An American crime drama directed by Jameson Brooks, starring Glenn Morshower and Marilyn Manson.
A group of punk rockers in a small town have conflict with the local high school athletes and one night, a young man is killed.
I think that this is an accurate depiction of how things go almost anywhere in America. It's totally wrong, but the punk rockers get abused by everyone, the cops are dicks and the "popular" high school kids are impervious. Marilyn Manson's intro and outro speeches were very appropriate to use in the context of this film. The punks dressed correctly. One of them had a jacket that was like 100% spikes that I really liked. I could prattle on and on about cinematic elements or societal group differences, but to what end? Nobody reads this. I rate this good.
An American documentary directed by Morgan Neville.
The story of Fred Rogers' life and career is told with interviews of family members and co-workers.
Technical proficiency and a positive message are what make this worth watching. It was a little tame for my tastes, except one short clip. I can't seem to find it in the timeline, but Fred Rogers says "I'll tell you what children need" in a way that makes the viewer know he means it. I thought that was priceless. The documentary covers his decision to start a television program, his rise to fame, how the show worked, parodies and controversies and finally, his death. The interviews were filmed well, even though some of them may have been "single camera single take" jobs. The audio was very level and video from multiple formats and dates were combined in a coherent fashion. Subject matter was ordered in a consecutive and sequential (by date) manner, with re-occurring themes that supported Mr. Rogers' philosophy and beliefs. I'm rating it adequate because it was of a high quality, but didn't go that extra step into good.
A Chinese American wuxia directed by Yuen Woo-ping, starring Donnie Yen and Michelle Yeoh.
A thief is sent from West Lotus to steal the Green Destiny sword from Sir Te's house where it was supposed to be hidden. Shu Lien captures the thief and hires a group of "Iron Way" warriors to help her guard it. Shu Lien's new student turns out to be related to the thief, everyone fights and most of them die.
Sometimes sequels are not so great. The original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) was much better because it seemed sincere and there was not as much fast editing going on. The slower pace of the original allowed audiences to digest what was going on before something else happened, but this sequel seemed rushed. The flashbacks, storytelling and training scenes were too short. It seemed like the audience was not allowed time to get to know the characters in order to care about them. I also noticed that people were flying for no real reason. In the original, the wire flying was always motivated by a purpose in the fight or the plot. The plot in this was unoriginal: they are still fighting over that same sword. I know that the current trend in movies is sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes, but there are actually some decent original films being made. Sorry to Bother You (2018) is a good example of this. Sometimes it's best to let sleeping dogs lie and not fix what is not broken (cliche' sentence anyone?). I rate this tolerable because it was insincere, unoriginal, but upheld the basic requirements of the genre.
