This movie shows us the painful scenes of a loveless marriage of ten years finally coming apart. The husband and wife are played by Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory, two of the best and ideally cast. But ten minutes into the movie the unsure dialog, really awful music track and the obvious manipulation by the director take over and spoil everything. The pace is jerky, too many abrupt changes of mood...nothing resonates. There are surreal scenes....guests fill the room, a lady sings a modern classical song...the couple continue their pathological exploration of what went wrong in loud voice...the guests and vocalist ignore them. All of this reeks of it's derivation from Ingmar Bergman, but Bergman did it so much better. Stick with Scenes From a Marriage and Saraband if you want to see how as failed marriage should be screened.
Reviews
14 Reviews
Kapo
(1960)
Sloppy Work
2 July 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This could have been a good movie, the story was there but it failed. Scene after scene that was just not realistic or believable. I was shocked at how sloppy Pontecorvo was in allowing so many careless takes. The women, who were supposed to be starving, diseased etc. etc. looked exactly like what they were...extras dressed in clean uniforms and fresh from a satisfying lunch at the commissary. When a German machine-gunner guns down thirty or forty people, what should the scene look like? Some motionless dead people, but mostly people in all stages of being wounded, crawling, screaming, some limping away etc.. Pontecorvo gave us forty motionless supposedly dead bodies, almost all face down, then the hero rises up unscathed and walks away. The subplot of the gal's relationship with the blond German officer was not only unbelievable but didn't go anywhere. Susan Strasberg, a virgin young girl goes into the bedroom to give herself to a German officer to gain better treatment, comes back out of the bedroom perfectly made up and looking exactly the way she did when she went in...come on! Sorry, just can't recommend this one.
Hard Eight
(1996)
Bad Movie, Disgusting Characters
23 January 2009
This movie tells of the turning point in the lives of three main characters, played by better than competent actors, against a background of gambling in Las Vegas. Sounds OK, right? But the three characters are all without any morality or redeeming qualities, the most I can say for them is none of them do drugs as far as we know. The language is unrelentingly obscene. None of the three hesitate to commit crimes whenever the occasion demands, and we're not talking about lifting a six-pack, we're talking felonies. The guy and the gal are just plain stupid, not retarded in a way to invite sympathy. I cannot imagine why Gwyneth Paltrow's agent would let her do this movie, she's a fine actress and doesn't belong in an outhouse like this. The movie begins with a plot line for the guy, which is never referred to again after the first few minutes. It proceeds on to a totally false method of screwing a casino. Then we meet the Gwyneth Paltrow gal, whom we are led to believe is a fallen angel who deserves better, but she turns out to deserve worse.I honestly believe they changed the name from Sydney to Hard Eight or vice versa, don't care which, in hope that the bad word of mouth from the earlier showings could be ducked with a new name. My advice is to run, not walk away from this one.
Body of Lies
(2008)
Hurried and choppy
11 October 2008
I was disappointed in this movie from one of my favorite genres. The story was there, the performances were good (with one exception) and the dialog sharp. But there was just too much fast-paced action, too many clipped cell-phone calls, too many cars skidding to a stop with tires squealing. It seemed like the director was double parked. It's hard to tell a coherent story with short action-filled scenes, quick cuts to truncated cell-phone calls and surveillance views, especially when the plot is so convoluted with twists, lies, double-crosses and surprises every few minutes..and I knew the basic story from having read the book. I felt that the nurse character was played too lightly, almost an airhead. A good movie if you are the kind of person who is always in a hurry, if you like martial arts and Lethal Weapon movies. Not so good if you liked Breach, Ken Follett or Tom Clancy movies.
Miss Julie
(1951)
One of the best...
31 July 2008
Sjoberg takes a Strindberg play and converts in into a superb movie. The dramatic conflicts faced by the characters is intense and plausible and almost painful to watch.
The theme is the repression of women and sexual expression, and the rigid class system, in Sweden around the turn of the century, many years before the liberating effects of the victory by the Social Democrats in the election of 1932. It is exemplified by the disastrous attempt by Julie, the daughter of a count, to find love with a man who is well-educated, strongly respectful of his place, very handsome and personable, but of the servant class. The cast gives fine performances all up and down the line. Sjoberg directs with the hand of a master, some scenes expressionistic, some impressionistic, close-ups as needed, long shots perfectly fitted in.
If you are not familiar with Sjoberg, note that a big part of Bergman's startup came from his collaboration with the older Sjoberg on the movie Torment, in which Sjoberg directed and Bergman wrote the script and served as assistant director.
The theme is the repression of women and sexual expression, and the rigid class system, in Sweden around the turn of the century, many years before the liberating effects of the victory by the Social Democrats in the election of 1932. It is exemplified by the disastrous attempt by Julie, the daughter of a count, to find love with a man who is well-educated, strongly respectful of his place, very handsome and personable, but of the servant class. The cast gives fine performances all up and down the line. Sjoberg directs with the hand of a master, some scenes expressionistic, some impressionistic, close-ups as needed, long shots perfectly fitted in.
If you are not familiar with Sjoberg, note that a big part of Bergman's startup came from his collaboration with the older Sjoberg on the movie Torment, in which Sjoberg directed and Bergman wrote the script and served as assistant director.
I Was Born, But...
(1932)
Too many non-scenes
31 July 2008
I rate this movie as being only a step above an Our Gang comedy. It's a 1932 silent with scene after scene of kids going to school, kids coming home from school, kids eating lunch, kids eating at home, kids fighting or poking each other, kids staring at each other ready to fight. These scenes alternate with scenes of the father going to work, coming home from work, changing clothes, going into his boss's office, and all characters putting on their shoes as they come out of their house.
The movie has a serious plot, with plenty of heart, but it is just too boring to have to watch all these non-scenes to get at the plot. I think the material could have been made into a pretty good short, but there's just not enough there for ninety minutes.
The movie has a serious plot, with plenty of heart, but it is just too boring to have to watch all these non-scenes to get at the plot. I think the material could have been made into a pretty good short, but there's just not enough there for ninety minutes.
Protagonist
(2007)
Like Nothing You Have Seen Before
10 July 2008
I had a strange introduction to this movie. I added it to my queue on Netflix, and they marked it as available for instant play, meaning that I could just click on the button and view the movie on my monitor rather than receive the DVD by mail. The Netflix jacket blurb said something about the lives of four disparate characters finding common paths, and I assumed I was going to see a movie like Crash or 21 Grams, in which fate crosses the threads of the characters' lives. But what came up was a series of people talking, or family album-like photos, mixed in with some scenes of weird push-puppets. The audio failed so I had no idea what what was going on. I sent a message to Netflix that the link from instant play to the movie Protagonist was screwed up, and ordered the DVD to be shipped. I was amazed to find that what I had seen on instant play was in fact Protagonist. I've taken this space to explain all this so you will understand me when I say this is not like any other "movie" you have ever seen.
Protagonist is certainly one of the most creative productions ever. The producer manages to tie together themes from Euripides, push puppetry, and the drastic human experience, the story arcs, of four greatly disparate living men.
If you have seen TV pieces on great events like D-day or the Holocaust, in which the camera cuts back and forth between a group of narrators, this movie has a lot in common with those. The difference is that in those productions the forces that drive the characters to extremes are external to the characters, where in Protagonist the forces that drive the characters are all internal...their struggles are with their own minds.
The addition of the puppetry was a stroke of genius...the puppet scenes are masterfully creative and expressive, true art in a new form.
The synthesis of the humans telling their stories with the puppets acting out the Euripidean themes, made Protagonist seem more like fiction than documentary.
Not for everyone, but if you are bold in wanting to see something different and more creative than garden-variety fiction movies, try Protagonist. I loved it.
Protagonist is certainly one of the most creative productions ever. The producer manages to tie together themes from Euripides, push puppetry, and the drastic human experience, the story arcs, of four greatly disparate living men.
If you have seen TV pieces on great events like D-day or the Holocaust, in which the camera cuts back and forth between a group of narrators, this movie has a lot in common with those. The difference is that in those productions the forces that drive the characters to extremes are external to the characters, where in Protagonist the forces that drive the characters are all internal...their struggles are with their own minds.
The addition of the puppetry was a stroke of genius...the puppet scenes are masterfully creative and expressive, true art in a new form.
The synthesis of the humans telling their stories with the puppets acting out the Euripidean themes, made Protagonist seem more like fiction than documentary.
Not for everyone, but if you are bold in wanting to see something different and more creative than garden-variety fiction movies, try Protagonist. I loved it.
21
(2008)
Not The Movie It Could Have Been
31 March 2008
Warning: Spoilers
This movie was based on a true story, and if the makers had stuck closer to the true story it could have been a much better movie. But no, they had to Hollywoodize it and dumb it down so that anyone with the least knowledge of the game of blackjack and how casinos operate will be saying "No way" to themselves all through the movie. It actually ends up with a chase scene and characters running through the kitchen, for God's sake.
In real life the team's success was 90% in being careful to not attract the attention of the casinos detectors and only 10% in their scheme, which was based on the well-known technique of card-counting to get an edge. In the movie, the team's actions were childishly crude even to the point of continually returning to the same casino...so the movie makers could develop the characters of the casino bad guys. In real life the team was careful to not win much at any one table or at any one casino, not more than $1,000 a session, which would be well within the amount any lucky player might win without counting. In the movie they hit the same table for tens of thousands of dollars, which would have set off alarms all over Nevada. Even the hand signals the team used in the movie were childishly obvious. All this by the supposedly brilliant MIT students and professor. No way.
The movie actually had the bad casino guys torturing card counters when they caught them. No way. In real life a casino has the right, tested in court, to kick anyone out and ban them from ever playing again...they do not have to prove cheating or card-counting, they do it under the laws of trespassing on their private property and this is what they do. Remember, card-counters are only making what amounts to an hourly wage, so they are not a serious threat to a casino.
Another example of the Hollywood treatment was that after showing how brilliant Ben was at counting cards when they were recruiting him, he was not used as the card counter, he was used as the big bettor and one of the female team members did the counting.
an entertaining movie for someone not knowledgeable or much interested in real life casino gambling, but dumb and dumber for those who are.
In real life the team's success was 90% in being careful to not attract the attention of the casinos detectors and only 10% in their scheme, which was based on the well-known technique of card-counting to get an edge. In the movie, the team's actions were childishly crude even to the point of continually returning to the same casino...so the movie makers could develop the characters of the casino bad guys. In real life the team was careful to not win much at any one table or at any one casino, not more than $1,000 a session, which would be well within the amount any lucky player might win without counting. In the movie they hit the same table for tens of thousands of dollars, which would have set off alarms all over Nevada. Even the hand signals the team used in the movie were childishly obvious. All this by the supposedly brilliant MIT students and professor. No way.
The movie actually had the bad casino guys torturing card counters when they caught them. No way. In real life a casino has the right, tested in court, to kick anyone out and ban them from ever playing again...they do not have to prove cheating or card-counting, they do it under the laws of trespassing on their private property and this is what they do. Remember, card-counters are only making what amounts to an hourly wage, so they are not a serious threat to a casino.
Another example of the Hollywood treatment was that after showing how brilliant Ben was at counting cards when they were recruiting him, he was not used as the card counter, he was used as the big bettor and one of the female team members did the counting.
an entertaining movie for someone not knowledgeable or much interested in real life casino gambling, but dumb and dumber for those who are.
Gunga Din
(1939)
This movie is rated as a classic on sentiment, not on any quality of movie making.
22 March 2008
This movie is rated a classic on sentiment not on any quality of movie-making. It moves from the unlikely to the unbelievable, from the unrealistic to the ludicrous.
The unbelievable plot revolves around an attempt by two British soldiers and a Hindu gofer to rescue a third soldier who has been captured by insurgent Indians. In the later scene we see a full regiment with drum and bagpipes marching into an ambush. In the British army, a sergeant does not order up a rescue attempt, and if you get past that, he does not attempt it with only one other soldier and an Indian servant when there is a full regiment on hand. The Indian insurgents are so incredibly inept it is laughable...there are hundreds of them but they can't hold their prisoner or kill the two rescuers, of course not. At one point we see the British soldiers throwing blocks of stone down from the battlements at the insurgents, who are scattered around the mountainside in ambush...one would have to have an eggplant for a brain to think this would do any damage. After Cary Grant as the rescued prisoner is shot, he lies on the floor looking around at the water boy...hardly the actions of someone who has been shot in the back. The water boy bravely blows a bugle (which comes from nowhere) to sound the alarm...this he does by standing up high on a wall so he can be seen and shot by the bad guys, and we shed a tear as he keeps trying to sound more notes as he is repeatedly shot and the bugle call breaks up into feeble squawks...instead of blowing the bugle while hiding behind cover as anybody with half a brain would do. This scene has deservedly been parodied in comedy sketches. If they wanted to make a Buster Keaton comedy, they should have hired Keaton and done it better.
The unbelievable plot revolves around an attempt by two British soldiers and a Hindu gofer to rescue a third soldier who has been captured by insurgent Indians. In the later scene we see a full regiment with drum and bagpipes marching into an ambush. In the British army, a sergeant does not order up a rescue attempt, and if you get past that, he does not attempt it with only one other soldier and an Indian servant when there is a full regiment on hand. The Indian insurgents are so incredibly inept it is laughable...there are hundreds of them but they can't hold their prisoner or kill the two rescuers, of course not. At one point we see the British soldiers throwing blocks of stone down from the battlements at the insurgents, who are scattered around the mountainside in ambush...one would have to have an eggplant for a brain to think this would do any damage. After Cary Grant as the rescued prisoner is shot, he lies on the floor looking around at the water boy...hardly the actions of someone who has been shot in the back. The water boy bravely blows a bugle (which comes from nowhere) to sound the alarm...this he does by standing up high on a wall so he can be seen and shot by the bad guys, and we shed a tear as he keeps trying to sound more notes as he is repeatedly shot and the bugle call breaks up into feeble squawks...instead of blowing the bugle while hiding behind cover as anybody with half a brain would do. This scene has deservedly been parodied in comedy sketches. If they wanted to make a Buster Keaton comedy, they should have hired Keaton and done it better.
The Long, Hot Summer
(1958)
A Sympathetic Disappointment
28 January 2008
Considering the cast and the fine Faulkner story, I was expecting wonderful things from this movie, maybe another Splendor in the Grass, but I felt badly let down.
The script was, in a word, wretched. There were unmotivated strong emotions, stilted dialog, not helped by poorly faked Southern accents from players who are not not native Southerners, loaded with plot holes and murky relationships that seemed to go up and down like the stock market.
The cast that looked so good on paper didn't cut it. Anthony Franciosa looked like high school senior play. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, who went on to Academy Award performances later, were just over the top and struggling with bad dialog in this one. I thought Orson Welles and Angela Lansbury were was excellent playing off each other, but their relationship in a subplot was undefined and didn't advance the story at all.
My family, with different generations, watched the movie at home on DVD with me and their reaction was similar to mine: a sympathetic disappointment in the work of some of our favorite players.
The script was, in a word, wretched. There were unmotivated strong emotions, stilted dialog, not helped by poorly faked Southern accents from players who are not not native Southerners, loaded with plot holes and murky relationships that seemed to go up and down like the stock market.
The cast that looked so good on paper didn't cut it. Anthony Franciosa looked like high school senior play. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, who went on to Academy Award performances later, were just over the top and struggling with bad dialog in this one. I thought Orson Welles and Angela Lansbury were was excellent playing off each other, but their relationship in a subplot was undefined and didn't advance the story at all.
My family, with different generations, watched the movie at home on DVD with me and their reaction was similar to mine: a sympathetic disappointment in the work of some of our favorite players.
Ashes of Paradise
(1997)
Ranks with best crime movies
22 September 2007
Viewed this movie once, liked it so much I turned around and viewed it again. I would rate it on equal terms with LA Confidential and The Usual Suspects as one of the best modern crime movies. It is edited in style similar to Memento, looking backward while advancing toward the ending, and this worked to make it unpredictable and entertaining throughout. The movie was very well cast. Letitia Bredice in particular gave an outstanding performance as a highly sexy young woman, yet intelligent and deserving of sympathy in a Marilyn Monroe kind of role. Two other fine performances at the center of the story came from Cecilia Roth as a magistrate trying to work her way through a baffling crime and political interference, and Hector Alterio, also a magistrate, caught between his sense of duty and a situation increasingly threatening to his beloved sons. Highly recommended for lovers of crime movies.
3:10 to Yuma
(2007)
Clichéd and Unrealistic Throughout
17 September 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I went to this movie expecting to see a modern western with at least some shreds of realism and creativity, such as I had seen in Eastwood's movie, The Unforgiven and the TV series Lonesome Dove. Unfortunately, that was not the case. 3:10 showed us just about every cliché and unrealistic action scene that abound in old grade B westerns. My suspension of disbelief was zero, I didn't believe a word of this movie. Here are a few examples why:
Gatling gun in stagecoach. An armored stagecoach with a Gatling gun mounted so it's field of fire through a slot traversed about 45 degrees....from any other angle it was blind and useless. So where did the attackers collect? Why in a bunch in front of the gun, of course.
We never shoot horses. What would killers like these guys do to stop and rob a flying stagecoach pulled by a team of six? Don't you think the first thing they would do would be to shoot one of the horses so that dragging the dead horse would screw up the whole team and harness...and if that didn't wreck the flying stagecoach, shoot another one...and if that didn't...you get the idea. But no, these outlaws were too humane to do that, they let the stagecoach keep going...and going...and going...while the Gatling gun and marksmen inside the bouncing stagecoach picked some of them off. I'm a pretty good shot, but I sure wish I could hit a man galloping on horseback under those conditions. Wait a mo...maybe it would be easier to just shoot the horse out from under him...no, can't do that...it wouldn't't be humane, even it might save my life.
The marshal who was gut-shot in an early scene, (and provided us with two nice clichés, the doc was a veterinarian, ha ha, and the tense scene of the forceps picking the slug out of his belly without anesthetic and being dropped...tink...into a pan) was up and ready the next day for a hard ride through the pass to take the prisoner to Bisbee. Some constitution I must say.
When the outlaw who was famous for his ruthless killings and bloody escapes, was brought to the ranch house (plot cliché contrived to make that necessary) the rancher let him eat at his family's dinner table with his wife and impressionable son. Yeah, right.
The movie begins with the cliché of the barn burning and the rancher trying to save his horses. This burning was utterly unexplained and unmotivated.
During the dangerous ride through the pass and Indian country, the outlaw gets the jump on the marshal and rancher and ruthlessly kills the marshal. Later, the rancher and his son turn the tables and the rancher gets the gun back. Now, don't you think that as soon as the rancher got his hands on the gun he would have instantly shot the outlaw and taken the quickest way to get himself and his son to safety? But no, he has to risk his son's life and his own to get this guy past the Indians, and past the outlaw's gang who were coming to rescue him, so he could catch a train and go to prison. Spare me.
In the big final scene wherein the rancher brings the outlaw to catch the train, the rancher pulls the outlaw along with him while they run through alleys and over rooftops amidst a storm of gunfire from the outlaw's henchmen...and the outlaw simply runs along with the rancher and even climbs on the roof with him, making no attempt to grab the rancher's gun, or duck away from him or jump off of a building to get to his men...does nothing at all to save himself from life in prison. Totally unbelievable.
And lastly, if you were the outlaw's top henchman, experienced in robbing trains and killing the occupants as related earlier, and your boss was to be taken by train to Yuma and prison, and you had lead the gang into Bisbee to save him...wouldn't't it occur to you to disable the train as soon as it arrived, so no matter what the rancher did he couldn't win, he would just be stuck there in Bisbee, outnumbered twenty to one, till he gave up?
I love good westerns, have lived in the west all my life, know Bisbee and Yuma, Durango, Lordsburg, Tombstone and Las Cruces and all of the places where famous actual outlaws lived...but I just couldn't swallow this movie. Sorry.
Gatling gun in stagecoach. An armored stagecoach with a Gatling gun mounted so it's field of fire through a slot traversed about 45 degrees....from any other angle it was blind and useless. So where did the attackers collect? Why in a bunch in front of the gun, of course.
We never shoot horses. What would killers like these guys do to stop and rob a flying stagecoach pulled by a team of six? Don't you think the first thing they would do would be to shoot one of the horses so that dragging the dead horse would screw up the whole team and harness...and if that didn't wreck the flying stagecoach, shoot another one...and if that didn't...you get the idea. But no, these outlaws were too humane to do that, they let the stagecoach keep going...and going...and going...while the Gatling gun and marksmen inside the bouncing stagecoach picked some of them off. I'm a pretty good shot, but I sure wish I could hit a man galloping on horseback under those conditions. Wait a mo...maybe it would be easier to just shoot the horse out from under him...no, can't do that...it wouldn't't be humane, even it might save my life.
The marshal who was gut-shot in an early scene, (and provided us with two nice clichés, the doc was a veterinarian, ha ha, and the tense scene of the forceps picking the slug out of his belly without anesthetic and being dropped...tink...into a pan) was up and ready the next day for a hard ride through the pass to take the prisoner to Bisbee. Some constitution I must say.
When the outlaw who was famous for his ruthless killings and bloody escapes, was brought to the ranch house (plot cliché contrived to make that necessary) the rancher let him eat at his family's dinner table with his wife and impressionable son. Yeah, right.
The movie begins with the cliché of the barn burning and the rancher trying to save his horses. This burning was utterly unexplained and unmotivated.
During the dangerous ride through the pass and Indian country, the outlaw gets the jump on the marshal and rancher and ruthlessly kills the marshal. Later, the rancher and his son turn the tables and the rancher gets the gun back. Now, don't you think that as soon as the rancher got his hands on the gun he would have instantly shot the outlaw and taken the quickest way to get himself and his son to safety? But no, he has to risk his son's life and his own to get this guy past the Indians, and past the outlaw's gang who were coming to rescue him, so he could catch a train and go to prison. Spare me.
In the big final scene wherein the rancher brings the outlaw to catch the train, the rancher pulls the outlaw along with him while they run through alleys and over rooftops amidst a storm of gunfire from the outlaw's henchmen...and the outlaw simply runs along with the rancher and even climbs on the roof with him, making no attempt to grab the rancher's gun, or duck away from him or jump off of a building to get to his men...does nothing at all to save himself from life in prison. Totally unbelievable.
And lastly, if you were the outlaw's top henchman, experienced in robbing trains and killing the occupants as related earlier, and your boss was to be taken by train to Yuma and prison, and you had lead the gang into Bisbee to save him...wouldn't't it occur to you to disable the train as soon as it arrived, so no matter what the rancher did he couldn't win, he would just be stuck there in Bisbee, outnumbered twenty to one, till he gave up?
I love good westerns, have lived in the west all my life, know Bisbee and Yuma, Durango, Lordsburg, Tombstone and Las Cruces and all of the places where famous actual outlaws lived...but I just couldn't swallow this movie. Sorry.
1408
(2007)
Hopelessly illogical
25 June 2007
Warning: Spoilers
This movie defies any common sense or logic. The special effects that are supposed to create suspense and horror are hopelessly illogical and follow no particular pattern. Some are mechanical things like the temperature control. Some are the ghosts of past occupants who came to bad ends. There is an endless number of crashes and darkness. The room is on a floor of a dignified hotel with many other rooms on the same floor...are we supposed to think the occupants of other rooms don't notice the screams or the loud noises? No effect on the rooms on the other sides of the walls of Room 1408? No people gathering in the hallway wondering what is happening? Why does Enslin's daughter appear in the room when she was never an occupant? A group of wreckers comes to the room and demolishes it...what was that all about? Worst of all, the room is not developed as an evil character, as was done in the Shining...it is just special effects. The movie was far too long and there were too many twists and turns, again having nothing to do with character development or logic. A really boring and bad movie for the thinking moviegoer.
The Saragossa Manuscript
(1965)
A Real Mess
9 July 2004
Based on IMDb score and comments, I was expecting to see a movie on the same level as The Seventh Seal or The Da Vinci Code. A major disappointment. In this movie they tried to combine the horror of apparitions and Dante Inferno landscapes with the light comedy of foppish main characters and silly a-ladder-at-Madame's-bedroom-window scenes. If that wasn't bad enough, they kept branching off on long back-story lines, making it hard to keep track of the characters and where we were at, plus killing any hope of building foreboding or suspense. Minimal character development. Minimal narrative drive. No laughs, not even a good chuckle. No tension. No satisfying ending. A total waste of time.
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