Change Your Image
Stephen-34
Reviews
Les destinées sentimentales (2000)
Such a beautiful film, to fall so short
Chardonne's novel is a masterfully written tale about two characters as they spiral through and explore love as life's most essential element. The director captured it beautifully as a tone, a feeling, and as an overall impression of how the characters react to their journey. Unfortunately, he left out the milestones, those transitions a character makes, inwardly, as outward events bear in on them. The audience is asked to make gigantic leaps of logic as the character's trust in and dependence on Love changes, evolves with age. Mind you this is a three hour epic, so it is not for want of time that the production misses the mark, only the screenwriter's discipline, and here, again, the director got involved where he ought not be.
Bella Martha (2001)
If you ever needed a reason to learn German
You have it now. Buy, don't rent this film. It's a keeper. Most notable and with great kudos to the director, the films stays true to itself almost all the way through. Far enough to beat out most other films. There are a few quibbles toward the end of the film, but not enough to shake off the aura it imparts just giving yourself over to its story.
The camera moves efficiently and cleanly throughout the film, and the actors respond with clean understated action and dialog.
The story is spare, and I found what I think is a clue to the writer's intention, as the protagonist describes the menu purpose of "Fish in Butter and Basil sauce." Listen for it and see if you don't agree, she is speaking to us about her story/film.
To own this is, like Nurse Betty, to own something you just have to pull out and watch a couple of times a year. just because they're so darn good.
No wonder the folks in H'wood are busy at making an American version for 2007.
Under Suspicion (2000)
Long on Potential - Short on Delivery
Like its French inspiration, "Garde a Vue," Stephen Hopkins' film attempts to follow the tack of a psychological thriller but fails. It might have taken the path of a pure who-dunnit except that it is far too slow, caught up within its self imposed venue and contains entirely too much trivial talk.
I'll mention, for purposes to be addressed later, that the he film is an adaptation of the English novel "Brainwash," by John Wainwright, but unlike every novel's predisposition, this film makes no attempt to 'set up' the characters so the audience might witness their methodical exposure. Freeman and Hackman are intermittently engrossing during the very long 101 minutes it takes to reach the end - and it is ever the ending the writer has in mind. The rest of the story is a setup for the ending, so, if the story isn't spun out adroitly, the ending becomes pointless and you've wasted 2 hours and seven bucks.
Hackman and Freeman certainly have the chops to work in a more tightly wound presentation, but their characters need more meat on their bones so the audience even cares that one or the other's flesh is being stripped away in front of our eyes. We're never given the opportunity to meet these protagonists, form any opinions or understand either characters essential facade, so, in the end we just don't care what happens to either of them.
I am tempted, after watching this film, to go read the book. Like the optimistic child who dives into a mound of horse manure declaring "there must be a pony in here somewhere," I'm tempted to believe that this mound of bs must have once been a good yarn.
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
So lost in agenda, they missed the point
It is a greater disappointment to believe in the ones you love whenever they clearly strive to fail you on purpose.
Eastwood and Freeman have so often revealed magic that I had come to trust them for artistic integrity. Million Dollar Baby destroyed that belief. This film is little more than a wobbly-wheeled vehicle for a man intent on portraying a disconsolate, washed-up, never-quite-made-it human being, (Heartbreak Ridge, The Unforgiven, Space Cowboys) intent on having us feel sorry for him despite the fact he never took the risk to claim his own slice of life, and it fails both as story and as art.
I am disappointed by the clear failure to work the parallel between the ring and the altar. The story's narrator openly defines the relationship between a boxer and her trainer, and we have numerous examples of that relationship at work. We are presented with Frankie's own journey toward spiritual discipline (a journey we all share) and we anticipate the priest's role as an opportunity to develop the parallel. But the writer (?) producer (?) director (?) let it fall flat upon the screen as an empty suit and I for one was disappointed. This was not a story element overlooked, but clearly inserted into the story and then abandoned (because it might add a glimmer of light into the gloom?).
Then, we are given Maggie's unyielding trust in Frankie though never where it originated nor what of anything between them nourishes it; and through to the end, we wait for the reveal that never comes. Instead, we are asked to watch Frankie trash her gift as an ode to his own tragic life. The film offers us not so much the art of story telling as of despair.
That crumbling sound you hear is another bit of Eastwood's audience falling away.
The Constant Gardener (2005)
Meirelles missed the point and let the film just meander.
This is a rough edged film where (I suppose) the director let the cinematographer employ jerky camera movement as an effort to create tension where none really exists. The LeCarre story was always very slow moving, and not the stuff of adventureware. Like his earlier novel (and film) The Tailor of Panama, writer LeCarre was having a tough time inventing in a new motif.
This was the first time out for LeCarre following the end of the cold war. My remembrance of the novel is not flattering, but there is a remembered poignancy about an inability of either of the Quayles to cope with the 'real world,' and so their characters found solace in their private rebellions. It was what attracted them to each other. The characters were an apt study on LeCarre's part of the juxtaposition of apathy and contention, each employed as a studied response to a world too much for mere banalities.
Meirelles either didn't get it, or tried to reinvent LeCarre's story as if it were one of his previous pot boilers. The film is jarring from first to last. So jarring you can't really spend time getting to know, much less care about either Justin or Tessa. Meirelles jumps erratically back and forth between the two, missing the connective links between intention and action. I tried to get up and leave the theater on no fewer than three occasions, but forced myself to sit through it that I might have a new benchmark for failure.
Ship of Fools (1965)
It's up there with the best of 'em.
Since God only let her write one Novel, I'm glad Katherine Ann Porter chose this one. It's a great story, and Mann does a masterful job of bringing it to visual life. I realize that 1964 was still early for dealing with thorny issues; but the plight of Cubans and Jews ought not to receive such faint reference. Still, one watches these old films for the nudge they did make, not how little they made a dent. The acting is crisp, and that was a novelty in those days. Cinematography doesn't match the actor's or director's effort; we're constantly bound in echo frames and flat backgrounds. It's all the more poignant as a vehicle for Signoret and Leigh. They were true greats, and this is one last time to see them. Oskar Werner's offhand style almost lost it toward the end, thankfully he saved it and his final scene is remarkable. This is one film I suggest you own.