leslieann-1 Reviews

Playing by Heart (1998)

middling

[7/10 · 7 March 2008]

Angelina Jolie is good (although she seems older than her boyfriend in the film), and Dennis Quaid nearly walks away with it too - they give the most nuanced performances, i'd say, with a script that skims over the surface of necessity, since there are so many vignettes, not giving anything enough time to develop.

the scene when the theatrical director throws her new boyfriend out because she is projecting trouble ahead felt very real - it is a playing out of an instinct that some of us may know, and there are true sparks of humor between them, and it's sexier than any other physical relationship going on - but the drawn-out scenario of some of the others just did not ring true or matter: the older couple are not focussing on what's really troubling them and fill up the time with discussion of an old love affair - totally tedious! and the actors worked hard to make it real. the relationship between the mother and her AIDs afflicted son was well played out - but i felt they had to rush to get it in - but it was affecting and well played, well written. (it felt like stage dialogue which ordinarily i do not like in a film).

middling worthwhile to watch in the end, (although i liked the scene of Trent in bed with a huge dog). altogether not very gripping - surprising that so many great actors were in it, and that the film received so much attention.

A Loving Father (2002)

disturbing and not very good

[6/10 · 22 February 2008]

i was distracted by the fact that this is a real father-son team and knowing something of their real life stories, i kept looking for the genuineness of emotion i thought might be lurking - it wasn't there though.

the daughter is as stifling and neurotic as her father says she is, and as deranged as her brother who kidnaps their father is - entirely dour and sometimes totally uncomfortable film. despite the son's saying things are resolved for him (which we don't believe), if i were their father i'd want to vanish too to get away from them and from his life, which Berger shows us is shovelling horse's excrement some of the time, literally, anyway... the son's weak character must be a deterrent to any development of a relationship and his decision to drive aimlessly somewhere with his entrapped father does not have any significance, in fact, it is a failure. and who was Arthur, the dark-haired chap? why would anyone love or marry that awful daughter, if he is her husband.

but,as ever, when he is on the scene, Gerard Depardieu dominates and is so much more compelling a figure than anyone else - but i suspect at some moments in the car, etc, with his son, he decided to play it down, not only because he lacked good dialogue, but in a mistakenly generous gesture, he may not have wanted to outshine the vapid acting of his unattractive son.this even further ruins the film. a disappointing and cringe-making experience. sorry, i did not like this at all. compare it to the film "Elisa" in which Paradis plays Depardieu's angry daughter - they have an equally tricky relationship but the script is so much better and it is far more genuine and significant even if not entirely perfect. i resent having paid any money for this film at all - it is shambles and mostly the writer is to blame!

Ménage (1986)

diverting and energetic entertainment

[9/10 · 13 December 2007]

the trick of this film is the seductive power of the swaggering, beefy and sexy character, Bob - played as no one else could, by Depardieu. picking up a quarrelling couple in a bar, he makes a play for both and succeeds with both, as he succeeds with us, reestablishing their lives, closer to his anarchic soul's path. they rob with him, are both seduced by him, and set up a menage a trois with him. he seduces us too to the appeal of this life.

we are attracted too - that street life that Depardieu's characters in many films seem to live successfully, and freely, appeals to the freedom we long for. but, yes, there is a price to pay in all those films and in this one too - but here, the price is so much fun...

a man they are robbing pulls a gun on Depardieu's character, insisting he make love to his wife in front of him, and they talk their way out; and by the end of the film, in order to pay the bills, Depardieu and his now fully dragged up friend, husband of the couple, sell themselves as prostitutes.

by the time we get to that, however, we are outside the boundaries of identification - they are cartoon characters, they don't care, and we no longer care. it is amusing, but the story had finished earlier when they set up house, and Depardieu acts like a typical male, no matter that his partner is male too. (they tolerate the woman in their home because she has no where else to go}: he demands dinner and cleanliness in the home, on time and when he wants it; he despises the tears shed in response to his abuse; the three have come full circle - relentless badgering between them (the two men, a couple, now ignore the woman)and dissatisfactions similar to what we began with.

the drag scenes at the end are tacked on for a bit of fun...it sort of flags. are we to think that by dressing as women they have degraded themselves? or is the lesson that this milquetoast male does always attract this kind of badgering? or that relationships - male and male; male and female; always devolve to this one, where one person is in charge of the other? who knows? but it is sure fun getting there. it will get you thinking while you laugh. great writing and superb comic acting.

Michael Clayton (2007)

great but flawed picture

[8/10 · 7 October 2007]

i went because clooney was in the film, but then was dazzled by Tom Wilkonson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack's acting in what is an ensemble performance with Clooney as the weaker element - i just could believe that he was a down-and-out gambler, or a fixer of the low-down level he was meant to be, but tant pis...

in fact, the acting and the script were sort of theatrical rather than devoted to film "reality" - wilkinson's florid language, and the overlay of Swinton's character's practising a speech and delivering it was interesting but it took me outside the illusion - that's okay - but i never completely got a visceral reaction to the toxic poisoning that the corporation was perpetrating; years ago the Insider and Erin Brocavich grabbed me more.

a young farmer who the Wilkinson character brings on to testify against his own case was not convincing at all - i do not believe her mother would let her do that trip. there is a hint of erotic attraction that is distasteful and undermines our sympathy for what wilkinson character was doing - was that intended? i did not find that girl especially cool or believable, and so i tended to dismiss the whole issue. in fact, the issue behind the shenanigans was downplayed to the human voraciousness of greed...

i kept also wondering why we see the ending first - that is usually a solution to a plot gap that was plugged in this way. i am not sure what the pastoral contemplation of the horses was about except to make the blow up of the car more effective. so it was an aesthetic decision not a decision about plot. that was beautiful but weak - and a filmic element used to fix it up - but i am "up" for being entertained too, i guess, and that's what that moment also did. amuse us...

but it was very enjoyable, and professional to a high degree, beautiful to look at without doubt, so that's good.

the message was almost too broad, and i kept comparing it to the specifics of The Insider which was very persuasive and scary (and to Erin...the same), although the focus of Erin Brocavich was also on her development.

here there is little sense of the Clooney character's development - it is all resolved in the end (in a bit of a rush - restaurant debt settled, rejoining his family, etc. etc.), and it works out okay - his son is a good figure, and participates in our sense of whether or not arthur is mad or not, but clooney's exchanges with him and with his former-junkie brother are just not credible - he just sticks out too much somehow. i don't know why - no underlying grit somehow (I associate it to his inability as a person to commit to a woman, and so the depths are not ever really challenged in him as a person, and so he cannot draw on that as an actor - but that's perhaps more about me than about clooney as an actor - his performance in Solaris grabbed me, however.) as you can see, it was a thoroughly thought-provoking event for me, and i'd even see it again, despite a slightly clock-work script.

Snow Cake (2006)

thoughtful and visually stunning film, but i have some quibbles...

[8/10 · 29 August 2007]

if sigourney weaver were not a beautiful A-list movie actor, i am not sure we'd tolerate her stab at being autistic. nor would alex, the alan rickman character. would he have stayed with her as long as he does? despite the guilt that i am not sure i totally experience from him - because she is a cut off figure, he only has minimal reaction to play off - i didn't feel he was "arty" i just was not convinced he'd killed anyone but even more than that, i was not convinced he'd been in prison. that's a hassle for me -

we sense his anger at the truck driver who lingers around, and he has to run away or he replays the past (we learn later). but i never felt the truck driver was in danger -

the film constantly undermines its own dramatic tension. maybe that's okay sometimes too, i mean it's okay that a film be a bit quiet - not to have heightened emotion and high action on offer in cinemas all the time is maybe not a bad thing: a bit of variety, i suppose.

but other secondary figures are not satisfying - they are either clichéd, or characters with only one arrow to their bows - the inexplicable woman who insists on trying to comfort linda - she is rebuffed, cringes about it and tries again, the nosey husband-hunting superficial neighbour with inappropriate conventional responses to an unconventional woman, who keeps looking at alex and continues to try to react meaningfully to linda - the townies are too stereotyped.

the parents are excellent, really good. the hovering policeman is not at all convincing. and, for me there is a problem with the carrie-moss character: her beauty is so evidently also the result of plastic surgery - i was entertained watching them kiss in bed - but there are only hints of earthy humour from her and so she does not seem real. or especially deeply sexy. and that's too bad. that trick of whispering behind a man's ear (which she did in Matrix to Keanu Reeves when she first meets him) is a little too contrived - all the characters are also saying lines that are not extremely sophisticated -

the dialogue does not always work - beautiful, sometimes, but without the music the director has added behind some speeches, we would not be alerted (due to the declamatory timing? - the actor's fault or the director's? or the writer's fault?)

maybe the lines could just not bear all the significance they were meant to bear so we needed help to know that they were IMPORTANT - like when linda, the autistic woman, starts on a mini-story which will lead her to make an example of the word "dazlicious" (sp?) - that's nice written on a piece of paper, but it takes a while for this little speech to catch on in weaver's rhythms of speech too and to be a "telling" moment. luckily we have the music but that overcompensation also means to me that the director was sensing the lightweight-edness of the dialogue.

the inevitability of an involvement with the woman next door (although the actor and director contrive nicely to leave us a bit in the dark about maggie's way of making a living...) carrie-moss, being a sexual partner for this anomalous man is just too cheesy - and she does not especially react to the announcement he's killed someone when the policeman who loves her hopelessly tells her so.

so i have a mixed reaction overall - except that, like most of the other commentators, i love rickman's acting - the filming itself, the landscape and the shots are stunning. made me feel homesick for north America. the good acting, if sometimes not great, is labouring with a first-time writer's (hasty?) effort.

Shrink Rap (2007– )

Stephen fry prevails...

[9 July 2007]

The smugness of interviewer Pamela Connelly makes her tactics unconvincing, strewing terms about with a glibness that is off-putting, irresponsible if fry had taken her seriously which i doubt he did, despite his praise - amazingly despite his facial reactions, Stephen fry does not react verbally - maybe part of the people-pleasing personality trait that he is accused of engaging in - by himself and by her. she insists on connections she's made, i.e. referring to the damaging voice criticizing him that fry has inside him as his father's voice - too easy. we are not convinced of this connection and fry somewhat bridles at it, though he controls his reaction. his denial that his being buggered by another boy when he was young was "traumatic" - an overused term if there ever was one - is intriguing and if she'd been a more subtle and less self-satisfied and overly confident interrogator, she might have followed up on that. it made my skin crawl and i admired his skill and intelligence all the more. perhaps he has managed to please the world of viewers over and above this kind of sanctimonious interrogation by showing her up without her knowing it. cringe-making - but he is brilliant and makes us laugh with his wit and insight. a valuable discussion, even despite her interventions. (my own background is as an academic in the field of psychoanalytic studies; i am not an analyst however, and seeing her "performance" here puts me off even more.) imagine putting yourself into such a creature's hands - with her flicking her blond hair over her shoulder, etc. yuck.

Dark Harbor (1998)

great three-hander...but sophisticated...

[8/10 · 16 June 2007]

Rickman is sexy and good, but the "stranger" is less convincing - Reedus is sort of sexy, but he is not a consistent actor - this could be the director's fault in this case - we are supposed to find him alluring in the extreme just because he is "pretty" - but that's not enough. The thwarted wife is almost convincing - 7 years marriage and she and Rickman's character should be more settled with each other, whether their roles are to be incompatible or not - they must have patterns by now. i get that, although i think the wife is a bit stiff in her role - and not convincingly attracted to the "stranger" - so that's a failing - the unspoken bonding between the Rickman character and the "stranger" is better done, even if we are not sure what it is. i miss Rickman's sexy English accent (luckily he slips into it and out of the American pattern). disappointing but with some great acting.

Fires Within (1991)

slim but reasonable film

[8/10 · 25 June 2006]

Beautiful film that is skewered not only by the distracting editing, as your previous commentator mentions, but also by the confused message...anti-Castro Cubans in the USA are numerous, but we have learned - often from the movies, like Scarface or that excellent film about a gay Cuban poet who flees Cuba - that there are many ambiguities in that life - they are simplified and reduced here too much. Isabel is very passive and perhaps traumatised to an extent that is not really illuminated. it is a terrific idea that the Cuban husband is a mild-mannered type and that the American who saved her from the sea is hot - interesting to watch; in fact, also, it is the American (d'Onofrio) who makes the point of the film, that is so under-stated and ambivalent - that the Cuban husband must choose between politics and his family. the film is interesting and exasperatingly under-stated. this could have been developed into something far more intriguing - one other good point: it is fascinating to see Hispanic Miami in all its glamour and tawdriness, however. overall, the film is really underdeveloped.

The Whole Wide World (1996)

fascinating film with top performances

[9/10 · 4 February 2006]

This film covers themes of how people are creative and, also, how love can fade - the demands the odd writer makes on the more conventional school teacher who is intrigued by him are too great for her, although she tries - it is her own wish to be a writer that leads her to him shamelessly - and it is mixed in with her dream of who she might be. d'Onofrio turns in a convincing performance - and despite the oddness of the writer he portrays, we are charmed by him - no mean feat. and i think Renee Zelwenger gives one of the best performances i've seen from her - without that cutesy stuff she does aimed at seducing men. it is as good as she was in Cold Mountain. This is not a big screen film,however, and yet it is powerful for all that.