Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Be Reel- The Man Who Fell to Earth
Released in 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth is a Sci-Fi, drama starring David Bowie, and Candy Clark. A space alien crash lands on planet Earth in search of water for his drought stricken planet. Upon landing he uses his knowledge of advanced technology to create his own company and becomes insanely rich. He uses this money to build a spacecraft to return home to his alien wife and kids, in the process of its construction he falls in love and gets into some trouble with the government. This movie is 2 hours and 19 minutes long, without the 6 unnecessary sex scenes and 9 separate scenes of Bowie drinking water the movie probably wouldn't even be a half hour. Most of the characters are either super boring, annoying or are just really confusing. For example the space alien Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie), crash lands with a British passport (we never learn how he gets it), uses a fake name (for no legitimate reason), arrives on Earth with a ton of money, can crash land into a lake without getting sick but can’t get in a car or elevator without getting sick, the list goes on. As for annoying characters Mary Lou (Clark) is a handful. Mary Lou gets upset that Newton likes his wife more than her, forces nonreligious characters to go to church with her, body shames Newton, when she’s not complaining about something she’s talking about things that don’t matter at all (ex. Why trains make her sad, her thoughts on living in the country, and Frank Sinatra’s suits). Most of the other characters are all boring old white guys so you get them mixed up the whole time. The movie also uses these guys to narrate a few scenes that don’t involve them and make the movie inconsistent, because only a few scenes have narration. The movie is boring, the camera work is questionable at times, there are subplots that tie into nothing and never get fully resolved, the end of the main plot does not even really make sense either. The movie is kind of awful but oddly enough the performances of the actors/actresses and the weird off screen decisions that were made make the movie very watchable. Overall the movie is super odd, kind of boring, but a really fun time to watch.
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This movie is insane! Classic 70s Bowie. The tone of this post is excellent: you’re able to synthesize really incisive analysis with the casual tone of a conversation. Really nice balance here. I’d like to see some more distinction in terms of the subjective and objective qualities of the film watching experience. Maybe multiple paragraphs would have helped. Most of this review is focused on those objective qualities that make this movie poorly made, so it was a bit of a surprise to see you get to the end and mention the fun time you had watching it. Consider how you can communicate that to us. Also, we should see some form of media present on the post, like a scene or an image that helps us (the audience) understand what you’re talking about. Please make sure you also designate this movie (in this case, it seems like Bad Good).
ReplyDeleteI think that the one long paragraph structure is somewhat strenuous for the reader, maybe next time break up the paragraph into smaller paragraphs. I like the character breakdown(s) telling the reader who to look out for, in this,(in terms of annoyance) before even watching the film. Maybe elaborate more on what goes on in the movie, though the bit about the unnecessary sex scenes and water drinking scenes are a funny anecdote. It is a bit strange that you found the movie boring, but fun, maybe elaborate why?
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