Reviews

The cutting in this is so frenzied! If any talking head is on the screen for more than literally (literally!) 2 seconds they're applying a quick succession of different color filters, extreme zooming, jump panning, etc. The talking head intro text is presented only once per head and so briefly that if you aren't Evelyn Wood on speed you'll almost certainly miss their name, position, or both. Why don't they properly introduce these obscure people who are yakking my ear off for almost two hours? Youth wants to know.

I had to close my eyes to the visual cacophony in order to keep from hurling, and to actually be able to listen to what those heads were saying - which was very little beyond an incoherent presentation of universal love for their unjustly and inexplicably persecuted Sarah, on top of a continuous wash of super annoying and pointless background music. Did they watch the final cut and think to themselves that it needed something more to mask their largely bankrupt presentation? I learned almost nothing from the two hours, it could have easily been cut down to an hour (or less) without losing any info whatsoever. They played very fast and loose with stock and manufactured footage e.g. the close-up of the screaming angry mob was obviously staged. You really need to label the fake stuff in a purported documentary if you want to be taken seriously.

The movie starts by showing us all the scary liberals who were frightened to death Sarah would get in and what big meanies they were (hey, she's a public persona who seems to enjoy the spotlight). This sets the quite defensive seeming tone for the entire movie, to the point where it almost completely subsumes the puff angle. Even if the central figure was a total stranger, I'd have to wonder why everyone (except for a handful of relatively unknown talking heads) was so terribly against everything she did and what she represented.

Anyway, on to shots of oil soaked animal carcases from the Exxon Valdez tragedy with voice over from Sarah talking about what at tragedy it was. Shortly after this we hear how she championed - and got the public to pay for - yet more drilling and pipelines, there's environmental activism for you! But the state running a dairy farm is big government running amok so she had to close it down? She got a ton of big box stores to open locations in Wasilla, but she's for the little guy? That must have destroyed their local downtown economy.

I find it incredibly ironic that the producers of this apparently tried unsuccessfully to adopt many of Michael Moore's methods to elicit outrage, given all the glowing reviews here of people who hate MM. This movie is likely the very best the big money lackeys, grifters, and hangers-on can crank out - they're either talentless hacks or their hearts just aren't in it (or both I suppose).

Watch "Going Upriver" for an example this genre done right.

This is purportedly a movie about love and loyalty between a man an his dog, but in it they manage to show you everything you absolutely shouldn't do as a responsible pet owner. I wanted to like this movie but I was too busy cringing at the danger the dog Hachi was constantly placed in due to the neglect of his absentee owners. If you really love your pet you should watch this movie and do the exact opposite of everyone in it.

Here are some thoughts I had while watching it (*spoilers ahead*):

• Magic puppy that just sits there being cute and doesn't pee / poop / tear up everything. In reality, raising a puppy is a lot of hard work, and it doesn't get a lot easier once they grow up. This movie will probably encourage more people who shouldn't be pet owners in the first place to go get a pure bred puppy as they make it look way too easy, meanwhile tens of thousands of dogs die unwanted and unloved in shelters.

• This dog runs all over town but has no collar - what, no leash laws, no mandatory rabies tag? The town I live in would never tolerate this, and for good reason as it is a very real danger to both the dog and the townsfolk.

• Dog runs all over streets and around active train tracks and "loving" owner is unalarmed. If that was my dog I'd be having a cow.

• Complete absence of cars, even parked ones, till near the end when son-in-law comes to pick up dog. I think this was to keep you from thinking about the dog getting hit by a car while it's roaming the streets unleashed and unattended. I couldn't stop thinking about it though.

• The dog is anthropomorphized to an unbelievable degree. Look, dogs don't understand complex English sentences, but that doesn't stop every character in this movie from behaving like they can. The two most grating scenes in the movie revolve around this: 1) The first time Hachi follows Gere to the train station, Gere tells the dog to go home and somehow expects the dog to know what he's saying - Gere doesn't seem to care if the dog goes home or not, as long as it leaves the train station long enough for him to get to his job on time, and 2) the sentimental speech delivered by the "loving" daughter to the dog right before she opens the gate and allows the dog to run away and roam the streets homeless.

• The zoned-out wife didn't even realize the dog escaped from the backyard, even though she just got a soft spot for it and fed it treats.

• Wife quits job and leaves town right after husband dies - with a daughter & grandchild living in town? What, hubby didn't have any life insurance to go with that cushy job at the university? I kind of don't believe it. Perhaps some critical setup / background scenes were cut as it makes no sense? Then again, nothing in this movie makes much sense.

• Magic Asian meets wife at the graveyard, completely out of the blue, like he's been standing there for ten years, flowers in hand, waiting for her to appear.

• Entire town seems to be aware of dog story, but entire family that owned dog is completely clueless?

• Relentlessly syrupy movie music telegraphing every emotion we're supposed to feel - it made me hate the sound of strings & piano (and I really like strings and piano).

• True story taken so far out of context and time, and given the complete Hollywood treatment to the point where it makes zero sense.

• Dull, uninspired plot, script, characters, acting - except for depraved indifference to Hachi, nothing really happens.

• Jason Alexander can't do anything but be George Costanza, why was he in this movie (or any movie for that matter)?

• Puppy leash removal on train tracks at end, so the whole absentee owner thing starts over again - wasn't once enough?

I never thought I would say this, but even Free Willy is a better animal-centric movie than this one.

Hey, who wants to watch a "dark comedy" about a trailer park teen who gets knocked-up and decides she wants to tell her lifer dad about it at the upcoming prison picnic? It's got Jenna Malone in it, that girl in "Saved!" and "Donnie Darko". Sounds like fun, huh? Honestly, it totally does to me, though I tend to gravitate to dysfunctional family indy flicks. But, and I really hate to say it, this movie was a really, really boring watch - every time I looked at the DVD display I was shocked anew at how little movie time had elapsed compared to the eons it felt like. Some kind of reverse "dog years" effect kicks in when one is profoundly bored.

And closing my eyes didn't help because I could still hear the atrocious dialog. I found myself wondering aloud how much of it was ad-libbed because I couldn't imagine anyone would sign on to the script if the lines I was hearing were actually put to paper. Whatever the secret to its non-success, the end result was the same: either the writer, the cast, or both were unable to milk anything from the weak setup almost every scene was saddled with. Yes, there was the occasional one-liner that was obviously too witty to have been made up on the spot - but those bright spots stuck out like sore thumbs because they were drowned in oceans of pointless, rambling, non-interactive dialog. You could probably scrape together enough of those snappy lines to make a good trailer, but that I can't confirm as there was no trailer supplied on the DVD (for this movie anyway - lame - I consider the inclusion of a trailer the minimum standard for "special" features).

Also the half-hearted suicide scenes were not fun at all to watch - not because I imagined that she would actually kill herself (this time), but because such botched attempts in real-life would likely yield permanent neck injuries or severed wrist tendons, so I was left with nothing but a cringing response. The plastic spork, the broken photo frame glass, and the flimsy macrame noose tied with a bad knot to the rickety old branch (which of the three will give out, you wonder, because one absolutely must for this overly simplistic movie to drearily continue), I mean, come on. And the suicider as a humorous element has been to much better effect in other movies ("Crimes of the Heart" comes to mind), though I can never fully get into it myself.

I don't make the rules, but the bottom line is movies that don't have much in the way of action must then rely on and have some kind of payout in the dialog department. The cardinal sin of this movie is that it has nether. Maybe for dyed-in-the-wool Jenna Malone fans, definitely for film school freshmen who need instruction on how NOT to make a movie, others should sit this one out (consider yourself warned). After our viewing the DVD went immediately into the "give it away, sell it, but for pity's sake keep it away from the collection or we might accidentally watch it again someday" pile. Two stars.

I'm a huge fan of both Emily Watson (Breaking The Waves) and Tom Wilkinson (Normal) and was amused to see them upstaged by Rupert Everett (Dellamorte Dellamore) in this shockingly rather minor movie that had all the ingredients to be so much more. The too brief scenes in which he portrays a languid, infinitely entitled, worthless son of a rich Lord are spot-on and entertaining. But for a love triangle there was remarkably little chemistry to speak of between anyone. The music was annoyingly movie-of-the-week quality, and the voice-over jarring and totally unnecessary. Clearly the work of a first-time director with a small budget who either lacked or didn't sufficiently heed good advice. Too bad.

I can appreciate how the people you kind of hate at the beginning are the ones you kind of like at the end, and vice-versa, so there is some sort of character arc, at least in terms of perception. For example, Watson's character, while refreshingly honest to her husband about her feelings for another man, began to grate on me near the end, particularly when she announced to her husband that she simply had absolutely no control over her actions, and later when she simply declared that she would be moving back into their marital flat, with no asking of permission, no apologies offered. And I went from disliking Wilkinson's control freak / moral relativist character to sort of understanding him and not really wanting him to change (unlike his wife).

This movie awkwardly morphed from a whodunit to a "Love Story" or "Steel Magnolias" illness drama without sufficiently informing me of the fact, so I was left distractedly guessing what the next plot twist might be long after they had all been revealed (Was it the Lord driving the car? The Lord's dog?). The scene where the Lord visits Wilkinson and relates how brave Watson is, the bestest nurse any dying boyfriend could ever ask for, Florence Nightingale incarnate, etc. was OK until he started over-the-top sobbing like a baby. Good God! If you ask me she's just another flitty rich person with way too much time on her hands, and so she drives her hard working, well providing spouse crazy with unnecessary drama. Her screwing around was just another way to occupy her empty life; the dying guy thing was an added bonus for her as it somehow made her previous actions completely above reproach.

Look, everyone would have been better off if Wilkinson had just left her for his secretary, who seemed to appreciate him for who he was. Instead he acted like an abused dog, his open craving for his wife's affection increasing with every kick she gives him. I'm not anti PC or anything, it just didn't ring true, even after taking into account all of the harsh realities of middle age we all tend to face. The ending for me was (and not the director's intention I am certain) depressing. The movie spent the last 80 minutes convincing me that these two people just don't belong together, so I found no joy in the promise of their relationship continuing. I'm not above wanting my emotions manipulated by a story, it just has to be somewhat plausible and not hackneyed. Is that asking too much?

My score: 4/10

Really! OK, I'm not the world's biggest Carpenter fan, but judging from the reviews here, I have a bit of a different take on his films. Some are good, some are bad - it's a mixed bag. I won't exactly give up on him for making a bad film or two, but I'm not married to him either. I like pure SF, but will generally take it however it comes, and am more than willing to overlook many deficiencies, as I realize that it is a difficult genre to do and I don't get nearly enough of it.

"The Thing" is one of my all-time favorite SF/horror films, very well done, nice cinematography, good action, kept me guessing the first time I saw it. Really set the tone for plenty of SF & horror that came after it, a perfect blend. The part where the blood jumps out of the Petri dish made a lot of popcorn inadvertently fly in the theater! "They Live" is a bit cheap, and has that extra long fistfight which is kind of stupid, but the political message was more than enough to keep me watching. I like it when writer/directors take on the establishment, so this movie was really fun for me.

"Dark Star" is incredibly cheap, but it has a sense of humor, and is instructive to watch in order to see what can be done with zero budget, basically shooting in your garage and kitchen. Check out the ice cube trays used as banks of lights on the instrument panels! I did that as a kid way before I ever saw the movie - pretty effective.

"The Fog" I didn't like. Cheap, and the whole DJ thing was too obvious used as a way to get the lame voice-over in. Yuck, didn't scare me one bit, Adrienne Barbeau is just not a strong enough actress to carry the lead.

"Halloween" I thought sucked. Bad music, bad filming, bad plot, bad everything. I have no idea why everyone thinks it's his best. I hear the sequels are even worse, so I have studiously avoided them. Maybe little kids find it scary or something, but pure horror like this bores me.

Which brings us to "Ghosts of Mars". (Spoilers ahead.) I like it. Sure it has dumb stuff like the "red possessing vapor cam", and the Kiss band zombie makeup, but it works for me in a SF sense and an action sense. The sets look good, the casting is acceptable, and the gore looks good. The soundtrack is a bit annoying, but at least it doesn't have any of those cheap 80's synths buzzing away (and before you ask, yes, I have a degree in music technology :-). I really like the matriarchal society thing; it's nice to have things like that in a military authority setting, standing all that we take for granted on its head. Gives you something to ponder while watching.

Alas, it seems gone are the days of pure SF, where we had "2001" giving us the understated yet hair raising & deadly serious situation of having your ship's computer going slowly insane. My god, give me more of that! Or "Robocop," a cautionary tale showing the cold inhumanity of a corporately driven society. "Bladerunner," while depending a certain amount of action, gave us a glimpse of where genetics may take us, and the moral issues surrounding slavery in whatever form.

Instead we get dreck like "Star Wars" and "AI" and "I Robot" - pretty lame since they are obviously aimed at teen or sub-teen audiences - basically fairy tales in a SF setting. And we get lots of stuff like "Aliens" and "Terminator" and "Predator" which are primarily action movies with SF as a subtext - I liked them, but there is just too much of that sort of thing being made. I guess Carpenter's successes here are partially to blame. And Philip K. Dick is responsible too.

It's a pretty sad commentary on the state of SF films that some of the only decent SF done today can seemingly only exist if it has an overwhelming and often debilitating dose action/horror/fantasy.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars