zio ugo Reviews

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

A bit Hollywoodish, but not too much

[13 December 2004]

The topic is interesting, the quintessential "road movie" with social and political undertones (or maybe the quintessential social and political film with road undertones) and, all in all, fairly well realized. The Latin American natural and human landscape is, as always, stunning in its beauty and variety. All in all a decent film. Yet, one can't help but comparing it with the film it could have been and it wasn't, mainly due to a certain Hollywood sappiness that, maybe under the influence of the American portion of the production, percolates through the whole film. Some defects are subtle and, all in all, venial: the way facial expressions are edited in here and there in the film, certain semi-comical moments whose placement and frequency are too predictable not to arouse the suspicion that they went directly from the pages of a production manual into the film, etc. Others are more evident: the river-crossing scene is absolutely unforgivable (and this whether Guevara really swam through the river or not), the political and social aspects of the film are downplayed and, when they are played at all, they are with a naiveté that borders with a populist "good feeling" (what the Italians used to call, some ten years ago, "il buonismo.") Gael Garcia Bernal is a solid actor, and this film confirms it, but we are far away from the performance in "El crime del Padre Amaro." One can even glimpse the early symptoms of Tarantinism (a disease that I named after Quentin Tarantino: a great director who is, however, so busy being Quentin Tarantino that his life seems not to have much space for anything else.)

But, as I said, all in all, the story is good, the film keeps moving, the South American landscape is beautiful, the Argentinian accent is deliciously musical. Not a masterpiece, but worth the price of the ticket, which is more than you can say for so many films.

Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

What's Verne got to do with it?

[13 December 2004]

Disney's Around the World in 80 days

Being locked for 12 hours inside a jet liner leads one to do things that, under normal circumstances, one wouldn't dream of doing, possibly because the low pressure and the dry air reduce the flow of oxygen to the brain and the notoriously bland airline food depresses one's spirit. Be it as it may, it is under these circumstances that I found myself, my vacation books all read, to watch Disney's version of "Around the world in 80 days," a most unfortunate decision, as it turned out. One would think that deriving a film for kids from a Jules Verne book should be a rather straightforward affair: Verne's books contain plenty of adventure, generations of children have loved them as they are, and they are written in a style as cinematic ally oriented as Michael Chrichton (and more nobly so: Verne, just as Chrichton, is not a great writer but, at least, he didn't choose his writing style with an eye on the movie rights). "Around the world in 80 days" is, among other things, a gentle French divertissement at the expense of British propriety, the emblem of which is Phileas Fogg (a name, I suppose, contrived by Verne to resonate with one of London's better known features): a proper, organized, methodical, punctual member of the conservative Reform Club, whose faith in orderly progress leads him to believe that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days simply because Her Majesty's train and ship time tables say so: mother nature and its unpredictability would not dare to stay in the way of the British empire. With the exception of the name, nothing of this is left in the film's Fogg: a goofy inventor eternally in contrast with the establishment of which the book's Fogg was the epitome, all in all a figure closer to the most trite American mythology than to the stereotypical Englishman as humorously seen by a XIX century French writer. The film's Fogg is afraid of leaving England for the first time; no such concern could arise in the mind of the book's Fogg: he will never leave England, because he carries it with him wherever he goes. The book's Fogg is imperturbable: in the whole book he loses his temper only once, to punch Mr. Fixx in the face after he confesses that Fogg has been arrested by mistake. The film's Fogg is the comic relief of an action film. Speaking of action, the need for plenty of it leads to the silly idea of a Chinese Passepartout (Jackie Chan, as ubiquitous as weed), to an improbable gang of Chinese bad guys (and girl) that go to extraordinary and inexplicable lengths to put their hands on an objectively worthless Chinese village, and to the replacement of the false accusation of theft (by Fogg) of money from the Bank of England with the true one of theft (by Passepartout) of a jade Buddha from the same bank (what was a jade Buddha doing in the Bank of England anyway?). All this just for an excuse to pack the film with martial art scene that go as well with the book as a tarantula on a pudding. Schwarzenegger plays (with the nice self-directed sense of humor that he already displayed in "last action hero") and incongruous and unlikely Turkish prince. Unlikely as it may be, Schwarzenegger is more credible in it than in his current role of a California governor.

You might think that I take too seriously a terrible rendition of what is, after all, just an adventure book, that it is not as if Disney had ruined "Crime and Punishment," and that I am trying to play philology on the wrong ground. But, you see, I do believe that if you don't have the creativity to come up with your own ideas, if you have to take them (and, more importantly for Disney's marketeers, their well known title) from somebody else, you should have the decency to respect their work, that re-interpretation is admitted, but only on well motivated grounds (vide "Romeo and Juliet" with Leonardo di Caprio). There are other important considerations. The action scenes, the evil and stupid bad guys (poor Lord Kelvin, pioneer of thermodynamics!), the antagonistic attitude of Fogg reflect more the desire of Disney to adhere to Hollywood stereotypes than anything Verne wrote. Once again, we see that Hollywood is capable of producing exactly the same film starting from no matter what story, and it considers its public incapable of understanding anything beyond the limited confines of its stereotypes. Quite an insult to the children's intelligence, really. Verne manages to create a continuing and interesting adventure, loved by children, without deviating too much from his two themes: the trip, and the mistaken pursuit of Mr. Fixx (and no: the gentlemen of the Reform Club wouldn't dream of using him for playing dirty tricks!). This useless film, putting action first, goes in all directions and manages only to be excruciatingly, blisteringly dumb.

September 11 (2002)

Collection of interesting perspectives

[11 November 2003]

Everybody trying to describe this film using the common categories of cinema would run into serious problem and would, eventually, come to realization that such an attempt is futile. When eleven directors from eleven different countries are asked to comment an event of global resonance in any way they wanted, the result can?t be but inhomogeneous and, I would say, inhomogeneity should be welcome as a success of the operation.

Being quite impossible to say what this film "is" as a film, the only key to interpret it might be that of embracing its variety and reading it by comparison.

The eleven views of the terrorist attacks vary widely. A couple of them (Penn and Lelouche) are personal to the point of minimalism, reflecting on the impact that the ripples of such an enormous event can have even on the life of people seemingly disconnected from it. At the opposite corner, Loach and Chahine have an openly political reading of the attack as an event in the web of a troubled world (anybody who read these episodes in a purely anti-American "I-wonder-why-they-hate-us" has either not paid attention, or is committing the typically American sins of manichaeism, oversimplification, and historical amnesia).

Nair?s episode was interesting, in my view, especially in the light of the words that appear at the beginning of it: "inspired to actual events," a foreshadowing of a plethora of TV movie-of-the-week, those being really offensive and anti-American with their idiotic glorification of the hero and the reduction of the American collective personality to a cartoonish flatness.

The segment by Gonzalez Inarritu was maybe the most powerful and experimental: something that you can do only when you have the luxury of shooting an eleven minutes, nine seconds, and one frame segment.

I could go on for all the episodes, each one of which has a distinct personality (although the quality of the realization varies quite a bit), and each one of which allows an interesting reading perspective.

The film is definitely powerful, interesting, and worth seeing. Although chances are that you will not like all the eleven episodes equally, each one of them will probably put the September 11 tragedy in a different perspective and give it depth and complexity.

It is a shame that human stupidity prevented this film from having a wide American distribution.

Vanilla Sky (2001)

How to use a photocopier

[1 July 2003]

From the point of view of pure cinema, it is quite impossible to make any review of this film: `Vanilla sky' is the carbon copy of the Spanish film `Abre los ojos,' translated practically verbatim, and with the only difference of a higher percentage of in-your-face special effects (including the typical never-ending fall from a building) that, if they don't add anything to the film, they certainly add a lot to the budget of Digital Domain, the company responsible for most of the special effects. What is left for us to do is to reflect on the meaning of such an operation. We can't honestly call it a remake because of the temporal closeness of its antecedent (Abre los ojos was released in 1997), and of the consequent lack of the `cultural distance' necessary to any reinterpretation operation. We can't call it an homage to a genre (a la Brain de Palma in `Blow Out,' just to make an example) because the referent is too specific, and the carbon copy quality of `Vanilla Sky' too evident.

So, what is left? The producers, obviously, believed that the story would appeal to the American public, for otherwise they wouldn't have spent a considerable amount of money filming it but, in this case, wouldn't have been simpler to release the original in AMC theaters around the country? The only explanation I can find, one that is rather insulting for the American public, is the following. Hollywood producers believe that the mainstream spectator will not see a film unless it falls completely within the expected (and very restricted, Hollywood canons). So, the setting has to be a familiar American setting (New York instead of Madrid) and there has to be the usual sprinkle of known American actors (Tom Cruise). But, most important, the dialog has an undefinable Hollywood quality: just the mix of witty, sad, and sugary to which Hollywood films have accustomed the American public.

This film, in other words, is an explicit insult: Hollywood is telling us that they got us so use to their style of crap that the only way for us to go see a film is to make it into crap.

What is truly sad is that they might be right: Vanilla Sky was a discrete success. On the other hand (and I quote Barnum paraphrasing Mencken): `Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.'

Romance (1999)

Reversal of the Hollywood scheme

[10 March 2003]

(this is a repost... the other review I posted was somehow missing a part)

In a perfect world, my opinion of ?Romance? would sound more or less like this. This is a fairly interesting film about the crisis in a couple relation that, in some sense, manages to come up with some interesting and quite universal statements about the couple relation qua relation and qua adaptation to a life of routine after the initial sparks. The desire of the woman to test her sexual boundaries should be seen, I believe, in this context, together with the final realization that, after all, even a bondage experience can be as banal and squalid as everyday life. The film is quite typically French: more spoken than physical, with the kind of conversation that French films seem to favor: too intellectual to be spoken by real people in real life, but grounded enough to make you wish that you and your friends could speak like that. It is probably not as good as ?la pianiste? but, then again, not many films are as good as ?la pianiste.? It is, however, an interesting analysis of a situation common to many couples.

This, as I said, in a perfect world. Alas, this is not a perfect world and, somehow, the question of the sexual content of the film managed to dominate the question about its contents. Most of this, I must say, comes from the barbaric and puritan America, my country of adoption. To the more relaxed Europeans, I must point out that this is a country in which, on television, it is normal to see ?reality shows? with murder scenes, car crashes during high speed pursuits, and violent arrests; it is normal to see in prime time films with violent content that glorify the army and the ethos of war. Yet, it is illegal to show a woman?s breast, and curse words that in more liberal countries are considered quite normal are invariably, and audibly, beeped. The sense and the moral choice behind all this escape me, but this is the background that one should have in mind to understand the outrage of some Americans in front of this film.

Outrage which, I must say, is quite misplaced. With the exception of one or two scenes, the sex in the film is not very explicit and, even including the more ?racy? fellatio scenes, it is no more explicit that in Bellocchio?s ?Il Diavolo in Corpo,? which I saw (uncut) on Italian TV (quite late at night, to be honest).

This outrage, however, and the puritanism that generated it, give this film its true significance, beyond the plot and the acting: the reversal of the traditional Hollywoodian standard. The essential fact about this film is that, while sex is depicted with immaculate candor (without, I must add, the lewd and voyeuristic aspects of Hollywood?s depiction), violence is symbolic, hidden from view. The only violent death of the film is in an explosion that we only see from afar in a very sanitized version, the dead body is never shown, and the Fellinesque funeral points to the unreality and the absurdity of the whole occurrence.

If a political message should be derived from this film, is a rejection of a culture that is trying to make sex unacceptable channeling sexual energies into violence, which is so often and so absurdly glorified and depicted into every gory detail. The call for sex versus violence implicit in the editing and the direction of this film is, I will add, a very healthy one.

Not a great film, but a fairly good one. Recommended.

Romance (1999)

Much ado about sex, but fairly good nevertheless

[7 March 2003]

In a perfect world, my opinion of ?Romance? would sound more or less like this. This is a fairly interesting film about the crisis in a couple relation that, in some sense, manages to come up with some interesting and quite universal statements about the couple relation qua relation and qua adaptation to a life of routine after the initial sparks. The desire of the woman to test her sexual boundaries should be seen, I believe, in this context, together with the final realization that, after all, even a bondage experience can be as banal and squalid as everyday life. The film is quite typically French: more spoken than physical, with the kind of conversation that French films seem to favor: too intellectual to be spoken by real people in real life, but grounded enough to make you wish that you and your friends could speak like that. It is probably not as good as ?la pianiste? but, then again, not many films are as good as ?la pianiste.? It is, however, an interesting analysis of a situation common to many couples.

This, as I said, in a perfect world. Alas, this is not a perfect world and, somehow, the question of the sexual content of the film managed to dominate the question about its contents. Most of this, I must say, come from the barbaric and puritan America, my country of adoption. To the more relaxed Europeans, I must point out that this is a country in which, on television, it is normal to see ?reality shows? with murder scenes, car crashes during high speed pursuits, and violent arrests; it is normal to see in prime time films with violent content that glorify the army and the ethos of war. Yet, it is illegal to show a woman?s breast, and curse words that in more liberal countries are considered quite normal are invariably, and audibly, beeped. The sense and the moral choice behind all this escape me, but this is the background that one should have in mind to understand the outrage of some Americans in front of this film.

Outrage which, I must say, is quite misplaced. With the exception of one or two scenes, the sex in the film is not very explicit and, even including the more ?racy? fellatio scenes, it is no more explicit that in Bellocchio?s ?Il Diavolo in Corpo,? which I saw (uncut) on Italian TV (quite late at night, to be honest). If we can get the people past the shock of discovery that normal couples do have oral sex, I would say that the first paragraph of this review sums up pretty well my overall opinion of the whole film.

Not a great film, but a fairly good one. Recommended.

Violet Perfume: Nobody Hears You (2001)

Another little gem from Mexico

[15 January 2003]

Almost a new generation Italian neo-realist film minus the political commitment, plus a sense that there is more to suffering than poverty alone: decades of social fragmentation and of "me" ideology have left us all as closed as Leibnitzian windowless monads: packed everywhere, but incapable of any elementary form of communication.

The Italian neo-realists, more or less close to various forms of socialism, had here and there glimpse of (naive, as it was to be seen) hope into the "new man." No such feeling is present here. The sky has closed upon us and is not going to open anytime soon.

All in all, a superb, if terribly dramatic film. The final scene is an absolute masterpiece, hinting at unspeakable horrors directed towards the already beaten, raped, and victimized protagonist, with the exquisite restrain not to show them at all.

A great film, which takes on important themes (sexual violence among teenagers, the dissolution of family and social bonds, the apathy of society towards "inconvenient" realities) without puritan restrain but without unnecessary gore. Highly recommended.

Open Your Eyes (1997)

A good film, ruined by a commonplace finale

[15 January 2003]

For most of its length, this film is compelling, well filmed, with an interesting and complex plot. The problem is that 90% of the film is so good that it builds up expectations for a final epiphany that should be just as bizarre, involving, and unexpected.

Alas, when the moment comes all we are offered is a rather disappointing disentanglement, more akin to that of a soap opera in which the producers have decided to revive a dead character (yes, I am talking about "Dallas") than to such a beautifully made (up to that point) film.

If only the authors creativity and imagination had held for another ten minutes, this would have been an almost perfect film. As it is, I regard it as a missed opportunity (although I still appreciated its innovative ideas).

I wish I could compare it to Vanilla Sky, but I have a policy not to go see Hollywood star-filled remakes of European films. If they want my eight dollars, they should at least have the decency not to steal a plot just to re-set it in a more familiar American environment. It is really annoying.

In the Bedroom (2001)

Vigilante justice riding high...

[4 November 2002]

I rented this film on tape after I was Nanni Moretti's "The son's room" because the issues with which the two films deal are somewhat overlapping, and I was interested in the cultural differences that would be revealed in the treatment of such an intimate and private tragedy. Was I in for a ride!

Unlike Moretti's understated, human view of the tragedy of losing a son, this mediocre film is replete with American stereotypes. The most evident, of course, is the presence of the unredeemable "bad guy." In Moretti's film, the son dies in a scuba diving accident and, while the father is briefly trying to look for responsibilities of the death in the faulty equipment, the futility of his attempt is never too far from his consciousness. In this film, the son is killed by the ultimate stereotypical bad guy, complete with evil smile, shifty eyes, and a father with a lot of money that can keep him in jail as short as humanly possible.

The finale is the usual scary message that mainstream American films send us these days: the world is crumbling around us, be isolated, be paranoid and, most of all, take justice in your own hands. The father of the slain son kills the murderer of his son and, in the best American tradition, this act brings back life to normal. There isn't, in the film, any attempt to analyze the psychology behind this act, or the devastating consequences that, presumably, killing a man would have on the father of the victim: this (the film proclaims) is America, a bad guy is not really human, and we need to feel no guilt if we kill him. At least, this is the message that the film sends owing to its complete lack of analysis of the consequences of this second killing: the American myth of "closure" reigns supreme and after this act of eye-for-an-eye vigilante justice the world is again the way it is supposed to be.

Even the analysis of the reaction of the parents to the death of the son is often blunt and replete with cliches. In short, a film that tries to deal with some worthy themes, mainly the deep impact of the death of a young son on a family, but, at the same time, a film that reveals the absolute incapacity of the American industrial movie-making machine to deal with complex issues without resorting to cliches, surprising ending, and all the trivial paraphernalia of entertainment.

In this situation, people who want to see meaningful films can only hope that European, Latin American, Asian, and American independent films will finally receive the wide distribution they deserve.

The Son's Room (2001)

Intimate, deep, and... rated R

[30 October 2002]

Moretti becomes more mature, more intimate, more personal. While playing an increasing role in Italian politics (with his movement of opposition to the right-wing government), in his films he has abandoned the sharp political criticism of his debut (Ecce Bombo, Io sono un Autarchico), and the cynical and funny social observations of "Bianca," "Palombella Rossa," and "Caro Diario" to give us a compelling portrait of grief.

A noticeable thing about this film is that the stupidity and ignorance of the MPAA gave it an R rating. Apparently, according to the MPAA, teenagers are welcome to see the stupid violence of "Independence Day," or the idiotic cardboard characters of "Spider Man" (both rated PG-13), but should not, except under adult supervision, know that the death of a teenage child is a shocking and traumatizing experience for a family, and could shatter their painfully constructed unity.

The decision of the MPAA provoked outrage in Italy and surprise in Europe. It is amazing that people of such obvious ignorance should be allowed to make such crucial decisions: they should be held responsible for the garbage they feed to teenagers, and for keeping them away from meaningful films.

Hell (1994)

De la normalité bourgoise jusqu'a l'enfer

[19 April 2001]

Quite interesting film on obsession (an obsession of jealousy, in the specific case) and on the observation that hell is man-made. I liked the very solar performance of Emmanuelle Béart, while I expected something more from François Cluzet.

In order to frame the film properly, however, one must consider that the original script is from 1964 and that Chabrol went to a certain length not to let us lose sight of this fact: the film is shot in a very 60's technicolor; one of the hotel guests uses a camera rather than a video-camera, and the scene he shoots have an unmistakably 60's flavor; the water-ski scene (the key moment of the whole film) has a 60's pace and framing,... We are obviously supposed to read the film in a 1960's perspective. And, considering the political climate in France in the 60's, and the nature of Paul Prieur occupation (he is a hotel owner, therefore a businessman), I find it impossible not to read this film as a statement of the impossibility of the bourgeois ideal of happiness.

The bourgeois values make people equipped to strive for more, but don't give them the emotional tools to deal with their life once they are "arrived." The feeling that there must be something more, and that this can't be the perfection of life is too easily translated in the feeling that there *is* something wrong (a cheating wife: the greatest shame for the latin male), and in the creation of a personal hell.

It is very significant, I think, that the film was released at the dawn of the "new economy" which, even more that the traditional bourgeois values, leads people to a life of continuous movement, and makes them emotionally unprepared to deal with being finally arrived.

Memento (2000)

thriller a la postmodern

[12 April 2001]

Cinema is the the modernist form of art par excellence, and filmmakers rarely find themselves at ease with the deconstructionist practices common to more post-modernist media, such as hypertext or experimental video.

When they do, though, the results are always interesting, and "Memento" is but one example. The film (you know it by now if you have read the previous comments and/or seen it) is based on a fragmentation and reversal of time as experienced by somebody with short term memory loss. Beyond the immediate comments on the plot (personally, I think was played out rather well, with the two sequences, one in reverse, the other in forward time that meet at the end in the crucial core of the film), it is impossible not to read this film as an allegory of the fragmentation of intellectual life in the age of Television (with its 1/2 hour time slots), gee-whiz journalism, and all the paraphernalia of our post-modern condition.

Is there really a difference between the decontextualized life of somebody without short term memory and that of a user of decontextualized TV, songs, and newspapers?

Highly recommendable film.

Almost Famous (2000)

Frightening

[1/10 · 12 April 2001]

I left the theater frightened to death by the message of this film: the ultimate triumph of sticky, middle America, petit bourgeois values. It is always clear, in "Almost famous" that there is a "right" world, and a "wrong" world. Mom, the roll call at graduation, the little house in the suburbs, a honorable profession, are part of the "right" world. Pretty much anything else is part of the "wrong" world (including, apparently, pursuing a career as a stewardess, maybe because spending nights in hotels far away from mom's eyes can provide occasions for--gasp!--casual sex).

Only the puritan 90's could produce this petit-bourgeois film, and only the puritan 90's could decide to set it in the 70's (the decade that all the good newborn christian guys love to hate) to send an oblique message to the promiscuous teens of the 90's (what subtlety! what mastery of rhetorical devices! to set a movie in the 70's to talk to teens in the 90's).

The film's little rampages against the "establishment" are just the icing sprinkled lightly to lure today's teens into acknowledging that the real enemies today are Hip Hop (thinly disguised as 70's Rock 'n' Roll), casual sex, and, in general, any bohemian and alternative kind of life. Don't fall for it: this is an establishment film if I ever saw one.

Towards Evening (1990)

A delicate balance between the intimate and the political

[9/10 · 9 January 2001]

Films like this make you realize that, for all its glamour and its money, Hollywood is really irrelevant in today's cinema. This is one of those films that could only be made in Europe; as far as I know, the film wasn't even distributed in the US, which is just as well, because I doubt that the American public could have appreciated this film without special effects, without the mandatory one-thrill-every-20-minutes, with a thin plot, and great multidimensional characters.

The film is the story of the relation between an old Communist (who defines himself as Hegelian, rather than Marxist) who grew up in a party of social order and almost puritan lifestyle, and his daughter, a product of Italy's extra-parliamentary left in the 1970's which was, at the time, storming through the convictions of the previous communist generation.

The strongest point of the movie is the equilibrium in the representation of the political conflict between two worlds (which had to be a major part of a narration set in years in which "the private is public" was an ongoing slogan) and the personal conflict between two people (a homage to the more reclusive and private 90's).

Great performances of Marcello Mastroianni, Sandrine Bonnaire, and the young Lara Pranzoni as "Papere."

American Beauty (1999)

The Medium is the message

[17 July 2000]

The flaws and the merit of this movie have been commented in enough messages, so I will not delve in them. In short, the film's attempt to reveal the distortions of contemporary suburban life, and the unlikely ways in which beauty can be found is laudable, but its symbolism too obvious and its depth insufficient.

All this said, the positive aspect of this movie is that it is an Hollywood movie, and it can reach an Hollywood audience. Suburban multiplexes do not carry films like "Happiness" (a vastly superior film), and suburbanites are brought up to a diet of brainless action movie and stupid comedies.

A film like this, with all its flaws, is a good change for people who flocked to see "Armageddon." Unfortunately, the space for quality cinema in contemporary America is becoming very scarce. For a while at least, "American beauty" could be the best most people will get.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?

[9 February 2000]

Whatever you think of this film, it has one merit: it forces one to think once more the eternal question of inter-media translation, specifically, the relation between literary and visual works. Whoever knows Kundera, even superficially (and I don't think one can appreciate this film without knowing Kundera), has a pretty good idea of the impossibility of bringing his books, as they are, on the screen.

His multifaceted relation with the story, in which the writer is always the most important character, at one time telling the story and "of the story" doesn't translate very well into the concreteness of the film language, unless one decide to resort to such devices as the narrating voice. In this case, however, this would have been little more than an easy device, and bravo to the director for not resorting to it.

All this said, the question of what kind of film is this remains, and I will not attempt an answer. It can't be taken as an introduction to Kundera, because it presupposes Kundera. I can't even completely agree with the Hollywood trivialization theory. There are enough bad John Grisham novels around to produce Hollywood movies for the next 100 years.

This film may have been an attempt to establish a new relation between film and novel, one characterized by a greater interpretative freedom and greater adaptation to the need of the medium in which the novel is translated. If this was the goal, then Kundera was certainly an ambitious start, and the fact that the attempt was only a half success should be taken as a credit to the director, and not as his failure.

P.S. I write this after I tried to watch the film on TV. Don't try it. At least, not in the US. The "editing for content" make it unbearable. After half an hour, I gave up, went out and rented the tape...

The Matrix (1999)

Tried to watch it. Fell asleep. Twice.

[8 October 1999]

I am constantly amazed by the kind of films people can pay money to see. I tried to see this film twice, and both times I fell asleep in the middle of it (I didn't pay to see it; maybe, had I paid, the thought of financial loss would have kept me awake, but I doubt it).

The plot is predictable, the ideas don't work (cyborgs have no better way to get energy than to keep humans alive? And where do they get the energy to feed the humans? Are we supposed to think that human bodies violate the first principle of thermodynamics?), and the acting was... well... not there.

There are, of course, special effects and action, but after years and tears of the same things, one would think that the public had grown beyond saying "ahhhhh" every time a dazzling (and expensive) special effect appears, or to cheer every time a good guy chases a bad guy. Evidently not. Too bad: special effects are killing the art of telling a story and developing a character that are the basis of fiction.

There's Something About Mary (1998)

Is this what funny is supposed to look like?

[25 February 1999]

Cameron Diaz is very cute, and she has a rather captivating smile. If I open with these observations it is because these are all the positive things I can say about this rather insipid comedy.

Apart from the obvious gags of mistaken identity, "everybody loves her," and pretending to be who you are not, I couldn't find anything here deserving a second glance.

The Winter Guest (1997)

Beautifully filmed. A great film.

[10/10 · 10 February 1999]

A beautiful ordinary story. A film made of long silences and unheard incessant talk. Of painful memories and hopeful looks. Of attending funerals as social occasions. Of unexpressible love. Of a beautifully photographed gray Scottish landscape.

Emma Thomson and Phyllida Law deliver powerful performances, although the incredibly poetic early teen Sam and Tom almost steal the movie.

When you are tired of idiotic movies that look all the same, go see or rent this one. Highly recommended.

A Perfect Murder (1998)

Pointless remake... as so many of them.

[1 February 1999]

Hollywood, striving for riskless commercial success, has constantly embraced the practice of the remake. Sometimes is the unspoken remake of a foreign (with a particular predilection for French) films (a la "Point of No return"), sometimes a boasted remake, with the mandatory multi-million dollars special effects, of a domestic product (a la "Psycho"). More often than not, we are in the presence of a purely commercial operation, with no artistic of cultural justifications (there are, of course, exceptions, but oh-so preciously few).

This mediocre thriller is no exception. The plot is (ex hypothesis) deja vu. The film fails completely to capture the atmosphere of Hitchcock's masterpiece.

A final, semi-sociological note. In the original film (as in many films at the time), the villain is arrested. In this version (as in many films today) the villain is killed. We have seen the killing of the villain so often that it has risen to the status of a stereotype. I am not sure what conclusions we should draw about the "vigilante" attitudes of the 90's, but, for sure, it doesn't say anything good.

Don't waste your time with this movie. Go at your local video store and rent "Dial M for Murder." You will have a much better time.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

See it at your own risk

[1/10 · 28 January 1999]

Go get a cup of coffee, a beer, or a glass or wine. Go out for dinner, or stay home and dedicate to the ancient art of onan. Wash the car, do your taxes. Anything is better than going to see this incoherent drivel.

The film is just not funny. The idea of Shakespeare in a writing slump might have been good, but the forced insertion of the romance element is just concocted to extract some easy sighs from the viewer. How many of them were due to the movie, and how many to the thought of the $8 gone forever, I cannot say. The romance is as deja vu as it gets, the jokes are trite. The material would have been enough for a 20 minutes Monty Python sketch (with oh-so-more hilarious results), not for a full length feature film.

If you want to see a witty film of Shakesperean ambience, go rent the delicious Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard.

Joseph Fiennes wears the same expression for the whole movie, and almost manages to make you think that Roger Moore was not so bad after all. Ben Affleck (Ben, how could you go from "chasing amy to this?) acts as if he didn't really know where he is. Geoffrey Rush is confirming once more how Hollywood money can ruin a once brilliant actor.

Titanic (1997)

Bad, bad, bad... (did I tell you it's bad?)

[1/10 · 20 January 1999]

Although it is easy to see how this brainless saga could appeal to an equally brainless segment of the public, it is much harder to understand the honors that have been bestowed on this mediocre (albeit expensive) production. The special effects were pretty good, and the details of reconstruction of some of the inanimate objects was remarkable. The problem was in the animate entities.

The main characters are anachronistic: essentially 90's teenagers dressed in funny turn-of-the-century clothes. If you are thrilled by the fact that Rose decided to follow her heart instead of the social conventions of the time, you should consider having your fiancee/wife/daughter run away with a gang member she only met two days ago. It is easy to laugh at the social conventions of 90 years ago. A film aiming at a meaningful social discourse should make us look critically at contemporary mores. It is easy to laugh at the Victorian sexual code. Let us laugh at monogamy if we have the courage!

I expect a historic film to help me understand the age it refers to, and to help me relate it to my age. Placing to MTV teenagers in a 1912 as real as Conan the Barbarian's middle ages doesn't help me do either.

Some of the scenes are artificially emotionally charged (e.g. the two lovers looking from the bow of the ship to the horizon) but one cannot escape the impression that the number, intensity, and sequencing of these scenes come from some "How to make a movie" manual that you can probably buy for $10.95 at the nearest Barnes and Noble. All in all, I would say that the film reveals a decent craftsmanship, but not a single shred of art (a situation not uncommon in Hollywood).

I saw this film in a theatre, and I don't feel any need to see it again at home. I have better things to do with my time. But if all you like in a film is to go see some special effects, and saying "ooooo..." when the ship sink, and "aaaaah...." when the main characters kiss, then this is the film for you.