Skip to main content

"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

Popular posts from this blog

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 Babadook

Spoilers and typos! Enjoy. We often look back nostalgically on childhood, envious of the joy we felt and the boundless imaginations we possessed. How conveniently we forget the other side of that coin: as children, we experience a depth of terror our adult selves continually try to recreate for cathartic entertainment. When we try to bring those childhood fears to life on the screen, we often end up with movies about "things that go bump in the night," which is a somewhat superficial approach. While it does provide an opportunity for a supernatural experience, it ignores the root of our fear: the unknown . As children, we lack life experience. We lack nuance. We lack understanding. Not knowing creates in us fear. Yes, we fear what lurks in the darkness but we also fear the adult world because we do not understand how it works. The Babadook works to exploit both  those fears. The short story: a widowed mother of a young boy experiences a mental breakdown and tries to...