The New World, a review by Rick
The New WorldHollywood Legend:
Colin Farrell
Christian Bale 
Sorry - I couldn't even type them as 'Hollywood Legends' without cracking myself up, especially compared to those I have included
I haven't even entered this into DVDP yet, and I may not! I got the Blu-ray cheap a while ago. It was a movie I hadn't seen so decided to watch with my nephew yesterday. My son had warned my not to, but I did.
The movie is about John Smith and Pocahontas, and the native Americans, and settling in a strange land, and communicating with people you don't understand, and apparently trees... lot's of them. Oh yea, and streams.
This thing was so disjointed from the beginning I regretted watching it from about 20 minutes in. It is hard to follow because there is too much stuff thrown in there. It's 172 minutes long with about 40 of them just showing trees and streams. I'm guessing it was supposed to be the director's masterpiece (didn't even look to see who it is but will - so I know NOT to watch his movies). It just had that feel. To me it just came accross as
Even at the end, I knew it was the end and was waiting for the credits to roll. Tyhe show a ship sailing away... then starts the zoom in. V E R Y S L O W. The ship is a few hundred yards off when the scene starts. What seems like 10 minutes later (probably only a minute or two) the are finally zoomed all the way in on a set of rigging for one of the sails
It was this sort of filming throughout. Something would be happening, the scene would end, then we would get to watch a stream for 30 seconds. And did I mention the trees? This guy was fascinated with trees. It looked like he has a crew just sitting in the woods with the instructions of "every time the wind blows make sure you capture it!". The scenes weren't even that good. You would think being in high def it would look OK but the views were too tight to appreciate. No big landscape shots (or very few I should say) If I want to watch all that nature footage I'll put on a Sunrise Earth DVD. At least I won't have to watch the camera man go from a view of a tree, then the s l o w z o o m all the way to a leaf blowing in the wind.
The Native Americans were shown as savages that hardly spoke and mostly used hoots and yells to communicate. The little bit of dialog there was had no subtitles, so you had no idea what was going on. There were a few scenes with the subtitles but most of them you had to just make up what you thought they were saying. Perhaps again this was for each audience member to find their own message in the film. If it was the only message I got was the film was crap! Add to the mix Colin Farrell, who's dialog I couldn't understand at all most of the time. HE could have used subtitles too!
There were battles, which I would usually like. They made no sense half the time though. What was there was done OK. Not too gory and not too fake. I guess there was something positive about the movie.
With it being Thanksgiving weekend I thought I might enjoy a movie about some of the first settlers and their experiences in settling a new land. Unfortunately what I got was close to 3 hours of some directors wet dream of fantastic cinema. I can appreciate movies on many levels and have a varried collection. Very few films I have ever watched get the
rating. There is usually something good in them. Not this one. In fact I think I'll give it a
(From DCO third annual November Alphabet Marathon - discussion/review/banter thread on November 28th, 2009)
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May 21, 2024, 03:16:43 PM
