Love Liza (www.derf.net)

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movie reviews

Love Liza ... movie reviews
sat 2004-sep-18 01:54:40 pdt ... permalink

Tonight we went to our local indie DVD rental place and walked out with Love Liza. I remembered seeing a trailer for it, but didn't remember much about it other than what's on the box -- Philip Seymour Hoffman looking depressed.

Anyway, it was good. I mean, I enjoyed it, although some parts are kind of painful to watch and a lot is fairly depressing. I would complain that the story is really unfocused and meandering, except that I think that that is very much by design. The film's depiction of the feeling of being emotionally lost after the suicide of a loved one certainly feels believable (though clearly I can't speak to whether it's accurate). Hoffman's performance is terrific, and his brother's script is at least in this respect quite well-written.

I guess the question is whether conveying this one single feeling is enough to carry a whole movie... And in the end, I think it was. But it would have been nice (and probably would have made for a better film) if there had been more of an arc, more personal growth. To the extent that anything changes over the course of the story, it doesn't really feel like we get to see it change, to see what effects the change...

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reader comments on this entry:

fri 2004-sep-24 19:02:45 pdt
posted by leigh

That movie was really interesting. It was so obscure in some ways. I did not know about gas addiction prior ... I had never heard of it, so i spent a decent chunk of the movie trying to wrap my brain around that.

Addiction in itself is very upsetting to me so the movie brought up a lot of feelings (my parents were heavy into coke when i was little, my dad was an alcoholic, blah blah).

I just found myself feeling so tense as I watched his life fall apart, seeing this person who seemed unable to focus thru the haze of his internal tortures. (i get super emotionally involved in movies)

I love Kathy bates and thought her hair looked completely awesome. She's the rad.

I felt almost regretful after I watched the movie. A few days later I reflected on it and decided I was glad I watched it, but it's definately not something I would ever watch again.