"American Independent Film, 1999" - Movie Review: Love and Death on Long Island

Unfortunately for some really great films their trailers do them an enormous disservice. This was the case with Love and Death on Long Island. From the trailers I envisioned a totally different film then what I saw when I put the movie in. I was pleasantly surprised when I began watching Love and Death, it was touching without being pathetic and sappy. I actually found myself really drawn into the movie; I cared about the characters – more specifically, I cared what happened to John Hurt’s character. His performance made the movie for me, without him I wouldn’t have been so moved.

Hurt took the “psycho” out of obsession for me. He played Giles down to something human and not dangerous and sick. Although he was so old, and Ronnie so young, he never came across as a “dirty old man.” There was something very young about his character – something very like a teen girl: watching all of Ronnie's movies repeatedly, memorizing all Ronnie's sats, switching his brand of cigarettes to the Chestertons because Ronnie lives in Chesterton, etc.

Jason Priestly, on the other hand, gave his usual poor performance. I see no talent and no emotion in him. His character seemed so flat and dull. I could hardly even imagine what Giles saw in him, and I think Giles realized that when he met Ronnie – he was nothing but a pretty face.

The film was filled with subdued humor. Hurt’s dream sequence in which he was on a game show, his subject: the life of Ronnie Bostock, was particularly funny. Giles’s leap into the 90’s was funniest to those who know someone that is so cut off. This was a bit more extreme humor than the rest, but it played just as well. Without the humor, Giles would have been much less of a character. And his obsession would have seemed more dangerous then sweet.

Comments

The Witch (2015)

You know the drill - there's ALWAYS spoilers. Don't want the movie ruined for you, come back after you've seen it. Also - I'm still without an editor - typos and bad grammar await you! I keep hoping that the cultural obsession with zombies will end; literally every other damn movie that comes 'round seems to feature some sort of shambling, undead being bent on devouring the weak flesh of regular humans. Once upon a time, zombies have have been used as a metaphor for the blind consumerism created by our capitalist society, or the perceived depletion of resources by immigrants, or even the ravages of time and disease on our frail bodies. Now it seems that the deeper social commentary has been lost as audiences mindlessly consume "zombie fiction" in an attempt to keep up with trends. ( How very meta - a film buddy of mine commented on this assessment! ) All of this is just a sideways rant, leading up to my actual point: it seems that zombie may actually...

Mother!

Alright friends and readers–this one is probably doubly filled with typos and grammar errors because I wrote it while angry. Good luck and happy reading. There are unpopular opinions in every realm. As a film student, you can truly strike a nerve when you say things like, "I fucking hate the self-indulgence of independent films and the way people idolize them." Or, you know, "Low lighting and slow pacing does not a good movie make." Or whatever. You can of course, objectively, understand how this happens. When you are creating art–when you are outside the system so to speak–you are free to explore things (subjects, techniques, etc.) that may need to be addressed and that freedom can become intoxicating and go to one's head. While it may seem only right or only fair to respect and accept each creative endeavor that every artist undertakes, it is unreasonable to believe that the world will remain forever patient with the self-obsession artists have. Th...

The Ones Below (2015)

Standard disclosure: there's ALWAYS spoilers. Don't want the movie ruined for you? Come back after you've seen it. And - I'm still without an editor - typos and bad grammar await you! Enjoy! When I was like 12 years old, my young (impressionable) friends and I watched The Hand That Rocks the Cradle ; Rebecca De Mornay is so gloriously evil in that movie that we ended up watching it all the damn time — much to the chagrin of my mother, I assume, who got real tired (real fast) of having to see this movie about a million damn times. What can I say? She was kind of a saint that way. Looking back, unsurprisingly, it's pretty easy to see that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle isn't really a terrific movie — although it's still pretty solid for a 90's thriller. Certainly it boasted some fairly well-known cast ( Ernie Hudson and Julianne Moore — whom my regular readers know that I absolutely hate, in particular.) but, the plot is actually pretty convolut...

i'm kael's ghost

Search This Blog