The Life of David Gale

[Lasher]

We went and saw this movie tonight, and OMFG did this movie suck. I cannot tell you in how many different ways this movie sucked. I was going to try and explain just how badly this movie sucked, but I just read a review of it on imdb.com (which I wish to christ I had read BEFORE leaving for the theatre) and they do a good job of illustrating the level of suckiness this movie reached.

So, from imdb.com:

At first, David Gale seems like the cinematic equivalent of the pseudo-intellectual party guest who has only a few ideas knocking around in his head and proceeds to spout them off at every opportunity.

Then after a mind-boggling left turn, it turns into the guest who puked on your carpet, ruined your flower bed, broke your windows, punched you in the face, kicked your dog, and soiled himself on your couch.

Simply put, Alan Parker should never direct again, and Spacey should be ashamed of himself. Only Linney emerges semi-unscathed; it's as if she walked off the set of a better, more interesting movie about activists as complex individuals and got roped into doing scenes for this one.

- Mark Englehart


It was bad. Just plain fucking bad. So bad that near the end of the movie you're wondering if Kate Winslet will make it off the ship alive.

If you have any plans to see this movie - for God's sake don't do it!!

 

[Cleopatra]

We went and saw this movie tonight, and OMFG did this movie suck. I cannot tell you in how many different ways this movie sucked. I was going to try and explain just how badly this movie sucked, but I just read a review of it on imdb.com (which I wish to christ I had read BEFORE leaving for the theatre) and they do a good job of illustrating the level of suckiness this movie reached.

So, from imdb.com:

At first, David Gale seems like the cinematic equivalent of the pseudo-intellectual party guest who has only a few ideas knocking around in his head and proceeds to spout them off at every opportunity.

Then after a mind-boggling left turn, it turns into the guest who puked on your carpet, ruined your flower bed, broke your windows, punched you in the face, kicked your dog, and soiled himself on your couch.

Simply put, Alan Parker should never direct again, and Spacey should be ashamed of himself. Only Linney emerges semi-unscathed; it's as if she walked off the set of a better, more interesting movie about activists as complex individuals and got roped into doing scenes for this one.

- Mark Englehart


It was bad. Just plain fucking bad. So bad that near the end of the movie you're wondering if Kate Winslet will make it off the ship alive.

If you have any plans to see this movie - for God's sake don't do it!!

So, to recap, it was bad.

Right?

*grin*

 

[Lasher]

Yes, it was bad.

 

[Eumenides]

I don't know the movie, but no one disses Spacey and survives my wrath!

 

[sheath]

The story of David Gale is a compelling one. It's a shame it was portrayed in such a shoddy way. Spacey usually makes any simple lackluster movie into an incredible one...too bad he was off on this.

S.

 

[Summery]

I don't know the movie, but no one disses Spacey and survives my wrath!

Wait until Caly sees this. She is going to be all over it!

I for one, will probably take my chances and see it for myself.

 

[Calamity Jane]

Wow.

Think I'll just cross that one off my list and watch The Usual Suspects again.

 

[Azwed]

I saw this movie and thought it would be intersting but I will just pass it by now.

 

[Spinaroonie]

Ebert gave it ZERO stars.

Find that review... it was pretty good.

 

[Spinaroonie]

The story of David Gale is a compelling one. It's a shame it was portrayed in such a shoddy way. Spacey usually makes any simple lackluster movie into an incredible one...too bad he was off on this.

S.

He wasn't real. It was based off of a play that was based off of a book that was based off of imagination.

 

[Lasher]

The story of David Gale is a compelling one.

It could've been a good movie. The potential was there... But I've just never seen so many hokey suspense gimmicks crammed into one movie. The last half hour or so was like watching a piss poor slasher movie without the slashing.

 

[Lasher]

He wasn't real.

Ooops, meant to mention that in the last post. This David Gale is a fictional character. I believe the director is also a fictional character.

 

[Azwed]

Ooops, meant to mention that in the last post. This David Gale is a fictional character. I believe the director is also a fictional character.

or at least his paycheck will be fictional.

 

[Lasher]

Ebert gave it ZERO stars.

By Roger Ebert:

"The Life of David Gale" tells the story of a famous opponent of capital punishment who, in what he must find an absurdly ironic development, finds himself on Death Row in Texas, charged with the murder of a woman who was also opposed to capital punishment. This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do.

David Gale is an understandably bitter man, played by Kevin Spacey, who protests his innocence to a reporter named Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), whom he has summoned to Texas for that purpose. He claims to have been framed by right-wing supporters of capital punishment because his death would provide such poetic irony in support of the noose, the gas or the chair. Far from killing Constance Harraway (Laura Linney), he says, he had every reason not to, and he explains that to Bitsey in flashbacks that make up about half of the story.

Bitsey becomes convinced of David's innocence. She is joined in her investigation by the eager and sexy intern Zack (Gabriel Mann), and they become aware that they are being followed everywhere in a pickup truck by a gaunt-faced fellow in a cowboy hat, who is either a right-wing death-penalty supporter who really killed the dead woman, or somebody else. If he is somebody else, then he is obviously following them around with the MacGuffin, in this case a videotape suggesting disturbing aspects of the death of Constance.

The man in the cowboy hat illustrates my recently renamed Principle of the Unassigned Character, formerly known less elegantly as the Law of Economy of Character Development. This principle teaches us that the prominent character who seems to be extraneous to the action will probably hold the key to it. The cowboy lives in one of those tumble-down shacks filled with flies and peanut butter, with old calendars on the walls. The yard has more bedsprings than the house has beds.

The acting in "The Life of David Gale" is splendidly done but serves a meretricious cause. The direction is by the British director Alan Parker, who at one point had never made a movie I wholly disapproved of. Now has he ever. The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein.

I am sure the filmmakers believe their film is against the death penalty. I believe it supports it and hopes to discredit the opponents of the penalty as unprincipled fraudsters. What I do not understand is the final revelation on the videotape. Surely David Gale knows that Bitsey Bloom cannot keep it private without violating the ethics of journalism and sacrificing the biggest story of her career. So it serves no functional purpose except to give a cheap thrill to the audience slackjaws. It is shameful.

One of the things that annoys me is that the story is set in Texas and not just in any old state--a state like Arkansas, for example, where the 1996 documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" convincingly explains why three innocent kids are in prison because they wore black and listened to heavy metal, while the likely killer keeps pushing himself onscreen and wildly signaling his guilt. Nor is it set in our own state of Illinois, where Death Row was run so shabbily that former Gov. George Ryan finally threw up his hands and declared the whole system rotten.

No, the movie is set in Texas, which in a good year all by itself carries out half the executions in America. Death Row in Texas is like the Roach Motel: Roach checks in, doesn't check out. When George W. Bush was Texas governor, he claimed to carefully consider each and every execution, although a study of his office calendar shows he budgeted 15 minutes per condemned man (we cannot guess how many of these minutes were devoted to pouring himself a cup of coffee before settling down to the job). Still, when you're killing someone every other week and there's an average of 400 more waiting their turn, you have to move right along.

Spacey and Parker are honorable men. Why did they go to Texas and make this silly movie? The last shot made me want to throw something at the screen--maybe Spacey and Parker.

You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

 

[Pyper]

Bitsey Bloom?

 

[Lasher]

Bitsey Bloom?

Yes, Bitsey. Bitsey is a great name if your female lead is a hooker or a stripper... But for a supposedly tough journalist (who cried and awful damn lot for a tough journalist) I just don't think Bitsey cuts it.

 

[sweet soft kiss]

Ebert gave it ZERO stars.

Find that review... it was pretty good.

That must be sucky... Ebert likes everything these days....

or else the studio didn't give him enough free pizza....

 

[MoJo Riem]

My $.02 worth

Having been suckered into seeing the David Gale movie by my wife, with the in-laws along no less. It was definitely a thinking mans movie -not too well done but the whodunit anyway.

As for the Spacey bashing, he's been doing these types of movies since he got famous (American Beauty?)... whats the stretch? he had to fall in one sooner or later...
The worst part was I had a pretty much on-target guess about halfway through the movie, the agony was waiting for the end. the worst actor in the movie was Winslet (Bitsy). She was terribly miscast, maybe they should have switched parts with Linney, so Lane really went after a young girl twice???? LOL!
I didn't mind the plot twists - I just think the explanations were left on the cutting room floor for the most part, losing the ability to follow the cast members reason for being- the intern was thoroughly wasted film IMHO. The Prison scenes were too melodramatic to be believed, but if they spent more time on the plot switches with something to tie the lead characters in (a videocassette? cmon!) I probably would have bitten on the misdirection.
So it wasnt the worst movie of my life - but no Oscar or Cannes awards for them next year...

 

[sweet soft kiss]

By Roger Ebert:

One of the things that annoys me is that the story is set in Texas and not just in any old state--a state like Arkansas, for example, where the 1996 documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" convincingly explains why three innocent kids are in prison because they wore black and listened to heavy metal, while the likely killer keeps pushing himself onscreen and wildly signaling his guilt. Nor is it set in our own state of Illinois, where Death Row was run so shabbily that former Gov. George Ryan finally threw up his hands and declared the whole system rotten.
___________________________________________________
You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

I am surprised Ebert forgot to include "The Thin Blue Line" with "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" .. now if there was ever a documentary to make a person think twice about the death penalty ... thats the one to see...

 

[sheath]

He wasn't real. It was based off of a play that was based off of a book that was based off of imagination.

Ummm....no.

Read up on Death Penalty law.

The cases are all over the place. "David Gale" represents many of them.

S.

 

[MoJo Riem]

Tell us more sheath...

Now that aint fair Sheath

Spill the beans!

 

[lavender]

Lasher,

You should have checked Ebert's review before going to see this piece of shite. He gave it ZERO STARS!!!!!!!!

 

[MoJo Riem]

Lavender,

What do you do if you think Eberts a desperate windbag who fluffs up movies from certain "makers" and trashes nearly everything else....?

 

[Lasher]

Lasher,

You should have checked Ebert's review before going to see this piece of shite. He gave it ZERO STARS!!!!!!!!

LOL... I realize that now, believe me.

I'm usually pretty good at picking movies, but I went balls up on this one.

The threatre we like going to has 10 screens and it was showing shit on all 10 of'em tonight. It was either this or Daredevil and I could smell the fucking stink coming off Daredevil from across the parking lot.

One good thing came of this - the trailer for Identity looked really fucking good.

 

[lavender]

Here are some of my movie recommendations if they are showing in your area, in order of my personal preference.

City of God
Gangs of New York
Adaptation
Talk to Her
The Quiet American