Change Your Image
Paritai
Reviews
The Moderns (1988)
Disappointing and inauthentic
The only excuse for such a movie is that it gives an authentic image of Paris 1926. But it doesn't. For one glaring example, one scene has Edith Piaf in the background singing Parlez moi d'amour. The only trouble is, in 1926, Piaf was 10 years old. Quelle domage.
Bad Manners (1997)
Pretentious Trash
A woman who is a tenured professor at Harvard invites an old boyfriend to her home. He brings along an ill-mannered (hence the title) girlfriend who, moreover, the woman's husband thinks stole $50 from his wallet. That's the setup, and from there it deteriorates. Why does the woman not ask her guests to leave? No reason is even suggested. If you can swallow that, perhaps you can enjoy the rest of the movie, though there isn't much to it except more bad manners and suspicions and accusations and, notwithstanding the blurbs on the videocassette box, precious little wit. Oh, yes, you get to hear the girl talk dirty.
There is also the putative pleasure of seeing that the rich (the Cambridge mansion where the movie takes place is worth a fortune in today's real estate market - right now you can take advantage of a pre-construction offer and purchase a studio apartment in Central Square for $360,000), and the highly respected, handle their personal affairs as poorly as the rest of us. If you changed the characters' professions, if the Harvard professor were a waitress, and her former boyfriend was in town not to deliver a musicology lecture but to compete in a bowling tournament, and if the setting were a 2-bedroom apartment in Queens, I strongly suspect the critics would pan the movie as just a lot of uninteresting and, yes, ill-mannered conversation where nothing happens.
But the professor is not a waitress, she is a tenured member of the Harvard faculty. No one, certainly no woman, achieves that distinction by being an ineffectual wimp. Yet no intelligent, forceful person would put up with this invasion of her home, and even attack on her marriage - she would ask her guests to leave (there's plenty of nice hotels in Cambridge).
Men in Black (1997)
Waste of time.
I can guarantee that there will no spoilers in these comments, for there is no story to spoil. Superb special effects, very noisy soundtrack, excellent acting, a couple of cute lines and sight gags, no story at all. Normally, I would respond to so boring a movie by pressing stop and rewind after 20 minutes or so, but the visuals were so good I watched till the end. Then I was really sorry for wasting so much time. Where have all the writers gone?
The English Patient (1996)
Enormous to do about very little
Gorgeous cinematography and two beautiful actresses certainly give a movie a good start, but that's really all this movie has. Moreover, the lead actor, in what amounts to 2 roles (before and after the accident), plays an unattractive character, cold and monochromatic. In a somewhat pivotal scene, Laszlo stares at Katharine while he is dancing with her like an inexperienced young man who has read a book on how to dominate girls. Indeed, why Katharine would even look at Laszlo when she is married to the manifestly nicer and better looking Geoffrey, is the movie's biggest mystery. For the rest, although the movie is supposedly about World War II, there is almost no mention of politics, no mention at all of religion, nobody seems to have any place they have to be (in wartime, soldiers don't get to just hang around where they please), and the morals are suited to a rabbit hutch. Oh, and the Germans are brutal (how can you have a movie take place in the 1940s without a nice German torture scene?), the British are vulgar, and the Americans just plain stupid (the scene on the bridge). That this movie won 9 academy awards can only testify to the poverty of today's film industry.
Pi (1998)
Absolutely awful
The camerawork is abominable, the acting is terrible, the story is vile - math genius is, naturally, nuts - the characters are anti-Semitic stereotypes (the paranoid genius slob, the older failure with a central European accent, the super-aggressive Hasid). I cannot say whether the movie improves after the first half hour or so, as I turned it off in utter disgust, but given what I saw I cannot believe that anyone involved in this trash would be able to put together a coherent scene. I've rated it a 1, but that isn't close to how bad it is.
Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001)
Extremely harrowing. Justifiable?
I assume there is no one on the planet who does not know what happens to Anne, but if you don't, don't read on.
This is the best Holocaust film I have ever seen, and I've seen many of them in several languages - best, that is, in the sense of showing the horror in so vivid a manner that weeks or months of nightmares are sure to follow for the audience. The scene of the arrival at the concentration camp, in particular, where the women and girls are forced to disrobe and are then shorn of their hair, is so harrowing that there must be some overriding justification for allowing oneself to see it and to have such images permanently imprinted on one's mind.
Of course this issue has been raised again and again where Holocaust portrayals are concerned, but the superb direction and acting in this film raises it again and more urgently than ever. The usual reason given is that we must be constantly reminded of what happened during the Nazizeit so that it never happens again. But who must be reminded? Good people do not need to be reminded not to haul innocent people away to concentration camps where they are stripped, shorn, starved, and murdered. Bad people will slaver at the sight of an endless supply of naked women at their mercy. Besides, what is it we are supposed to remember? This film makes no serious effort, nor would anyone expect it to, to explain how monsters came to power in a sophisticated European nation in the middle of the 20th century. Yet that is the only lesson worth learning, if our concern is to see that it never happens again. That is, if monsters come to power again - the Taliban government in Afghanistan has just decreed that all Hindus must wear identifying insignia, like the stars of David the Nazis made the Jews wear - if, then, monsters come to power, they will act like monsters, which means they will do evil things, and remembering what the Nazis did will not serve as a barrier so much as a blueprint.
I must add that I was offended by the use of Holocaust images to sell products. At one point, a moment after desperate hunger was depicted, a commercial came on for a diet regimen! This is not merely to trivialize raw evil, it is to exploit it. If that's the only way the Disney company can afford to produce such a drama, then they shouldn't do it - the price is too high.
The Matrix (1999)
Disappointing
Terrific special effects, very noisy, no story, less wit, sophomoric (high school sophomore) philosophy/theology. And what a shame our heroes couldn't use their spectacular technology to, say, synthesize a nice cold bottle of Moet champagne and extrude some Baccarat crystal to drink it from, instead of gruel in tin plates.
Seven Days in May (1964)
Absurd
The setup: The President of the United States is persuaded that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is running a secret base within the US and is planning a coup to take place within a week. So what does he do? He sends a broken down drunken senator to drive over and check out the secret base, and meanwhile hyperventilates over his own helplessness - if he fires the general, the president fears he will be thought nuts. I won't say what happens after this setup, which is complete early in the movie, but it is absurd on its face. If you're the president, and you're told there is a military base in the US you've never heard of, you don't tell a personal friend, who is drunk more often than not, to drive over all by himself and see what's going on, you send a high-level delegation of military officers, headed by a 2-star general, to find out if the rumor's true, and it if is, to take immediate control of the base. The delegation remains in constant contact with military authorities who can send whatever military backup might be needed if the secret base command, which probably does not include any officer of 2-star rank, refuses to take orders. Indeed, even if an officer of higher rank were present, his authority would of course be trumped by an order from the president. As for the suspected rogue general, he need not be fired, he need only be (a) ordered to Washington for immediate consultations; (b) be kept waiting for his appointment with the president for, oh, a day or two; and (c) be sent on an urgent inspection tour of American forces on Okinawa. Meanwhile, with the general safely out of the way, you undertake an orderly investigation of his recent activities and, if you discover hard evidence that he really was planning a coup, you have him arrested. Frederic March is a great actor, no doubt, and looks presidential, but his total ineffectuality in dealing with what seems like a rather simple situation is inexplicable. As the body of the movie depends upon this setup situation, it's all really nonsense. That this can be called the quintessential political thriller only demonstrates how terribly small our film expectations have become.
Happiness (1998)
Disappointing and unutterably sad.
I don't see what all the fuss is about, or the references to humor. This is one of the saddest films I've ever seen. The sex is joyless and everybody, most of them rich and handsome and healthy, is unhappy. Why?? I have no idea, which is to say, the film taught me nothing. As it certainly was not entertaining, why would anyone want to watch it and even pay for the privilege? Take away the shock value of the explicit dialogue and there's nothing left - and is anyone capable of being shocked by explicit language today? A wholly unsatisfactory movie experience, though I certainly don't share the fears of some posters that I won't be able to forget it. I'm having trouble remembering it already.
Ruddigore (1983)
How not to do Gilbert & Sullivan today.
Despite some nice singing, especially by Sandra Dugdale as Rose Maybud and Donald Adams as Sir Roderic Murgatroyd, this is a perfectly dreadful production. The girls ham it up, something which Gilbert warned against ever doing in the G&S operettas. Their early scenes, moreover, have suggestions of Lesbianism which could not be more out of place. Most of the singers are fair to middling, with Vincent Price apparently imitating Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady - good actor, no voice at all. Most of all, nobody takes the story seriously - no matter how absurd a G&S plot is today, and most were pretty absurd even while Victoria lived (and loved them), it is essential that they be played straight. As done here, a young person seeing Ruddigore for the first time would have to wonder what all the fuss is about. Better to just listen to it on an old D'Oyly Carte recording.
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Wonderful
A favorite movie, guaranteed always to make one feel good. The scene, a Jewish summer resort of the last generation, is very familiar to me as I played piano and directed musicals in just such resorts in the 1950s. Dirty Dancing has the feel of such resorts just right and without the Borscht Circuit shtick which can be very distancing for many people. The story is moving, the acting is just fine (my father was a doctor just like the Jerry Orbach character), and the dancing is great. I've seen the movie dozens of time and never tire of it.
Carmen (1984)
One of the best opera films ever made.
This is one of the best opera films ever made. The singing and orchestral playing are superb. The acting, directing, and scene setting made the story credible and even moving. Domingo is rather old for the role of the soldier so besotted by the sexy Carmen that he defies military orders. No matter, it works - Julia Migenes is so alluring, sings and moves so seductively, that it's not hard to imagine a man old enough to know better ruining his life for an hour with her. A must for opera lovers, and an excellent introduction to opera for those who think it's just about fat ladies playing teenage geishas and consumptive seamstresses.
I'll Do Anything (1994)
Enjoyed
We enjoyed this movie. It was nicely paced, the plight of the single barely-employed father suddenly faced with the daughter he had not seen for 2 years and must now care for was credible, and the several sub-plots were well done, in places quite witty. The acting was first-rate. We were grateful to be spared car chases, shootings, fires, mutilations, and 130 dB explosions. All in all, a very pleasant evening's entertainment.
La double vie de Véronique (1991)
Very disappointing.
Reviews of this movie were so positive that we were very disappointed. In fact, we only saw the Polish segment and the beginning of the French segment. We thought the movie pretentious, confusing, dull, and shocking (what on earth did the girl die of in the midst of quite stirring music?). Jacob is pretty, no doubt, but a bit of plot would not have been amiss.