Once, when talking about Shia LaBeouf with a friend of mine, I was scolded for not having seen A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints because it was yet another movie in which “The Boof” proved his acting abilities. So I went home and added this little movie to my Netflix queue barely reading the description which I often do with recommendations made by humans since I like going into stuff knowing as little as possible. This movie is about a guy named Dito Montiel (who wrote, directed, and lived this movie) and how he had a really tough life in New York City before he abandoned, along with his horrible and violent fate, his family and friends to move to California. I’m not the biggest fan of gritty street stories like this, and although this one had promise it was ultimately ruined by its inexperienced filmmaker. The characters seemed realistic, the situations were truly disheartening for our main character, but the story-telling was disjointed and foggy. I understand that it was meant to be an exploration of Montiel’s return to his home after 15 years and the memories that came rushing back to him in preparation to see his dying father. This sounds interesting until you notice that it actually feels like you’re seeing distant memories, but someone else’s as opposed to your own (confusing). According to some other reviews I read Tony Stark’s Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as the adult version of Dito Montiel was Oscar-worthy. I didn’t even notice his presence in the movie that much except for one scene with his father that I thought was pretty well-acted. Dianne Wiest appeared as Dito’s mother, and there’s just something about her that breaks my heart a little bit. I blame that on her sweetness in Edward Scissorhands. In fact, she’s probably the only real reason why this movie didn’t get * out of *****. While not a bad movie on the whole, it was a little self-indulgent for my taste.
** out of *****
Black Snake Moan was one of those movies that I kind of overlooked for no real reason. It’s funny, there was a question posed to me once, I think from a trivia game of some sort, that asked what actor was been in the most super-high grossing films. Of course one might guess Tom Cruise, Brat Pitt, or some A-list actor who is a huge ticket seller, but they, like I was, would be wrong. The answer at the time was Samuel L. Jackson. Two major movies I can think of right away are Jurassic Park and Star Wars. Unfortunately, while I like a lot of the movies he’s been in, he has never impressed me as an actor, and he seems kind of cocky in real life. And he was in Snakes On A Plane. I do, however, like Christina Ricci a lot, and I’ve liked Justin Timberlake in every movie I’ve seen him in so far, it just wasn’t enough for me to see this. Then my brother told me it was actually good. Still skeptical while watching, I actually ended up mildly enjoying this one despite the naughty language and (again) gritty, sweaty dirtiness that was found throughout. This was another teeterer that barely escaped a lower rating because of one scene in particular involving Ms. Ricci’s character and an encounter she has in a grocery store. I thought it was a great scene, and the semi-fairy tale-ish ending actually helped boost the rating, too. Oh, and I went from not likeing Sam Jackson’s character in the beginning to liking him a lot by the end.
*** out of *****
I have rocky relationships with movies from before the 1990s, and each decade seems to have its own special disagreeable qualities. I most certainly can see the value of many movies that I don’t like from these time periods, but I generally don’t like the over-the-top stage-like acting style of older movies. That being said, there are still a lot of older movies that I really enjoy sometimes despite this type of acting. Of all the science fiction movies I had to watch for one of my film classes in college I actually like Village of the Damned (1960) a lot more than ’80s sci-fi (except for The Thing (1982) which should be seen by everyone alive). Anyway, when I first saw Becket back during freshman year of high school (for a history class) I found that my preparation for being bored and sleepy through the in-class viewing was completely unnecessary. Since that was about 10 years ago I decided that my tastes in movies had probably changed so I wanted to watch it again to see how I feel about it now. The verdict?: I still like it just fine. It’s (ironically for my taste) based on a play, so it has some parts that seem stagey, and the acting is by no means great by either of the main characters. This is just the type of story I love, though: political intrigue clearly driven by the passion and emotions of people looking out for themselves. The important part of that last sentence is the word “clearly” since everything is driven by peoples’ passion, but the focus is too often in the wrong, less interesting and relatable place. Now I’m really excited to see the sequel, The Lion In Winter, partially because I liked Becket, but also because John Barry wrote the score.
**** out of *****
