frankd-6 Reviews

Unconditional Love (2002)

A Surprisingly Entertaining Charmer!

[9/10 · 2 August 2003]

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE is surprisingly entertaining. While the plot goes off in perhaps too many directions, making for an overlong movie, it never fails to charm and ingratiate itself. The several plotlines, one warmly reminiscent of SHIRLEY VALENTINE, provide ample smiles, laughs, wisdom and tenderness. It all shouldn't work, and at times it certainly bumps along, but forgive its inconsistencies, sit back and have a good time. It's a charmer!

Obsession (1976)

One of the most entertaining films of all time

[10/10 · 17 August 2002]

Seldom will you see a movie as enthralling as OBSESSION. Beautifully filmed in New Orleans and Italy (Florence and San Gimignano), and superbly scored by Bernard Herrmann, this most cleverly-scripted film invites comparison with the very best of Hitchcock. It's so magnificently, outrageously entertaining it continues to give pleasure long after it's over. And make you want to see it again and again.

Road to Perdition (2002)

A beautiful, but embalmed film

[6/10 · 13 July 2002]

Sure,ROAD TO PERDITION looks and feels like a class movie. In fact, it's a coffee-table-book movie. Beautiful to look at but flat. But it is not a grabber, with a screenplay and direction which keeps the audience at a decided distance from characters supposed to be torn and tragic but who come across as uninvolving and uninteresting. The movie is an exercise in style, and in that it succeeds completely. As for being involved on any emotional level, it misses the mark completely. Comparisons with THE GODFATHER I and II are a mighty, ridiculous reach. That movie had people you became intimately involved with, told with warmth, sweep, extravagance and style. If only ROAD TO PERDITION had at least a fraction of the energy and pizazz which the 1930's Warner Brothers crime dramas had in spades and which Francis Ford Coppola breathed into every emotional frame of his movies.

Road to Perdition (2002)

A beautiful, but embalmed film

[6/10 · 13 July 2002]

Sure,ROAD TO PERDITION looks and feels like a class movie. In fact, it's a coffee-table-book movie. Beautiful to look at but flat. But it is not a grabber, with a screenplay and direction which keeps the audience at a decided distance from characters supposed to be torn and tragic but who come across as uninvolving and uninteresting. The movie is an exercise in style, and in that it succeeds completely. As for being involved on any emotional level, it misses the mark completely. Comparisons with THE GODFATHER I and II are a mighty, ridiculous reach. Those two films had people you became intimately involved with, told with warmth, sweep, extravagance and style. If only ROAD TO PERDITION had at least a fraction of the energy and strength which the 1930's Warner Brothers crime dramas had in spades and which Francis Ford Coppola breathed into every emotional frame of his movies.

The Great Waltz (1938)

One of the great MGM musicals

[10/10 · 12 January 2000]

THE GREAT WALTZ is one of the all-time great musicals with memorable orchestrations of its magnificent music, beautiful, swirling cinematography, Luise Rainer at her heartbreaking best and Miliza Korjus outrageously divine in performance and voice. The plot adroitly mixes music, smaltz and sentiment with several scenes of heartbreaking, dramatic power. This movie is an absolute joy, a treasure to be seen and enjoyed year after year.

The Straight Story (1999)

A Film Classic! A Deceptively Simple, Unexpectedly Moving Triumph!

[17 October 1999]

Quite possibly, one of the loveliest, most serene, most moving and honest films I've ever seen. Moving quietly, knowingly and sensitively forward for close to two hours to an ultimate payoff where little is spoken, but so much of everything is deeply, eloquently, silently said, the entire movie is a miracle of taste, intelligence and feeling. The quietness of David Lynch's directorial touches are breathtaking in their simplicity, so refreshing in an era of being hit over the head with "directorial pyrotechnics." The performance of Richard Farnsworth is sublime. With a combination of age, grace and talent, he inhabits the role with breathtaking perfection. Sissy Spacek, as his daughter, delivers an uncanny, true performance of a person who happens to have a speech impediment. She invests the character with a delicacy and truth both rare and refreshing.

This is a movie like no other. Give all concerned highest honors for not condescending to the audience. And pile honor on honors, awards on awards for making a classic.