Change Your Image
roycaldwell
Reviews
Bébé apache (1910)
Un bon bébé -- don't miss this one
Hey, I saw this yesterday at the Videotheque in Paris, and it was good. Bébé is the child actor who starred in dozens of Feuillade's films, and I liked the kid. The Apache in the title refers not to the Native Americans, but to the name of shady criminal types in turn-of-the-century Paris. They beat up Bébé's daddy, so Bébé disguises himself as an Apache, infiltrates the gang, and revenges Papa. OK, not a very realistic plot, but watching a 5-year-old kid act like a tough guy made me laugh. Don't pass this up if it comes to a cinema in your town.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Overwrought, turgid, grotesque
Overwrought, grotesque, turgid. At the end they are fighting and fighting, Barberousse (who does not have a red beard) and Sparrow, and we ask why because neither can die. On and on and on and on they go, while elsewhere all kinds of mayhem occurs. This film has a mixed tone - unlike Sinbad: it tries to be a swashbuckler, but must fall into line on the current craze for realistic effects and graphic violence. We watch brutal, winner-take-all-and-death-to-the-loser battles, as the heroes quip and prance, and just out of frame the ghouls plunge swords into the chests of soldiers we have just seen fall. In Sinbad, no one seems to die - and that is fine by me. Johnny Depp swishes drunkenly through his role; Orlando Bloom is appropriately dewy and earnest; the girl is luminous, fiery, resourceful - like every heroine in action films these days. This film fell seriously in love with its main effect: the pirates turn into ghouls under the moonlight. You want to see a great swashbuckler, invite your niece or nephew or the kid next door, and check out Sinbad.
Morte a Venezia (1971)
From 3 stars to 10
I saw this film many years ago, and absolutely hated it -- I could not wait for it to end, and would have walked out, but there was a girl sleeping on my shoulder. You know what? I have never forgotten this film, and more, I would say that it continues to haunt me with its images and music over the years. How many movies have I wept over and laughed over in the moviehouse, then forgotten as soon as I hit the street, like ... you see, I can't even think of one! Rarer are films like Death in Venice that enter your consciousness and work sea changes. The French like to say film is an art, and movies like this one prove they are right. I give it 10 stars, up from the 3 I gave it the night I saw it.
Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (1986)
A Masterpiece
This film is a masterpiece: visually stunning and full of poetry. Again, Miyazaki shows his ability to rediscover a child's sense of wonder. The plot here, like that of Princess Mononoke, demonstrates his mythopoetic genius: he has taken elements from existing stories and woven them into a compelling, visionary narrative: here we have the world of Dickens married to Swift's floating island Laputa, with dashes of swashbuckling pirate tales. Miyazaki is always fascinated by flight (Kiki, Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Totoro), but nowhere does he do anything as magical with that theme as here. He has transposed sea-going vessels, and all the imagery associated with it (pirates, ocean liners, great gunships), into the air. This film seems to cancel the real history of flight, and to substitute another, imaginary version. A double anachronism: this is the way the nineteenth century would have imagined flight. It cannot be denied either that the film has a strong emotional dimension: the boy who dreams of flying goes back to the mine and watches as a girl floats down from the sky into his arms! The film is filled with moments of stunning beauty, poetically and visually: Pazu and Sheeta in the gondola over the pirate ship watch the huge gunship emerge below them; the destruction of Laputa - the walls come crumbling down and rain into the sea - Apocalypse; the great tree of Laputa floats away at the end.
The more I reflect on Miyazaki's films, the more I am convinced that he is one of the greatest filmmakers, one of the great artists of our time.
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
A different opinion
I don't get it. Why did this film flop? It has great action pieces, a fine storyline with good surprises, excellent characters and romance at the center, sharp dialogue, good comedy, an animal who's not too cute, and terrific visuals. It blows away the insipid Nemo and the overblown Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe Sinbad failed at box offices because it's a film without an audience -- too sophisticated for children (it's not about parents and children like Nemo), and adults don't go to see animation. This film resembles (and ranks with) the classic swashbucklers from the thirties or forties. I have a 5-year-old daughter and I've seen all the US cartoons from the past 20 years -- and Sinbad is the best. Not as good as any of Miyazaki's work, but worth seeing and reseeing.