I was okay with that, but characters were never explained & many decisions in the film & dialogue made no sense b/c the story wasn't flushed out enough to understand the importance of the choices or dialogue. For example the "talk to the men" theme is made a big deal of in the beginning. It's repeated several times. It's never explained though. Why were they insistent that Skloot could only talk to the men. It came from several characters, but then most of the movie is spent NOT talking to the men. It never made any sense. Some character's behavior was not explained until almost the end of the film, which really hurt the viewer's ability to empathize & warm to the characters.
It was such a shame as there were many great actors who performed well, but ultimately the lack of background info & poor choices, made this movie a mess. I had such high hopes :-( I'm still looking fwd to reading the book, maybe that will fill in the huge gaps of the movie. You won't miss much if you skip this one!
The Pet (2006)
Just awful
The acting is terrible. The plot makes no sense. This movie attempts to explore 2 relevant & infinitely interesting topics...a type of D/s relationship & human slave trafficking. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close to doing either justice. It attempts to intertwine the two in a way that makes no sense. The D/s side comes off as typical fantasy...the woman is offered large sums of money by a rich man to try being his kept-nude & in a cage pet & she likes it. Now, I'm not against a well-done fantasy portrayal, but this isn't it. In the movie's defense, it does attempt to show a D/s relationship as a loving one with mutual consent & benefit (besides the monetary). But that doesn't begin to save the film. We are asked to believe that one day she is perfectly lucid & signing contracts & the next day she has no cognitive abilities except those of a dog. BTW, if you have a RL dog, you know that most of them have a whole lotta cognitive ability LOL. This is only one of it's many, many problems.
As for it's attempt to touch on the abhorrent practice of the human slave trade, it touches on it briefly in a way that makes no sense in the context of the movie. I had such high hopes for this film & the trailer made it look so exciting. I wanted to love it. Instead, when I wasn't laughing, I was just stunned by how bad it was. Don't waste your time! And definitely don't waste your money!