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Reviews
The Visitor (2007)
ESL Class Participation Assignment
That's what my friend and I finally decided the script was after about the eighth time that a scene just died on the screen and we turned to each other and went, "ARGH!"
Here are some examples of the ESL script of this movie:
"You look nice today." "Thank you. You look nice also."
"Would you like to go to dinner Thursday?" "Yes, I would like that."
"May I offer you something to drink?" "Yes, thank you. I am thirsty. I will have a glass of water."
Talk about NOTHING happening in a movie. Even "Flight of the Red Balloon," which I liked, had more going on in it than this snoozefest.
The few big emotional scenes, when they finally arrive, feel forced, scripted, and don't come off.
And P.S.: why has nobody mentioned what a lush this guy is! He has wine with his cereal in the morning, wine while listening to music, wine in the afternoon. When the waiter brought him and his date two glasses of wine, I thought he was going to ask her, "And what are you having? These are for me!"
Antônia (2006)
Worst Subtitles in History
Wow, is this movie bad. First of all, the plot: there is none. The band goes from four girls to one as a series of script contrivances -- the two involving street violence being especially poorly presented -- combine to make them the single unluckiest backup girl group in Brazilian history. The script is just very immature: each character has exactly one emotion, or one character trait, or one purpose to serve in the story. You know exactly what's going to happen, and even if you didn't you simply wouldn't care. The lead has a nice screen presence and all the girls can sing beautifully, but "Antonia" will be remembered, at least by this viewer, only for a set of English subtitles so consistently awful I was sure they had to be intended as a parody. We're talking "Kung Fu" dubbing here...
Ira & Abby (2006)
Hated every second of it
It's the kind of movie I hate with every fiber of my being: overwritten in a self-congratulatory way, talky with nobody saying anything interesting or substantial, whiny, preposterous in every detail -- not a single word or action bears any resemblance to anything that has ever happened on planet Earth -- profoundly unfunny, overstuffed with sketched-out characters but lacking a single one to care for, much less like or root for, replete with undertalented actors and a couple of talented ones all mugging their way through (why bother being human when the script is SO false?), predictable whenever it thinks it's taking a chance, trite when it thinks it's being original. It takes place entirely in Movieland -- that it gets its Manhattan geography all wrong on Ira's opening-credits walk through the city was the first clue -- and succeeds almost uncannily at producing the opposite of the desired reaction in every scene: when the filmmakers aimed for sweetness and romance, they instead delivered crassness and vulgarity; when they aimed for Woody Allen-style neuroticism, they found only snarkiness and endless therapist clichés; when they aimed for laughs, they got only stone faces from my audience. It's this year's equivalent of 2001's "All Over the Guy," with Judith Light in the Andrea Martin role. Avoid it like the plague.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Movie I've Hated Most in 3 Years' Time
This movie plays with "Pieces of April" in an endless double feature in Hell.
Each character has only one personality trait, but has several cutesy-poo idionsyncrasies. Everybody argues nonstop. Everybody is loud and vulgar. Nobody is likable, pleasant or enjoyable to be around. Every line of dialogue is so false you can see the script as these (in some cases) talented actors mouth these god-awful words. The poor little girl's routine is so age-inappropriate it feels truly queasy and in no way humorous. The plot contrivances creak so badly you can hear the strain. Steve Carell's nemesis and the object of his affection look less like Proust scholars than a Fire Island maven and his kept boy. The film overrelies on broad, unfunny physical comedy and shtick.
In short, it's torture to sit through.
The White Countess (2005)
Comically Bad!
At points we literally thought they were being this bad on purpose. Continuity errors throughout -- where was the script supervisor??? Plot? What plot? This story goes absolutely nowhere, and piles coincidence on coincidence. The characters spend half their dialogue reminding each other who they are and why they're there -- without these superfluous bits of exposition they could have trimmed an hour out of the endless running time. The rest of the time is overacting central by most, underacting central by the rest -- Natasha Richardson's accent is atrocious. Lynn Redgrave is out on another planet in this one -- charming family in terms of what they do to Natasha. What a mess. Whole thing also looks like it was shot through pomegranate juice! Total dead air! I refuse to believe anyone found anything of merit in this -- unless maybe a cure for insomnia!
Zi hu die (2003)
Ugly look
Rex Reed once said of a movie ("Julia and Julia" to be specific) that it looked like it was shot through pomegranate juice. I was reminded of that as I snored through Purple Butterfly. This one appeared to be shot through gauze.
The story was boring and it was not helped that for large portions of scenes actors' faces were literally out of focus or would only come into focus after extended periods of time.
Also, everyone looked the same so it was hard to distinguish among the characters. I call this the "Dead Poets Society" syndrome.
There was nobody to care about, nobody to become interested in dramatically, and the movie shed no historical light on a very interesting period of time and set of circumstances.
A total disappointment.
Pieces of April (2003)
The Emperor Has No Clothes! (spoilers)
This is the most ridiculously overpraised piece of crap of the year. First of all, it's only about seventy minutes long without credits -- not that I was complaining by the end -- which is pretty insulting in the era of $10 movie tickets. Second, the camerawork makes Woody Allen's "Husband and Wives" feel positively stable by comparison. It's truly headache-inducing.
There's a lot to hate about this movie, but most of all is that it takes place entirely in Movieland, where every character has one or more supposedly endearing or interesting eccentricities and ten times too much dialogue -- all of it screaming "SCRIPT!" --, every moment is laden with unlikely action and silly melodrama, and nothing anybody says or does bears any resemblance to the real world.
The baby-faced Katie Holmes as a druggie is only the beginning. Next comes the black woman whose initial response to Holmes at her apartment door rings completely false. Then the effete upstairs neighbor who behaves unlike anybody on Planet Earth. And the list goes on and on and on -- it's really amazing how much falsehood has been crammed into so little running time.
The stuff with April's family is just painful to watch and rings false from the first second to the last. Patricia Clarkson gets the one and only laugh in the picture when she has her husband stop the car, gets out, and without saying a word crosses the highway and sticks out her thumb to hitchhike in the opposite direction. The idea that this is an award-worthy performance is an insult, not least of all to Clarkson. Everybody else, you just feel sad for, including yourself.
Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)
Every Second of this Movie Rings False (Possible Spoilers)
There's not a single scene, not a single line of dialogue that rings true. First of all, as has been pointed out, the actors appear to range from their mid-twenties to their thirties -- maybe one or two pass as high school students; the rest of the time when they talk about going to spring formals and such you just want to laugh -- sort of like Gabrielle Carteris in "BH 90210." Also, they're bad -- they possess none of the naturalness or persuasiveness of the non-professionals in, say, "Raising Victor Vargas."
Then they start talking about "breaking the cycle" and "going jihad on his ass" and such, and that's just script talk -- nobody talks that way in real life. (Even a minor touch like when the female love interest says, "I have a 3.8 GPA" -- I don't know any high school students who would utter such a sentence -- to the boys they like.) There's far too much heavy-handed sermonizing in the movie -- the characters convey the moviemakers' ideas not through their actions or through realistic dialogue but by stating them: "Good grades were our passport to freedom," etc. It's cringe-inducing.
Boy was this movie a letdown from the critical raves -- it's actually one of the worst so far this year.
The Pianist (2002)
Awful. Couldn't wait for it to end. (Possible spoilers)
We know nothing about the hero of the movie or his family. Instead, we are simply droppped into their lives with no sense of character or context. In this manner, material with obvious visceral impact is stripped of any kind of dramatic thrust or force. I couldn't tell you two things about the Brody character, or one thing about any of the other characters, so how can I be expected to care about them on any but the simplest level that they represent actual people with whose sad stories I am already acquainted? What we do get are countless, endless shots of Brody pretending to play the piano. The music is good but certainly not memorable; I can't imagine wanting the soundtrack. But what are we in the audience to do during these scenes, other than to yawn, shift in our seats and pray for relief? Polanski includes certain scenes with undeniable visceral impact but seems to take all a little bit too much pleasure in the prettiness of his staging. The endless, deadly dull "Pianist" will have you hissing at the end -- if you make it that far.
Chain Camera (2001)
I love documentary, but...
...this one just isn't worth the cost of a movie ticket. What these filmmakers have done cannot properly be called filmmaking; rather, they just chose sixteen students of some diversity (though not quite as much diversity as the reviews have suggested) and set them loose. The results are, to be brutally frank, far more often boring, self-indulgent, overwrought and off-puttingly grainy than truly insightful.
There are, of course, moments of recognition and identification of the sort only possible in documentary film, but overall there's not much more truth here than in "Bully" or, for that matter, a decent TV documentary of the same sort. Though full of talk about sex and sexual diversity and racism, the film brings nothing to the table that will be of use to anyone who has thought about any of these issues with any seriousness. And while certain segments serve absolutely no purpose other than to inject a bit of (admittedly welcome) comic relief, most often the five-minute limit keeps up from becoming emotionally involved with any of the students. An interesting idea, but thumbs down for CHAIN CAMERA.
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Diane Keaton Gives Best Female Comic Performance of 90s
I agree with those who love this movie. It is my favorite of his, and I love most of his films. But what nobody has yet singled out is that Diane Keaton in this movie gives the best female comic performance of the 90s. The way she pops off lines like "Forget the police, Larry. They're red tape. This is _my_ case" and "I'm gonna have Ted run a check on that" captures everything that men find exasperating but endlessly attractive about women. Anjelica Huston gives a star turn and Alan Alda could not be more appealing. Of course Woody saves himself some of the best lines in his entire oeuvre. It's one of my all-time faves.