Charming and brutal

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This documentary has a lot going for it. Beautiful cinematography. Morbidly interesting subject matter. Something of a story line. Curious characters. And the Salton Sea itself-I have seen this on maps since I was in the 7th and wondered what kind of people live there. But I couldn't decide if it was simply a documentary filmmaker filming real life as it occurred or if it was a scripted story, forced to tell the story the filmmaker wanted us to see. The dance and soundtrack sequences had to be almost certainly staged. Some of the conversations had to be staged. I rated this film 8 out of 10 anyway, because if it wasn't always real life, I believed I could see real life just behind a very transparent curtain.

It is probably better sometimes to see a film after the buzz is over in order to appreciate it - its good as well as its weakest parts. The break-through film of Alma Harel was very much talked about when it was released a couple of years ago. I have seen it only now and I can probably better enjoy its best parts, as well as wonder about other without necessarily being influenced by the chorus of praise (some justified) which accompanied its release.The landscape seems to belong to a post-apocalyptic film. On the deserted shores of a sea that was born by an accident a small community of people deprived of almost everything tries to survive. Yet this is not the planet after an atomic war, and this is not the Sea of Aral either, but a real landscape and real people in the state of California, in a place located at measurable distances from all the services available in one of the most sophisticated states of the USA. The destinies of several people are being followed in parallel. A boy with behavioral problems whose parents went to jail are may be in danger of being denied parenthood if they get in any kind of more trouble. A teenager who was born and raised in the violent suburbs of a big city and has seen death and violence, and came here in the search of the right path for overcoming his social condition. An old man who survived a life of working in the oil fields but never abandoned his passion for booze, smoking, women. All the stories are human and credible and real. This may look like art fiction, but is actually a documentary of a special kind.The art dimension of the film is provided by the each of the characters dancing at some point in time. Each of the dancing episodes is so well integrated in the whole movie that it looks quite natural. Dancing may not be part of their real life, but Alama Harel made it look like it is. Yet here comes also the problematic aspect of the film. We get a glimpse of life in one very extreme area of today's America, with its people. It's real life and yet there is some manipulation here, because there was a cameraman (maybe the director herself) some place to catch what looks like pieces of truth. It's beautiful but I could not escape a feeling of artificiality. Yet Alma Arel is certainly a film-maker to follow, Let us see what subjects she will pick next.

Searching round online for any Bob Dylan news,I was surprise to recently to discover that Dylan had contributed 2 songs for a low budget documentary.With having a family friend about to pay a visit during the run up to Christmas,I was happy to see that the documentary had been brought out on DVD,which would allow everyone to pay a quick visit to Bombay Beach.The outline of the film:Film maker Alma Har'el goes to a poor, census-designated-place in Imperial County,California called Bombay Beach,that has a population of just under 300 people.Deciding to focus on three distinct residence of Bombay:the first one being an old man called Red,who despite recently suffering from ill health,continues to travel to a drug store based out of Bombay Beach,so that he can buy cigarette's which he can sell at a few pence more than he paid for them,at the trailer park that he lives in.The second person who Alma looks at is a young man called CeeJay Thompson,who after being sent to Bombay Beach by a relative who was fearing that he may get involved in gangs,is shocked to find paradise at Bombay,where along with becoming the star player in the high school's football team,Thompson also begins to fall in love with one of the schools cheerleader's.For the third person,Har'el focuses on the family of 7 year old Benny Parrish,who along with having bright dreams of being a firemen in the future,is also having to make long journeys out with his parents to medical facility,due to suffering from a bi-polar disorder.View on the film:Working closely with dance and stage choreography Paula Present,director Alma Har'el intercepts the three threads of the movie with surreal dance and stage pieces,that go from Ceejay and his girlfriend having a dance off,to the film jumping 20 years to show Benny as a firemen.Whilst this does make the documentary more openly "staged" than most,Har'el cleverly uses " the fantasy severance's" to build up a strong,dusty,ambient wasteland mood that erupts at the precise moment Alma unleashes any of the two (written just for this movie) smooth Dylan tracks on the soundtrack.Basting the film in Bombay Beach,Alma opens the movie with archival promotional Video footage from the building of Bombay Beach,where people were being told to buy property there so that they could have a piece of "the American dream".Jumping to the modern day,run day wasteland of the place,Har'el smartly shows,that no matter how much the American dream is pushed to the edge of the cliff,there are still people who are trying to find their part of the dream,in the suburb of Bombay.

Once a saline oasis for the Californian elite, Bombay Beach is one of a number of former resort towns dotted around the inland Salton Sea, fashioned in 1905 when heavy rainfall caused the Colorado River to breach its banks. Fish were first introduced in the 1930s, and by the 1950s the tourist trade was booming; Sinatra would perform in the area and Eisenhower would also make an appearance. By 1970 however, the former hotspot was deserted. Rising water levels had destroyed much of the infrastructure, and further investment dried up entirely. Har'el's 'Bombay Beach' explores what is left of the town, a refuge for the lost, the senile and the sick. And yet, in their desire to escape the reality of that where they have come, Bombay Beach recoups its image as a destination of choice, of value - it may not offer much, but its inhabitants seek the solace and contemplation its isolation offers.