Wow, I haven't seen hardly any movies this summer! Nothing has much appealled to me.
Dean's rating scale: ****Exceptionally good, ***Quite good indeed, ** I liked some things about it, but found it to be something closer to average,* Not recommended.
I need to point out that I am not actually as critical
as I may sometimes sound from my reviews. Generally, anything two
stars or better is something I have enjoyed, and even those to which I
only give one star probably have some aspects I have found redeeming, though
I'd put them further down my list. Anything with less than a star
(that is 0 or 1/2) is an absolute or nearly absolute thumbs down.
| Fast Runner | **1/2 |
| Possession | *1/2 |
Fast Runner -- (In Inuit, with English subtitles) -- Because this film offers a rare glimpse into the lives of the Inuit people, at least of those who still follow the traditional Inuit lifestyle, it's likely to captivate many a viewer, in spite of its three hour length. It captures many details about the lifestyle in ways that most of us likely have never considered -- I haven't -- with regard to the struggle and the constant effort it takes to survive under the extraordinarily harsh conditions of the far north. The plot, meanwhile, is a rather simplistic good versus evil morality play and power struggle, primarily based on the competition for dominance between two young alpha male Inuit men. The value systems on display in the film range from Darwin's survival of the fittest to Christ's turn the other cheek, with communism and traditional paternal and maternalism thrown in to boot, all set among the brutal elements and the constant need to provide the basics, notably food and warmth, which are forever in short supply. The struggle to find relief from monotony is something to which most of us can relate, but this setting puts our own efforts at that in perspective. At the end of three hours, it may seem to you that the time has passed relatively quickly, although there are periods during the show that seem brutally slow, and you can imagine a better movie covering the same material in two hours. It's a bit difficult at first to figure out who is who among the characters, and it is strongly recommended that you catch the very beginning of the show in order to make better sense later on about the direction of the plot. I'm not sure how reflective of traditional Inuit life the film is. It will probably leave a misleading impression with some folks, particularly since these days most of the Inuit are now urban or small town dwellers rather than nomads. Still, anyone with a taste for exotic culture, with a lot of struggle and a little adventure thrown in, will probably find more than enough to like about this film. (Kids -- perhaps not, due to intimate sexual scenes, nudity and violence; Teens -- yes, but they can't have more than a low level of attention deficit disorder; ditto for adults) **1/2
Possession -- Don't waste your time with this one. You've got better things to do. I don't even feel inspired to say much about it, so I won't. Gwenneth Paltrow's okay. There's mostly chemestry-less romance and snooty talk, and in the end, you're not going to care. *1/2