trixie1127 Reviews

The Black Donnellys (2007)

The show "The Departed" wishes it was

[9/10 · 28 February 2007]

Going just by the pilot - excellent! I thought the story'd be off to a bit of a slow, boring start, but it took off like a flare, from the first few shots, never flagging, never letting up. The grittiness of the look, the timing, the pace, the story line, the dialogue -- terrific, just what you'd expect from people who made "Crash." They didn't disappoint. The acting is also very good, except Keith Nobbs, who plays Joey Ice Cream: entirely too much of a clichéd motor-mouthed overacting little weasel. If he's going to continue providing the narration, it can be a detriment to the overall quality, as it was in the pilot, hence I gave it only 9 stars out of 10.

Children of Men (2006)

A thinking person's thriller? Thinking about what?

[6/10 · 24 February 2007]

The cinematography is stunning. That's about it. Somebody called their review "A thinking person's thriller" - thinking about what? I don't have a problem with a "what if" factor, it's an integral part of fiction: what if (due to pollution, hormones and/or preservatives in food, or whatever) we did stop breeding? It's a fine premise for a dystopia. What stumped me is the confusion around the political points the writers were trying to make about illegal immigration and didn't quite succeed. If the UK is the only country left standing, *should* it let everybody in and make room for them? Why? Then again, considering the march of young Muslim men waving rifles in the refugee camp and chanting "Allah Akbar," maybe they *shouldn't* let everyone just run loose? Maybe not. Maybe the walls around the refugee camp aren't thick enough. But maybe they also shouldn't beat the refugees and push them around and yell at them. They probably shouldn't. But being the only country left standing, a country the size of a handkerchief, the one everybody wants to get in, maybe they're a little stressed out? Unfortunately, the filmmakers spent a ton of screen time on creating this pseudo-political confusion, at the expense of creating their main character. Who is this dude Theo and why does he do the things he does? He just wanders around in a daze without any apparent motivation other than the memory of his dead son, which is an unbearably lame cliché and explains nothing. Until the end, we never get to know him as a real person. It helps that Clive Owen is so easy on the eye, but if the main character never comes alive as a person, the story isn't worth following, and what happens to him doesn't matter all that much. The other characters are just as one-dimensional and archetypical, and that hampers the acting, even from such favorites as Michael Caine, even though he knocks himself out to give his character an extra dimension, which brings it to a whopping two. And that's a shame, because it could have been a good story if the writers (I mean the screenwriters; I haven't read the original James novel) focused more on the human beings at the center of it than on the difficult and complex politics of illegal immigration, about which they don't seem to know much.

Nevertheless, it's worth repeating: the cinematography, the whole look, is excellent.

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005)

What the **** was that all about?!?

[1/10 · 2 September 2006]

This movie was supposed to come out in New York last fall - never did, then last winter - never did, and I was dying to see it. Finally, I caught it on DVD, and everything made sense: it was not held back because of its offensiveness to anyone but because it's just unbelievably bad. The whole movie is an exercise in self-deprecation that's better left to Brooks's therapist. It has some funny moments, but Brooks - not an unfunny guy - goes out of his way to compile the routine with which he tests the Hindu sense of humor (the explanation of why India is part of the "Muslim world" is weak in the extreme) of jokes he cannot possibly not know to be lame. I mean, come on, they include knock-knock jokes! Then he gets laughs for the same unfunny jokes from a band of hashed-up Pakistani Muslim terrorists. Maybe it's supposed to make a statement, but I don't believe Brooks knows what that statement is. Some of the acting is good - John Carrol Lynch is the best thing about this movie - but the premise falls so flat on its face, it goes through the earth core and comes out on the other side. If anyone actually wanted to find some humor in the Muslim world, they should have sent Denis Leary and Colin Quinn to look for it in Saudi Arabia.

Match Point (2005)

What happens when upper classes start mixing with the help

[4/10 · 14 August 2006]

A nicely produced, good-looking movie, but there's no earthly reason for it to be a Woody Allen movie. There's no wit or humor within a mile of this dreary, moralistic ripoff of The Talented Mr. Ripley - and Patricia Highsmith had already said it all much better (before it got dumbed down in Matt Damon's climactic writhing histrionics) - and what's the point of watching a Woody Allen movie if it doesn't let you so much as crack a smile, never mind give you a clever line or a dozen that you'd be inspired to memorize and apply to general life circumstances, the way Woody Allen used to write? Not one of the characters in Match Point could possibly be less interesting, appealing, or sympathetic. Woody Allen's growing, embarrassing obsession with Scarlett Johanssen notwithstanding, she's just an emergency backup Charlize Theron, 15 years younger, without Theron's experience and range as an actress and her mature sex appeal as a woman. Since Match Point also rehashes Woody's old pseudophilosophical ruminations of Crimes and Misdemeanors, I wish I could say watch Crimes and Misdemeanors instead, but I wouldn't wish that one on anybody either. No, you just can't beat Woody Allen's "early, funny ones." Try as he may, his attempts at depth do nothing but sink like a rock - and drag the audience down with them, into the mire of pompousness and disturbingly shallow moralizing.