chicothekid
Joined Oct 2000
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Reviews18
chicothekid's rating
What a disgrace! I was checking this out hoping it would be an undiscovered James Garner gem and what a stinker it turned out to be! The production quality was fine, but the plot was undeniably lame and I can honestly say that I am only a couple hours older and a lot dumber now. The movie really had no redeeming qualities and if this kind of stuff keeps coming out, it will give Hallmark a bad name. For those of you who insist on knowing what it was about, it's about nothing, and in this case, it's not a good thing. We are subjected to watching one old ornery woman who is one of the dumbest creatures ever to roam the earth, who happens to be married to a real sweetheart who is probably the only person alive that could put up with her. She drags him through one mess after another, gets him into one embarrassing situation after another, and is proud of herself the whole time. Then the movie ends. What a relief that was! Not worth the time it would take to watch it, so do yourself a favor and skip this one, you'll be glad you did if you knew how bad this one really is.
Oh wow. The normal words used to describe movies just don't apply here. In most regards, this defies all conventional logic used in the movies and is by no means, a typical movie. I caught this one at its premier at the Sundance Film Festival and was not very well prepared for what I was about to see.
The Event refers to the assisted suicide of a young man Matt (Don McKellar). Matt has AIDS and has just about run the course of conventional treatments. There are about to be no cocktails left and nothing to look forward to but a long and painful death. Matt has been living with AIDS for seven years now and doesn't want to go out that way. If he's got to go out, he's going out on his own terms: his way and at his time. So he enlists the help of several friends, rounding up as many potent prescription drugs as they can get their hands on. Then a party is thrown to celebrate his departure from earth, and to have one last fling before dying. And then it's time to get it over with and Matt is assisted with his suicide.
Now all of that is all that Nick (Parker Posey) has to work with. She works as a lawyer for the state of New York and has received notice that Matt did not die of natural causes. It's up to her to find out who helped Matt kill himself, and the more she learns about the event, the more it impacts her (as well as the viewer).
And what we are left with is a movie with a cause. This is all about the AIDS epidemic and how it affects everyone, one person at a time. Now I personally haven't known anyone with AIDS, or anyone who was helped in committing suicide, but I found myself emotionally worn out when the credits started rolling. I however, was the exception to the rule, and continually heard one sniffling sound after another (from the rest of the audience) and knew that this was a movie with some emotional kick to it. This is not a feel good movie; this is not a comedy that you can simply walk away from. This one is going to linger in the back (and probably even the front) of your mind for quite some time. It has some exceptionally powerful themes and images, and is a credit to the art of movie directing. Thom Fitzgerald is one of the undiscovered directors of his day, and he proves that you don't need unlimited budget or special effects to make a really powerful movie. He simply shows us life in all its painful glory and doesn't try to sugar coat it for anybody. He takes a growing social problem and makes sure we don't forget just how much it is affecting the world, and he makes it look easy.
Part of the reason he was so successful was because of the talented acting core he had to work with. Don McKellar doesn't usually come to mind when you think of outstanding actors, but he sure delivered a fine performance here. Olympia Dukakis plays Lila, Matt's mother, and if she isn't wonderful to watch, then nobody ever has been. She plays the mother that isn't concerned about the negative aspects of her son or his life, she just loves her kid. She shows the true beauty of motherhood and unconditional love in a way that few women have ever done on film. And finally there is the lovely and erotic Sarah Polley. I don't care what she's in, I just have a hard time taking my eyes off her. She seems to command my attention wherever she is on screen, and she always rewards the attention when it is given.
I had a chance to speak with her after the show was over, and I was really impressed with her. She doesn't seem to be stuck on herself and is a rather humble little thing. As good as she can be, she could have already made a household name for herself, and she hasn't let that get in her way. She sticks to the independent movies because she can make the movies with a purpose. She can do what she enjoys and feel good about it at the end of the day, because she's not in it solely for the money. As an actress, she has the ability to impact the lives of millions and she seems to take that responsibility seriously. She doesn't do the fluff that makes you rich, she only does what she believes in. And speaking of which, just about everyone involved in the movie said the only reason they took it was because they had someone close to them go through the same thing. Olympia Dukakis said that she had been to two such events and was forever changed by them. And that my friends, is the power of independent movies. They aren't made for the money, but to share the ideas contained in them. And this one has some pretty potent ideas. The other thing that really impressed me was how the director handled the situation with 9/11. The movie was filmed shortly thereafter and he included a nice little scene showing how it affected the characters in the movie. It was just a quick little scene, but I was surprised at how much it meant to me and how much I was thinking about it after the movie had already ended.
The Event refers to the assisted suicide of a young man Matt (Don McKellar). Matt has AIDS and has just about run the course of conventional treatments. There are about to be no cocktails left and nothing to look forward to but a long and painful death. Matt has been living with AIDS for seven years now and doesn't want to go out that way. If he's got to go out, he's going out on his own terms: his way and at his time. So he enlists the help of several friends, rounding up as many potent prescription drugs as they can get their hands on. Then a party is thrown to celebrate his departure from earth, and to have one last fling before dying. And then it's time to get it over with and Matt is assisted with his suicide.
Now all of that is all that Nick (Parker Posey) has to work with. She works as a lawyer for the state of New York and has received notice that Matt did not die of natural causes. It's up to her to find out who helped Matt kill himself, and the more she learns about the event, the more it impacts her (as well as the viewer).
And what we are left with is a movie with a cause. This is all about the AIDS epidemic and how it affects everyone, one person at a time. Now I personally haven't known anyone with AIDS, or anyone who was helped in committing suicide, but I found myself emotionally worn out when the credits started rolling. I however, was the exception to the rule, and continually heard one sniffling sound after another (from the rest of the audience) and knew that this was a movie with some emotional kick to it. This is not a feel good movie; this is not a comedy that you can simply walk away from. This one is going to linger in the back (and probably even the front) of your mind for quite some time. It has some exceptionally powerful themes and images, and is a credit to the art of movie directing. Thom Fitzgerald is one of the undiscovered directors of his day, and he proves that you don't need unlimited budget or special effects to make a really powerful movie. He simply shows us life in all its painful glory and doesn't try to sugar coat it for anybody. He takes a growing social problem and makes sure we don't forget just how much it is affecting the world, and he makes it look easy.
Part of the reason he was so successful was because of the talented acting core he had to work with. Don McKellar doesn't usually come to mind when you think of outstanding actors, but he sure delivered a fine performance here. Olympia Dukakis plays Lila, Matt's mother, and if she isn't wonderful to watch, then nobody ever has been. She plays the mother that isn't concerned about the negative aspects of her son or his life, she just loves her kid. She shows the true beauty of motherhood and unconditional love in a way that few women have ever done on film. And finally there is the lovely and erotic Sarah Polley. I don't care what she's in, I just have a hard time taking my eyes off her. She seems to command my attention wherever she is on screen, and she always rewards the attention when it is given.
I had a chance to speak with her after the show was over, and I was really impressed with her. She doesn't seem to be stuck on herself and is a rather humble little thing. As good as she can be, she could have already made a household name for herself, and she hasn't let that get in her way. She sticks to the independent movies because she can make the movies with a purpose. She can do what she enjoys and feel good about it at the end of the day, because she's not in it solely for the money. As an actress, she has the ability to impact the lives of millions and she seems to take that responsibility seriously. She doesn't do the fluff that makes you rich, she only does what she believes in. And speaking of which, just about everyone involved in the movie said the only reason they took it was because they had someone close to them go through the same thing. Olympia Dukakis said that she had been to two such events and was forever changed by them. And that my friends, is the power of independent movies. They aren't made for the money, but to share the ideas contained in them. And this one has some pretty potent ideas. The other thing that really impressed me was how the director handled the situation with 9/11. The movie was filmed shortly thereafter and he included a nice little scene showing how it affected the characters in the movie. It was just a quick little scene, but I was surprised at how much it meant to me and how much I was thinking about it after the movie had already ended.
One of these days, somebody needs to give Kevin Smith an award of some sort for bringing the fun back into movies. When that day comes, I would be the first in line to support it, but it definitely wouldn't be for movies like this. I suppose that if you keep making movies long enough, a really bad one is doomed to happen, but Kevin Smith should know better than this, and it's pretty sad to see something this stupid come from such a creative mind. While the plot involves Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) traveling to Hollywood to keep a new movie about them from being made, it seemed like the plot was more of an elaborate excuse to throw in all of the old characters from Smith's previous movies. Don't get me wrong now, Smith has had some great characters in the past, but cramming them all into one movie just isn't the right way to go about creating another good movie. Smith used just about every bad movie technique ever conceived of, except copying the fight scene from the Matrix, and it gets a little depressing at times.
Perhaps the most ironic portion of the entire movie is that Jay and Silent Bob get very upset when they learn that people all over the world are writing nasty things about them on the internet. If they thought there were a lot of bad things going around before, I can't wait to see what people are saying about them after this gets seen by a few people. This is really one case where it seemed that Smith needed to make another movie but had no real good ideas for one. He relied far too heavily on old characters instead of creating new ones, and far too much on Jason Mewes' potty mouth to carry them through a tough scene. Instead of creating another memorable scene for the ages, he often relied on stupid one-liners or a celebrity cameo by one of his old friends. There were quite a few funny moments scattered throughout the movie, but it didn't have quite the same feeling that Clerks or Dogma had going for them. That said, it definitely made me want to watch Clerks again, and there was a very classic scene from Good Will Hunting 2, but there just wasn't enough to justify a whole movie. I would like to say that Smith did an excellent of job of getting Ali Larter, Eliza Dushku and Shannon Elizabeth into tight leather, which would make for some excellent wallpaper on your computer. For that we can be eternally grateful, but again, there just wasn't enough for a whole movie. It was nice seeing Jason Biggs "talk" about his American Pie days, seeing what Scooby Doo has been up to lately, seeing Mark Hamill in a new role, and Shannon Elizabeth being referred to as "Booboo Kitty F-ck," but there were just way too many things done wrong to compete with Smith's earlier work. If you are new to the Jay and Silent Bob movies, this is definitely not the place to start as it feels more like a sequel to all of their other movies, rather than a movie of it's own. If you absolutely love Kevin Smith, then you will easily find enough to keep you laughing, but it's nowhere near as good as his older stuff.
Perhaps the most ironic portion of the entire movie is that Jay and Silent Bob get very upset when they learn that people all over the world are writing nasty things about them on the internet. If they thought there were a lot of bad things going around before, I can't wait to see what people are saying about them after this gets seen by a few people. This is really one case where it seemed that Smith needed to make another movie but had no real good ideas for one. He relied far too heavily on old characters instead of creating new ones, and far too much on Jason Mewes' potty mouth to carry them through a tough scene. Instead of creating another memorable scene for the ages, he often relied on stupid one-liners or a celebrity cameo by one of his old friends. There were quite a few funny moments scattered throughout the movie, but it didn't have quite the same feeling that Clerks or Dogma had going for them. That said, it definitely made me want to watch Clerks again, and there was a very classic scene from Good Will Hunting 2, but there just wasn't enough to justify a whole movie. I would like to say that Smith did an excellent of job of getting Ali Larter, Eliza Dushku and Shannon Elizabeth into tight leather, which would make for some excellent wallpaper on your computer. For that we can be eternally grateful, but again, there just wasn't enough for a whole movie. It was nice seeing Jason Biggs "talk" about his American Pie days, seeing what Scooby Doo has been up to lately, seeing Mark Hamill in a new role, and Shannon Elizabeth being referred to as "Booboo Kitty F-ck," but there were just way too many things done wrong to compete with Smith's earlier work. If you are new to the Jay and Silent Bob movies, this is definitely not the place to start as it feels more like a sequel to all of their other movies, rather than a movie of it's own. If you absolutely love Kevin Smith, then you will easily find enough to keep you laughing, but it's nowhere near as good as his older stuff.