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edweiland
Reviews
An Affair of the Heart (2012)
Good Doc
Affair of the Heart looks at Rick Springfield's devoted fan base. This movie really sparkles when it focuses on the groupies, which is the majority of the film. What I liked best was how the fans told their own stories of what led them to a place where so much of their time and resources are devoted to a former teen idol whose heyday was more than 25 years ago. Included are some very moving personal stories, interviews with spouses of the fans and their feelings about dealing with the obsessions of their significant others and a lot of recent concert footage. The movie drags when it gets into Springfield's career a little. It's all basic pop star stuff. It wasn't of much interest to me and wouldn't appeal to anyone other than devoted fans. Fortunately this doesn't take up much of the film. Springfield is the star of the film. He's on camera a lot both performing and being interviewed and comes off as a likable star with a good perspective on life. He clearly loves performing and enjoys taking the time to get to know his devoted fans. The connection between the star and his fans makes for an interesting film that's well worth seeing.
Outsourced (2006)
Hokey
Outsourced starts out promising. An American manager is headed to India to train his replacement in a call center. There are some good shots of India and some good laughs involving the merchandise being sold through the center and the wacky cross-cultural misunderstandings. In general things appear to headed on a decent track. Then things start to unravel. The Indians turn from interesting characters into bad caricatures. The romance is forced and unsatisfying. The movie finishes with a series of scenes that are meant to be uplifting and fun, but are nothing anyone who has been watching movies for any amount of time hasn't seen.
Firefly (2005)
A Great Thriller
I caught Firefly at the Bend film festival and it simply blew me away. It was easily the best film at the festival and one of the better movies I've seen in a long time. The movie focuses on 3 strangers who all have hazy memories of an occurrence on Halloween night. Two wake up the next morning in bizarre circumstances, not knowing how they got there. The other had been assaulted by 3 masked thugs and was being rushed to the hospital. The movie then jumps ahead to 5 days before Christmas and the secret of what happened starts to come clear to the 3 characters over a 5-day period. The plot moves quickly and the fact there there were a few story lines to follow wasn't a huge problem. They do a great job of building on the mystery and even adding some new dimensions and characters to it as the film races along. After several twists, some good laughs and a few thrills, the movie finishes perfectly.
Modern Love (2006)
Dark and dreary
I caught this movie at the Bend Film Festival last night. First note is the audience reaction was not good. That could have been because the crowd was in sort of a silly, upbeat mood since it was Friday evening and had viewed a couple of humorous shorts before "Modern Love". This movie is dark, moody and humorless, which might have worked better on a Sunday afternoon with a more serious crowd. That said, I still have some problems with this movie. Some technical things were done well. The use of darkness and light in the first part of the film is neat and the two leads, Mark Constable and Victoria Hill, do a good job of portraying a passionless couple without wasting time on getting into the reasons for the state of their marriage. Later Constable does a good job of going slowly from serious, hard-working family man to what may or may not be a crazy person. There was also some great photography. That aside, I can't say I liked this movie. It seems the director is trying to emulate David Lynch and fell short. There were too many long scenes with very little dialog and this got tiresome by the end. The characters from the small town were just strange. They weren't lovably strange, quirky or even interesting. As the movie goes on you're sort of waiting for an explanation for the behavior of John, the main character. When that finally happens the revelation isn't particularly earthshaking. I haven't seen many Australian movies, nor do I know much about the place and that might skew my feelings some. But in general I found this movie dark, dreary and increasingly difficult to watch as it wore on.