The Beach
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Movie Reviews of The Beach
Movie Review: Shark 1 - Sweden 0
Summary: 4 Stars
I really liked The Beach. The concept of travel abroad without reservation is highly appealing. The thought of finding a remote island all to myself is that much more exciting and enticing. There are, however, a few things with which I have problems.
Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an American backpacker in Thailand living a laissez faire existence. He just wants to have fun without the worries of every day life; he wants to explore and enjoy all that there is to offer. In other words, he likes tourism but abhors tourists. Even though he did make it to Bangkok, he didn't make it to Phucket; so, there's an easy joke missed.
After receiving a map in one of the dirtiest hotel rooms ever, from a completely insane guy named Daffy, he links up with a French couple (Guillaume Canet and Virginie Ledoyen) to find the island. They travel by all sorts of means until they finally see the island in the far off distance and decide to swim for it. I was really hoping for a repeat of the Titanic, where Richard/Jack plummets to the bottom of the ocean, but I was disappointed.
Once the trio inevitably makes it to the island, they meet up with a group of like-minded travelers who have set up an isolated community. They sustain themselves by selling some of the copious amounts of illegal pharmaceuticals growing on the island. The problem with this concept, however, is that there are armed Thai drug dealers on the island. Why would they drug dealers allow the other community? Why not just kill everyone and keep all the profits?
Anyway, the trio fit easily into the island way of life, alongside their new family. Every day is filled with sporting events, leisurely activities, and random upkeep of their little utopia. The only real excitement came from sharks that randomly visited the beach for Swedish hor'dourves. I believe my favorite line of the movie went something like: "AHHHGHRRHRGGRRRAAHHH", when the soundtrack took a 180 into eerieness, as a shark littered the water and beach with bloody shreds of flesh, and then flossed with a femur.
In the end, there end up being too many visitors, the drug dealers have had enough of the outsiders, and the community must decide how far they'll go to protect their secret.
Movie Review: LIFE'S A BEACH AND THEN. . . well . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
There is a genre of film we have dubbed It's-So-Hard-Being (Fill In Pampered Stars Name Here) Cinema, in which an obscenely over-paid actor goes through an existential crisis and finds his life, like, totally shallow, and so divorces himself from all those superficial trappings and returns to what's really important. Think of Anthony Hopkins in It-Stinked -- sorry, INSTINCT, Kevin Spacey in AMERICAN BEAUTY, Winona Ryder in GIRL, INTERRUPTED. The resulting performances are usually difficult to swallow since they come from people who spend more money on Melrose Avenue in half an hour than we make in a month. One of the most ridiculous contributions to this largely insufferable collection is from Leonardo DiCaprio, who got paid twenty million clams to get back to nature.
In THE BEACH, director Danny Boyle's hilariously self-serious travelogue, Leo goes to Thailand in search of himself. He overdoses on "Who am I?" voice-overs in the beginning but never really convinces us he's anything more than a Beverly Hills brat in the midst of an amusingly naive rebellion. Roughing it in a fleabag motel, he meets pothead Robert Carlyle, who gives him a map to an island paradise. Since all this navel-gazing would be incomplete without some French influence, Leo teams up with a gorgeous gamine and her equally photogenic boyfriend to find the mythic paradise.
So, what then is the film once it hits the glorious white sands? Is it ROBINSON CRUSOE? Is it LORD OF THE FLIES? Is it beautifully shot and dumb as a coconut rind? The answers are "Not really," "Hell, no," and "You betcha." On the island, Leo goes shirtless, gets a tan, sleeps with two different women for no apparent reason, kills a shark, yells a lot, imagines himself as a character in a video game and saves the tribe from bloodthirsty drug-dealers. No, it doesn't make a shred of sense, but it sure is pretty. Leo bends over backward trying to be a sexy stud, an action hero and a jungle madman, often in the same scene. Not to diminish his talent, but he's just too darn cute for any of it to be believable.
The mediocre reviews originally given to THE BEACH were much too kind. Thank goodness Leo got back to the real basics; making GOOD movies.
Movie Review: I liked this one
Summary: 4 Stars
I did like The Beach despite of it's depressing nature. It certainly is not a "pick me up" kind of a film, but there was just something about the idea of this really happening that is very intriguing to me. I like to daydream and what better movie than to watch to stimulate my imagination. The actors and actresses were great. Tilda Swinton was the "ringleader" if you will, (she also starred as the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia) she just has a very believable presence on film that drew me in the movie. Like the White Witch, she had a haunting aura on film. I found it to be like a differnt version of "Lord of the Flies". There is always evil among people. The movie could have been made a bit better, but over all I would reccommend anyone to give it a shot.Movie Review: PARADISE LOST ?
Summary: 4 Stars
Young male visitor to Thailand circa 1999 finds life of possibilities which never existed 30 years ago. Imagine thinking of this area of the world as an island paradise during Vietnam, Kent State et al. Anyway, Richard (DiCaprio)throws it all away, first by lying about a copy of an island map, then by allowing his sexual emotions to run rampant.He fails to see that the women of a small commune that embraces him are not to be trusted with sexual secrets, especially the dangerous Swinton, the seemingly self appointed ""leader of the pack". He also learns, too late, that pleasure seekers tend to be almost totally selfish and self centered; when the going gets tough, the tough get going-right back to "playland".Whatever, Leo is almost always up to a good piece of acting, and he succeeds here once again. If anything, it's the uneveness of the production, its shallowness that seems to have created an almost entirely split audience of reviewers. Adding superior cinematography does nothing to harm this reviewer's account. Give it a B minus.Movie Review: self indulgence has its price
Summary: 4 Stars
Time has given this controversial movie its audience. It nearly accidentally killed Boyle and it severed his relationship with Ewan Mcgregor*check IMDB for more details. It's a great film for anyone familiar with Danny Boyle; a director who is not happy with giving backstories. This is more obvious in his zombie reinvention genre 28 days later where he puts you 28 days later, literally. Leaving you to pick up your survival knowledge as you tumble along with the proctagonist. Here, he starts things off with Daffy, a shady man who speaks of a mysterious beach isolated from the sea. We never understand why he was outcasted from the island, nor his circumstances. But that's Boyle's style. Leonardo Dicaprio plays Richard, an American who doesn't know metrics and is in permanent seek of the ultimate sensation. Boyle always has an electronic, synthesizer soundtrack. John Murphy more popularly. But in this film it is a mix of cover songs and a few original songs by numerous artists. None by John Murphy to my dissapointment. Tilda Swinton makes a surprising cameo as Sal. Sal is that demented advocate who believes in the community as a check or balance that is beyond necessary, mandated is more like it. We push forward into the reality of the beach and in the end we are TORN out of paradise. I suppose there is no other way to be expelled from paradise but to be forced out, torn out. This is a great movie to further your knowledge of a very gifted director. Listening to his commentary is the best part. His lecture to the end really establishes his many choices for this controversial movie.