Change Your Image
ricsan
Reviews
The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1998)
Figgis at his worst
Mike Figgis is a gifted director, but he is capable of the best and the worst, and no one can foresee how his next film will be like. From my point of view, his best feature up to day is "The Browning version". He has also made good films ("Stormy Monday", "Leaving Las Vegas") but sometimes he plummets into the hollow ("One night stand"), the commercial ("Mr. Jones") or watches himself for almost two hours ("The Loss of sexual innocence"). Maybe inspired by Kieslowsky, this film lacks the depth of the polish master, and is a boring collection of images supposed to be related with the awakening of the being, or the sexual self-consciousness, or whatever was roaming into the director's mind.
Frailty (2001)
Again The Sixth Sense? (SPOILERS inside)
Not again, please. I'm tired, I'm sick of watching films running cunningly and interestingly for an hour and a half, and then come that now predictable smell... And the Great Twist come, and you find you have once more been teased, the whole plot was a fake, and that you could have been reading a book instead, because the film really gets on in the final quarter.
With some exceptions (The Sixth Sense) these movies really put me angry, in willing to play also the God's Hand with screenwriter, director, whoever... Frailty is a well-shot film about the difficult position of a child, divided between the love and the scare for his father. The film is really superb shot. But then, comes the laughable, once-again ridiculous twist.
You may like it, no problem. But I feel truly disappointed.
Swamp Water (1941)
A Ford-like Renoir film
Having seen almost all Renoir's works, I was eager to see this one, the master's first film of his american stint. If you have seen Renoir's The River (1951), one of his loveliest masterpieces, the feeling cames to you, when you are watching this 1941 movie, that you are seeing just a preparatory exercise for that later piece of art. Just listen Walter Brennan's lines when he first meet Dana Andrews about how the death of an individual begets new life elsewhere.
Sometimes also in the movie I had the resemblance of watching a John Ford movie, specially in the town scenes, more obvious in the ball scenes, the guy with the girl chatting, the dancers background, and suddenly a huge thug coming out, and the fight therefore. More hints about this: the writer is Dudley Nichols, a Ford habitual collaborator, and among the cast, John Carradine and Ward Bond, also from Ford's troup. Anyway, it's a Renoir. Watch it (it's short and pleasant, and hide two or three great moments.)
Angel Eyes (2001)
There's something about Jenny
After watching this uninspired film, I began wondering what's wrong with it, as it has something unusual in modern films: a good female character. I think this seemingly rude cop-woman, albeit vulnerable, is the kind of character a fine film can be built around. J. López shows some of her maybe Bronx-borne gesture, and that's OK for me. But the film has several flaws: 1) Jennifer López has a too charming, glamorous appearance for the restless woman she is supposed to be. Maybe she is too beautiful for the part. 2) I can't feel any magic between she and mind-troubled James Caviezel. Take a look at Sodenberg's delightful flick "Out of Sight" to see how magic works between two actors (Jennifer López and George Clooney) 3) Some sequences were for me straightly boring, badly-paced, worst edited.
So, a bad film, in my opinion.
The Golden Bowl (2000)
A bowl with a crack.
I have always considered the style of James Ivory's narrating very adequate for the Henry James adaptations, as long as E.M. Forsters'. Henry James's writing is seemingly cool and distanced, as Ivory filming.
But this film is a flaw. This film has a serious crack, as has the bowl of the title. No one can see or imagine how Kate Beckinsale, not mention Uma THurman, can be so desperately in love with Jeremy Northam, not just because I think he (the actor) lacks of enough glamour to spark such feelings, but because he (the character) is presented to us as a flat and inexpressive man, in no way capable of driving two beautiful and wealthy women to despair. This is the dramatic base of this story, and if this fail, the whole film does.
The rest of the film is the usual in this kind of films: gowns, hairdos, flowers, chateaus, ......
The Castle (1997)
Movies are such a great thing
Two things about this flick and about the movies generally talking: 1. I live a zillion miles away from Australia, a place where probably I'll never be, a country I have nothing in common with. It does not matter at all. For an hour and a half I´ve been living there, with one of the weirdest and lovable families ever seen. I´ve been another australian.
2. I hate law movies. I hate trials on a screen, with distinguished exceptions. I hate lost causes. I hate that David vs. Goliath stuff. I hate J. Grisham's books and adaptations. This film is all about that. But it a marvelous, enjoyable, laughable, tear-jerker, unforgettable film.
Thank you, Antipodes dwellers, for such a gift.
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Nothing Lies Beneath
This movie is a beautifully wrapped sugar containing absolutely nothing. Two top Hollywood stars, a good work of direction, splendid cinematography, wonderful art direction. All this gathered to tell a stupid, flat, foreseeable ghost story, with two or three ready-seen tricks to make you jump in the seat (actually, it didn't get it with me). Boring, indeed.
Small Soldiers (1998)
Gremlins 3
Thirty minutes after this film began, I realized: "Boy, this is Gremlins 3". 8 years after, Joe Dante almost repeats exactly the same formula: a teenager gets a little tricky toy that proves to be extremely smart and that comes out of control. This is no to say this is a bad movie, which it is not. There are great dialogue lines (See "memorable quotes") and plenty of irony around. It's a worth-watching flick after all.
Unbreakable (2000)
The secret style of M.N.Shyamalan
After seen this smooth, gentle, quiet, enigmatic film, that follows step by step the structure, the same topics, of its predecessor, The 6th Sense, one wonder about the style of their maker. Specially in this his second movie, the film seems to have secret messages hidden under the surface, as if a subliminal language were constantly throwing you ideas, suggestions... This is a film plagued with a lot of visual and word rhymes, what makes it a second, third, etc... visualization worth. A intense, beautiful, touching, delicately paced piece of cinema.
Fight Club (1999)
Just a rather boring movie, period.
Fight Club is not a landmark cult-movie, showing a disappointed and frustrated generation. This a too-long, tedious, dull film, just made to forgive it A.S.A.P.
Brad Pitt must believe that being a good actor means playing nut, insane, filthy, unshaved people.
Lulu on the Bridge (1998)
Did I like it or did not?
I've read through all the comments, and I agree with the most of them, the good and the bad ones. I also think that the first thought is the film is a rather boring piece, but it's true that some of the scenes hit soundly and live in your mind for months, and that the last minute make the rest of the movie more interesting. The movie also reminds me some of Kieslowski's works.
Naniwa erejî (1936)
First real Mizoguchi film in Mizoguchi's career
This is the first collaboration between Mizoguchi and writer Yoshikata Yoda, with the actress Isuzu Yamada in the principal role, as a young telephonist pushed to prostitution to save her ruined family, and then repudiated by them. Mizoguchi begins his impressive mastership with the framing and the perspective and, though still far from his masterpieces, is an interesting milestone for the Mizoguchi admirers.
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)
Boring biopic
Alan Rudolph repeats the mistakes committed by himself in The Moderns (1988), or James Ivory's "Quartet" (1981) in adapting the ambient and the atmosphere of the 1920's artistic world. I don't know exactly why, but both films insist in going bored, slow-paced. Add this the fact that "Mrs Parker..." is a biopic about writer and screenwriter "Eternally Unhappy Dorothy Parker" and her pals of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table. Surely a deserved tribute to these crazy bunch, but, why so dull and preposterous?
Short Cuts (1993)
Reaching the perfection
As could be thought, the personalities of Robert Altman and Raymond Carver resulted complementary. Both practice an inside outlook of the American medium-class, both are deep gazer of the details and the persons. Altman has a unique sense of irony, relating the characters and the objects surrounding them. All this have a place in this splendid, earthy, made of human tissue, comprehensive, 3 hour delightful movie. The screenplay, made of pieces, extracted from several Carver writings, are exquisitely sewn. It had to be a hard word to put it altogether. A piece of art.
The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
The charm of the old things
Today, almost sixty years after this Josef Von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture, the best we can say about this film is that the picture has the beguile and the enchant of the old-fashioned, of those fascinating obsolete, venerable things from the past. Von Sternberg made his best at 30's, with Marlene Dietrich, and paradoxically any of those older films have passed better through the time, than this 1941 movie, in what became the declining of his career.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Calculated shocks tactic
It has to be given to Mr. Shamyalan (or however is written), the merit that he has built an intriguing, disturbing film, from a story plagued with holes. He manages to cover this inconsistencies with calculated shocks, the main, obviously, at the end of the movie. One on the finest features of the film I think are the solid characters depicted, with provides the picture with a sordid, pitiful ambient, with its three tattered protagonists. In this way, I find this film rather influenced by "The Exorcist" ambient, which "Sixth Sense" owes most of its undoubtable virtues.
Falling in Love (1984)
Understated romance
Underestimated by critics, this valuable melo, supported by its two strong leading players, depicts a disquieting romance, but, instead of showing rude sex or exaggerated passion, all goes hiden, quiet, buried. This understatement enriches the film, making a real romantic and enjoyable movie. I like the slow rhythm, the dreamy light, the long takes. I think it's no point in match this movie with the 1946 David Lean's classic. They are different movies, different times.
The Scalphunters (1968)
Fine screenplay, unsuccessful movie
The picture contains some of the clues of the sixties' westerns, such as the denounce of the brutality against the indians tribes, racism, a kind of ironic and dropout anti-hero (Burt Lancaster, excellent, as ever). It is all shaped in a good script, but Pollack fails to get a satisfying work of it, maybe due to an outdated humor, and makes a trivial, though amusing, movie.