MrGreene Reviews

Titan A.E. (2000)

Titan's an Art Enterprise

[8/10 · 14 June 2000]

The movie's a little soul-less to stack up against the great animation motherlode of last year, but the art work, the direction, and the character animation were imaginative and unusual. I also appreciate animation that doesn't simply replicate camera movement and the "realism" of live action, but startles with images that couldn't exist in the real world. Very rich and rewarding imagery.

Battlefield Earth (2000)

Dianetics: The Science of Matter over Mind?

[1/10 · 10 May 2000]

This movie employs a highly unusual strategy. Can you resist seeing a movie that you will soon hear can make a serious claim to being one of the worst ever? Probably not, and that must be what they're counting on. There can be no other explanation for just how awful and juvenile this movie is in every respect. I thought L. Ron Hubbard wrote books--not comic books, and this doesn't rise to comic book standards.

Timecode (2000)

A Split Decision

[7/10 · 5 April 2000]

One interrelated story about a fictitious Hollywood production company told on one screen divided into quadrants. Neither as innovative technically nor as pointlessly experimental as one might think. Director Mike Figgis even makes light of the notion that it's earth shattering within the movie. He's having fun, and it shows.

A Dog of Flanders (1999)

Simple, Pure Pleasure

[9/10 · 25 August 1999]

A simple, pure, nearly unadulterated pleasure, with extraordinary performances and a lovely epiphany at the end. It might be the last movie of the century to representing the paradigm of what moviemaking during the studio era aspired to.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

It's a Star Wars Movie

[7/10 · 19 May 1999]

The good news: It's a Star Wars movie which fits in nicely with all the previous adolescent action-adventures. The bad news: It's a Star Wars movie, so it's not much--and I'm a little disappointed that it's not very well distinguished from the other three. My personal critical hierarchy forms a diamond shape: At the top, The Empire Strikes Back, far below, Return of the Jedi, and in the middle, each superior to the other in different ways, are the two Lucas-directed episodes. I think Lucas is a master-shot master, but very little else about his directorial style has improved over the years. I would have expected more originality in the intervening years, and I couldn't help thinking that the entire enterprise could have been measurably improved if Lucas had the humility to ask Spielberg to switch roles with him and produce the film for him. There is no scene in Phantom Menace NO SCENE that could not have been improved by Spielberg's touch. But that which remains is only as disappointing as this stuff generally is. Don't listen to the anti-hype of critics who were part of the virtual hype (apparently the enthusiasm was a half-mile long and a half-inch deep--my showing last night wasn't even nearly sold out). Now the hype machine, having seen that it's after all just a Star Wars movie, wishes to distance itself from what they were complicit in creating. After all, it CAN be enjoyed on exactly the same level of entertainment as the others (except for Jedi, which had the Ewoks.)

Election (1999)

High School Fiction Doesn't Have to Feel False

[9/10 · 21 April 1999]

Election has all the charm and "edge" of contemporary high school comedies, but rather than simply flattering teenagers with hip lies about themselves, this extremely well written and imaginative story combines realistic detail with intersecting neurotic fabulations--that of the overambitious, "driven" teen, and the under-achieving, midlife crisis-inflicted guidance counselor (played brilliantly by Matthew Broderick).

Message in a Bottle (1999)

Well Acted, Amazingly Photographed

[7/10 · 10 February 1999]

It doesn't avoid cliche, but each one of the predictable scenes is done better than typically. This is largely due to the more than adequate performances, usually (though not uniformly) good screenplay, and absolutely PERFECT cinematography from the master, Caleb Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Natural, Being There). He makes everyone seem smarter, every scene seem new. I doubt there will be a better photographed film this year, and for those who still go to the movies for visual pleasure, this will more than suffice. Also, one note on acting: Robin Wright Penn has come along gradually. With this and her performance in Hurlyburly, she is nonpareil in her age- and beauty-class; I'd prefer to see her than Julia Roberts, Monica Potter (the winner of the New Julia Roberts Star Search contest, as The Undercover Critic put it, and all the rest in adult romance--and she's always been more gifted at comedy than the rest.

The 24 Hour Woman (1999)

Squandered Opportunity

[28 January 1999]

It squanders an opportunity to be about the class differences between a working-class Black woman (Jean-Baptiste) and her boss (Rosie Perez, who despite the cast list above, is the focus of the entire film) and settles for all the cliches about juggling work and family duty. It's directed incompetently, worst than most television programs, with an inbalanced story structure and lazy, imprecise screenplay.

Hurlyburly (1998)

Sean Penn's Reason for Acting

[6 January 1999]

Kevin Spacey does his usual mannered priss; Meg Ryan and Chaz Palmintieri are unsubtle and poor; the direction is unexceptional. But David Rabe's play is superb (and the cut-down, however it may displease fans of the play, is adequately expressive of the play's meaning). And Sean Penn is absolutely extraordinary--it's the best performance of the year. He gives the play a reason to have been sitting around for years. He wouldn't have done it as well as a younger actor; and I honestly don't think there is an actor working today who could have played it better.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Bracing, beautiful, and reflective

[10/10 · 30 December 1998]

Happily an apples-to-oranges comparison with Saving Private Ryan (though Spielberg's film, which is great in different ways, prepares the zeitgeist for Malick's philosophical ruminations), Thin Red Line sees war in existential/phenomenological/spiritual light, pictures soldiers contemplating death, facing the horizon, experiencing dread--not usually young men's experience. Malick's extraordinary presentation intermixes recognizable motifs (God seeming to observe man through nature, voice-over technique) but with less intended irony than in Badlands and Days of Heaven. It will seem to some viewers curiously detached, reminiscent of Kubrick; they have simply to realize that both Spielberg and Malick are artists with distinct and brilliantly realized visions in which there is truth and beauty for those with eyes to see.