ATOBrian Reviews

Unforgiven (1992)

Hearken with us back to those days of yesteryear, when the bad guys were very bad, and the good guys were even worse!

[19 June 2003]

I've seen Clint Eastwood's The Unforgiven hailed as the anti-western or even the last of all westerns. Well, I don't know how you improve on this film within the genre, but I hope someone will try, so that this won't be the western to end all westerns.

This film takes all the conventions of westerns and tosses them in the air, letting the chips fall where they may. When you have the good guys (or are they supposed to be the bad guys? I don't know!) pondering what it means to kill a man, doubting the very motives they had for setting out on the journey that ended in the death of two men, you know this is not the western of Gary Cooper and John Wayne.

There is no black and white here. Everybody descends to the toilet-bowl vortex of violence and sadism, to the point that you don't know who are the good guys and who the bad. As Will Munny says, "We've all got it comin.'"

You Can Count on Me (2000)

A really great indie film

[8 June 2003]

What other movies that you can think of focus on issues of morality, responsibility and integrity?

Both the main characters in this film, Sammie and Terry, have to face these issues and make decisions about how they're going to live their lives. Yet the plot of the film doesn't resolve these issues neatly for the audience. It requires us to think about them without knowing if Sammie ends up marrying Bob or about how her son, Rudy, deals with the truth about his father; we never know how or if Terry deals with all of his many issues. All of which makes this a better movie than if it "resolved" everything. I guess the idea is that this is a movie about life. And, in life, you don't really know how things end until you look back on them.

Muriel's Wedding (1994)

So Much...Better...Than Advertised!

[10/10 · 20 May 2003]

You gotta love the Hollywood marketing hacks. "Outrageously funny...you'll stand up and.....cheer!" Did they even watch the movie? Or was this a cynical ploy to try to make "Muriel's Wedding" into a more commercially viable film?

Either way, the marketing for this great little movie deserves an award for Most Misleading. In misrepresenting "Muriel," they reduced it to a fun "chick flick" in the minds of people who hadn't yet seen it. It's so much better than that.

A few years back, my then-girlfriend begged for this on one of our trips to Blockbuster, so I gave in, resigned to a night of gritting my teeth through a silly, formula-written, semi-feminist movie about a couple girls who have fun while getting even with their boyfriends or finally landing the big job or whatever the ending was gonna be.

Well, I was FLOORED by what "Muriel's Wedding" was, as well as what it wasn't.

The film is profoundly psychological and satirical. The person who sees Muriel, powerfully played by Toni Collette, and cannot empathize with her is a heartless, brainless schmuck indeed. Collette's performance and writer/director PJ Hogan's screenplay take Muriel through pretty much the whole range of emotion. Much of this emotion is negative, and it's really painful (but beautiful) to watch at several points. To watch Muriel's harrowing journey toward self-acceptance is to relive painful moments in your past, whether you are a man or a woman.

"Muriel" is also FULL of satire. It has a lot to say about marriage and family life, and little of it is good, although I believe it leaves plenty of room for redemption for Muriel and her abusive father (well-played by Bill Hunter).

"Muriel's Wedding" isn't a perfect movie, though it's pretty damned close. The scenes of Rhonda's and Muriel's life in Sydney, in particular, seem rather episodic, without strong threads to bind them. But this is almost quibbling with a great, great film.

That's the way "Muriel's Wedding" is. It affords you no escape, if that's what you are looking for. I think that's why most people are so p***ed off about it. They want to be entertained, not depressed by a film that has to do with real life. Well, I can't be too hard on these folks. It's really the marketing department's fault for their false advertising.

But if you want to see a very powerful film and are willing be really touched by a it, then see "Muriel's Wedding."