Gretta-2 Reviews

Meet the Fockers (2004)

Toxic waste!

[1/10 · 20 May 2005]

What happened? Same actors, same directors - but this is miserable! To paraphrase Bette Davis's famous line: "What - A - Mess."

The scriptwriters: what can one say? Junior high kids found writing on the bathroom walls? Dim-witted junior high kids found writing on the bathroom walls? Is there a funny line, a funny plot device, anything other than bathroom and awkward sex jokes? No.

At the outset, Dad tells everyone about flushing the motor home toilet. The wise video store browser would be well-advised to flush this wreck. Save your rental money.

To say any more would be praise.

/Greta WGAw

Lost in Translation (2003)

Another Naked Emperor

[2/10 · 9 March 2005]

How could anyone find any substantial quality in this flat-as-a-fritter drone? What a terrible waste of excellent talent! There is no story, here, nor is there any depth of characters. We know the surfaces. Perhaps that's the story: Surface. We are only shadows. But this exposition of human solitude and casual relationships has been done over and over, until it's banal. This was not Bill Murray's best "side." The long parade of awards is not astonishing; the Industry has been rewarding superficiality and mediocrity for a decade, at least. "If we don't understand it, it must be brilliant." ("If we can't see the emperor's clothes, we must be Phillistines.")

Someone should have added koi to put color and motion in this shallow pond.

/GSE, WGAw

Kabloonak (1994)

A work of Existential art, in "Kabloonak" the desert of ice gleams with fine acting and cinematography

[10/10 · 9 December 2004]

In this film Claude Massot brought to the screen his vision of the first film documentary, Robert Flaherty's "Nanook of the North." From start to finish, this film is a constellation of brilliantly choreographed performances, both by the professional actors and by the Inuit who are cast in native roles. Harsh, frozen vistas are polished to crystalline perfection through cinematography as pure and sharp as Japanese calligraphy. Charles Dance and Adamie Q. Inukpuk bring enormous strength and essential restraint to their roles as Flaherty, the "Kabloonak", or stranger, and Nanook, two utterly unalike men made brothers by their struggle through an arctic lunarscape to film the hunt of a polar bear. Inukpuk's Nanook is not a primitive, but a complex human living in bitterly primitive conditions. Dance turns in one of the finest performances of his screen career as Flaherty, a geologist and former prospector who made the film of his dreams, yet turned down offers to make another such motion picture. Charles Dance, Cinematographers Jacques Loiseleux and François Protat, and Sebastian Regnier's score all have won international gold medals for their work in "Kabloonak."

Adaptation. (2002)

What. A. Mess!

[1/10 · 25 June 2003]

Ye GODS this thing is sophomoric! Is this the future of film writing and production? Lowered, I hope not. This thrashing mess is supposed to be (either/and/or) on-the-edge/ quasi-surreal/ performance art on film. Isn't it? Whatever was intended (if anything,) Jonze and his dabbling, babbling twin writers (are THEY real?) have turned out a thorough mess of a movie and a waste of talented actors.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

This is "America" distilled into an epic film.

[12 June 2003]

This is arguably the finest motion picture ever made about the Vision called "America." It is an idealist recreation of small-town and rural United States. It explains the Great Depression, especially in the South, in a way that makes that period painfully real. This film is also about the goodness of one man in particular. Human nature, with both grandeur and evil contesting, is played out by a magnificent cast. The movie is not Harper Lee's novel, but it is the cinematically perfect rendering of her book, its time, place and people. Fatherhood has never been so splendidly delineated, childhood so perceptively depicted, bigotry so thoroughly skewered and decency so crystalline as in this film. It is a template for "Things as They Ought to Be," once racism is shown to be the stupidity that actually it is. The story unfolds on a summer day in the South, and folds closed almost a year later, on an Autumn night. Within these borders glisten keepsake items, much as we see in the superb opening credits, each item being carefully taken from its place in an old cigar box. And finally, in the closing moments, we connect the title to the basis of this story's morality, much as Atticus Finch tells it to his son, Jem, when presenting him with a small-calibre rifle: "... you must never kill a mockingbird ...." With Harper Lee's poignant autobiographical novel as a base, Horton Foote's award-winning script has distilled a time and place into a vision. It is a vision worth living up to, and seeing over and over. Every father should be Atticus Finch, every child should live in the secure simplicity of "Macomb." Elmer Bernstein's lyric score carries the story, rather than covering it, the characters and settings shimmer with truth, and a particular time and place in America is captured and preserved on film. "...Mockingbird" garnered over 20 nominations for national and international awards, including eight Oscar nominations. Gregory Peck won Best Actor, and Horton Foote best screenplay writer. The film won the "British Oscar" - BAFTA's award -for best foreign film, and Alan Pakula won BAFTA's award as best director of a foreign film.

Cops and Robbersons (1994)

DysFUNctional family Robberson arrests stake-out.

[7/10 · 31 May 2002]

This is a truly funny film that the whole family can watch, and enjoy. Amazing! Mom cooks enough food for a White House reception, the kids are mostly normal except the youngest, who is channeling Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and Dad can't get a bagel without cream cheese on it. The cops are standard film cops except that Jack Palance is even more overpowering than usual. His best line (you have to be there) is "Never throw a cat at me again." He never yells, although he has plentiful provocation. This is refreshing; we laughed through the whole movie.

The Family Man (2000)

What's so "bad" about feeling good?

[10/10 · 18 November 2001]

This really is a brilliant and satisfying motion picture. Every facet is polished, every actor perfectly cast. The concept has been condemned as a "steal" from Frank Capra, but it isn't; it's a universal wish made reality, if possibly by magical means. Tea Leoni continues to polish her work. She is a glowingly beautiful woman who can act. She almost steals the film from Nicholas Cage, but that is impossible. Cage is - if one can say this - the new James Stewart. His voice, his lanky physique, even his gestures are Stewart-esque. No wonder he got this role.

Cage shines as this Jack Campbell, whether the man is an arbitrager with a carbon steel soul or a gentle, bemused husband and father. Cage is so good at this dual personality that it's clear that he still can play the guilt (sic)-edged, slightly deranged and/or highly dangerous types that have built his career, in spite of worried critics who think otherwise.

One reads reviews of the film that praise with faint damns, and vice versa, because "Family Man" leaves a good feeling. What's wrong with that? The well-woven characters with interesting, contrapuntal flaws keep the film from being gooey.

Perhaps I'm about to damn this excellent film, but I'll say this anyway: the whole family can watch "Family Man". Yes, Mrs. Duchovny - or her body double - does appear nude through a steamed-glass shower stall, and some people are in bed with others now and then. But there is no violence, no crude language and a message that enforces the rewards of family life. Boy, do we need that!

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

An Epic uniquely American; a Luminous tribute to fatherhood.

[20 February 2000]

This is arguably the finest motion picture ever made about small-town and rural United States, about the Great Depression, about the South and especially, about the goodness of one man in particular. Human nature, with both grandeur and evil contesting, is played out by a perfect cast.

The film is not Harper Lee's novel, but it is the cinematically perfect production of her time, place and people. Fatherhood has never been so perfectly delineated, childhood so perceptively depicted, bigotry so thoroughly skewered and decency so crystalline as in this film. It is a template for "Things as They Ought to Be," once racism is shown to be the stupidity that actually it is.

The story unfolds on a summer day in the South, and folds closed almost a year later, on an Autumn night. Within its borders glisten keepsake items, much as we see in the superb opening credits, each being carefully taken from their place in an old cigar box. And finally, in the closing moments, we connect the title to the basis of this story's morality, as Atticus Finch told it to his son, Jem: "Son ... you must never kill a mockingbird ...."

With Harper Lee's poignant autobiographical novel as a base, Horton Foote has distilled a time and place into a vision. It is a vision worth living up to, and seeing over and over. Every father should be Atticus Finch, every child should live in the simplicity of "Macomb." Elmer Bernstein's singing, haunting score carries the story, rather than covering it, the characters and settings shimmer with truth, and a particular time and place in America is captured and preserved on film.

Pascali's Island (1988)

This is the story of a man who was forgotten by his god.

[28 October 1999]

In a finely-crafted and beautifully filmed story, three people meet who are engaged in deceptions of different sorts. Each one is acting in secret, yet all three find themselves thrust into the very center of their deceptions by ironic twists. Each fences with the other romantically, yet the most cynical actually fall in love. Excellent performances by Kingsley, Charles Dance and Helen Mirren, three of England's most talented and versatile actors. Exotic scenery sets the stage for a variety of passions, schemes and deceits. Mirren and Dance are spectacular, in the love scenes especially, but Ben Kingsley dominates this film. His dark eyes mirror dwindling hope in his sultan's dying world and his hopeless love for an untouchable, unreachable foreigner.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

There is only one cinematic statement against war that is more powerful: "Saving Private Ryan".

[26 February 1999]

No remake can quite capture the gritty reality brought to the original motion picture through the early, "faster" film and less speedy camera shutter. Black-and-white is so much more horrific and bloody than color filming. War is death, mud and darkness. Violent death and waste are conveyed via acting, not spread around the set by prop managers or special FX. Reading Remarque's book adds insights that are not onscreen, and should be an essential follow-up to viewing the film. I agree with the earlier comment: "... Western Front" should be shown in schools. The absurd wastefulness of war has seldom been made so clear.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Pierre Boule's prediction about nuclear warfare:

[6 November 1998]

"Planet of the Apes" was a novel by French war correspondent and writer Pierre Boule ("Bridge On the River Kwai".) When this novel debuted it startled his fans and literary critics, since Boule was known for his works based on fact. His reply to all this was that the nuclear arms race was a pending disaster that would someday become a fact. The film was true to its originator's concept: nuclear warfare has degraded the human branch of Primatae, leaving the other branch of the tree in charge. A great script, marvelous cast, very good special effects and an ending "punch line" that packed more wallop that Evander Holyfield made the movie a critical success and SciFi audience favorite - and it still works.

The spin-offs, especially #2, "Beneath the Planet of the Apes", were loyal to the original's quality. "Beneath..." even follows Boule's original thesis of human devolution, mental and physical, due to radiation.

I've seen this film at least four times. It makes its point each time, and supplies yet a new dimension for the relationship between "man" and "animal". We can see the use of humans as experimental animals in a perfect 180-turn from our practices today using animals for experimentation. This was an interesting point for Boule to have made at a time (early 60s) when society wasn't terribly concerned about cruelty towards "lab" animals.

GSE/ WGAw