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Movies

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) a (mildly) belated review

Given the popularity of the film and the many, many reviews of the same out there, I thought hard about whether it was worth it to offer my own spin on Zero Dark Thirty, perhaps one of the more controversial films of the past year.

After all, what more could I add to the myriad of opinions regarding the film, both good and bad?  Perhaps there was…we’ll see.

Briefly, Zero Dark Thirty is a film very much worth watching.  It is a steely account of the manhunt of Osama Bin Laden for the ten years from 9/11 to his killing by U.S. forces in 2011.

The movie’s main controversy centers around some early scenes depicting U.S. “enhanced interrogation” techniques, ie torture.  While the film does show that some information is extracted from one such use of the technique, in the end the film also shows that it is detective work and persistence that ultimately pays off in the manhunt.

Having said that, I can’t help but wonder what the critics were so bothered by.  Had director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal completely avoided the topic of torture -something that was sadly very much a part of the early days of the “war on terror”- they would have rightly been accused of whitewashing a reality of those early days.  Also, this ignores what I found most intriguing about the later part of the film, how the many sins of the Bush administration wound up coming back to bite the protagonists in their quest to find Bin Laden.

For example, when our protagonist Maya (Jessica Chastain) pieces together the clues that lead U.S. intelligence to what they suspect is the Bin Laden compound, there winds up being great hesitancy (and 120 plus days of delay) before the order is given to assault the place.  In some of the film’s best moments (IMHO) we find that may of the higher ups in government are leery of committing any actions against the compound because of the dark specter of Weapons of Mass Destruction never found in Iraq.  In other words, the absolutist bluster of the Bush administration in that there were WMDs in Iraq and which led to the war in Iraq wound up causing the next administration to make damn sure they weren’t about to go down that rabbit hole again and assault a compound that certainly housed some high level figure (though they couldn’t be certain if they were terrorists or simply drug dealers) but one they could not verify was Osama Bin Laden himself.

If the film fails in any way it is that Ms. Bigelow chose to present her work in a very neutral, almost completely unemotional tone.  There are few ups or downs, with the notable exception being the tension from the raid on the Bin Laden compound.  For most of the rest of the film we “see” things through Maya’s eyes but because she’s presented throughout the film as an emotional cypher with no family nor lover and seemingly no friends, the film adopts her perspectives.

Which brings me to this:  In many ways, Zero Dark Thirty is not unlike another politically charged film, specifically All The President’s Men.  It is my feeling that All The President’s Men was a far more successful attempt to bring “real life” events to the big screen.  Both films shared a similar plot structure in that both sets of protagonists were hunting information.  In All The President’s Men, the information revolved around possible corruption in the White House while in Zero Dark Thirty, obviously, it was information leading to Bin Laden.

But what worked better in All The President’s Men was the fact that as a viewer I found myself far more engaged, emotionally, in what was going on.  Because of this emotional engagement as a viewer I was far more invested in the unfolding mystery and the very real fear that something sinister was going on here.  In Zero Dark Thirty, unfortunately, what I mentioned above regarding Maya’s lack of emotions winds up making most of what goes on an emotional blank and, therefore, we aren’t as deeply involved in the hunt as we might have been.

Despite this, I still recommend Zero Dark Thirty.  It is a worthwhile chronicle of a very dark time in U.S. history.

And, just for the heck of it…

 

Movies

The Innkeepers (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Director/Writer Ti West developed a strong cult following among horror film aficionados with the release of his 2009 film The House of The Devil.  Many viewed it as a great throwback to the slow buildup/high tension horror films of the past.  His 2011 film The Innkeepers, which he also wrote and directed, would appear to follow in the same tradition, this time focusing on one of the more tried and true horror tropes:  The haunted house.

Or, in this case, the haunted Inn.

Claire (Sara Paxton) is a very young twentyish woman who works at the Yankee Pedlar Inn along with the slightly older Luke (Pat Haley).  The Inn is on its very last days and will be closed forever following the coming weekend.  Yet Claire and Luke work on despite the low number of tenants and high level of boredom.  Why?  Because Claire and Luke believe the Inn is haunted by the spirit of one Madeline O’Malley, a woman who in the Inn’s distant past (the Inn is perhaps a hundred or so years old) hung herself in the basement.

Claire and Luke are effectively just like the various “ghost hunters” you (over) see on TV nowadays, people with cameras and audio recording equipment hunting for any evidence of ghostly doings.

While there is one humorous, though completely superfluous, scene outside the Inn wherein Claire visits a coffee shop run by Lena Dunham (yes, that Lena Dunham) and we get a few minutes of Ms. Dunham doing her thing, the rest of the movie is exclusively set within the Inn itself.

Claire, we come to find, is starting to hear things.  Her co-worker worries that she may be getting a little too involved in this whole “ghost hunting” situation.  Meanwhile, two final guests show up at the Inn, Leane Rease-Jones (Kelly McGillis) a one-time famous actress now devoted to crystals and assorted spiritual pursuits, and an old man (George Riddle) who insists on being given a room on the third floor, despite the fact that the rooms up there have already been stripped in preparation for the Inn’s closing.

I don’t want to give away too much more but suffice it to say that for those who are patient enough for this “slow burn” type film, the scares are delivered in bulk by the film’s delirious climax.

However, the ending itself left me rather…cold.  In fact, while I could forgive some of the extraneous elements in the film (the already mentioned Lena Dunham cameo, the mother and her son), the ultimate resolution of the film simply didn’t work for me.  It came across as a little too downbeat.

Anyway, that’s just me.  Regardless, The Innkeepers offers plenty of good buildup and a terrific climax that should have just about everyone suffering from white knuckle syndrome.  My only reservation lies in the film’s final few minutes, but otherwise its a keeper.

Movies

Holy Motors (2012) a (mildly) belated review

When I first heard of Holy Motors it was via some seriously positive reviews that noted the film was surreal yet thought provoking, bizarre yet beautiful.

My spider senses were definitely tingling.

Mind you, I’m not a huge fan of surreal cinema, but when its good (Mulholland Drive, for example) it can be really, really good.  Unfortunately, the flip side of this is that when its bad, it can certainly be very, very bad.

It’s been only a day since I finally got to see Holy Motors, and my opinion of it is still evolving even as I write this sentence.  As a very surreal film, it defies easy explanation regarding its plot.  The best I can offer is the following:  A man named Oscar (Denis Lavant) is being driven through Paris for a day.  His driver (Edith Scob) is his only constant company and she takes him from one “assignment” to another, wherein the man dresses and/or disguises himself for a series of different “scenes” he is playing out.  Oscar, you see, is an actor and during the course of the day he will participate in nine different sequences which vary wildly from place to place.

A comment on acting and cinema?  A comment on how individuals “appear” differently from scenario to scenario throughout life?

It’s open to your interpretation.  There are hints and allusions to other works of art, from film to novels (I apparently wasn’t the only one to catch a wiff of Moby Dick in the film’s DNA).

Early in the movie we have the two most show stopping segments.  The first involves our actor participating in a “motion capture” film.  He is dressed in black with motion detection silver spheres spread throughout his body.  His movements during this sequence, which eventually becomes highly sexual, are beautiful to behold, and toward the end of the sequence when we finally see what our actors’ motions are being animated as, I suspect the message delivered is that the human form is so much more beautiful in motion than whatever the computer animators come up with afterwards.

The next sequence, certainly the most off-the-wall of the bunch, involves our actor becoming a “beast” and kidnapping a “beauty” (Eva Mendes).  One of the more interesting things about that segment, other than its sheer, unambiguous bizarreness, is that early on in the skit when the “beast” is walking through a graveyard the tombstones, rather than announcing who lies beneath, announce websites they would like people to go to.  Not sure what the meaning of that is, other than that the internet is full of dead sites.  Anyway, unlike the motion capture segment, this one had me scratching my head and wondering just what the hell all that was about.  For those who are averse to male nudity, the conclusion of that particular segment might be a (ahem) turn off.

From there, the movie becomes a little more sedate, featuring interactions between Oscar and what appear to be a series of family relations.  A daughter, a niece, an old lover.  There’s also segments involving assassination and murder, both equally strange.

As I said before, I’m still digesting this film.  Immediately after watching it, I was bewildered and overwhelmed by the strange sights and sounds but after a day of sorting things out, I’m far more enthusiastic over what I saw.  Having said that, I find it difficult to recommend this film to the casual theater goer.

The fact is that Holy Motors demands your attention and patience as well as a desire to follow its strange cinematic paths.  If you give it a try, you may well find yourself well rewarded in the end.

Movies

Hit and Run (2012) a (mildly) belated review

Dying is easy, comedy is hard.

And how.

I can’t tell you the number of “comedy” films I’ve seen which may have elicited, at best, a chuckle or two rather than the hilarity promised.  Thus, I’m often weary when thinking of putting on a comedy.  However, when I first heard of the 2012 film Hit and Run, I was intrigued.  The movie seemed to come out of nowhere and the critics were relatively kind to it.  But what interested me the most was their description of what the film was:  A romantic comedy that was also a throwback to 1970’s car chase films.

Man, its been a while since those type of films were released, having buried themselves in mediocrity or worse in the 1980’s.  So, when the film made it to home video, I had to give it a shot.  The result proved a pleasant diversion and certainly a decent enough time killer.

Hit and Run’s plot isn’t all that original and I got more than a little wiff of Ron Howard’s directorial debut, 1977’s Grand Theft Auto (no relation to the popular video game series) in its Romeo & Juliet-like plot.  Grand Theft Auto featured two young lovers on the run from assorted crazy people, including the female lead’s ex-lover.  In Hit and Run, we have Kristen Bell playing Annie Bean, a teacher who has been given a once in a lifetime opportunity to leave her small town and become the department head at a school in Los Angeles.  The only complication is that her boyfriend, Charles Bronson (yes, you read that name right and there’s a definite joke involved in this), played by Dax Shepard, is in the witness protection program and venturing outside of that small town could be hazardous to his health.

Nonetheless, the two do venture outside their small town with a very tight deadline to reach L.A.  Along the way, they quickly are pursued by Annie’s ex-boyfriend, the Marshall assigned to protect Charles, a pair of cops, and, finally, member’s of Bronson’s ex-gang.

There are plenty of amusing cameos (and one larger cameo by Bradley Cooper) that liven things up.  Unlike the car chase movies of the 1970’s, there is precious little actual vehicular mayhem in this film.  There are a few chases and they’re reasonably well done, but unlike Grand Theft Auto, there’s very little actual wreckage to be seen.

As a comedy, the movie works for the most part, drawing laughs from dialogue and situations.  Having said that, there are occasions where a joke was pushed along a little too much.  Without giving too much away, one of the movie’s funniest jokes involves one of the character’s “adventures” while in prison.  The joke builds to a hilarious punchline, but once it is reached the characters talk on for another couple of minutes and effectively dampen what should have been a hilarious bit.

In other words, some judicious trimming might have helped.

Still, Hit and Run is a decent if not spectacular film to spend a couple of hours with.  Afterwards, you may want to dust off your copy of Smokey and the Bandit and give it a whirl.

I’ve provided the trailer below but if you’re planning to see the film I suggest you don’t play it. Like too many trailers, it gives away the biggest joke (but stops where it should have!)

And now, a blast from the past…the trailer to Grand Theft Auto!

Movies

Taken 2 (2012) a (mildly) belated review

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When it was originally released in 2008, Taken proved a surprise hit.  The plot was simplicity itself:  The daughter of a shady ex-CIA operative is kidnapped in Europe.  Using the skills he acquired while “on the job”, our hero mercilessly pursues the kidnappers, stopping at nothing to get his daughter back.

I suspect what made the film work so well was that Liam Neeson, the film’s star, projected such a no-nonsense attitude and was willing to not only rough up the bad guys, but also go after alleged friends (and their wives!) to get what he needed.  Neeson’s Bryan Mills became, effectively, a force of nature and would not be stopped in the pursuit of his goal.

So, four years later, we get Taken 2.  The film actually follows a logical story arc: The family of the people Mills took out in the first movie want revenge.  And, wouldn’t you know it, but Mills and his ex-wife and daughter just happen to be traveling within spitting distance in Istanbul…

When it was released, Taken 2 didn’t get quite the same level of love the original film received from both critics and audiences.  I suppose this was to be expected.  After all, there are some big leaps in logic one has to accept.  After all the crap Mills pulled in the first Taken, one would think there are NO countries that would welcome him or his family into their borders…yet the trio wind up, as stated, within spitting distance of the relatives bent on getting revenge. I suspect the film might have played out a little better if it were set on Mills’ home ground, with the villains coming after him.

But ignoring that little point, I expected the film to be something of a let down, at least based on all that was written/talked about.  I was surprised to find, however, that Taken 2, while certainly no masterpiece, was a decent little pulp action thriller.  The bad guys were bad enough and the situations were tense enough to pass the time.  Yeah, there were other problems to be found other than the setting.  Liam Neeson fights a few times in the film and, frankly, no amount of quick film editing can make him look like a fearsome fighter.  Also, the film spends perhaps a little too much time in the United States before heading out to Istanbul (was it really necessary to get into his daughter’s boyfriend and the fact that she was in the process of getting a driver’s license?  Don’t get me wrong, I feel Maggie Grace, who returns as Mills’ daughter, is a good actress.  So good that for the most part she pulled off her role in this movie, acting as if she was 17 or 18 years old despite being 29 years old while filming.  Still, there was little reason to get into the whole boyfriend stuff, which had almost no payoff in the end).

OK, OK, I know I’m starting to nit-pick and should just stop.  No, Taken 2 is no masterpiece, but as mentioned before, it is an enjoyable time killer action/adventure film that only asks its audience to sit back and enjoy the ride.  While perhaps not as sharp as the original, Taken 2 nonetheless for the most part gives you what you’re asking for…provided you aren’t too demanding.

Movies

The Devil’s Mask (1946) a (very) belated review

If you’re a fan of old time (and sometimes creaky) mysteries, you could do far worse than spend a little over an hour watching The Devil’s Mask.

The story, let’s face it, is lower level pulp.  We begin with a shadowy figure breaking into a museum and doing something with one (or more?) of the five shrunken heads on display recently brought in from South America.  Then, a plane crashes and one of the few things recovered from the wreckage is a box whose address and destination has been burned off but whose contents remain intact.

Inside the box?

A shrunken head, of course!

Meanwhile, two detectives -one “serious” and the other more of a “comic relief”- are hired by the wife of a disappeared explorer to check in on her step daughter and boyfriend.  The boyfriend is following her around at the behest of her stepdaughter and the stepmother fears the two want to do her harm.  You see, the explorer who brought those shrunken heads into the museum is/was the husband of the stepmother, and he has mysteriously disappeared following an expedition south.

Was he murdered?  By whom?  Could the stepmother be hiding a hidden lover?  Could she and the lover be the killers?  Or is it possible the missing explorer is still alive and lurking in the shadows…ready to strike?

As I said, the plot itself is pure pulp and either you enjoy this sort of stuff or you won’t.  Regardless, one can appreciate the lovely black and white cinematography and use of very heavy shadows.  While the plot itself was mildly diverting, even a fan of the pulps like me will admit the story itself borders on the ridiculous (the whole airplane crashing thing never really amounted to more than a way to introduce the idea of the shrunken heads and the payoff to that was more than a little silly).

Still, what can I say?  I enjoyed the film and it was short enough (as I said before, its total runtime is a little over an hour) to not wear out its welcome.  A cautious recommendation is offered to those who like these kind of old “B” films.

Others might want to steer clear.

Movies

Deadfall (2012) a (mildly) belated review

There are films that you love, there are films you hate, and there are those in between.  They may grip you for a while before fizzling out.  They may present a story that you simply can’t get into.  They may even feature all the proper elements to make a great film yet those ingredients don’t make a great whole.

In the case of Deadfall, a film barely released to theaters last year, the ingredients most certainly are there to make a potent whole.  The movie stars Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde as ambiguous (in more ways than one) criminal siblings who just scored a big haul along with their partner and are heading to Canada to get away.  But as they make their way through a snowy road, they hit a deer and their car flips.  Their partner dies in the crash and before the duo can fully emerge from the wrecked car a police officer has arrived to see what’s going on.

Addison (Eric Bana) kills the cop and flees deeper into the woods with his sister Liza.  They decide their best course of action (well, other than perhaps, you know, driving off with the police man’s car at least for a little bit!) is to split up and get back together later.  Addison, we find, is very protective of his little sister and she is a little…strange.  Because she is an unknown in whatever heist they just pulled off, Addison reasons this is why it is a good idea for them to split.  If he’s caught, he’s caught.  If she is found, there is no way to link her to the crime they just committed.

The movie segues into introducing other characters, from an elderly couple (Kris Kristofferson and Susan Spacek) to their just released from prison son as well as the Sheriff of the County and his daughter.  Both sets of parents have issues with their kids and, as the movie progresses, the characters and their fates intertwine.

I won’t go into more story detail but suffice to say that while this film features a good cast, great locations, and some excellent cinematography (there’s something, to me, magical about films set featuring a very snowy tableau), the film’s plot, unfortunately, bogs down rather quickly.  Too much information is presented in too little time, though I would quickly hasten to add that the story presented might have benefited from being pared down of at least two of the characters (the Sheriff and his daughter, alas, serve no great purpose in the film, even if veteran actor Treat Williams is quite good as the intolerant and over-protective Sheriff).

In the end, the ingredients are there for at least a reasonably good suspense film, but the execution and too many ingredients (ie extra storylines) ultimately diffuse whatever steam this film tries to build.

While the film had a limited theatrical release, based on the very bland trailer presented below, I have a suspicion the studios knew the film wouldn’t do too well and didn’t really give it a great push.

Movies

A Lonely Place To Die (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Read about this movie in an article concerning movies audiences missed out on in 2011 and gave it a try.

I’m glad I did!

In a nutshell, A Lonely Place To Die concerns a group of five mountain climbers who stumble upon a little girl locked up in a box buried below ground.  They save her from her captivity and then have to face the cold-blooded individuals who put her there in the first place.

This is a low budget film that does not feature huge special effects and is far from your typical “Hollywood” action spectacular.  The heroes are down to Earth (no pun intended) and the villains are really fearsome.  If the film has any real big problem, it may be the final act/conclusion.  It’s not that the film had a “bad” ending, but after such great sustained intensity in the first two thirds plus of the film, the ending felt a little too ordinary.

I suppose almost all films of this type, where “city” folk face peril in the rugged and unforgiving outdoors, work in the very tall shadow of Deliverance, and in the case of A Lonely Place To Die, perhaps like Deliverance the film might have been a little better if it kept the villains’ identity and intentions more nebulous.

Just a thought.

Still, A Lonely Place to Die is a strong, intense suspense film well worthy of your time.  It may not completely stick the landing, but it does a great job in getting your juices pumping.

Movies

Dream House (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before (part 2):  Idyllic guy and idyllic family move into an idyllic home out in the suburbs, only to find that there was a brutal murder committed there a few years before.  Strange goings-on ensue…

The last time I used the above opening was for The Bourne Legacy (read the full review here) a film that, ironically enough, also starred Rachel Weisz.

In the case of Dream House, Daniel Craig is Will Atenton, a family man who at the start of the film quits his job and heads to his “dream house” where his wife (Rachael Weisz) and two daughters are already living.  Now free of his city job, he plans to settle down and write a book, fix up the house, and bask in his close relationship with his wife and young family.  But strange things, of course, are afoot and husband and wife discover that five years before the family who lived in the house -all but the husband- were brutally murdered.  The husband was shot in the head by his wife, an act the police believe was meant in self defense.  However, much as they suspect the husband killed the rest of the family, there isn’t enough evidence to verify his guilt and the man was sent to a psychiatric hospital and, eventually, released…

…is he now stalking Atenton and his family?  What are his plans…if any?  And what about the family’s neighbor (Naomi Watts, completely wasted in a role I suspect was considerably trimmed down as the film was made)?  What secrets does she hold?

The little plot presented above gives you most of what you need to know about this film before treading dangerously close to SPOILER territory.

Which I will do now.

BEWARE….SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

 

Still here?

Ok, you’ve been warned.  The upshot is this:  Will Atenton, we find, is in reality the man who previously owned the house.  He is indeed the man people think (but couldn’t prove) killed his wife and two children.  In Atenton’s current fantasy world, he quit his job in the “big city” but in reality was released from his psychiatric hospital and returned to his vacant home.  His wife and children are hallucinations or, as revealed later in the film, actually ghosts he alone can see.  The mysterious neighbor, of course, knows who he is and humors his hallucinations/visions.  Of all the townsfolk, she alone suspects he didn’t have anything to do with his family’s murder.

Eventually it is revealed this is indeed the case, that the murderer is actually the neighbor’s ex-husband (a short fused bully of a man who wants sole custody of his child from Naomi Watt’s character) and his partner in crime, a thug he hired to kill his wife but who went to the wrong home (I think…I might have been hallucinating myself by that point in the film).

Most of this, by the way, is revealed in the theatrical trailer, presented below.  Seriously, studios…why bother making the film if you’re going to give almost everything away in the trailer?

Anyway, Dream House, unfortunately, is not a very good film.  It never really engages you and when the big reveal comes so early in the movie you can’t help but wonder (and predict) why any time at all was spent on the neighbor and her short-fused ex-husband.  As mentioned before, Naomi Watts is wasted in what amounts to a very small role and I couldn’t help but think that there were considerable changes made to the screenplay as filming was done.  Why, after all, would Naomi Watts, a big star and listed as second star in this film after Daniel Craig, agree to do such a, in the end, small role?  Further, the pace of the film often lags and tests one’s patience.  Given how easy it is to predict where the movie is going, that becomes a double problem.

If there is one bright spot it is a sequence toward the very end, a genuinely emotional final scene between the haunted Atenton and the ghosts of his deceased family.  I found this part to be incredibly well done…emotional, exciting…even sad.  I wish the rest of the film could have been half as good as those few minutes.

As good as the scene is, it does present one of the film’s most glaring plot holes:  If it is confirmed that Atenton is not hallucinating but actually seeing the ghosts of his dead family and they are trying to help him…why didn’t they reveal everything to him earlier?  Why didn’t his wife tell him who actually killed her and her family?  It makes no sense at all.

Needless to say, unless you’re really, really bored and would like to see Daniel Craig doing something a little less “suave” than James Bond, there is little reason for you to bother seeing Dream House.

Movies

The Big Bang (2010) a (mildly) belated review

In the What-The-Hell-Could-They-Have-Possibly-Been-Thinking Department I present to you: The Big Bang.

No, not the popular TV show with the similar name, we’re talking about the 2010 direct to DVD feature film starring Antonio Banderas as private eye Ned Cruz on the trail of hulking Anton “The Pro” Propov’s (Robert Maillet) lost girlfriend…a woman we find he never actually met but interacted with through mail she sent to him while he was in prison.

Right away the more perceptive out there will recognize the movie’s initial plot is a direct rip off of Raymond Chandler’s classic novel (and several times filmed) Farewell My Lovely, wherein private eye Phillip Marlowe helps hulking Moose Malloy try to find his lost girlfriend after he leaves prison.

Anyway, the film goes off on its own (very strange) directions from that initial point. The story is told in media res, with our hero shackled, bleeding, and blind and being interrogated by three police officers over the events that have led him to this point.  We start with the conclusion of a very strange -and as far as I can see completely irrelevant- previous case involving an actor (James Van Der Beek in a cameo) and some dirty laundry he has that’s about to be aired.  That segues into our hero being hired by the hulking Anton to find his girlfriend….and eventually some missing diamonds.

Much of the dialogue and settings in the film makes references to physics and scientific concepts (hence the title) and it is there we find the movie’s first big flaw:  Using Antonio Banderas as the lead.  Mind you, I like Antonio Banderas.  I think he’s a pretty damn good actor but let’s face facts:  He speaks English with a strong accent and this is a terrible hindrance in a movie where he’s called upon to spout plenty of “clever” dialogue…with scientific ideas sprinkled quite liberally into them.

Still, there is stuff to see and enjoy in the film, including one of the most bizarre (though undeniably sexy) love-making sessions committed to film.  Its rare when you don’t know how to react to a scene wherein a character in the movie (played by the stunning Autumn Reeser) makes love while spouting very physics heavy dialogue involving such sexy subjects as protons and electrons.

I can only imagine how they went about filming that scene.  If anything, the lovely Mrs. Reeser deserves some kind of award for playing it with a straight face!

Alas, despite being so “smart”, this film is ultimately pretty dumb.  The plot devolves as it plays out and the revelations of who the “bad guys” are were simply too obvious almost from the beginning.  Finally, the ultimate “reveal” of who was sending the notes to our hulking ex-con elicits unintended laughter (The filmmakers were trying to go for tragedy here…weren’t they?!).

No, I cannot recommend this film to your average movie goer.

…and yet…

This is such a bizarre movie experience that its hard not to recommend it to at least one group of people:  Those looking to see something that’s truly waaaay off the beaten path.

You can’t get farther than The Big Bang.