anjru
Joined Aug 2003
Welcome to the new profile
Our updates are still in development. While the previous version of the profile is no longer accessible, we're actively working on improvements, and some of the missing features will be returning soon! Stay tuned for their return. In the meantime, the Ratings Analysis is still available on our iOS and Android apps, found on the profile page. To view your Rating Distribution(s) by Year and Genre, please refer to our new Help guide.
Badges2
To learn how to earn badges, go to the badges help page.
Reviews13
anjru's rating
In Shame, Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan play brother and sister who share a disturbing past that they only hint at, leaving film-goers to guess what happened to them as children and teenagers as their emotionally-crippled adult years unfold.
Fassbender's Brandon Sullivan is a thirty-something businessman who is relationally disabled. He seems incapable of connecting with anyone except through random, fleeting and sometimes dangerous sexual encounters. Mulligan's Sissy Sullivan, a lounge singer, craves a connection with her brother, a caring relationship. However, he is incapable of connecting with her except for fleeting moments of affection.
One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Brandon and his smarmy married boss, played by James Badge Dale, go to the club where Sissy is performing. Her rendition of Frank Sinatra's New York, New York is spellbinding, as is her brother's unfolding reaction to it.
Shame is rated NC17. There are a number of graphic scenes of full frontal nudity, threesomes, prostitutes, explicit language and more. None of it is gratuitous or particularly titillating because, what always comes through above all else is the emptiness and desperation in Brandon. He seems to wish to find a way out, but always to no avail.
As someone else wrote, this is not a good "first-date movie." Shame is not for everyone. It is compelling, disturbing and well-acted and directed. If you have a stomach for a disturbing film and a slice of the times we live in, check it out.
Fassbender's Brandon Sullivan is a thirty-something businessman who is relationally disabled. He seems incapable of connecting with anyone except through random, fleeting and sometimes dangerous sexual encounters. Mulligan's Sissy Sullivan, a lounge singer, craves a connection with her brother, a caring relationship. However, he is incapable of connecting with her except for fleeting moments of affection.
One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Brandon and his smarmy married boss, played by James Badge Dale, go to the club where Sissy is performing. Her rendition of Frank Sinatra's New York, New York is spellbinding, as is her brother's unfolding reaction to it.
Shame is rated NC17. There are a number of graphic scenes of full frontal nudity, threesomes, prostitutes, explicit language and more. None of it is gratuitous or particularly titillating because, what always comes through above all else is the emptiness and desperation in Brandon. He seems to wish to find a way out, but always to no avail.
As someone else wrote, this is not a good "first-date movie." Shame is not for everyone. It is compelling, disturbing and well-acted and directed. If you have a stomach for a disturbing film and a slice of the times we live in, check it out.
Knuckle is a sad story about various factions of one family of Irish Travelers who settle decades-long animosity toward one another through bare-knuckle battles that take place in obscure areas across the Irish landscape. Modern technology plays a big role in their feud. The fights, that pit the toughest men in each of the families against one another, are filmed for immediate viewing by all competing families.
Although the battles, billed as "fair fights" with impartial referees from non-combatant families, show the fighters giving their all, win or lose, it is the insulting and disparaging commentary, captured on film after the fights by the victors' clan members that fuel the feud for years to come. There are isolated shots of women and children. One woman, in particular, spoke at length about the need for all of this to come to an end. The greatest sadness in the film is the legacy that the feuding and fighting brings to the children who are doomed to follow in their dads and uncles footsteps, if not as fighters certainly as haters. One might conclude that these feuding families found a safer way of dealing with their hostility toward one another than shooting or stabbing.
Filmed over a decade-long period from the mid-1990's to mid-2000's, viewers are offered only a glimmer of hope that things could change. But even this is marred by the reality that all it takes is a slight, an insult or a "dis" that could change things in a moment. As for the fighting itself, film-goers will see quite a few bloody battles, one with two out-of-shape grandfathers. But there is nothing to compare with professional boxing or mixed martial arts. These were pure street fights with some grabbing, gouging and biting (although all of that was cause for disqualification). As someone one who knows just enough about boxing I kept wondering, throughout all of the fights, why none of the combatants went for the body.
Although the battles, billed as "fair fights" with impartial referees from non-combatant families, show the fighters giving their all, win or lose, it is the insulting and disparaging commentary, captured on film after the fights by the victors' clan members that fuel the feud for years to come. There are isolated shots of women and children. One woman, in particular, spoke at length about the need for all of this to come to an end. The greatest sadness in the film is the legacy that the feuding and fighting brings to the children who are doomed to follow in their dads and uncles footsteps, if not as fighters certainly as haters. One might conclude that these feuding families found a safer way of dealing with their hostility toward one another than shooting or stabbing.
Filmed over a decade-long period from the mid-1990's to mid-2000's, viewers are offered only a glimmer of hope that things could change. But even this is marred by the reality that all it takes is a slight, an insult or a "dis" that could change things in a moment. As for the fighting itself, film-goers will see quite a few bloody battles, one with two out-of-shape grandfathers. But there is nothing to compare with professional boxing or mixed martial arts. These were pure street fights with some grabbing, gouging and biting (although all of that was cause for disqualification). As someone one who knows just enough about boxing I kept wondering, throughout all of the fights, why none of the combatants went for the body.
The Help is a very good movie about institutional racism in the deep south in the early 1960's (in Jackson, Mississippi around the time that Medgar Evers was murdered). If you read the earlier reviews you will already know that the help are the black housemaids that handled white folks' housekeeping and child care.
There are many fine performances all the way around. The actresses who play the help are excellent. Two of them deserve consideration when award season comes around again. The actresses who play the seething, detestable, racist oppressors of the help are portrayed as one-dimensional cartoonish characters. One exception is a ditsy, white- trash-blonde-sexpot with a heart of gold who married up. It turns out that she is also on the receiving end the wrath of the southern belles. To conjure an image of the belles, imagine a race-baiting June Cleaver, pearls and all, with a deep-south accent and nasty disposition added to her sweet side. For the ditsy blond, gather up and image of Ellie May Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies.
The only multi-dimensional white woman in the film is the southern girl who is hell-bent on breaking the mold. She returns from college and decides to write an expose of the help; with the help of the help. She enlists the maids to be her confederates in her clandestine operation.
Although somewhat predictable, the film is engaging, moving, sad, enraging, funny and well staged and performed by all of the actors. I enjoyed The Help and I think you will too.
There are many fine performances all the way around. The actresses who play the help are excellent. Two of them deserve consideration when award season comes around again. The actresses who play the seething, detestable, racist oppressors of the help are portrayed as one-dimensional cartoonish characters. One exception is a ditsy, white- trash-blonde-sexpot with a heart of gold who married up. It turns out that she is also on the receiving end the wrath of the southern belles. To conjure an image of the belles, imagine a race-baiting June Cleaver, pearls and all, with a deep-south accent and nasty disposition added to her sweet side. For the ditsy blond, gather up and image of Ellie May Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies.
The only multi-dimensional white woman in the film is the southern girl who is hell-bent on breaking the mold. She returns from college and decides to write an expose of the help; with the help of the help. She enlists the maids to be her confederates in her clandestine operation.
Although somewhat predictable, the film is engaging, moving, sad, enraging, funny and well staged and performed by all of the actors. I enjoyed The Help and I think you will too.