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Reviews
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Up there with Hitchcock's Psycho.
Jake was the product of a very strange family and developed schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. It appears that Jake had for a long time taken young girls to the farm and kept them prisoner in the basement / laundry. This final psychosis is him trying to free himself of doing that. The first time I watched it I was quite puzzled with what was happening, but the cost and the special effects told me this was a great film. I watched it a second time after considering many different angles. All the Brrrr containers in the bin. The stalling in the car at the secluded school. The 'middle aged Jake' murdering the boy dancer to get the girl. Lucy's changing behavior unfolding in the psychotic event. Jake had wanted fame but his strange personality disorder had prevented that. This quite dark film is a masterpiece which revolves around a psychiatric disorder. It's up there with Psycho. I gave it 10/10 after my second viewing. I'll watch it a third and 4th time. It's interesting.... including the reference to 'The Society of the Spectacle' about how we are being programmed by social media and street scapes and society generally. Jesse Plemons singing the Oklahoma song, In a Lonely Room is a masterpiece of music and voice :)
Stone (2010)
Was put off by the IMDB score of 5.3 but this is brilliant
Human frailty. DeNiro fell for the sexy woman and it cost him his job, his marriage, his house. How fast life can just fall apart with poor judgement. There is a warning in this story. It's a common story which repeats everywhere for eternity. DeNiro took the low hanging fruit and paid the price. Sad what happened and an interesting ending which caused me to think about that for some hours. Hence my score of 8
The Boat Builder (2017)
Captain Crazy
In IMDB and other film review channels there is 'The Plot' & often 'The Plot Summary'. The plot for this film is so weak that they are one and the same! The film is very linear from beginning to end. Old hermit building a sailing sloop as his lifetime hobby. He has no need of people and enjoys his own company. Local kids tease him. One young kid befriends him. They complete the boat together. The boat is launched (you don't see any of these completions or launch - the film budget must have been like < $10k). Then the old hermit, Captain Crazy finds that the young boy stowed away on the boat but is not too unhappy about it. The film ends. It's kind of like.... I went to the beach, I dug a hole, I played in the water, I drank lemonade, I went home. If this film receives scores of 1 or 2 I can understand it. Each actor played his or her part like they were forced into do it under duress. I've still given it 6/10 and that is only because this could be Christopher Lloyd's penultimate self performance. After all he is 80 years old now.
Le chant du loup (2019)
Lots of nice technical goodies
Loved the realism in the sub. All those electronic systems, amazing. Something the public rarely sees. The acting was great, the English dubbing was superb. I have it 9/10. I do love submarine films !
Fear and Desire (1952)
The Camerawork shows Genius
Such a pretentious narration at the beginning of the movie, wow, I thought 'this is going to be great'. But then I had to redefine great. This is like a Twilight Zone episode with more than one focal point. The Lieutenant was a narcissist (echoing Kubrick I guess). He cared little for the ideas of his men and poured his big ideas ... like the mouse trap to a springboard onto them. His men may well have been smarter than him, especially the Sargent. I had to laugh at the special strength of the binoculars, from X20 to X200 in an instant :) . The pretty women, the 'desire' in amidst the 'fear'. No doubt this was Kubrick's story - not borrowed from an author but dreamed up by himself and put to celluloid. If I watch a film a second time, it's got something special, some quality which attracted me to it. Was it Proteus the dog? Was it the General with the blonde hair gelled back in modern style? Was it Paul Mazursky going nuts? Was it Proteus's master who had basically given up on war and showed no resistance but who was shot anyway.
I think we have to listen carefully to the prologue and epilogue narration and link those ideas to the various parts or focal points in the story to see that this was a short movie with big inferences. Was Kubrick 'nuts' ? Most likely he was, but he knew where he was going and that is beyond nuts in every direction of his career. He had the guts to make this, on 35mm film with a professionally narrated soundtrack. He used his father's money but the movie probably broke even or made a loss. Don't forget, Kubrick pulled Clockwork Orange from public showing also. Fear and Desire is worthy of a 9 for sure. :)