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Moon Manor (2022)
Ugh
A self-satisfied screaming bore. The self-congratulatory tone is established practically during the credits and never lets up. Especially worthy of sincere mockery is the character of the "Death Doula"! The hackneyed triteness on display here is inspired. Carrozo's ability to communicate a blessed thing regarding his predicament is, let's be honest, emoji-esque in range and depth. I was particularly unmoved by his canned-spam "acting" in trying-and failing-to articulate the word "morbid" as illustrative of the horrors of Alzheimer's. I yawned so strenuously I nearly dislocated my jaw. Throughout the movie he is as garrulous as Chatty Cathy. One concludes: If THAT'S senility, what's all the damn fuss about? Really, my dog whining to go out has evoked more existential dread.
As Wilde said so aptly about the "Death of Little Nell" in Great Expectations, you'd need a heart of stone to watch "Moon Manor" and not burst out laughing.
The Wife (2017)
Comically Implausible
Silly feminist revenge fantasies simply do not get sillier than this one, capped off by the confrontation between father and son: "What were you doing in your office with her that you didn't want me to see? QED!" cries the latter from the bottom of his hair follicles.
Hungry Hill (1947)
Dance Genius
Hungry Hill contains the greatest dance sequence ever filmed, which begins in the ballroom of the mnaor and ends outdoors. Hurst outdid Hollywood. Margaret Lockwood leads dozens of Irish dancers in a rollicking reel. Quite exceptional choreography.
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
Give Me a Break
The most overrated piece of pretentious rubbish released in decades, so of course they went crazy for it in Cannes. Also, one long bore, which was actually the best thing about it.
Time Lapse (2014)
What AmI Missing?
The film is well-acted and the dialogue convincing, but the plot has me completely baffled. Either I must have missed some basic line of dialogue explaining the camera, or the movie's premise is pitifully screwed up. Time-travel "paradox" has nothing to do with my problem either. It would be nice if it does, but it isn't.
As an example, examine the actions of one of the characters. At 8 pm on, say, Monday, the artist sees whatever work he will have completed by 8 pm Tuesday. The plain premise seems to be that he must be done painting exactly what the premonitory photograph reveals to have been done by the time the next photograph is to be taken and so on. The point is he must actually do something, and we see him "doing something" on time again and again.
His friends also must similarly do something. But gambler seems only to have to write down by 8 pm what horses will win. So then, how does the gambler know what horses will win without doing something to actually cause them to win? The winning of a horse race is done by a rider on a horse that is racing, not by a gambler writing down the winner. So the conclusion has to be that the camera is not merely taking a photo 24 hours in advance but is also causing things to happen by then. Yet that is in conflict with the need of the characters to do something or else. Or else what?
It's important to understand that there is no suggestion in the movie that the camera does anything except passively record what will have happened within exactly 24 hours. Yet the plot fails unless the camera actively creates the reality within that time interval. That is not a paradox of time travel but simply lousy plotting, lousy plotting that is possibly pretending to be paradoxical. Yet even that cannot be true, for nowhere do the characters say anything to lead you to believe that the camera is anything but passive. They have to get in sync with it, true; but why then doesn't that same requirement apply to the guy riding the horse as well, who has no idea that the camera even exists?
I don't get it, and I don't think it is my fault either.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Ease and Fluency with Austenian English Greatly Compromised
I did not see the 1995 miniseries, so I cannot compare Wright's version to it. It does, however, compare unfavorably with Robert Z. Leonard's 1940 "Pride and Prejudice." The problem is increasing unfamiliarity, even among British actors, with classic English prose. Throughout, Miss Knightley gives every unpleasant indication that she is struggling to enunciate properly. Given that she has eye-catching lips to begin with, the exaggerations of her mouth as she speaks, especially in the scene with D'Arcy in the rain, were quite alarming and kept distracting me with the image of an animated chimp mimicking a person talking. Knightley and occasionally Macfayden seem to be talking solely with the mouth and not first with heart and head. Compare this scene, which I believe is wholly invented as to setting, with the delightful and comfortable and elegant back and forth between Olivier and Garson in the parallel scene from 1940. The character in this movie who delivers her lines with fluency and confidence is Judi Dench, an actress of an older, pre"Four Weddings and a Funeral" generation of British actressesa watershed work in British cinema, in my opinion. Even so, her performance is far too menacing. I much prefer Edna May Oliver's Lady Catherine (and she was an American!).
Which brings me to a related irritation. The satirical element, always the heart and soul of Austen's best work, is very nearly absent here (sarcasm and bitterness are not satire). This movie is an onerously serious love story; and that is not at all how I remember the novel. In the 1940 version, Mary Boland as Mrs. Bennett, Frieda Insescourt as Caroline Bingley, Ann Rutherford (a Canadian) as Lydia, Bruce Lester as Charles Bingley, and especially Melville Cooper as Mr. Collins each rendered his character more felicitously than their counterparts hereand in half the time too.