Matters of Life and Death July 18th, 2007
Don’t take this review the wrong way. Joseph Mazzello is a really nice guy, and cares a lot about his art. He’s got a lot of potential in the film world and clearly knows, at least mechanically, how to make a film. I mean, he DID go to film school!
Matters of Life and Death (MOLAD – going for the CHUD effect, I think) took 2 years and $50,000 to make and only takes 30 minutes to watch. I’m not sure who got the raw deal on this particular dichotomy.
Ostensibly, this film is a vignette about a trio of siblings trying to cope with the death of their parents. The opening scene is very well shot, and the jarring exposition of the premise makes for a lot of promises that the subsequent 29 minutes will repeatedly fail to keep. Almost immediately, everything goes horribly wrong – filmwise, not plotwise.
Emily (Rachel Leigh Cook), the oldest, is the executor of the estate. Of course, she is vaguely drug-addicted, and her interests are with her vaguely thuggish boyfriend.
David (Joseph Mazzello) is the middle child who is vaguely normal and as second-in-command or whatever, is actually trying to keep things together.
Jon (Nick Heyman) is the youngest of the three and is still in high school. He doesn’t really give us anything up front.
Jon doesn’t want to go back to school. David tells him he has to, and if he doesn’t he can’t play in the baseball game. They swear at each other a lot. Nothing happens, Jon goes to school.
Emily might be stealing the estate checks. David learns about this, apparently, from a letter he gets in the mail. David goes to Emily’s apartment and she is vaguely suffering from a drug overdose, maybe. There is an intense (comically long) staring match between David and Emily’s boyfriend. Nothing happens, boyfriend leaves, David takes Emily to the hospital.
Jon hits a home run at the BIG GAME and impresses the TALENT SCOUTS. Jon and David have a Maverick/Iceman moment.
The doctor calls and Emily is going to be ok. The next day. After her drug overdose. She just needed to sleep it off, I guess.
Here we could have gone anywhere, but Mr. Mazzello wants his movie to MAKE A STATEMENT so he pushes the big red button and ties it all in with 9-11. Yes you read that correctly. After a barely-there script, some really sloppy editing, and some overdone performances (“Look mom, I’ve got RANGE!”) he cops it all out with 9-11 as if to say, “Look people – if you don’t like my film then the terrorists win and you are insensitive to national grief.”
COME ON MAN AT LEAST PRETEND TO TRY.
Matters of Life and Death, 2007, 29 minutes, Unrated.
I give it 2/5 stars.
This movie is definitely/probably better/worse if you are drinking.
