Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

I went, interested in how a cinematographer does flash backs...well, nothing to learn from this cinematography. Cuts. Period. Boring. But, it is more, a dangerous movie for nothing is rooted out to make one's connection to a cult understandable; the "normal" family is self-serving and shallow: their interest in helping the sister is for their own egos. They have no understanding and little redeeming grace. The sister wavers from being goodie two shoes to yelling at and judging her sister. Her sister takes it as she took the cultists at the farm. If this was to be the point, then, her madness was sorely acted. None of the acting is very good. I cannot believe people gave the film best ensemble awards---why? because they were a group of people together who played back to the earth though were zombie like and you never saw any connection really....that is partly the point, but....yuck....they may have shown some kind of tension, dissonance, craziness...plus, they had not a clue of how to garden.....(so annoying that the faux planting scene with flowers that seemed like they came from Walmart stock from folks who claimed they were learning how to grow their own food on little money)..... All of the kudos going to Olsen are not understandable to me. I did not see her inner struggle with her demons-- little was revealed in her face, or body of her confused emotions....her struggle for meaning and sanity was not believable. Neither the clichéd script nor director gave her any help but she might have tried to find something to redeem the movie beyond a piece that felt like it was made by a kid to jiggle some Halloween frights. Recently I have seen movies that seem to give kudos to actresses who strip to show their big breasts. This seems to be another in that trend. I felt that this movie was culturally unredeeming if not dangerous given all of the cultural wars on the right against hippies; this played into every one of their misinterpreted prejudices and turned it into pure evil while the professional saviors were hardly any better.

I am warning my friends not to waste their time.