1989

Dead Poets Society Review

January 27, 2018 by JD Hansel

A devilish lie lurks here. Maybe not so much in the film’s message as in the minds of the characters, or at least in the way the audience is bound to interpret the story, but somehow, the lie is here. As the film presents its separation of creativity, freethinking, and love for the arts from tradition, orthodoxy, and formality, it is assumed that the realm of the logical is on the latter side – the dark side – but this is not the case.

What Hollywood needs to learn to understand is that the logical and the conventional are not one and the same. In fact, “appeal to tradition” is a logical fallacy. The characters in this film who represent order, propriety, and convention are on the wrong side of logic with many of their attitudes, concerns, beliefs, and actions. That being said, once the audience understands this, the film is immensely enjoyable.

This film works through the anxiety that comes with youth better than most other films I’ve seen on the topic. I think its power in this regard probably comes from the issue I just described: we see young people put in a situation in which they are taught that freethinking is bad thinking and dogma is logical. We all know that this is wrong, and it is this understanding we have of the devilish lie that fuels the film’s drama. It is because of this that the film is so gripping, heart-wrenching, frustrating, and sometimes almost terrifying. While the film is sometimes cheesy, and not all of it dates well (I’m looking at you, scenes with the girl), but it is an intense experience that resonates with me on a special level, and I love that.

When Harry Met Sally Review

January 8, 2017 by JD Hansel

For those of us who didn’t grow up in the 1980s, it can be very difficult to imagine a time when Billy Crystal was young, handsome, and a viable romantic lead. He seems like such a comic figure that it would be impossible for him to play a character with a lot of heart, and yet he’s perfectly cast in this film. He fits into the character type of the street-wise all-American wise-cracker who never knows when to quit and who lives for the tickle of the feathers he ruffles. Meg Ryan, by contrast, is the Bert to his Ernie – the straight man who lives a very orderly and particular life and must see to it that everything is precisely as it ought to be. The idea of taking this kind of duo and watching it develop into a romance may not be entirely original to When Harry Met Sally, but this film does it especially well.

Perhaps the better pairing in the film, however, is not a couple of characters, but a duo behind the camera – Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner. By this point in his career, Reiner had demonstrated that he could do comedies that were fairly brutal (This Is Spinal Tap) and love stories that had just the right amount of heart in just the right places (The Princess Bride). Ephron, on the other hand, seemed to be best at making films in this particular genre with this particular sentiment, saturating her scripts in nostalgia and seeking out a way to keep the magic of Classical Hollywood believable in an age of cynicism. Consequently, the two forces put together inevitably resulted in a film that has lots of laughs and lots of heart, never going too far with either. Roger Ebert rightly noted that it has a resemblance to Woody Allen films, which largely has to do with the excellent choices of old jazz standards. The structure of the film is rather unconventional and artistic in a way, which I attribute to the clever craftsmanship of these two creative forces.

I’ll concede that it took me a long time to finish the movie – I frequently took breaks from it for days and I rarely felt the compulsion to find out what happened next (which I blame on the story’s predictability) – but it was worth it to finish it. It’s simply a pretty package of pure charm.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover Review

January 1, 2017 by JD Hansel

I’ve been meaning to see this film for a long time – unlike most people my age, it’s been on my radar for years, and I have often joked about its incredibly long title. Upon seeing it, I’ve found that it’s approximately what I thought it would be, only better.

It’s very much an artsy movie that seems to focus on visuals, themes, and cinematic experiments than entertaining, but it actually gets rather captivating and exciting in the second half. The characters are, to my surprise, very interesting, with many characters I root for and one character who reminds me (and reminded the professor who was showing the film when I saw it) of a certain bushy-haired billionaire who’s been in the news lately. The fear of “The Thief” intensifies as the film progresses, making for an intense and chilling third act. All of this, of course, gets elevated and enhanced by the excellent soundtrack, and of course by some of the greatest visuals in cinema history. Director Peter Greenaway seems to care very little for making a film that feels like real life, instead preferring a theatrical atmosphere, an unbelievable ending, and at least one subtle moment that is physically impossible (specifically the moment when a the wife’s dress changes colors instantly to match her surroundings). While I must confess that some of it feels somewhat slow and boring, and there is definitely an aura of pseudo-intellectualism coupled with needless violence throughout, the film basically works because of its ironic conclusion, which is just as dramatic and chilling as it is ridiculously absurd.

It’s a bit awkward and grim for my tastes, but at least it’s fresh and well-done.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

May 27, 2016 by JD Hansel

I had to watch it at some point – it’s unfortunately my duty. That being said, by coming into this film expecting a terrible movie, I was pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of it is interesting and enjoyable. Starting the movie with a laughing Vulcan is enough to make one curious, and the curiosity keeps cropping up throughout the film, which I think is a sign that the story can’t be that bad. True, the premise is strange and ridiculous – I mean, they essentially go find God in space – but I can enjoy just about anything as long as the character dynamic of the original Kirk, Spock, and Bones is present (unless it’s as tedious as Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture). I really don’t have much else to say about this one because, while I recognize that a lot of it is awkward, clunky, corny, unbelievable, bizarre, needless, and boring, I have to admit that whenever they focus on the relationships between the characters, I’m happy to be along for the ride.

Romero Review

April 1, 2016 by JD Hansel

I have decided to relieve myself of duty. For almost 21 months now, I have been reviewing every movie I watch for my first time, with only a few exceptions (such documentaries, or movies I have only seen through Mystery Science Theater and related productions). At this time, however, I am concluding this journey by ending the “mandatory” status of my online movie reviews. This is the 100th movie I have reviewed in this series, so it is a fitting place to end. Why is this particular film special enough to serve as the conclusion to an important chapter of my life’s story? Because I believe that experiencing Romero was a significant turning point in my life; for I now understand the nature of humankind.

Pardon me for being even more pretentious and over-dramatic than Romero itself, but this is a very telling film about what people always have done, and what we always shall do. What we see in this movie is the struggle to combat oppression. Over and over and over again, all throughout history, people are required to stand up and fight just to be called people. Humans are always finding new excuses to oppress people, as can be seen in just the recent history of Africa, Brazil, Panama, Cuba, and of course the United States, among several others that my readers will just have to research for themselves. I haven’t time to list every instance in the past century in which an entire populations have been denied their basic rights, and have been treated worse than animals.

This is what humans do. We harm without reason, we kill without cause, and we torture for pure pleasure. We silence those with whom we disagree and deafen ourselves with the gunshots that kill them. We invent new ways to kill more people more quickly, to hurt more people more violently. We dehumanize anyone we feel we must in order to manage our own fragile, pathetic emotions. This is what we do. This is what we are.

However, it is not all we are. What makes the human race such a fascinating species is not the fact that we are so oppressive and abusive that revolutions of liberation are commonplace, but rather the fact that we have made these revolutions commonplace by refusing to tolerate intolerance. People consistently demand liberty and are even willing to die in order to obtain liberty for the posterity of their people. If evil is in power, we will find a way to overthrow that power, no matter how long it takes us to do so. This is what we do.

This is what we are.

This movie contains many other elements that I could obviously discuss in more depth. The Hollywood white-washing is, of course, quite embarrassing, and the way that this movie cherry-picks information (such as the unsettling fact that the United States was supporting the oppressive government of El Salvador at the time by providing training and arms for the abusive soldiers) can be frustrating. I have little to add about any connection to certain characters in the story, and some of the characters were a mustache shy of a cartoon villain, but I will say that Raúl Juliá’s performance as Romero truly did move me. If one considers it to be a religious film – which I suppose is fair since it was produced in part by a Catholic production company – than it is certainly one of the best. It may be slow and boring at the start, but the more the film reveals about the evils humankind must endure, and about the powerful response humankind fires back at these evils, the more the viewer must appreciate the beauty of liberation.