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Reviews
Citizen Kane (1941)
The greatest film ever made
I feel as if I should have an IMDB comment on record for my favorite film of all time... Kane's place at the top of the AFI list is completely deserved. The film is central to cinema history, influencing every major filmmaker from Godard to Scorsese. There's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said. Long live Kane.
The Limey (1999)
Interesting but somehow unengaging
I am a huge Soderbergh fan. "sex, lies, and videotape," "Schizopolis," "Kafka," and "Out of Sight" are, in my mind, all terrific films. But after anticipating "The Limey" for months, I find myself disappointed. Soderbergh's directorial style is on full display, and the acting is impressive, but the film's plot never really manages to engage me. Many of the stylistic choices (chopped up narrative structure, multiple perspectives) are quite admirable, but at the end, I feel as if I've just watched the director tinker for 90 minutes. The clips of a young Terence Stamp in "Poor Cow" are utilized wonderfully.
L'humanité (1999)
Grand Jury Prize? Hmm...
After seeing L'Humanite at the Edinburgh festival, it's difficult to imagine it winning the Cannes Grand Jury Prize as well as the best actor and actress awards. The film is an unquestionably beautiful but otherwise unremarkable example of French cinema. Call me a stuffy American, but I found the opening sequence of the rape victim's damaged body to be completely unnecessary. The film's title is the most pretentious in recent memory.
American Beauty (1999)
Quite possibly the greatest film of the '90s
Sam Mendes' American Beauty is the most auspicious directorial debut since, well, Citizen Kane. American Beauty is a sprawling, kaleidoscopic masterpiece of a film. It's not flawless, it has more than few quirks (Spacey's contradictory alcohol abuse/physical fitness obsession, for instance), but in the end, none of them matter. The virtuosity of Mendes' direction is totally captivating: this is one of those rare films where every camera angle and movement seem to be completely perfect.
Furthermore, Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening give the performances of their careers. Spacey's work is utterly spectacular. He steals every scene he appears in as he adroitly shifts from self-loathing loser to ecstatic rebel. This is the film he will be remembered for. Bening is superb as a self-absorbed, power-obsessed real estate agent. Chris Cooper is also excellent in a role he seems to have been typecast for, the apopleptic and abusive father.
The film has an excellent pace, wonderful cinematography, and the most powerful use of visual metaphor in recent memory. It's better than GoodFellas, better than Pulp Fiction, better than Schindler's List, better than The Shawshank Redemption, and better than Life is Beautiful. And come Oscar time, when The Green Mile beats it out in every category, I'm sure I'll be screaming my lungs out at the television set.
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
Bewildering and visually stunning
This is another example of great filmmaking from John Cassavettes. Using his signature directing style (fluid camera movement, rack focusing, uncomfortably close two-shots), he creates a sprawling visual masterpiece loaded with social commentary as he explores the story of a man caught in a downward spiral in the underworld. Very, very good.
Notting Hill (1999)
Sappy and Formulaic
It's hard to believe that this was written by the same guy who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, frankly. Notting Hill is a formulaic, predictable, and dull romantic comedy. The jokes are weak, the writing uninspired, and the acting is nothing special. Roberts little "I'm just a girl" plea at the end made the audience laugh harder than any of the surprisingly flat jokes.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
A spectacular artistic failure
Terry Gilliam, with FaLiLV, has crafted a textbook example of bad art. The movie has a number of points to make, and generally manages to convey them (albeit with the lucidity of a drug addict). However, Gilliam constantly goes way over the top, hammering the same ideas into his audience's heads incessantly. Forty minutes into the film, Gilliam has already made his points, and the next eighty minutes are incredibly redundant. Much of the voice-over narration, particularly in the early parts of the film, creates an astonishingly pretentious ambience which only adds to the sense of malaise felt by viewers. While there are a couple of good scenes in the film (the rotating, mirrored bar, for example), as well as a great deal of visual brilliance on Gilliam's part, the majority of the movie is overdirected and overwritten. In the end, I'm more interested in figuring out exactly how Gilliam went wrong, rather than further considering the themes of the movie, which have already managed to completely play themselves out.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Disappointing
I read all of the reviews, and I totally disbelieved them. I wanted to love this movie, I wanted to, so badly...
And instead, I got a film that only manages to achieve adequacy only because of my already-existing relationship with the characters.
Each Star Wars movie preceding (and hopefully succeeding) The Phantom Menace contains a snappy, memorable line in each scene. TPM, on the other hand, has one or two such lines at the most. To boot, there are a number of truly awful lines. The actors themselves do fairly good jobs, but Lucas doesn't ask them emote in any way (with the exception of the final lightsaber duel, which is an example of classic, old-style Lucas magic). I know, I sound just like the reviewers... but it's ALL TRUE.
The effects are amazing, and yet somehow uninspiring. The podrace is great, but the ending is contrived. The lightsaber duels are great, but again, the ending to the final one is rather dumb. The ground and space battles, honestly, just suck. Most of the time, you're amazed at the effects themselves, rather than the images being created. ILM should be commended for their achievement in seamlessly integrated digital characters. But, honestly, you have to expect that for 250 million dollars.
The movie is good-to-okay for Star Wars fans, and fairly abysmal to the uninitiated (unless they happen to be 10 years old). The opening scenes are really, really bad. It gets better, until the final space battle, when it resumes crappiness (basically bad writing, bad directing).
I'm sorry, truly sorry, but against all odds, I found it to be poorly written and poorly directed. Let's hope for the best with Episode 2, which (and I hate to say use this as an optimistic comment) won't be directed by Lucas, who seems to have lost his touch.
By the Sword (1991)
This is a bad, bad movie.
This is a bad, bad movie. I'm an actual fencer: trust me when I say that this film's pretension of accuracy is just that. This is especially true during that vile little scene when the fencers are combining footwork with 80's pop. The ending is predictable, and the movie is a bore from start to finish. Horrible.