taggerez
Joined Aug 2008
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taggerez's rating
Brick is a terrific film that captures your attention from the first scene and holds it through the winding plot. A cross between film noir and a juvenile delinquent film, it is an experiment in genre bending and genre mixing. Brick is Touch of Evil meets High School Ceasar with terrific pulp fiction (old magazine and paperback style, not Tarantino) dialogue that's delivered in straight, rapid fire. The out-of-place lingo and desolated parking lots, athletic fields and school grounds give Brick a hard-edged quality that takes the viewer out of his ordinary world.
The composition of the scenes are reminiscent of Orson Wells and the plot elements are gathered from a variety of different crime movies. The performances are superb.
The composition of the scenes are reminiscent of Orson Wells and the plot elements are gathered from a variety of different crime movies. The performances are superb.
Grand Canyon is a marshmallow of a movie: soft, squishy, blandly sweet and utterly lacking nutritious value. Many reviewers here have called this "underrated" in fact, it is underwhelming. If Grand Canyon were really all the things its admirers claimed it was it would be far better than the film it actually is. Its somber tones and earnest observations provide a coating of weighty significance over a rusting hunk of zero. There are no revelations here, no great insights into the human condition, just the illusion of something stirring.
Fans of Grand Canyon argue that those who see through its pretense are insufficiently "sensitive" to appreciate the movie's philosophical merits. But any truly perceptive observer will spot the film's obvious contradictions and glory in its unintentionally humorous aspects. One character states, "When you sit on the edge of (the Grand Canyon) you realize what a joke we people really are... what big heads we have thinking that what we do is gonna matter all that much... thinking that our time here means (nothing) to those rocks Those rocks are laughing at me right now, me and my worries." If this is so, then why should any of the principles even bother going to the trouble of contemplating all that they pretend to contemplate? And why should anyone watching this sop give a damn about anyone in this film that strives so hard to make you care? Essentially, the Grand Canyon is meant to be a metaphor for the chasm that exists between people; between perceptions and reality, but if you listen carefully to how the characters express this, the Grand Canyon becomes more an allegory about the abyss within people who talk about the existence of miracles without daring to contemplate their source.
The characters are familiar: Kevin Kline is the feckless white (liberal) dope so feeble that he is rescued from the potentially fatal consequences of his own lame-brained actions twice. Danny Glover is the Magic Negro. Mary McDonald is the wise wife who obeys the voices she hears emitting from a mute homeless man. Naturally, Grand Canyon is set in Los Angeles and features attorneys and film producers who veer into the paths of wrecker drivers.
Grand Canyon appeals to a particular kind of sucker, the kind that prefers to believe in a poetic truth conjured in his own mind than the literal one staring him in the face; the kind of people who confuse style and substance. That so many of them have posted positive reviews of the film does not surprise me, what does are the many who claim it moved them to tears. Really? Cussing was inserted into the dialog so that viewers knew that they weren't watching some warmed over Hallmark Channel offering.
Fans of Grand Canyon argue that those who see through its pretense are insufficiently "sensitive" to appreciate the movie's philosophical merits. But any truly perceptive observer will spot the film's obvious contradictions and glory in its unintentionally humorous aspects. One character states, "When you sit on the edge of (the Grand Canyon) you realize what a joke we people really are... what big heads we have thinking that what we do is gonna matter all that much... thinking that our time here means (nothing) to those rocks Those rocks are laughing at me right now, me and my worries." If this is so, then why should any of the principles even bother going to the trouble of contemplating all that they pretend to contemplate? And why should anyone watching this sop give a damn about anyone in this film that strives so hard to make you care? Essentially, the Grand Canyon is meant to be a metaphor for the chasm that exists between people; between perceptions and reality, but if you listen carefully to how the characters express this, the Grand Canyon becomes more an allegory about the abyss within people who talk about the existence of miracles without daring to contemplate their source.
The characters are familiar: Kevin Kline is the feckless white (liberal) dope so feeble that he is rescued from the potentially fatal consequences of his own lame-brained actions twice. Danny Glover is the Magic Negro. Mary McDonald is the wise wife who obeys the voices she hears emitting from a mute homeless man. Naturally, Grand Canyon is set in Los Angeles and features attorneys and film producers who veer into the paths of wrecker drivers.
Grand Canyon appeals to a particular kind of sucker, the kind that prefers to believe in a poetic truth conjured in his own mind than the literal one staring him in the face; the kind of people who confuse style and substance. That so many of them have posted positive reviews of the film does not surprise me, what does are the many who claim it moved them to tears. Really? Cussing was inserted into the dialog so that viewers knew that they weren't watching some warmed over Hallmark Channel offering.
Many people like to attack or mock the anti-communist films of the 1950s for "paranoia" and "hysteria." They do this despite the fact that Soviet intelligence, using many prominent Americans like Alger Hiss who was highly placed in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration, made deep penetrations into U.S. institutions.
But more than thirty-years after the National Socialists were defeated in World War II -- with thousands of Soviet warheads aimed at the United States -- Hollywood resurrected the Nazis in a string of films of which "The Boys From Brazil" is one. Nevermind that Hitler never had anything close to the Fifth Column Stalin had or that Nazism was irrevocably ground into the earth with Germany's defeat of 1945, the Nazi Threat was back with a vengeance.
"The Boys From Brazil" isn't a really bad film but, when one weighs the respective threat of Nazism to communism at the time, it is hilariously paranoid. At the time this film flickered to life in threaters, the real Josef Mengele (a detestable ass) was living quietly in a bungalow in a suburb of São Paulo. Yet no one would dare call "The Boys From Brazil" or "Marathon Man" a hysterical relic of the 1970s!
But more than thirty-years after the National Socialists were defeated in World War II -- with thousands of Soviet warheads aimed at the United States -- Hollywood resurrected the Nazis in a string of films of which "The Boys From Brazil" is one. Nevermind that Hitler never had anything close to the Fifth Column Stalin had or that Nazism was irrevocably ground into the earth with Germany's defeat of 1945, the Nazi Threat was back with a vengeance.
"The Boys From Brazil" isn't a really bad film but, when one weighs the respective threat of Nazism to communism at the time, it is hilariously paranoid. At the time this film flickered to life in threaters, the real Josef Mengele (a detestable ass) was living quietly in a bungalow in a suburb of São Paulo. Yet no one would dare call "The Boys From Brazil" or "Marathon Man" a hysterical relic of the 1970s!