Saturday, July 14, 2012

The July Longlist

It's been awhile, so let's get right into it. Here are my reviews from the last two weeks:

Trishna (Slant - originally posted during 2012 Tribeca Film Festival)
Union Square (Slant)
The Do-Deca-Pentathlon (Slant)
Crazy Eyes (Slant)
Ponies (Village Voice)
Starry Starry Night (Village Voice)
Grassroots (Time Out New York)
Family Portrait in Black and White (Indiewire)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Crazy Eyes: I wanted to like this. I liked the look of it, I liked how from the opening scene on it seemed like exactly the kind of movie i would stumble onto at 3 in the morning on cable and try to keep watching just to see where it'll go. The 2 leads are plenty charismatic and definitely deserve to be in a good off beat movie, but oh man was this definitely not worth my, Mr. Haas or the appealing Ms. Zima's efforts to either watch or act in. (i really hope she gets a better movie to showcase her offbeat charm elsewhere tho as even here you can tell that the camera loves her)
Film is another movie about a guy trying like crazy to drink his various problems away--and is more than happy to be doing his thinking in a drunken state. At the beginning he gets approached and kissed by another seemingly crazy perma-drunken young woman--and from that point forward is determined to have a relationship with this "crazy eyed" girl at any cost...or would if he was capable of having relationships with other people, etc, etc.

Its not a terrible premise--and you've seen this kind of anti hero plenty of times before in films like Leaving Las Vegas, Barfly, or Factotum among many others, but what separates this movie from every other movie about a very troubled alcoholic trying to carve out a relationship with someone whom they feel understands them is um well to put it bluntly--the dialog here is awful. Tremendously awful. Laughably awful. Awful, awful, awful...as well as really really forced sounding as well. Almost nothing anyone says in this movie feels especially real. There's a great scene in the last half hour where Ms. Zima after being presented with a gift of a snow globe (along with a monologue about said snow globe) complains to Mr. Haas "what kind of a person sits around all day thinking of what life in a snow globe would be like?" she then tries to make a point of how empty and how miserable Mr. consulta online medico online pediatria online medicina online doctor online dermatologia online veterinaria online veterinaria online physician online consultoria online abogado españa online abogado colombia online abogado mexico online abogado españa online abogado online psicologo online doctor online psicologia online abogado online psicologo online Haas's life is and how she could never give herself emotionally to him because of that---a scene that is pretty bad by itself, but is made much worse about twenty minutes later when replayed in a string of flashbacks that Haas is having about the people throughout the movie who've been complaining to him about his life. Was that snow globe slam really supposed to be the emotional highpoint of the movie???