MaestroReviews

Deb and I are artists, painters actually. We go see films as often as once a week. That's right, we go to the theater and sit in a dark room with strangers to see movies. We rarely rent. We like "little" movies, foreign and documentary films. We try to stay away from mainstream and blockbusters whenever possible, but a couple sneak in each year. We seek out the obscure. We try to avoid violent movies, and that really limits our choices, most film makers seem to think violence makes a story interesting.
I try not to give anything away in the reviews, but offer an honest reaction.
We rate them 1~10, 10 being highest.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Of Gods and Men

Deb 4 Me 4

Another monastery movie… This came highly recommended and I just can’t get enough of monks on screen. It’s a great title, anything that begins with Of is automatically interesting. This is a docudrama of events that took place in Algeria in the 1990s. It is in French and subtitled in English; I’m always amazed how similar the two languages are. I actually knew nothing about the movie; but it was rated PG so I figured I couldn’t go wrong (wrong).

Again my problem isn’t so much with the movie as the rating system. How many murder mutilations are kids invited to see before a movie is rated R? I really didn’t expect to see any and I found my eyes being diverted not only from the certain scenes, but actually avoiding reading the subtitles when describing atrocities that happen off screen. Whatta wuss.

The movie was really hard for me to rate. Parts were brilliant, sucking me in and keeping me there until another scene, which sent me off to distraction. There was a huge transition from pastoral to grinding tension, which was done quite well. Eventually the tension took over, on purpose, and you just follow along like a puppy.

If an average movie is 5, I guess I liked it a bit less. I do not recommend you see it.

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