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Reviews
Motherless Brooklyn (2019)
Just One Problem
I found this film satisfying overall, but one anachronism distracted me and pulled me out of the 1950s setting. Lionel's symptoms of Tourette's syndrome, repetitive verbalizations of a rhyming nature, were accepted equanimously by everyone he encountered. No one displayed annoyance, made fun of him, or called him insulting names to cast aspersions about his intelligence. His repetitive touching of people on the shoulder as he faced them ought to have caused women to back away and men to knock his block off. They did neither. It was as if these 1950s characters had been taught the acceptance of people with disabilities that was not really commonplace until the 21st century. This is the biggest mystery in the movie.
Les frères Sisters (2018)
Brilliant Black Humor
This film is a beautifully stylized story of enemies who are brought around with square dealing and trust. It's also a cautionary environmental allegory. I hope future industrialists see it while they're still young enough not to have fully formulated their future pursuits.
Unbroken (2014)
I Want Half My Money Back
The only people who will like this movie are those who haven't read the book. Those who have read the book will leave the theatre wondering why the movie stopped when the war ended (although it was plenty long). Why didn't it follow Zamperini through his plunge into depression and alcoholism? But deep inside, the viewer will know why. Zamperini was saved from his post-war self destruction by turning to God to Whom he was reintroduced by none other than evangelist Billy Graham. The film makers must have thought that part of Zamperini's biography would be too cornball for movie goers so they told only the story of his physical survival and, sadly, not the many times more important story of the survival of his soul.