Change Your Image
underdog8
Reviews
Soccer Dog: European Cup (2004)
I'd like to apologize on behalf of America
... for this utter rubbish, as someone else aptly put it. So sorry. The only reason I gave it a two is because the dog is fairly cute and shouldn't be judged harshly for appearing in this abomination. As a soccer playing American with Scottish friends I know both a) soccer, and b) Scots, and it's obvious the makers of this "film for (very slow) children" had no clue about either, nor about casting, nor about writing, nor about film production. It's a real dog. Makes the Air Bud movies look like Orson Welles - those films were fairly bad too but at least they had a structure, and didn't rely as much on stereotypes.
Spare your kids this one.
Magnolia (1999)
A wonderful mess
The friend I saw this film with afterwards, when I asked her if she liked it, said "I didn't like it, but I thought it was good."
It's a trip led by an overly-caffeinated auteur who is completely on the top of his game. Whether or not you want to take the trip with him depends on what you bring to the table with your own taste and personal histories.
In fact, personal histories is what this film is all about. It's a grand guignol soap opera, the interweaving storylines and intersecting characters, the dying patriarchs and the drug abuse and marital infidelity. But it's all self-reflexive. At one point, the old man's nurse ( ) tells a phone operator, "This is like one of those scenes in a movie where the dying old man makes his last request to see his son. But it's real." Except it isn't.
There's so much going on in this film that it seems obviously written by a former film student, someone who knows how critics like symbolism and layers. It's destined for cult status. Every scene packs some sort of dramatic wallop. Like it or not, this film attempts something very few other American films have: it lets the scenes go on until a character says their piece and reveals a little bit more of who they are. It's bravely not in a rush.
I can criticize a lot of little things - which enervate the people who dislike this film - but they for me are overshadowed by what it attempts and what it accomplishes. Just as with "Boogie Nights" the film's too long. Anderson seems so sure that every thing he puts up there will be interesting to everyone else without bothering to rethink it. It's like a bloated novel by a brilliant writer (like, say Don DeLillo's "Underworld"), wherein you want to skip over certain parts where the writer gets carried away with their own brilliance and the depth and breadth of what they are attempting. The film could also be criticized for falling prey to what I call "Spike Lee Syndrome" - incessant use of the music soundtrack overlayed over long sequences to string them together; here sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's as if the filmmaker is insecure about the ability of their dialogue to carry a scene or sequence, but music can drown out and then blunt much of the emotional impact. The film could also benefit from more humor - there's some, coming naturally from the human situations and dark comedy moments - but not enough to give the audience a breather for such long emotional stretches.
And yet this is still an astonishing piece of work. To weave so many lives together, to bring together such an amazing cast and illicit a string of superb performances, is not an easy task, and, in this day and age, it's a rare Hollywood film that actually is about something. To criticize the film for not having enough plot seems narrowminded, ie, revealing how much people have become accustomed to the "Plot Point every 5 minutes" film structure. This film is highly structured, it's rarely boring, and at the end it reaches a catharsis, an epiphany even (replete with Biblical imagery, either laughable or mind-blowing depending on your point of view, but undeniably a major surprise - an event, which by the way, really did happen). Particularly outstanding are Jason Robards, in that most thankless of roles, stuck on a deathbed for the entirety of the film; he nonetheless brings to it an enormous amount of pathos. Phillip Baker Hall (the gameshow host) and John Reilly (the cop), who have both been in Anderson's two other films, are also excellent. Reilly's may in fact be one of the most realistic and humanistic portrayals of a police officer in film history. Tom Cruise, the misogynistic male empowerment guru, is quite remarkable (although some cynics would merely say he's playing himself) - although it's hard to watch all of his scenes preaching to the whooping throngs of males awaiting advice on how to bag babes. (What's scary is it isn't all that farfetched to imagine this really happening.) The child actors are frighteningly good (particularly the lead child prodigy boy). Although the women are excellent I still get the feeling that Anderson is less comfortable developing and understanding female characters. (Here at least, he has a wonderful African American TV interviewer, a woman who cuts through the Cruise's BS with acute sharpness.)
Although Anderson's direction is occasionally too overexuberant, overall it's beautifully filmed and orchestrated, from the lighting and composition right down to the small background touches (the artwork on the walls, the furniture, the background players even). The recurring themes and symbols make this a film to go back and watch a second time (when you have another three hours to kill, of course). Especially big is the theme of power, inherent in each scene, wherein one character has power over the other, forcing them to sit down, to be quiet, to listen. It's a thought-provoking film, open to debate and interpretation, full of life (and death), of black comedy, and in the hands of a less-ambitious director the same film could easily have been reduced to a MOW (which, one of the child prodigies in the film criticizes another for not knowing , means "Movie of the Week"). Criticizing it for not being more short and sweet, like a typical movie, is to forget that it's not a movie at all, but a Film with a capital "F" - and all the pretensions which go along with that. Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky made films unlike any other, sometimes entertaining but more often difficult and philosophical. Anderson's no Tarkovsky, but he may be as close as (mainstream) Hollywood will allow themselves to get. And if people don't want to sit through "Magnolia" there's always the James Bond film playing next door. Just remember: there's room for all of them.
The Cider House Rules (1999)
Likeable, forgettable
The latest adaption of a John Irving novel is a more than decent, likeable, and mostly forgettable film which has all the usual Irving-isms and characters. (Previous Irving films include World According to Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, and the treacly Simon Birch, extremely loosely adapted from Prayer for Owen Meaney.)
If you like Tobey Maguire - and who doesn't, the guy's so darned likeable - and Michael Caine, who gives one of his better performances (and first with an American accent!), and don't mind the sight of Charlize Theron (I sure don't), and enjoy looking at beautiful New England scenery... then you'll enjoy this film. The story is about an orphan who grows up to assist a doctor (Caine) who runs an abortion clinic out of the orphanage; the orphan (Maguire) ends up falling for a patient (Theron) whose boyfriend is serving in WWII. Maguire goes to work on the boyfriend's family's apple farm, where he works side-by-side with a group of African Americans who give him a new perspective on the world. And so on...
The whole thing is fairly predictable and not super original, and is full of schmaltzy touches (the cute and dying little orphan boy)... and yet with a game cast, nice photography and direction (the director Lasse Hallstrom also made "My Life as a Dog"), and good period recreation, it's a very hard film to dislike. Hard to remember that this was such a controversial book when it first came out.
Good escapism and nothing more. I'd give it a 6 out of 10.