Change Your Image
rafajack-56549
Reviews
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Very deceptive
Despite the fine colors and some few interesting shots, I'd say that House of Sand and Fog (2003) carries a lot of wasted potential, beginning with the story itself, the director didn't seem to know which way to go even though there were very good subjects to tackle here but not one was developed.
Next is obviously Ben Kingsley, a British actor of Indian descent playing an Iranian. He might be a fine Shakespearean actor but he just couldn't modulate his performance and ended up acting like a robot for 2 hours.
Shohreh Aghdashloo actually managed to milk stone in this, giving a very solid performance, with few cracks due to the poor way her character was written.
What we have here is a picture in a different visual language from the usual Hollywood flick, easily deceiving the more distracted movie-goer into thinking they saw a good film.
Superficial dialogue and a rather conservative approach ultimately makes the movie fail both as a melodrama and as a thriller.
The Woman in the Window (2021)
Scary Movie 6
The picture is totally uneven, one sees the grotesque work of Frankenstein they had to do after the studio infamously asked for reshooting. The director maybe wanted to give us an ode to Hitchcock's work and omg how he failed; the special effects are ridiculous and the only thing that keeps the story afloat for at least 40 minutes is the lead performance, she really stands above all else until she doesn't. Great contender for worst picture of the year so far. I give 1 star out of pity for Amy Adams.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)
A bad script vs. Billie Holiday
I read another review that said pretty much everything I wanted to say so I'll try to be concise. One could say that the movie is more about "look how Andra Day looks and talks and sings like Billie Holiday" than about the artist's life, I mean we all heard her songs a thousand times over the years do we really need so many musical numbers? We have the records silly! It's just a bunch of scenes stuck together with almost no continuity for 2 hours, not that linearity is a must for any picture but if you're telling the story of a person that actually lived you might as well have some, right? Andra Day is amazing and I hope she gets nominated for an Academy Award! That said, go watch Lady Sings The Blues or read Billie's autobigraphical book with the same name.