Joel's Reviews

You guys should enjoy it

I showed my wife the poster and she said get it so next weekend.

It's about a high school football star getting unrealistic offers from colleges. Everyone wants to buy him cars, clothes and women, just so Farmer Ted can throw a pig skin around for them. It's obnoxious. Everyone is watching this kid. Even private detectives. It's a farce. I sure wish it was funny!

First of all, I love Anthony Michael Hall. His work in the John Hughes films was tremendously entertaining. In this film the writing is just piss poor all around so nothing is good, not even Robert Downey Jr. as his best friend, or Uma Thurman as his girlfriend, or Paul Gleason (Principal Vernon - The Breakfast Club) as his coach. Everyone stinks because the writing and directing are bottom of the barrel. It's so bad.

Even the DP Robert Yeoman (Career long Wes Anderson lighting cameraman) doesn't have much to say as far as the look goes. It's all so bland. Judas Priest does the theme song? How can this movie not completely rule?!!

It just doesn't, as often happens when projects have too many good things going for it except the most important thing : a clue on how to use those things.

Anthony Michael Hall is just grating nerves here. He's not sexy, he's not hunky, he's not funny, and he's not smart in this film. It's an ugly affair.

Go ahead, try and get past the first 20 minutes, see what happens. I've done the work for you. Spare yourself the pain.

The beginning of the end for many years - for Farmer Ted (Edward Scissorhands notwithstanding).

This movie is so bad that when it hit video it got re-rated R instead of the theatrical PG-13 rating. Talk about ahead of its time. This may've been the very first time this kind of extra scene type thing happened on home video. I wish it could say it helped the picture, but we all know it did not.

I've heard of Johnny Be Good, but never seen it. Looks like a waste of time, I think I'll skip it. Good review, as you saved me from watching that

Ditto

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Yep I've never heard it either so have to pass. Sorry, Joel.

More often than not I find myself looking to movies as a way to feel something and connect, or to at least be carted away somewhere else besides my current drama in life. There aren't too many films that hit the nail on the head for dramatics without somehow blowing it. Ordinary People is a perfect drama, a movie that other films should measure themselves against to make sure they are in working order.

A family is torn apart by the accidental death of a child, and even more so when his sibling attempts suicide.

Timothy Hutton plays the youngest child. He's lost his older brother in a sail boat tragedy and after trying to dismiss himself from life, he's back from the mental hospital after repeated shock therapy sessions. His father, played by Donald Sutherland, is an easy going man. He is nice and he feels deeply. He loves his family, and wants to ensure that it will not fall apart on him. The issue seems to lay with the mother, played by Mary Tyler Moore. She has closed herself up completely and shows little to no affection for her son, and only half-heartedly to her husband.

The son is conflicted because he doesn't know who to blame. Is it his fault that he lived? Why does his mother hate him?


Moore plays the emotionally stunted household figure like a titan. She is cautious, careful, measured, and always on guard. She will not stop the world turning and discuss anything trivial, and certainly not anything that strays from an energetic onward and upward motion. Her awareness exists within the judgments of others, and even in the privacy of her own home, she cannot and will not engage in any deep emotional dialog because she must keep fit and be ready at moment's notice to be "on" and "OK".

Sutherland wants his son to be alright. He worries about him. He maybe sometimes sees his wife throw cold shade towards their youngest, but he refuses to believe it's because she feels little for him.

Hutton plays a finely pitched and heavily nuanced character. His torture is killing him on several levels. He misses the hospital where life wasn't so heavy. He can't even face his best friend because it reminds him of his brother, despite his best friend's persistence on being in his life and not giving up. A new shrink may be the answer, and Judd Hirsch does exceptional work as the doctor. He doesn't go too overboard with a yahoo fixer upper. Most of the time, he's playing it absolutely straight and reasonably, so there's no moments where you feel like the work they are doing in those sessions is on par with other films which usually have the psychiatrist act a bit too confident and pushy. There's none of that here. There is only enough to depict the effort to "break through" to a realistically resistant Hutton.

I found myself welling up with tears more than once during the run time of this movie. Maybe it's because I've seen some tragedy and these characters were close to how I realized my own family. I understand the coldness of someone close, someone who cannot open up, not that they are necessarily scared, but because they are simply incapable of that degree of depth, and have a shallow chip in their heart. This movie is told with real honesty, and I appreciate that.

The film also plays out with a high respect for the written word. You can see the details of adhering to the source material, like, for example, when the husband remembers a blossoming romance and dancing with his new wife as he sits on public transport alongside her in a deafeningly quiet trip. Has he ever had the love that he needs?

All the characters work in this movie. Elizabeth McGovern, though her part is small, still manages some trailblazing with how she can make a good joke with her eyes while trying to bowl, as well as communicate "straight shooting" to her suitor when he questions her emotional reliability. It is in that brief moment where she conveys that she is with him and does respect him, just by motioning her arms and showing her face to him on the front lawn of her house.

I wish there were more modern films like this one. It seems we have to scrape the depths of hell to get a solid drama now, and although Ordinary People does have some heavy themes, it never sells its soul just to appease carnage junkies. It's a real movie and deserves whatever awards it has garnered.

Sounds awesome Joel. I didn't really want to read too much because it was spoiler heavy. But I've added it to my to-watch list.

Id be shocked if it said nothing to you as a well made drama. Thanks, too.

Oh man, I kind of want to watch Jonny Be Good to see how bad it is. I hope it's so bad it's fun to laugh at, like Druids.

Sign up for amazon prime free 1st moth. Ordinary ppl on there too. Then cancel

A great movie nice review

I'd say about 80% of this movie is exactly what I enjoy about a good western. It takes its time, establishes the surroundings (hard to avoid considering the open desert and mountains), and injects a leisure dialog when the action is simmering in the not too distant future. It's the writing that seems to really be the ambitious element of this production. It's filled with humor and sarcasm, and though not all of it lands subtley, I have to give it points for trying and for the most part delivering some offbeat whimsy in this otherwise cold blooded tale of gruesome murder and rescue.

Kurt Russell is his usual wisened old tough guy self, and the rest of the cast are plenty capable and well selected to carry the load through the desert at night. Their trek is to face off with supernatural-like cave dwelling killers who resemble an Indian tribe, but who are not such a thing. The movie packs some real suspense and surprising scenes of action, though most of the film is all about the slow boil.

My issues with the movie are two things: the casting of Lili Simmons as the town doctor's assistant/wife. Everything else about this film is authentic. The clothes, the drawl, the locations, and a fair part of the dialog. So why do we have to witness yet another frontierswoman acting like she just walked off the set of The Wedding Planner? She's totally modern except for her dress. Immediately I was taken out of the movie and put onto the casting room as a fly on the wall.

Another issue I had was the "memorable" scene of graphic violence. It's the most disturbingly violent thing I have ever seen in a film and I'm just wondering why they had to go that far. It did nothing. I was enjoying the movie. I don't mind violence if it's done with some degree of poetry or urgency, or even tongue in cheek playfulness, but this scene is just wrong and strong. And the last act of the film feels like it goes into some sort of pre-teen fantasy nightmare with phony prison bars hammered into stone walls by barbarian killers, as if that's gonna hold Snake Plissken and his grandfather.

Anyway, for the most part this movie is really cool. It follows in the footsteps of what makes Tarantino's movies a cut above in the dialog department, and certainly takes its sweet assed time establishing the characters and letting the viewer enjoy the ambiance, but ultimately goes for the male fantasy cop out and ventures into torture porn.

+

I really liked Bone Tomahawk,

I agree that the wife felt too modern. I don't think she was the only one either. Entertaining as the writing was, I think some of it made the characters feel like they were 'playing' western. It may have been the accents too though.

I hated Ordinary People and i don't remember why. Should see it again as both you and Cricket have really liked it.

I can see how some of the writing wasn't typical of most classic westerns, but I'm also sure that Lee Van Cleef may've been a little too 60's at some point, too...if someone back then was expecting..actually scratch that. How the hell would I know, I wasn;t born until 1976. But yeah..I could suspend my disbelief with most everything except the wife. I see a lot of sloppy casting, acting and prop department flubbery in period pieces. Hottub Time Machine - they had a Rambo III poster hanging up in the year 1986. Rambo III came out in 1988. Sloppy cold medina.

And the end violence..I don;t know, man. That was like spilling a bag of gizzrds and raw liver. I don't know LOL...

I've seen movies I've hated and ended up loving them. Time is funny like that as you surely know. Then again, I'm sure that movie isn't for everyone, either.

Is that a spoiler

What about movies you used to love but now hate?

Sorry. I didn't go into specifics, but I'll edit that. Take it more as a warning.