4.5 Razors

The Lisbon Girls

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  • Title: The Virgin Suicides
  • IMDb: link

“Everyone dates the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls.  People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped out elms, the harsh sunlight, and the continuing decline of our auto industry.  Even as teenagers we tried to put the pieces together; we still can’t.  Now, whenever we run into each other at business lunches or cocktail parties, we find ourselves in the corner going over the evidence one more time.  All to understand those five girls who, after all these years, we can’t get out of our minds.”

virgin-suicides-poster

The Lisbon girls were beautiful.  The five daughters of Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner) and Mr. Lisbon (James Woods), a high school teacher, captured the minds and hearts of the neighborhood boys in the early 1970’s in the sleepy Michigan suburbs.

The girls, Therese (Leslie Hayman) 17 years-old, Mary (A.J. Cook) 16, Bonnie (Chelse Swain) 15, Lux (Kirsten Dunst) 14, and Cecila (Hanna Hall) 13, would all be gone in the course of a single year.

In the space of two summers the sleepy suburbs would be woken to the deaths of five beautiful young women, all at their own hands.  The haunting suicides would leave behind unfinished dreams and imaginations by the boys they left behind (Anthony DeSimone, Lee Kagan, Robert Schwartzman, Noah Shebib, and Jonathan Tucker).

What caused such events to occur?  The sheltered life of the girls didn’t help matters, nor the strict homelife.  Was that all?  And if so, was there nothing that could be done?  The film’s characters look back with a tearful eye in wonder.

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Sunshine Shines Bright

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  • Title: Little Miss Sunshine
  • IMDB: link

This is a terrific little film.  It’s sad when movies such as John Tucker Must Die get huge distribution and marketing while truly wonderful smaller films such as this one will struggle to find an audience.  Little Miss Sunshine is worth both your time and money; it’s so good I didn’t want it to end.

Into every life a little rain must fall, into this family…well, wear your galoshes.  Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a self-help guru who is lives his life to “the nine steps,” determined to be a winner and not a loser.  His wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) is trying to keep the family together despite their financial and emotional difficulties.

Son Dwayne (Paul Dano) quietly worships Fredrick Nietche, he’s taken a vow of silence, and spends his time dreaming about a life flying jets.  The grandfather (Alan Arkin) is a heroin addict who’s main philosophy to the younger generation seems to be – sleep with as many women as possible.

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World Trade Center

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  • Title: World Trade Center
  • IMDb: link

Let’s get this out of the way right now – the film does not, in any way, exploit the events of 9/11.  In a strange way, in fact, it celebrates the good that came out of such a horrific tragedy.  Oliver Stone and his cast and crew have rarely been better.  World Trade Center is one of the best movies of the year.

On an otherwise normal September day the unthinkable happens when a commercial airliner runs into the World Trade Center.  Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) leads a group of Port Authority police down to help evacuate the towers.

As the team gathers supplies and travels by bus down to the towers they hear rumors of other planes hitting the towers and the Pentagon.  The information is sketchy, as is their role in this crisis.  As McLoughlin states, there is no plan for a tragedy this size.

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Whodunit?

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  • Title: Who Killed the Electric Car?
  • IMDB: link

This film will make you both incredibly angry and deeply sad.  Once upon a time the United States was known for technological innovation, and it seems for a few years, in the early 90’s, we were again with the revolutionary electric car.  So what happened?  Just who killed the electric car and why?

Who Killed the Electric Car? is structured in two parts.  The first examines the creation of the electric car and its, much too short, history.  The second half of the movie is an investigation for the reasons behind the destruction of the futuristic automobile that was better, cleaner, and cheaper than the gas guzzlers we are driving today.

With interviews by consumers and celebrities who drove the cars, California activists, and a narration by Martin Sheen, the film presents a detailed look at the quick rise, and even faster fall, of an automobile powered by electricity which produced no harmful emissions.

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Dune – Extended Edition

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  • Title: Dune
  • IMDb: link

David Lynch’s 1984 film adaptation of the bible of all sci-fi epics, Frank Herbert’s Dune, has met much criticism over the years for being incomprehensible, indulgent, untrue to the book, and just plain terrible. Love it or hate it, Dune is back in print on a DVD that features its original 2 hour and 15 minute theatrical version as well as the nearly 3 hour TV cut (in Widescreen) that has actually been known to cause some faithful sci-fi fans to Gom Jabbar their own eyes out. If you don’t know what Gom Jabbar means, don’t fret; you’ll still be able to follow my review better than your first three viewings of Dune itself.

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