Stephen King’s It, King Corn, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Stephen King’s It
[ 2 stars out of 4 ]
I haven’t read the book prior to watching this film so I can’t compare consistencies between the two media. However, it doesn’t change the fact that I was extremely disappointed by this picture/mini-series. From friends and reviews online, I’ve been informed that this is a pretty scary flick. I was excited to rent it because I remember watching a scene or two when I was about eleven years old and I thought it was creepy so I immediately changed the channel. But from watching “It” from beginning to end, it was very underwhelming. The thought the first half was pretty good, especially the child actors. Some standouts include Seth Green, Brandon Crane, and the late Jonathan Brandis. I believed that they were being terrified by Pennywise (played by Tim Curry) because it’s natural for children to be scared of many things. Things went downhill quickly during the second half when the story focuses on the adults. It’s not like I didn’t like the late John Ritter, Annette O’Toole, Tim Reid and Richard Thomas. In fact, they’re all pretty good with some occassional lame dialogue. It’s just that I didn’t believe any of them had chemistry together. The only scene that I thought was pretty brilliant during the second half was when O’Toole’s character visited her old house and finds out that an old lady lives there. That sequence was pretty scary. The ending was really lame and just thinking about it makes me laugh more than anything. I’ve seen better pictures out there about children’s fears being repersonified when they were adults. This one is imaginative but unimpressive.
King Corn
[ 3 stars out of 4 ]
I can’t say all the information that were presented in this picture were new to me but there were definitely some shocking facts that I didn’t know or have forgotten about. I want to start off with the negatives. One of the main reasons why this documentary is less effective than it should have been is that Aaron Woolf, the director, spent too much time setting up everything–such as how the two friends that the audiences will follow throughout the picture, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, planted an acre of corn in Iowa. If they had cut off about twenty minutes from those scenes (like the two playing catch and sleeping with their crops), I think Woolf would have had more room for more in-depth interviews from scholars about the impacts of high fructose diets or presenting alternatives in order to avoid high fructose foods. Instead, the film merely glides over some of the most important topics that are extremely relevant in our society. It was definitely frustrating for me because I major in Biology and I wanted to know more about the issues that they were trying to tackle. However, I did like the way the film linked the relationship among what’s grown in the ground, the economy, and health issues. In a way, this film reminded me of “Super Size Me” because its technique involved shocking statistics and humor. I also liked the way that it didn’t write off the treatment of animals just to meet people’s demand for meat. The film is a little too short (it’s only about an hour and thirty minutes long) and I would’ve liked to see regular people being interviewed to show what they know (or what they don’t know) about the role of corn in pretty much everything we eat. That way, it will show this film’s relevance and urgency. I like documentaries that read like a thesis paper: clear, organized, and insightful. And if I were to treat this like a paper, it doesn’t deserve an “A” grade because most of the time it was stuck on the surface of things. I would give it a “B+” for hitting some strong points but not completely delivering its full potential.
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
[ 4 stars out of 4 ]
I’m not going to deny that I didn’t shed a tear while watching this touching film. From the first scene to the last, I was completely into it because the story is very human and the way the story unfolded is far from predictable. Julian Schnabel, the director, took many risks that actually paid off: one is placing the audience into the main character’s body right from the very beginning. By doing that, we are immediately able to feel and hear what the protagonist wants to express whether we want to or not. Mathieu Amalric who plays Jean-Dominique Bauby impressed me so much. I thought that Amalric really was paralyzed and it hurts just to look at his condition. This is the first time I’ve heard of Locked-In Syndrome, where the person is aware of everything that’s going on around him but he is completely paralyzed. (That will officially go under one of the things I most fear will happen to me.) The movie is surprisingly poetic and has comedic moments despite the tragedy that’s unfolding before the audience. In a span of just under two hours, we are able to understand, if not merely glimpse, what has happened during and before Bauby had a massive stroke that led him into a vegetative state. From an emotional point of view, this film is nothing short of devastating; from an artistic point of view, I admired its use of awkward camera angles, blurry perspectives, and the story’s fluidity. I haven’t seen a film in a while that has inspired me to not take things for granted.
