10s Movie Review - Certain Women

Director: Kelly Reichardt
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 107 minutes
Year: 2016
Starring: Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Jared Harris, James Le Gros, John Getz

Description: The lives of three women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.

Review: The American drama film “Certain Women” is about three Montana women who are intentionally and unintentionally connected. Three women, three stories. One is a lawyer who has a difficult client. The other a woman who gets into an argument with her husband over the purchase of a piece of land and the las is a woman who works on a horse ranch and takes lessons from an attorney. All are connected, but how.

“Certain Women” divides opinions. Some though it was three disconnected storylines and other see three stories with the same kind of message. Feminism at its finest. Yes, the threads were very thin between the stories, but they were there. In addition, the visuals were raw and unadorned.

The fact remains that “Certain Women” didn’t live up to my high expectations. It did not convince, too bad, because the acting is very good. A little more emotion and more connections would have done the film good.

Rating: 3/ 5

10s Movie Review - Pompeii

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Genre: Action/ Drama
Runtime: 105 minutes
Year: 2014
Starring: Kit Harington, Kiefer Sutherland, Emily Browning, Carrie-Ann Moss, Jared Harris, Jessica Lucas, Adewale Akunnuoye-Agbaje

Description: A slave-turned-gladiator (Kit Harington) finds himself in a race against time to save his true love (Emily Browning), who has been betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator (Kiefer Sutherland). As Mount Vesuvius erupts, he must fight to save his beloved as Pompeii crumbles around him.

Review: Okay, I like honesty. The only reason I watched this movie is Kit Harington. Because I think he is perfect. And this movie definitely isn’t.
In Hollywood there is trendsetters and you have the ones that follow those trends. Directors like James Camermon and Ridley Scott are trendsetters. Their work has set the bar high for director of later generations. Like Paul W.S. Anderson, a definite follower of those trends. Most of his movies are lesser and more unoriginal versions of those films.
“Pompeii” is in fact a combination of “Gladiator” and “Titanic”. I love the first and hate the last, so that’s not good. And that’s kind of sad, because I think the Roman city of Pompeii deserves a good film. It has an interesting story.
You have to give it to him. Paul W.S. Anderson always has to work with a relatively small budget and they always make a whole lot of money. But they have never been very well received.
Since “Gladiator”, any movie about the Roman empire seems to deal with the concept of gladiators. And “Pompeii” is not any different. Kit Harington plays Milo, a Celtic gladiator, brought to Pompeii for a tournament. When he enters the city, he meets Cassia. She belongs to the Roman elite, but she someone sees through all the differences and off course they fall for each other.
The story is not special, the characters are one-dimensional and everything is really predictable. But Kit Harington is still perfect…

Rating: 2 / 5

100 Movie Challenge 2017 - # 68: Happiness

Director: Tod Solondz
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 134 minutes
Year: 1998
Starring: Jane Adams, Dylan Baker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jon Lovitz, Jared Harris, Lara Flynn Boyle, Molly Shannon

Description: The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

Review: Looking for a film about happy families, happy relationships and happy people. Then “Happiness” is not your movie. It’s a very misleading title. The people in this movie are anything but happy and happiness is not present.
We follow several people. Like Joy Jordan, who claims to be very happy but isn’t everything but that. She is super nice, but is humiliated and broken over and over again. Her sister Trish thinks she has it all, but she doesn’t know that her husband jerks off to teen magazines and likes young boys. And he openly discusses sex with their young son. And then there is Alan, a lonely single man, who calls random women and talks dirty to them.
I guess “Happiness” isn’t for me.

Rating: 2/ 5