The trouble with close-ups of two men eating lunch and discussing Sal Mineo's upcoming film is that we don't get much more than two men shoveling food in their mouths. I don't know why director Franco was so locked in to the close-up. Or why we get so much footage of Sal Mineo driving through LA in his Chevy Malibu. Without any dialog or view out the window, this is downright boring. The accompanying torch song (Pink Flamingos?) on the sound track was so loud I had to cover my ears. As for period authenticity, someone should have checked the script: in 1976 people did not use the expression, "You're good to go." —- not even the nurse as the health clinic.
Reviews
16 Reviews
The Best of Youth
(2003)
Utterly shameless and absolutely wonderful!
11 January 2004
A history of Italy in the past 40 years, as filtered through the ups and downs of a middle-class family. Besides pop corn bring a box of tissues, because it will break your heart, again and again. It will also make you laugh and beam with joy. The wedding scene that ends Part I is magnificent, an ensemble of superb actors and actresses so skillfully followed by the camera you think it's one long spontaneous, improvised performance. Also not to be missed, the cameo role of the medical school professor.
Gangs of New York
(2002)
Scorsese remakes "Fight Club" -- already?
20 December 2002
Warning: Spoilers
Is there a difference between Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt? Not that I could see. Everyone seems to sweat a lot, all the time. Where are they exactly? Surely it's a mythical New York City. No one seems to have a home. No one ever sits down at a table to eat. Nearly every scene looks like it's set in a local whore house, one for immigrant Irish, another for Chinese. And in this toxic never-never land, even if you're shot through the chest like Billy the Butcher (Day-Lewis), you can still enjoy two bare-breasted babes without having the doc tend to your wound. And the noise is relentless -- the ha-has, the boasting, the threats, the punches, the sweat -- it's all a relentless, mean -- and corny -- brouhaha.
I can't give any spoilers here, because I didn't stay to see how it all turned out. I gave Scorsese the benefit of two hours, but by then he still hadn't pulled his film out of the muck. Sorry, Martin, I tried.
I can't give any spoilers here, because I didn't stay to see how it all turned out. I gave Scorsese the benefit of two hours, but by then he still hadn't pulled his film out of the muck. Sorry, Martin, I tried.
Heaven
(I) (2002)
Helicopt out
25 November 2002
Tom Tykwer has made three films about couples as social outcasts, and I think it's time he moved on to something else. Teaming up Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi as the lovers must be one of the bigger mis-matches in film history. Although in real life she's only five years his senior, in "Heaven" she seems old enough to be his mother. Worse, the dialog between them is so limited, I got no sense that they were in love. And speaking of dialog, if Giovanni Ribisi, born in L.A., is going to play Italians, he needs to be coached in correct Italian pronunciation. His vowels are too closed. Open wide for an 'Aaah', Giovanni.
While the first 45 min. of the film generate a certain amount of smooth suspense, once the plot leaves the interrogation format the film falls apart. In the print I saw, the Tuscany countryside is overexposed as orange and ugly. Sad music invites us to feel for the two renegades, but I couldn't feel much of anything. And who, in the end, ratted on them to the police? This is never explained, and as their helicopter soars up into heaven, I wanted the film to get down to earth and take care of unfinished business.
While the first 45 min. of the film generate a certain amount of smooth suspense, once the plot leaves the interrogation format the film falls apart. In the print I saw, the Tuscany countryside is overexposed as orange and ugly. Sad music invites us to feel for the two renegades, but I couldn't feel much of anything. And who, in the end, ratted on them to the police? This is never explained, and as their helicopter soars up into heaven, I wanted the film to get down to earth and take care of unfinished business.
Gosford Park
(2001)
Upstairs, Downstairs on Acid
4 January 2002
I was lucky enough to catch this film at the Kankakee, Illinois, World Film Festival. Several of the grips were in the audience, along with a couple of best boys. I took some notes:
1. There are so many characters in Gosford Park it's impossible to keep track of who they are and what they're up to. Some are utterly superfluous, like the two guys who arrive late, by car. I realize this may very well be a satire on British who-done-its of the 1930s, which tended to overwhelm American audiences with their excessive cast of characters.
2. The accents make listening to the dialog excruciating. Despite bravado demos of sound systems by the likes of THX, with its pin-drop-in-the-puddle, the clear recording of human speech still needs work.
3. The film is morally abrasive and unsatisfying. While no one regrets the murder of you know who, it bothers me that the Countess (Maggie Smith) does not go unpunished. Her treatment of her maid, beautifully played by Mary Macreachran, is cruel, and in the year 2002 should not be tolerated without some kind of comeuppance.
4. And yet, the film is great fun to watch, partly because it satirizes the genre, film-making, and actors. There are homages to "Rules of the Game" (the pheasant shoot) and "The Wizard of Oz" ("Here, Dorothy, you take the dog.") Watching Maggie Smith is a joy, but by now, a predictable one. I felt Eileen Atkins's performance was more deeply human. I thought the talents of Ryan Phillippe were wasted, and his role too casually discarded. Helen Mirren, naturally, ruled.
5. The one enchanting sequence in the film is the musical entertainment by Jeremy Northam in the role of Ivor Novello. Singing his own material at the piano, he welds almost the entire household, upstairs and downstairs, into an audience enraptured by art. Altman's camera records it all, lovingly, like a wonderful divertisement. Strange that Altman should award the prize for enchantment not to film, but to music.
1. There are so many characters in Gosford Park it's impossible to keep track of who they are and what they're up to. Some are utterly superfluous, like the two guys who arrive late, by car. I realize this may very well be a satire on British who-done-its of the 1930s, which tended to overwhelm American audiences with their excessive cast of characters.
2. The accents make listening to the dialog excruciating. Despite bravado demos of sound systems by the likes of THX, with its pin-drop-in-the-puddle, the clear recording of human speech still needs work.
3. The film is morally abrasive and unsatisfying. While no one regrets the murder of you know who, it bothers me that the Countess (Maggie Smith) does not go unpunished. Her treatment of her maid, beautifully played by Mary Macreachran, is cruel, and in the year 2002 should not be tolerated without some kind of comeuppance.
4. And yet, the film is great fun to watch, partly because it satirizes the genre, film-making, and actors. There are homages to "Rules of the Game" (the pheasant shoot) and "The Wizard of Oz" ("Here, Dorothy, you take the dog.") Watching Maggie Smith is a joy, but by now, a predictable one. I felt Eileen Atkins's performance was more deeply human. I thought the talents of Ryan Phillippe were wasted, and his role too casually discarded. Helen Mirren, naturally, ruled.
5. The one enchanting sequence in the film is the musical entertainment by Jeremy Northam in the role of Ivor Novello. Singing his own material at the piano, he welds almost the entire household, upstairs and downstairs, into an audience enraptured by art. Altman's camera records it all, lovingly, like a wonderful divertisement. Strange that Altman should award the prize for enchantment not to film, but to music.
A Beautiful Mind
(2001)
Ignoble portrait of a Nobel laureate
27 December 2001
The scene in "A Beautiful Mind" that haunts me most is not the shock therapy delivered to mathematician John Nash, not his infant son left to drown in the bathtub, not the implantation of a radioactive ID number in Nash's arm. None of these. What I keep wondering about is how Alicia, a young math student at Princeton in the1950s, had the savvy to wear a strapless black evening dress on her very first date, which turns out to be a black-tie Princeton do.
If there were an Oscar for most valiant performance under hostile conditions, then Jennifer Connelly, who plays Alicia -- and who, incidentally, looks great in the strapless black -- would surely win. Ms. Connelly bares up under awkward editing and awful dialog, as when she, now Mrs. Nash, tells him and us that love and faith will cure him of his schizophrenia. In the New Testament, perhaps; in Hollywood, by all means. All that's missing is a new-age crystal.
Dodging a story about ordinary humans, director Ron Howard has chosen to chronicle genius, but the product is the same old inflated confection: a romantic night sky in New Jersey that holds more stars than any Arizona desert; a ghastly Nobel prize award ceremony; and worst of all, the progress to that prize based on one academic paper, scribbling math formulas on window panes, and a lot of frenzied magazine clipping. The pudding is bloated and sweetened by yet another "uplifting", swollen music track. So predictable and so unbelievable.
If there were an Oscar for most valiant performance under hostile conditions, then Jennifer Connelly, who plays Alicia -- and who, incidentally, looks great in the strapless black -- would surely win. Ms. Connelly bares up under awkward editing and awful dialog, as when she, now Mrs. Nash, tells him and us that love and faith will cure him of his schizophrenia. In the New Testament, perhaps; in Hollywood, by all means. All that's missing is a new-age crystal.
Dodging a story about ordinary humans, director Ron Howard has chosen to chronicle genius, but the product is the same old inflated confection: a romantic night sky in New Jersey that holds more stars than any Arizona desert; a ghastly Nobel prize award ceremony; and worst of all, the progress to that prize based on one academic paper, scribbling math formulas on window panes, and a lot of frenzied magazine clipping. The pudding is bloated and sweetened by yet another "uplifting", swollen music track. So predictable and so unbelievable.
Amélie
(2001)
Fabulous? Absolutely!
1 November 2001
From French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet comes a film with the most original and sparkling look I've seen in a decade. Using camera angles and colored filters we've come to associate with TV commercials -- the good ones -- Jeunet turns this romantic adventure of a young Parisian who's afraid of intimacy into a visual whirlwind. His film-making technique owes much of its inspiration to those small orbs of water we shake to see the snowfall, the flashing open-shut action of a painted Spanish fan, and the zig-zag movement of the skateboarder. My favorite visual trick is the talking passport-size photos, not one, but four, images of a Spanish gent who dispenses advice to the love-lorn hero, brilliantly played by the endearing Matthieu Kassovitz.
The images and scenes pass with a speed the dazzles, as the young heroine Amélie pursues her many projects, whose goal is to improve the lives of ordinary Parisians who populate her life. Her imagination works overtime, even as she herself becomes the target of another form of improvement -- falling in love. The film has relatively little dialog; verbal cohesion comes at crucial points from a slightly authoritative voice-over. The wonder of the film is that it tells it story and holds us viewers primarily through visual means, as well as the enchanting performance of Audrey Tauton in the title role. And then there is that music, so charming it makes you sit through the credits that roll at the end. And finally you sit in the theater, lit again and reeking with the reality of spilled popcorn, and you wonder if you can't just sit there, and watch this wondrous escapade all over again.
The images and scenes pass with a speed the dazzles, as the young heroine Amélie pursues her many projects, whose goal is to improve the lives of ordinary Parisians who populate her life. Her imagination works overtime, even as she herself becomes the target of another form of improvement -- falling in love. The film has relatively little dialog; verbal cohesion comes at crucial points from a slightly authoritative voice-over. The wonder of the film is that it tells it story and holds us viewers primarily through visual means, as well as the enchanting performance of Audrey Tauton in the title role. And then there is that music, so charming it makes you sit through the credits that roll at the end. And finally you sit in the theater, lit again and reeking with the reality of spilled popcorn, and you wonder if you can't just sit there, and watch this wondrous escapade all over again.
The Last Castle
(2001)
Gandolfini Rules
26 October 2001
Despite a clever, if implausible plot line, The Last Castle goes haywire because James Gandolfini, as the sadistic warden of a military prison, steals the show from legendary heart-throb and leading man, Robert Redford. Gandolfini can take the creakiest line -- and they're lots of 'em -- inflect it with savory intonation and intent and deliver it with lurid gusto, like someone who sucks on an olive, devours the meat and spits out the pit. He's a marvel to to listen to and watch: peering through his steel-frame specs into a cell door peephole, he makes the scene into a confessional box where the priest confesses his atrocities.
My problem with the film is Redford's role: an imprisoned 3-star general, a stretch by any standard, is held up as the motivator and inspiration for honor and moral behavior among felons. I seirously doubt that the current general staff in the US is up to so noble a calling.
The final 20-minute siege of the prison is exciting. Other scenes. though, are badly cut -- as when warden Winters receives the letter. The musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, aping Aaron Copeland, is trite and atrocious.
My problem with the film is Redford's role: an imprisoned 3-star general, a stretch by any standard, is held up as the motivator and inspiration for honor and moral behavior among felons. I seirously doubt that the current general staff in the US is up to so noble a calling.
The final 20-minute siege of the prison is exciting. Other scenes. though, are badly cut -- as when warden Winters receives the letter. The musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, aping Aaron Copeland, is trite and atrocious.
Borstal Boy
(2000)
Stunning return of the reform-school film.
15 June 2001
In wartime England a reform school headed by a benign warden harbors troublemakers of different nationalities. The IRA rascal, brilliantly played by an American, Sean Hatosy, is just one of the boys whose antics propel Sheridan's film through comic scenes to a finale of loss and sadness. Sheridan's cutting is quick and deft, and, except for the last 10 minutes the plot skillfully avoids the pitfalls of sentimentality.
Warning to new directors: pop songs on a movie soundtrack can be injurious to your film, as it is here, along with a peculiarly stagy ending in an Irish railway station, where the hero vanishes into clouds of steam.
Otherwise the film is very moving, and certainly one of the best investigations ever into the rightness of feelings of love. Defying the long and awesome tradition of Irish verbal art, Sheridan demonstrates that sometimes silence is the best way to express the feelings that attend separation. The inmates' production of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a small triumph. The entire film is a huge triumph for director Sheridan. See it in a theater with a good sound system: sometimes the Irish-accented English can be hard to grasp.
Warning to new directors: pop songs on a movie soundtrack can be injurious to your film, as it is here, along with a peculiarly stagy ending in an Irish railway station, where the hero vanishes into clouds of steam.
Otherwise the film is very moving, and certainly one of the best investigations ever into the rightness of feelings of love. Defying the long and awesome tradition of Irish verbal art, Sheridan demonstrates that sometimes silence is the best way to express the feelings that attend separation. The inmates' production of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a small triumph. The entire film is a huge triumph for director Sheridan. See it in a theater with a good sound system: sometimes the Irish-accented English can be hard to grasp.
Pearl Harbor
(2001)
To sea or not to sea.
27 May 2001
Reasons to see "Pear Harbor": 1) The 40-minute attack episode 2) The fun of spotting scenes lifted from other films: a) "From Here to Eternity"; b) "The English Patient"; c) "Casablanca"; d) a Fellini film that features a big ocean liner. 3) The thrill of video games 4) The hula-girl lamps
Reasons not to see "Pearl Harbor": 1) It's pretty awful 2) Doesn't show much of Hawai'i or Hawai'ians 3) Jingoism
Reasons not to see "Pearl Harbor": 1) It's pretty awful 2) Doesn't show much of Hawai'i or Hawai'ians 3) Jingoism
The Music Teacher
(1988)
Tedium triumphs!
27 May 2001
The kind of film that earns "European films" the bad rap and bad rep the get from a lot of people these days. I had the feeling the film was written to showcase the music, not vice versa. And since you can't write a terribly compelling film about training vocalists, we're trapped into watching seemingly endless camera pans of trees, birds in them chirping ad nauseum, pseudo-profound, meaningful stares between people who have nothing to say to each other, and a Mahler symphony on the sound track that just simply won't go away. A terribly tedious film.
With a Friend Like Harry...
(2000)
Brilliant combination of laughs and suspense
30 April 2001
Director Moll uses the camera the way a dentist probes for cavities in teeth. With great visual sensitivity he moves his camera to extract the irony and wicked humor he finds in the homicidal encounter between two old school pals. Sergi Lopez gives a stunning performance as the wealthy, self-assured bachelor with bombshell in tow who takes up with a kindly husband burdened with a marriage and family gone out of control.
Moll has revived the French genre of "domestic thriller", best realized in "Diabolique". Even the musical score is fine-tuned to give a tongue-in-cheek twist to gruesome events, like an added twist of the knife. A couple of incidents may be miscalculated in their believability, but the overall effect adds up to genuinely brilliant film-making.
"Harry" also recalls the manipulations of other peoples' lives in "The Talented Mr. Ripley", but without the scenery and beautiful people. "Harry"'s suspense is more concentrated, delivered in exquisite doses, through exceptionally fine acting, cinematography, music and direction.
Moll has revived the French genre of "domestic thriller", best realized in "Diabolique". Even the musical score is fine-tuned to give a tongue-in-cheek twist to gruesome events, like an added twist of the knife. A couple of incidents may be miscalculated in their believability, but the overall effect adds up to genuinely brilliant film-making.
"Harry" also recalls the manipulations of other peoples' lives in "The Talented Mr. Ripley", but without the scenery and beautiful people. "Harry"'s suspense is more concentrated, delivered in exquisite doses, through exceptionally fine acting, cinematography, music and direction.
Come Undone
(2000)
Rhapsody yes, plot no
27 April 2001
It's a wonderful pastorale poem to a summer love affair. Who of us hasn't had one? However, I wish the director had lavished the same attention on the plot as he did on the beautiful young men. Why did they break up? What caused Matthieu's depression? He never tells us, so in the end, the film as little dramatic sense. I liked the frankness and thoroughness of director Lifshitz's approach - showing not only how his young men make love but also the problems one of them faces as a consequence. But I could have done without the second affair - the one with the cat. This is a smelly feline who eats out of the Matthieu's own plate. Ugh! no thank you. This is bourgeois sentimentality at its worst: transferring affection for a human to an animal.
Before Night Falls
(2000)
One helluva confusing film.
30 December 2000
Kind and/or pandering reviews treat this film as "fantastical" or "lyrical" account of the life of Cuban writer Reynaldo Arenas, but this merely obscures the film's lack of coherent concept, writing and direction.
It might have helped matters if this film about life in Castro Cuba had been made in Spanish. Instead, the audience must struggle to hear and comprehend Latin American actors speaking poorly articulated English. Adding to the confusion, Sean Penn appears in a cameo role of campesino. Here's an American actor trying to play a Cuban actor trying to speak English. Yet, when Arenas' writings are quoted, the soundtrack switches to Spanish, translated into English subtitles.
I left before the film ended, just after director Schnabel shifted to the technique of reprising a scene with different outcomes. I'd just seen Stephen Frears do something similar in "High Fidelity", to great comic effect. In "Before Night Falls" the same technique is bumbling and ineffective. Affection and respect for a gay writer who escaped from Castro's Cuba is no guarantee that you'll make a good film.
It might have helped matters if this film about life in Castro Cuba had been made in Spanish. Instead, the audience must struggle to hear and comprehend Latin American actors speaking poorly articulated English. Adding to the confusion, Sean Penn appears in a cameo role of campesino. Here's an American actor trying to play a Cuban actor trying to speak English. Yet, when Arenas' writings are quoted, the soundtrack switches to Spanish, translated into English subtitles.
I left before the film ended, just after director Schnabel shifted to the technique of reprising a scene with different outcomes. I'd just seen Stephen Frears do something similar in "High Fidelity", to great comic effect. In "Before Night Falls" the same technique is bumbling and ineffective. Affection and respect for a gay writer who escaped from Castro's Cuba is no guarantee that you'll make a good film.
You Can Count on Me
(2000)
A moving but slightly flawed film
17 December 2000
I had the same reaction as a lot of reviewers: the film moved me very much, and I think it's generaly a fine piece of work, though a flawed one. I'd be curious to hear how other viewers reacted to certain scenes. The major mistake occurs when Sammy, the Laura Linney character, asks her priest's help in getting her brother to, well, "redirect" his life. Up to that point the film gave no clue that her brother was a loser, in fact just the opposite. He acts as a wonderful substitute father for her son-teaching him how to drive a nail, how to fish, how to shoot pool. Or are we to understand that her missionary zeal toward her brother is a cover-up for her guilt-ridden affair with her boss? The direction the film took at this point mystified me.
In retrospect I find the Sammy character unbelievable, in other words, much too smart and knowing for someone who was born and continues to live in a small town in the Catskills. When she talks to the priest about their church's stand on adultery, she takes an unexpected stand for orthodoxy, as opposed to a more lenient, merciful admonishment. It's a funny scene, but Sammy also betrays a sophisticated ability to raise a core issue of pastoral theology. (In real life, Laura LInney comes from New York City, and to a certain extent, it shows in her portrayal.)
It's scenes like this one that I believe make Lonergan's film look better than it actually is. All his tete-a-tete scenes are brilliantly written and brilliantly played. The first one, in the restaurant where Sammy becomes angry with her brother is memorable, and I just hope that Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney are NOT offered a TV contract to segue their roles into a sit-com. It's undeniable that Director Lonergan has brought out the magic that exists between these two fine performers.
In retrospect I find the Sammy character unbelievable, in other words, much too smart and knowing for someone who was born and continues to live in a small town in the Catskills. When she talks to the priest about their church's stand on adultery, she takes an unexpected stand for orthodoxy, as opposed to a more lenient, merciful admonishment. It's a funny scene, but Sammy also betrays a sophisticated ability to raise a core issue of pastoral theology. (In real life, Laura LInney comes from New York City, and to a certain extent, it shows in her portrayal.)
It's scenes like this one that I believe make Lonergan's film look better than it actually is. All his tete-a-tete scenes are brilliantly written and brilliantly played. The first one, in the restaurant where Sammy becomes angry with her brother is memorable, and I just hope that Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney are NOT offered a TV contract to segue their roles into a sit-com. It's undeniable that Director Lonergan has brought out the magic that exists between these two fine performers.
Gladiator
(2000)
Where's the Roman bath?
14 May 2000
Except for the combat scenes, Gladiator is really lame. It took 3 writers, including director Ridley Scott, and the plot still has all the tension of a busted rubber band. You know the picture's in trouble when Hans Zimmer's soupy score has to be playing 99.9% of the time. Principal characters like emperor Commodus and his sister stand around pouting and plotting what to do next and relapse into animal fables on the meaning of power. Yawn! And here's where the film makers really missed the
boat: with a hunk like Russell Crowe as star, they didn't contrive one scene in a Roman bath! You'd think a slave who becomes a sensation overnight would be treated to a Roman bath! But, then again, the film itself takes a bath.
boat: with a hunk like Russell Crowe as star, they didn't contrive one scene in a Roman bath! You'd think a slave who becomes a sensation overnight would be treated to a Roman bath! But, then again, the film itself takes a bath.
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