Grizzly Man (2005)

I have to tell you about this amazing documentary I watched. It's called Grizzly Man and it's the true story of Timothy Treadwell and his love of grizzly bears.  He seems to equate the bears with the cuddly teddy bears of his childhood.  However, real grizzly bears are highly dangerous carnivores that will not hesitate to eat a human being. 

The Grizzly Bear should be respected for its strength and ferocity.  It should never be a pet or domesticated in any way.  It should never be forced to perform tricks in a circus.  It should never be attacked and milked for its bile on a farm.  The bear belongs in its natural habitat in the wild of Alaska where it can be free to run and hunt. 

A few months out of the year, Timothy goes to live in Alaska with these carnivores.  The people interviewed in this film all think he is crazy for going up there year after year. Eventually, he's going to get eaten by a bear.

Guess what happens. He gets eaten by a bear.  One year, he is staying in his usual spot in Alaska in a tent with his girlfriend.  The video camera's microphone just happens to be on during the incident.  So there is audio, not video, recording of what happened.  The audio is never played during the documentary as to respect their families.  Of course, I was curious and looked up the original police report and found the audio files. What I heard was the horrific screams of a man and woman clearly being attacked by a bear. 

What makes this documentary great is that it provides a glimpse into the life of a person who loved nature and wanted to share his passion with others. He often taught classes at elementary schools and shared the same childlike wonder of animals and the natural world as the young students did.  He just was not responsible for his enthusiasm and misjudged the ferocity of the wild bears.  I give this documentary an 8/10.

Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf) (1968)

This film has been mistakenly placed in the Horror category.  I am very disappointed. It is not a horror, it is more of a drama.  What is horror?  Strictly speaking, it has two definitions:

1. An intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.

2. A thing causing such a feeling.

There is nothing to shock us. Nothing to disgust us. (Good because I don't like gory horror).  And, above all, nothing to cause fear. Not once did I feel unsafe or uneasy.  It's not a bad film per se, it's just not a horror film. I will therefore tag it as drama.

The main feeling of this film is isolation.  The couple is alone on an island, surrounded by only their imagination, or it is something more?  The man, Johan, mentions that he felt sick and we learn he has a fever. That is when all the weird stuff starts to happen. So there you go. The hallucinations are caused by his fever.  Also, he refuses to sleep, and keeps his poor pregnant wife, Alma, awake all night with his paranoid blabbering. That lady is pregnant! She needs proper sleep, exercise, and a good diet.  That man is keeping her awake to the detriment of her health and her baby's health.  Sleep deprivation has been known to cause many problems, especially visual hallucinations, and a pregnant woman does not deserve that kind of stress.  But as the movie progresses, we learn that he really doesn't care about her at all, so why should he mind keeping her up with his nonsense at 4 in the morning? This movie was obviously written by a man.

Then we see him leaving the cottage to go to the castle, which supposedly is full of people, but certain shots reveal that they are only his hallucinations.  Laying on a slab is a hot naked lady, which we have already learned is his former lover.  So he's going to cheat with her?  I don't care if that is a real lady or not. Cheating on your pregnant wife has got to be the lowest thing a man can do.

After watching this, I immediately went to the comments section to see what others thought. One comment said, "No ingenuous criticism needed here. This film is Bergman. That's enough for anyone's appreciation." Excuse me? I'll criticize any film I want. And what's soo great about Bergman that I should automatically love his films?  I don't care who directs a film. I don't care who writes it.  If I don't like it, I'm going to tell everybody.  I seriously do not get what is so amazing about Bergman and why so many people practically worship him and his boring movies.  I give this film a 5/10.

The Third Man (1949)

An American dime-novel writer named Holly travels to Austria to meet his friend that has a job for him. He discovers his friend has been killed when he was struck by an oncoming car.  However, the story that his friend's neighbor tells him and the police report don't add up.  Something is off. The neighbor tells him there was a third man present at the accident scene, whereas the police report only says two. One says he died instantly, the other doesn't. What's going on?

Think about this, if the name of the film is The Third Man, the police don't believe it, the body was buried quickly with a closed casket funeral, and the only real witness was murdered, who do you think the third man is? Did people of the olden days not have any sense of plausibility? Or can they simply not see something huge right in front of their faces? That would explain how the Titanic sunk. I do not understand how these can be spoilers or twists, especially in film noirs. It is just too obvious.

There is no soundtrack or score in this film. There is just a man playing a zither. The entire time. A lot of times it is delightful, but it can take too much away from the tense moments in the film.

The only part I did not like was when Holly arranged a meeting with the Third Man. They end up walking to a Ferris Wheel. I am terrified of Ferris Wheels.  I was like ... 'Oh no, please don't go inside it' and they did! They went inside! And then they went up! The Third Man pointed out the window and noticed that the people look like ants and that he didn't care that he was killing innocent sick people with his watered-down medicine.  The pure evil of this man and his apathy towards others was magnified by the sheer horror of the Ferris Wheel.  I mean this man's water-down medicine was killing young children, whose lives could have easily been saved if they had gotten the proper care.  

The Ferris Wheel scene was just too scary for me. But other than that I did enjoy watching this film. I give it a 6/10.

Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould (1993)

Before I watched this, I had no idea who Glenn Gould was.  Now I know that he was a concert pianist that inexplicably gave up performing live when he turned 32.  So instead of presenting a full-length narrative film of his life, the filmmakers decided to show us 32 scenes that give us small glimpses into his life and personality.  Evidently he is an eccentric man who speaks in circles with unnecessarily large words to make him sound more intelligent than he really is.  He seems rather insecure to me; or maybe he just has some autistic or antisocial tendencies, which his obsession with classical music and radio, his manner of speaking and interacting with other people (he insists on interviewing by phone) help lead me to this conclusion.

Most of the scenes are him  listening to music. I don't know if it is actual recordings of him playing or not.  He seems to be thoroughly enjoying the music and deriving a deep emotional response to the music, and good for him.  I do not see how anyone can feel such emotion from listening to music.  I don't feel anything at all. It's just a piano playing. I don't get it.

"Boo hoo hoo, I have such an easy job just sitting on my ass playing piano all day and I get to travel the world, but I'm having an existential crisis and need to quit."  You know what, Fuck you for being self-absorbed and for making me listen to classical piano music for an hour and a half.  The ability to play an instrument does not make you smarter or better than anyone else in the world. I give this movie 5/10.

Scarface (1983)

First, you get the drugs. Then, you get the money. Then, you get the power. Then, you get the women.

That's the quote I remember most (besides him hollering "Say Hello to my little friend" and raising hell) from Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino with a terrible Cuban accent.  Seriously, has he ever been to Florida?

Tony (Scarface) starts off as a lowly dishwasher, but rises to the top of the drug trade selling cocaine.  But with that much money comes corruption.  He tries to shield his sister from the effects of his evil ways. But there is so much drama and violence, and lots of bloodshed.  He destroys himself and everything around him with his greed.  And yes, I did have a poster of Scarface in my college apartment like everyone else. I give this a 6/10.

Airplane! (1980)

Airplane! - A gripping dramatic thriller about a troubled flight.  As the flight passengers and crew succumb to food poisoning, there is a desperate need for somebody - anybody - to land the plane safely so they can get to a hospital.  Unfortunately the only person capable of flying the plane is an ex-pilot suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder. Can he overcome his fears in time to save everyone? Is there any hope for them? I just want to say, Good Luck, We're all counting on you.

I'm just kidding. It's the funniest movie of all time.  There is a pun or gag every 20 seconds or so.  If you are ever upset, you can watch this movie and feel so much better.  Surely, you can't be serious. Yes, I am, and don't call me Shirley. This movie is so much better than spoof films of today.  What I wrote in the beginning is the literal plot of the movie. The plotline serves as a base for all the gags, instead of many comedies of today where it's nothing but gags and a bare plot. A lot of the lines are served in a deadpan manner, and the seriousness of the tone makes it funnier. They're not trying to force the humor. And then there's Johnny.



                


Johnny is one of my favorite movie characters. He is ridiculous.  I love it when they're looking at the newspapers, and Johnny yells, "There's a sale at Penney's!!" 

Then, they need more lights on the runway so they dump a truck full of lamps on top of it. This movie is full of puns. I will give it a 9/10.

The Artist (2011)

Today's film is The Artist.  George Valentin is a silent film action star that is very successful. He meets Peppy, who is a fan who eventually becomes a star in her own right.  As technology progresses from silent films to films with talking, or "talkies", her fame surpasses his.  Will he be able to adapt to the ever-changing world of film, or will he hold tight to his nostalgia?

  

So this is mostly a silent film. I've seen lots of silent films, and most of them I would not consider spectacular. This one is.  Even people who would not normally ever watch a silent film will enjoy this.  I heard a lot of smack-talk during the Oscars, "How dare a silent film win in the day and age. That's so pretentious." Bitch do you even know what that word means?  A film is meant to tell a story.  The story is of a man who loses everything because he can't cope with change.  The change just happens to be the transition from silent films to ones with sound. Honestly, there were silent film actors who could not make this change.  So the obvious choice is to tell his story from his point of view, which is a silent film. This makes perfect sense. Besides, it's not entirely silent.

George starts to lose it when silent films go out of style, and his wife asks him why he refuses to talk.  He hears all the normal sounds you would hear in a room, such as a telephone ringing, and it grows louder and louder. He loses his possession to auction, and later loses his home.  Peppy, who is now successful, invites him to stay at her house, which is of course his old house, so that has to be really awkward.  He goes into a room with everything covered in white sheets. As he lifts the sheets up, he discovers that all of his old stuff was bought at auction by her. That scene was so creepy.  But Peppy makes up for it by trying really hard to get him back in the acting business. I will give this movie a 9/10.