Posted on 12/29/2012 11:33:18 AM PST by Signalman
Movies like Promised Land sometimes make me ashamed to be a liberal. Gus Van Sant’s heartland drama about a natural-gas company trying to take over a small town wants to make the personal political and vice versa, to use its protagonist’s indecision and lack of identity to make a broader point about the corporate, "just doing my job" ethos. But it collapses on all fronts, delivering hot-button platitudes and just-add-water character development.
The protagonist in this case is Steve (Matt Damon, who co-scripted, with John Krasinski, from a story by Dave Eggers), who works for a giant energy company seeking to buy drilling rights to the land owned by members of a rural community. He and his partner Sue (Frances McDormand, typically excellent) go into towns, pretend to be down-home types, get people to sign over the rights, and then move on to the next gig. Sue’s got a family back home, and she has a certain matter-of-factness about her job we can call can-do cynicism: As long as she’s able to pay for schools and whatever else, she’ll do what she has to. (The movie should have been about her.) Steve is a bit more of a cipher. We’re not sure what he wants, and neither is he — and that’s kind of the point.
Or it’s supposed to be, at any rate. Promised Land wants to keep the focus on Damon’s (non-)character, but it also wants to preach.
(Excerpt) Read more at vulture.com ...
You should be ashamed. You should also be lobotomized and sterilized. That's the only way we're going to save the planet.
What Lou said.
You should be ashamed yourself. If we assume that films can have their own integrity based on plausibility and accuracy and depth, then somebody who’s willing to say that a movie is lousy even though she agrees with its politics is worth any number of clowns who just decide whether something is good or not based on their own political views.
Jason Bourne finally remembered who he really was. Turns out he was a dork.
This movie was also funded by UAE... OIL money. Such hypocrites. I despise them.
Matt Damon really needs to be educated before he does things.
That fact that she (presumably) supports abortion, queerness, socialism, gun control, open borders, and the destruction of our natural freedoms far outweighs any points she gets for writing an honest film review.
She should be ashamed. Massively, crushingly ashamed.
I believe the previous poster was shaming the reviewer for vein a lib, not for being a bad reviewer.
I believe the previous poster was shaming the reviewer for being a lib, not for being a bad reviewer.
It looks like a pretty good movie. I will check it out. You guys just get so caught up in wanting a realistic movie but Hollywood is about make believe. Some of you have a hard time with that concept.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about the movie or whether it’s realistic. Its purpose is to disseminate supposed ‘facts’ about fracking and it has already been debunked as utter malarkey on that count. Not to mention numerous reviews giving it the thumbs down in terms of film making quality. Only an idiot would dismiss its purpose and potential effect as propaganda which is what it was made to be.
Sounds like a ripoff of “Local Hero” with none of the smarts, charm or wit.
My mistake. He's actually a he.
If he writes about those things criticize him all you want. But if you choose to attack him -- maybe in pretty graphic terms as the other poster did -- for panning a movie that agrees with his political views, then you're saying you don't care about cinema, and that your opinion of the review doesn't count for anything.
All the "blah, blah, you're not on my side" gets in the way of actually discussing any topic. If that's the point -- the "yay us, boo them" thing that we can do without reading anything or learning anything or forming any actual arguments -- then there isn't much point in discussing any specific topic or subject or in actually reading articles and finding out about anything.
There is no point in discussing anything with liberals. That’s a fact.
The tiger is right. I have been in the oil and gas business 35 years, and started out as a “Landman”, as Matt Damon does in the movie, buying oil and gas leases from farmers and landowners. The movie sensationalizes falsehoods about frac technology which has been safely used my entire career, and the movie propagates falsehoods about evil intentions of energy companies. One thing I am absolutely sure of is evil intentions of the Federal regulators re frac processes. Somebody must want us to not develop American natural resources, and depend on imports instead. Who do you suppose would benefit from continued energy imports to the USA?
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