Amy

This movie isn't black or white and shows the complexity of character. Two boys are at conflict with each other. The movie opens showing 15-year-old Janno herding cattle with a whip that he cracks to the ground to get the cows moving. You can tell that Janno has done this a thousand times, and his plodding movements reveal his monotonous life. But he's a "good boy" and works hard on the farm for his family which consists of an overly religious mom, a strict rough father, and three little sisters whose characters are never developed. To his family's surprise, the mother adopts Pieter, a roughened orphan who has lived on the streets. The mother urges Janno to embrace Pieter, and Janno struggles with this. Janno is gentle and sensitive. Pieter is rough and hard-core. Janno feels threatened by Pieter, fearing his mother loves Pieter more, perhaps because he's stronger. Strength is something his mother understands and values, more so than Janno's gentleness. It's heartbreaking to watch Janno hug his mother, and her touch is cold, and then she pulls her son off her. The two boys touch at being close, like brothers—they jump off a cliff into the water and are delighted... they go "clubbing" (South African style) together... Pieter defends Janno when his friend snub Janno off... but Janno can't open his heart to Pieter, and it's doubtful if Pieter would accept Janno's heart if he did. SPOILER ALERT AHEAD: What I found interesting was when Pieter told Janno that his mother was dead inside, like he himself is. Pieter may think he's dead inside, but he fell apart when Janno left him at the end of the film.

I was on pins and needles watching this film because I was terrified that something bad would happen to the dog. The main character (named Paterson) tied his dog outside a bar every night in a bad area. Every morning when I saw that the dog made it home, alive, my blood pressure returned to normal. Near the end of the movie, Paterson muttered the only negative thing that ever came out of this mouth: "Dog, I don't like you." Uh-oh, I thought, now Paterson is going to finally unleash his incredibly controlled and tranquil emotions and finally get real, and go berserk. But nope. Paterson remains incredibly calm and tranquil. Paterson and his gorgeous wife were unreal, like Barbie and Ken. They were so ridiculously kind to each other. First, her dream is to sell cupcakes. Then, her dream is to become a rock star, and she buys this expensive guitar with Paterson's money. I waited for Paterson to blow up when the bill came. Nope, he remains sedated and calm and tranquil and peaceful and loving. He asks his wife if the guitar will be hand delivered, and she has no clue. I thought the guitar might get stolen or lost in delivery. Nope. It was delivered perfectly, just as absolutely perfect as their relationship. Then she learns to play a song in about two hours. Took me weeks. I thought maybe Paterson would hit a pedestrian while driving his bus. Nope. After the bus broke down and Paterson came home, I thought he got fired and couldn't tell his wife. He seemed so upset, so bottled up. Nope. His mundane life remained perfect. Despite all my sarcasm, I liked this movie, in a way. This movie was boring, but so is life. This movie reflected life. Poor little boyfriend with the glasses. My heart went out to him. I actually write poetry, and I'm sorry, but his poetry was terrible. Thank GOD the dog was okay! Now I can sleep tonight.

This unique movie tries too hard. Francis Ford Coppola is hell-bent on appearing as "such an artist". Matt Dillon is an excellent actor, but god-like Coppola had only a rough sketch of a script and had them simply ad-lib so his movie seemed even more artistic. It was over the top, rambled on and on and on (Ramble Fish), and never "tied the knot" on any of its themes. It was kind of like letting a bunch of frogs lose and hoping they go to the finish line, but instead, they hop all over the place in too many different directions. My favorite character was the buck-toothed little sister. She was a riot!

Some of these reviews baffle me when people say that the beginning of Season 1 and Season 2 were slow. Hell-OOO... a man gets stabbed in the first twenty minutes in one series, and two people get poisoned at the beginning of another series. I'm not sure how that's considered slow or boring. I watched all 4 seasons (it's now (August 2024) and was hooked right away, especially in Season 1. I thought Season 1, Cora, was the best. I couldn't wait to see why the main character did what she did. My second favorite season was a toss-up between Season 2 or 3 (Julian or Jamie). I believe I liked Season 3, Jamie, better, but it was darker. I wish Julian focused more on the boy and why he did what he did instead of who his parents were. I thought the relationship between Harry and the boy was interesting. (This is beside the point, but the boy's face looked like a man, but he had a boy's body, and it was weird). I just finished watching Season 4 with Percy and the fishermen. While I enjoyed it, it was too convoluted with too many characters to keep track of. Harry, the detective, is the only character in all 4 seasons. He's a troubled soul with a difficult past that they only touch on. You see him holding his breath, showing little emotion, staying calm when he should be angry at someone. He grows on you and you want to hold him as if he's a little boy. I wish the writers would focus more on his past. I believe they will give us little touches in future seasons.

Extremely convoluted. Thick plot. I wish they had given more depth to one or two issues instead of introducing 100 plots, and only skimming each plot before diving into the next. It was hard to follow. They added too many characters to keep track of by the end of Season 2 and in Season 3. The acting, however, was good, and it had an interesting premise. PREMISE: In the future, humans are near-extinct due to mistakes we're making during our time right now (2024). Future people (called Travelers) have found a way to enter a person's consciousness (from our time) at the precise time of their death (death of a 2024 person). That way, Travelers aren't killing anyone; the 2024 person would have died anyway. Travelers enter the bodies of young people who usually die from accidents. The Travelers form teams and try to save humanity. There are thousands of Travelers all around the world. The series focuses on five. These five form a team. What's interesting is that the Travelers are ruled by "The Director", a god-like computer who knows all possibilities, outcomes, and algorithms. The Travelers inadvertently change the future (inevitable) (the future is CONSTANTLY changing due to their actions), and thus, a rebellious group called THE FACTION is formed, which opposes "The Director." The Travelers view THE FACTION as terrorists, but THE FACTION simply wants to be ruled by humans, not a machine. They have a point, tho they're portrayed as the enemy. It shocks me when reviewers equate this with Star Trek, which was a gem that was easy to follow while being intelligent. TRAVELERS was intelligent, or tried to be, but was over the top.

I love when I learn about history or another culture when I watch a movie. This was the case here. I didn't know that Hawaii had many Japanese immigrants living and working on the Big Island during the turn of the century. I had forgotten that coffee was their main financial pull. I didn't know that the Japanese were prejudiced against children who they labeled as "half-breeds." That tiny little "half-breed" Asian boy in the beginning of the story stole my heart. It shocked me how people on the street let a six-year-old orphan boy roam unattended. Then, due to red-tape and prejudice, it took Doc about a decade to adopt this boy. What happened to grandma? Did she become homeless?

I couldn’t figure out if this movie was about self-discovery, or a love story. Perhaps it was a little of both, but for me, it was more about self-discovery, because of its ending. (Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the ending). A quiet introverted boy who aspires to be a musician meets a wacky lose-spirited girl who aspires to be a hippie. At first, he is cold to her after she falls on him from a tree and inadvertently breaks his nose. So when I was trying to see who this character was, I thought he was a bit cold. The girl was kind. As the story unfolds, these roles reverse. She chases him… he finally gives in… they fall in love… then she dumps him. She goes off with her ex (no longer an ex?) (oh wait, she’s free-spirited), and goes on a 'menage a trois’ with her ex and his mindless girlfriend (who is also her best friend). Free love at its finest. Reality was somewhat stretched when quiet boy flies from London to Nevada, where wacky girl is attending a hippie festival in the middle of nowhere. It’s ‘The Burning Man’ festival, a cross between Woodstock and a psychedelic Native American opioid experience for hundreds of teens. Reality if further stretched when the boy arrives at the festival against impossible odds. After the boy arrives in Nevada, he’s in the middle of nowhere, where there seems to be only him, one other man, and one single taxi. The other man approaches the taxi driver (who is sitting on the hood of his taxi) and asks for a ride. The taxi-man tells him to walk, since he’s overweight and could use the exercise. The taxi-man is over-weight himself. The boy shyly asks the taxi-man for a ride and is denied. There seems to be no other transportation out of the open desert field of nothing. The taxi-man has a change of heart and ends up driving the quiet boy a ride across the desert to The Burning Man festival. Reality is ridiculously stretched when the quiet boy is denied entry into the festival because he has no ticket, ()tickets were sold out months ago)… but wha-LA — the taxi-man, like Mr. Oz, appears with two tickets, having sold his taxi. The boy is IN. The boy wanders through hippie-land knowing no one, seeing flashing lights, tents, and kids happily freaking out on drugs. He miraculously stumbles on wacky girl with her ex and her best friend. The wacky folks turn the boy away. He doesn’t fit in. He tries to win the wacky girl over with a song he wrote for her. It works. He hangs with the wacky group, a nerd among druggies, a dove among hornets. It’s clear he doesn’t fit in. But then he does. He even rolls in the mud with them, literally. He loves her, and she loves him, even though any form of structure goes against her ways, and this boy is rather structured. She wants to float among the clouds. He is grounded. I won’t ruin it from here. No spoilers. However, I loved the ending. Contrary to the beginning, the ending was rooted in reality. You have to see it to decide for yourself. This story was somewhat of a modern ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’, the Greek mythology. The quiet boy was Orpheus. The wacky girl was Eurydice. The wacky girl’s best friend (who was her ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend) was named Penelope, and Penelope had a mean streak. Out of jealousy, she sabotaged the relationship between quiet boy and wacky girl. This was Persephone in the Greek story. The wacky girl’s ex-boyfriend looked a bit devilish and was pure hedonistic, and he was Hades. Or perhaps he was Aristaeus. The taxi-man was Charon. The festival itself is hell.