| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
A |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A- |
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| Visuals: |
A |
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The Critics Need to Get a 'Llife'
by mjollnir (movies profile)
May 16, 2008
8
of
11 people found this review helpful
The reviewers - for the most part - have badly misread and misinterpreted "The Life Before Her Eyes".
It is NOT about a Columbine-type school massacre (although one takes place).
It does NOT have a trick ending (the ending, while shocking, is implicit in the title and depends on a wonderfully artistic conceit).
It is NOT about 'survivor guilt' or any of the other pop-psych catch-phrases that writers use when they can't get in touch with their creativity. This will become quite clear by the end of the picture.
It IS about moral choices, and will haunt you long after such critically acclaimed 'masterpieces' as "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" have mercifully wandered off into the back-corner dustbin part of your memory with the rest of the pretentious twaddle that mesmerizes modern-day movie reviewers...and will puzzle the hell out of pundits of the future, as they ponder just exactly what the devil was going on back then.
It IS beautifully shot and superbly acted.
(Although the script does contain two nit-picky anachronisms that somebody should have caught; hopefully you won't notice)
It IS a superb film, the best I've seen so far this year...and I go to the movies a lot.
But it is also disturbing. Profoundly so. I wouldn't forbid my teenage (or any other age) daughter to see it.
But I wouldn't take her. |
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