Badlands

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie:

          This is the kind of artistic movie I would never ordinarily watch if left to myself, but my friend the cinephile invited me over to watch it one afternoon.

Movie Review

          I had a hard time figuring out what to make of this movie.  At first, it seemed like a commentary on the poor decisions of teenagers in love. But as the movie progressed, it became clear the main characters were psychopaths, and that the movie had little generalizability to the broader human condition.  Which made me wonder what the point of the whole thing was.  Also the pace was too slow for me.

            Internet research reveals the movie was based of the real life case of Charles Starkweather (W), and this knowledge makes me appreciate it slightly more. Still, though…

Other Things I’d Talk About If I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words

* I’d repeat some of the stuff that my friend the Cinephile told me about this film’s social and cultural impact, but then say that for all that, I still didn’t really dig this film.

Links

Since I clearly didn’t get this film, I might as well link to some people who did.  Roger Ebert’s 4 star appraisal here.  And the AVclub’s take here and here.

Rating

3 out of 10 stars (Since people who are more intelligent than me rate this film much higher, I should make the disclaimer that this is a subjective rating reflecting my personal impressions, and not an attempt to objectively determine this film’s value.)

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky - Rightward Shift of US Politics