moviemcpeake snippet: If you like quirky (think life aquatic and royal tenenbaums) then you will love this film. It is daring, perverse, and just down right hysterical. Casting, setting, and storyline all flowed well together.
moviemcpeake snippet: Great sports film. Will own and watch many more times. A bit more focused on his life instead of the football story but inspirational and great soundtrack.
recommendation: if you like sports films, then this film is for you.
moviemcpeake snippet: I was mesmerized by the leading ladies. This is a great story that sucks you in and I didn’t want it to end. You really feel part of their world and it was a lot of fun being a part of it. The ending however could stand a bit of a rewrite. Overall wonderful.
recommendation: for sure see. own it if you like easy dramas.
moviemcpeake snippet: What a sad journey to be taken on. I was immersed in a world of fear, hatred, and unhappiness. For a brief moment one breathes a sigh of relief that this doesn’t happen today but that is probably the saddest thing about this story is that it does. Many groups of people find themselves in communities that do not support homosexual relationships. Blue collar, farming, ranching to rappers, politicians, and rural areas, among the few. Many people are still forced to hide, to pretend, to be unhappy.
Brokeback Mountain is the story of two men that have an intense, emotional, physical need for each other. Their secret relationship tears at their “other” families. Their wives, their children, their parents all seem to know but are either in denial or choose to ignore it. It ruins both men as they struggle with anger, fear, acceptance, and deal with a hole in their hearts that only heals when they are together. Only twice a year “fishing” trips allow them to heal but each departure rips the hole even bigger.
This film does a lot of things well. The greatest, being cinematography. Wow! The scenery is so amazing and compliments the story, as well as, becoming the narrator for the film. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal do outstanding jobs acting as lovers and as individuals struggling with their needs, their secrets. Randy Quaid’s small role is also handled well and shows his range. I am not sure that I understand any nominations for the wives (played by Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams). Not because they did not perform well on screen but I did not feel that they had enough presence in this story.
As an independent film, it really plays it safe. This is an independent film marketed and created for the hopes of the mass market. I hate that it is dated because this story resonates across many decades and today. The story needs to show more of the relationship’s intimacy. I am not talking about more sex scenes but they rarely even touch each other which I fell this is untrue to their characters and the relationship. There are two important scenes that show the fear, the hate, the pain. One of the stories is a wedge that is driven between the two men. Two hate crime scenes. The film pans over them like they are not significant moments but a transition scene. This is unfortunate because these scenes could have provided the gut sick emotion that this film was intending to give its audience.
Overall, I love that so many audiences and theaters have embraced this film. We have taken many strides in as fellow neighbors that we at least live in a society where the making and viewing of this film is mass marketed and people aren’t taken aback or protesting theaters. In a time were oppressed groups are beginning to feel and fight harder for a shift in popular views, more brave films like Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain need to share these stories of oppression, of lives unable to freely pursue their lives, to be a constant reminder that these stories are still among us, living and breathing. I hang my hat to the actors and the director who bravely took us to this world and did it so beautifully.
recommendation: see it and let it impact you.
moviemcpeake snippet: The perfect way to start off the Oscar Cram. I can only hope it will get some sort of nomination. Heart warming documentary. Pulls at your emotions. Touching. [Insert Adjective] Think of every positive adjective that you could use to describe a film and it would go here. This feel good film tells the story of a sensitive man who goes outside of the norm of his rural Illinois community and struggles to keep his love, his family’s farm alive and breathing.
No matter where Farmer John goes or what he does he is unable to escape the family farm that is calling him. He was born to sculpt dirt. John is not your typical farmer. Creative and liberating, John loves surrounding himself among artists and eccentrics as he rebuilds the barns and the farm to become the “Midwest Coast” safe haven and creative inspiration for painters, film makers, writers, and friends. They paint, they field. They mediate, they plow. They create rumors.
In the meantime, the small rural community known for helping its neighbors begins to fear their neighbor. Farm John is too different, he upsets their cattle, he ruins his good family name. He describes the situation best. “Farming Communities create a floor and a ceiling. When you need help, they build a floor for you to stand upon, but when you want to do things differently than that same community, builds a ceiling to box you in.” (paraphrase). There are so many great things about farming and this film embraces them. It embraces the importance of the earth and a sense of self. You find yourself desperately needing him to be successful at this thing that keeps torturing him but also loves him. It is such a volatile relationship which makes his narrative real and the emotions fragile.
I can’t think of a better recent American documentary. This film is small, short, and to the point. I learned so much about organic farming, the CSA program (CSA allows us city folk to get weekly organic produce at an affordable rate), and how prejudices spread across all fields of life. In an hour and a half it took me on a soft ride of emotions over and around the universal theme. People are scared of what they don’t understand. Have the courage to see through the pain that comes with prejudices to be able to be free to pursue what you love. Farmer John stays with his calling without compromising his integrity, his character. Because of this courage, he has now created a wonderful world of organic farming that still provides a safe haven for liberation while producing organic products available to every day people living in all types of areas.
recommendation: must see
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