Director: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
With: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Saarsgard, Sharon Stone, Adam Brody, Juno Temple
Amanda Seyfried has gone a long way from being the dumb blonde in Mean Girls. She has always been a good actress, in my opinion. It takes such a high level of self awareness to act a role of the hilarious Karen in Mean Girls. In Lovelace, not only self awareness is required, but boldness and maturity as well, to effectively portray an infamous porn star, in which she acted beautifully.
Seyfried portrays Linda Boreman, the star of Deep Throat who's better known as Linda Lovelace. The film depicts Lovelace's beginnings, rise and fall in the porn industry in the hands of Chuck Traynor.
Peter Saarsgard as Chuck Traynor was also good. It seems like he's slowly becoming the resident asshole in films. It's also good to see Sharon Stone in this as Lovelace's strict mother. She really CAN act and I wish that we'll see more of her in the future with better projects. Juno Temple also showed her range as an actress in this film as Lovelace's best friend. I believe that this girl has a future.
It's always fascinating to learn about a true story and watch it in a film, especially Linda Lovelace's very interesting life where directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman integrated more color and humor to it. But I felt like the second half of the film didn't live up to the engaging scenes of the first. The second half was kind of a drag and wasn't effective in making Linda Lovelace's journey become victorious rather than sour. After all, they're trying to prevent modern hopefuls / women from being abused especially in the film industry. Still, it's really not that bad. I love its score! It has retro vibe and it's also dramatic that adds up to the mood and emotion of the film. I think the first half was amusing and it makes me want to watch the real Deep Throat. :)) Or am I the only one who hasn't seen it? :3
Stories We Tell
Director: Sarah Polley
With: Sarah Polley, Rebecca Jenkins, Peter Evans, Michael Polley, Harry Gulkin, Susy Buchan, John Buchan, Mark Polley, Joanna Polley
Sarah Polley, director of Away From Her and Take This Waltz created this documentary simply to tell the story of her life and her family. Her father, Michael Polley, narrated the film. At first, you would probably think that the concept is kind of narcissistic. Even one of the storytellers told Powell, "who gives a fuck about this family?". I mean, who would create a documentary film about the story of her own clan? But as the film progressed, it is like a beautiful flower whose petals are blossoming for the world to see.
It's a story about love, family, life and infidelity. But this depends on who's telling the story. All of the storytellers were asked to recall stories of their family mainly about Diane, Powell's mother, who died of cancer when Powell was young. It is utterly captivating that some stories contradict each other, the reason why the subject varies depending on the storyteller.
The general consensus of the storytellers is that the family is far from being perfect. In fact, it is kind of dark. But despite that, the family and the people involved are very participative with Powell, they could make their own TV show for being likable and poetic, to an extent. It's very simple and pleasant at first, until twists kept on turning. Powell was revealed to be a product of infidelity. But with the different stories told in this documentary, it is hard to judge the status of her life and the state of their family. I'll go back to the fact, that it really depends on who's telling the story. Watch it and you decide. Or should I say, watch it and let them tell their story.
I was a fan of Powell prior to watching this film. I'm a huge fan of her work in Take This Waltz, which she wrote and directed. With this documentary, without giving a footnote to her past films, Powell made it clear that her films were inspired by her real life experiences. Take This Waltz and Away From Her made MORE sense because of this documentary. It's quite haunting, thinking about it. But what I love more about this documentary is that it doesn't only express what Powell wanted to reveal about herself, it's also part of a closure of a story she really wanted to tell and want to know about herself. And this is by letting the people revolving her, tell her story, their perspective. The reality is, the stories contravene and seems like they make no sense, but Powell let these stories be.
Director: James Wan
With: Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Lin Shaye, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey
Insidious Chapter 2
I've been looking forward to seeing this film since they announced that they're going to make a sequel for 2011's Insidious. I've always been a fan and considered it as one of my favorite horror films ever. I have lower expectations though because of its critical response and add to that the fact that horror sequels rarely live up to the success of their predecessors. But after watching it, I must say that it's still the Insidious that I love - insanely scary and hilarious. Then again, I tend to be well attached to the film that I get scared easily, but screw it, it really provided the horror.
With this second chapter though, director James Wan included additional ingredients absent from its prequel. If the first one has demons, the second one has similarities with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. There are also lots of scenes in the film where it resembled The Shining, one was when Patrick Wilson looked like Jack Nicholson in his famous "Here's Johnny!" scene, while Rose Byrne also effectively showed fear in her eyes ala Shelley Duvall. Wilson and Byrne may not be at par with those classic actors. Nevertheless, they, along with the rest of the cast, delivered solid performances. Lin Shaye here is still as fun and expressive as the first Insidious.
Horror films for me always work if it has the right mix of comedy and scares. Insidious Chapter 2 has plenty of those factors. Although like the first Insidious, I find the last quarter of the film to be ridiculous, but I embraced it and had a great time in the movie house with friends. I'm a believer that horror films should be enjoyed in a movie house, not at home, alone, with lights turned off. It's crazier when you get a kick out of it with several friends and a bunch of strangers despite their loud screams, gasps and laughters.
I'm happy for the box office success it's achieving right now and I hope that it will inspire more producers to create horror flicks that avid horror fans love and enjoy. Here's hoping that 2014 brings more terrifying movies for us!
Director: Alex Gibney
This documentary directed by Alex Gibney is about an Afghan Taxi Driver, Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in detention and was falsely accused of being part of the Afghan terrorists.
The film focuses on the contradiction of the Bush administration and their national laws particularly on torture and interrogation in general. It kind of reminds me of We Steal Secrets wherein there's a dilemma about freedom of speech. They alter laws in order to achieve something in their favor but that's when the moral implication enters the situation. I remember during the peak of Zero Dark Thirty, it had some issues about Kathryn Bigelow's inclusion of torture in her film. I wish I watched Taxi to the Dark Side way back, so that I wasn't ignorant during this height of ZDT's controversy.
Taxi to the Dark side somewhat opened my eyes in the process of American soldiers and interrogators in dealing with captured terrorists or criminals. It was terrifying to see how the interrogators can smile to the cameras while the people they tortured are thrown or displayed beside them. I also now have a better understanding of why there are many Americans against by how George Bush dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the Bush doctrine in general. The 9/11 attacks, seem like it made some Americans become close minded with their beliefs. As a country where racism is prevalent, some tend to generalize that all Afghans are bad people. It's really hard to tackle this issue without putting myself in their situation. It's hard to point fingers. There are many others involved in this issue before me, but as I watched this documentary, I got sympathetic towards the innocent people affected by these events, may it be Americans or Afghans. it could be anyone. It's saddening that even the Geneva Conventions, that authorize the code of international law for the humanitarian treatment of war, gets violated to strike against the so-called 'bad people'. It is unmistakably wrong how terrorists can look at life as if it's nothing, but acting upon it like how Nazis and other warlords did in our past is equally sinful. Our history exists to serve as our lesson. I feel so preachy now but that's just how I felt while I was watching this documentary.
But anyway, this film has a great message but I could compare its narration to Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. It has a very compelling story and paramount to the society, but I kind of find it boring. :/ It's so serious, which is appropriate because the issue should be taken seriously :3 but it didn't have the suspenseful storytelling technique, or at least entertaining despite its dark content, that other documentaries possess for their viewers to be engaged. It's information after information. But like I mentioned, the message of this documentary is worthy enough to see this. I'm glad I did.
Director: Andrew Jarecki
With: Arnold Friedman, Elaine Friedman, Jesse Friedman, David Friedman, Seth Friedman
Directed by Andrew Jarecki, 'Capturing the Friedmans' is a documentary about the 1980's investigation of Arnold and Jesse Friedman for child molestation and sodomy and how this affected their household in Great Neck, New York. The Friedmans consist of Arnold and Elaine, with their children David, Seth and Jesse. Aside from interviews, the film contains a number of home videos of their family dinners, conversations, arguments, vacations and video diaries prior and during the Friedmans' trial. These footages were taken not for publishing purposes, but as a way to record the events in their lives.
The style of this documentary reminds me of two documentaries that I've also watched this year - The Imposter and Stories We Tell, in a sense that we weren't given one side of the story. Jarecki made its viewers decide who to believe as each side has strong convictions of what they know about their story. For me, it's not even about what the accused did with the victims. Wherein Arnold Friedman, the head of the family and father of three children, along with his youngest son, Jesse Friedman, allegedly sodomized and molested several children who attended Arnold's computer classes in their home. The case is bad, undoubtedly, which actually also kind of reminds me of the documentary, Deliver Us From Evil, but what's more provocative in this film is the effect of this hysteria (as how Elaine described it), to the lives of each members of the Friedmans. I've watched them fall apart in the midst of the trial and it's disheartening to witness it. But despite this turn of events, you can tell how each of the Friedmans love their family deeply. I'm trembling as I type this, just thinking about what they can do for their loved ones. I kind of feel guilty that I'm more focused on their family, than the supposed victims of the film, but I truly think that the main source of inspiration that I got from this film is the relationship of the Friedmans with each other.
This documentary is VERY depressing. There's nothing more saddening with a documentary that started with a complete and happy family only to be destroyed by an event that shook, not only them and their community, but its viewers as well. Especially that the accusations may not be entirely true as currently, this is still in the process of investigation. I don't know how anyone could finish this film without feeling a plethora of emotions, disgust turns into sympathy, affection to rage. It's an emotional roller coaster! But the feeling of sadness soars in the end. Kudos to Jarecki's way of stitching every interviews that he got for this film and providing the open-endedness of the documentary, leaving his viewers a vague scenario of what really happened to the Friedmans.
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