marioncap Reviews

The Scarlet Letter (1995)

Not the Hawthorne classic, but enjoyable on its own

[7/10 · 25 June 2012]

Nope, this film is NOT an accurate adaptation of "The Scarlet Letter" by any stretch of the imagination. It's more like a modern "Variations on a Theme by Nathaniel Hawthorne," or one of those Fantasias that 19th- century composers used to write with a famous, much-older melody as a starting point.

That said, I enjoyed this movie quite a lot. The depiction of late 18th/early 19th century Native American civilization on the Northeastern Seaboard is vividly and richly imagined; don't think I've ever seen this in a film before. Gary Oldman, as a wonderfully sexy and yet perfectly pure young Rev. Dimmesdale, probably would have pleased Hawthorne on the whole, and his chemistry with Demi Moore's obviously anachronistic, but compelling, Hester Prynne is delicious (their scene in the barn is very hot indeed).

Finally, something has to be said about the gorgeous John Barry score. What lovely, memorable film music! On the strength of the score alone, I encourage anyone who enjoys romantic stories (and won't be offended by the vast, ridiculous departures from Hawthorne's masterpiece) to give this movie a look.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Brilliant, terrifying movie

[9/10 · 24 June 2012]

I was thrilled and terrified by this movie, but also shocked that none of its reviewers seemed to understand it. Almost every review I've read misses the point of Tom Ripley's degrading job at Carnegie Hall's men's room: He worked the job so he could hear great music for free; for an aspiring young concert pianist, it was actually a pretty good job in the 1950s.

Nobody seems to have noticed that while Dickie Greenleaf just wants to goof around in Europe, Tom Ripley actually wants to play the piano professionally. Yes, of course he wants to be rich, but he doesn't just want to be rich for the sake of being rich. When Freddy finds him in Rome, he finds him because his landlady hears him practicing the piano at all hours. Tom Ripley longs for the rich life, but he wants it so he can play the piano! His horrible tragedy is not only that he kills the only person who can ever love him; it's also that he kills the only person who could ever understand and embrace him as an artist. He starts out as an aspiring artist with a once-in-a-lifetime freak chance, and ends up a serial killer.

The Civil War (1990)

History brought to life, in horror and clarity

[9/10 · 24 June 2012]

Most reasonably-educated Americans alive today think they know something about the Civil War; but I would bet serious money that most don't know just how bloody and horrible it was. The sheer numbers of killed and maimed soldiers, between 1861 and 1865, is horrifying - and the new technology of photography made it possible for average citizens, reading their newspaper, to see the heartbreaking images of dead and dying young men lying on the battlefields. Now, digging deeper, it's even more horrifying that half of these brave young men fought and died to preserve a monstrous system in which people with light-colored skin enslaved people with dark-colored skin, for no good reason at all, except for the great enrichment of a small, wealthy white elite.

Faulkner wrote, more or less, that the past "isn't over; it isn't even past." He was terribly, absolutely right.

The Black Cat (1934)

Spooky, memorable flick starring two '30s horror gods - and something more, too

[9/10 · 14 August 2009]

I recently bought a VHS copy of this film - don't think it's available on DVD - and watched it again several times, after falling in love with it on late-night TV as a teenager back in the 1970s.

The campy fun of watching the two ultimate horror stars of the '30s duke it out in a context of Satanism, melodrama and modern architecture is undeniable. However, there is something more to this film, and once it hits you, it's hard to get out of your mind.

The unspoken back-story is the horror of World War I in Europe, and both the script - full of chilling references to dead men in trenches and the fate of prisoners of war - and the musical score, made up almost entirely of excerpts from great symphonic and chamber works by European composers of the late 19th/early 20th century, evokes the darkness, damage and pain suffered and witnessed by Europeans who survived that war. Both Karloff and Lugosi were old enough to have vivid memories of the first world war, and Lugosi in particular shows a dramatic range that would surprise most 1931 "Dracula" fans.

Lugosi gives a bravura performance as the kind, gentle, haunted and tormented psychiatrist, Dr. Vitus Werdegast, who is driven to vengeful violence by the dreadful fate of his lost wife and daughter. This film is the best evidence, IMHO, of the talent he is said to have evidenced as a Shakespearian stage actor in his native Hungary. His facial expressions are extreme enough to be melodramatic on film, but they would obviously be just right, gripping and moving, on stage.

This movie strikes me as having two realities: one, it's just an unusually good B-Horror film of the thirties, with two great stars; and two - it's a dark and accurate description of what war does to the people who survive it.

(Just for extra credit - can anybody translate the Latin invocation that Boris Karloff starts in this film with "Cum grano salis"? I really, really hope that he's reciting a recipe in Latin.)

That Midnight Kiss (1949)

Wonderful tenor, horrible soprano, otherwise forgettable film

[8/10 · 8 August 2009]

I vote 8 out of 10 just for the amazingly beautiful singing of Mario Lanza. How sad that he never achieved the great opera career his talent deserved! His acting is only passable, but his personal charisma is quite impressive.

It drives me crazy that squeaky-voiced sopranina, Kathryn Grayson, who in real life could not even dream of a job as a chorus soprano in an actual functioning opera company, is presented as a plausible leading lady (Lucia di Lammermoor or Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto)! Her voice might be cute in a small room singing folk songs (if you could forgive her hideously spread vowels), but there is no way in Hell that such a tiny sound would ever in a million years carry over an orchestra.

(Was there really no soprano with a real voice who could have co-starred with Mario Lanza back in the early 50's? Alas, there probably was, but she probably wasn't a tiny skinny Barbie doll like Kathryn Grayson.)

Black Cat, White Cat (1998)

Bizarre, joyful insanity -- don't miss this one!

[10/10 · 13 March 2009]

The sublime goofiness of this movie is hard to describe; you really must see it for yourself. But some of its virtues are: it manages to be a classic farce, without ever seeming stylized; it showcases and celebrates the glorious music of the Rroma people in almost every frame, while keeping the convoluted narrative running; it presents even its densest, dopiest, kookiest and weirdest characters as full human beings, not stereotypes; and, not least, it presents a number of farm animals in juicy cameo roles (the car-eating pig ought to get some kind of "Best Performance by a Barnyard Animal" prize). The title characters, for example, appear in almost every crucial scene, and end up making the happy ending possible.

Young lovers, lonely hearts, domineering grandparents, stupid con-artists, coke-head gangsters and flocks of geese make up the world of "Black Cat, White Cat," always accompanied by torrents of music. If loony, generous, dark humor appeals to you, you'll love this wonderful, humane, totally delicious movie. Years later, this is still the best movie ever. You will just relish every minute of this crazy, out-of-this-world, humane and delicious masterpiece!

The Fan (1996)

Unsparing character study of a psychopathic narcissist

[8/10 · 28 September 2006]

DeNiro really triumphs as an actor in this underrated film. A baseball fan myself, I was absorbed by the atmosphere and the terrific ball-game filming in this picture -- but above all, DeNiro's performance blew my mind and stays with me.

DeNiro's Gil Renard is a familiar, scary character; he's a violent nutcase who beats his wife while still believing himself to be one of Nature's gentlemen. He just thinks he's been dealt a bad hand in life. He never notices his own pathological selfishness; never notices how his obsessions affect the other people in his life. All he notices is his own overwhelming feeling of violated innocence. Gil Renard thinks he was always a Perfectly Good Guy, until the unfair world crushed his innocence. . . meanwhile, his ex-wife, his son, his baseball idol, HIS son, and even his old best friend from Little League, all are expendable, just to preserve Gil's idealistic image of baseball, and of his own innocence.

Maid of Honor (2006 TV Movie)

Surprisingly fun, well-acted and nasty suspense film

[7/10 · 24 June 2006]

I picked this up at the video store thinking "this'll be a really bad, unintentionally funny melodrama about a Desperate Woman" -- and I was only half-right. Yes, it is about a desperate woman, but it's actually very well done, powerfully suspenseful and develops all the characters to the point where they come across as real people you care about.

This movie fooled me at least three times, and I like to think I'm fairly quick on the uptake. Linda Purl is a wonderfully expressive and intense actress -- why isn't she famous??? I highly recommend this movie to anybody who likes good thrillers, and/or anyone who enjoys watching a superb actor like Purl as she crafts a brilliantly realized character (even if the movie isn't quite good enough to deserve her).

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Heartbreaking romance, one for the ages

[9/10 · 28 January 2006]

This beautiful, difficult film depicts the love between two tender-hearted, emotionally deprived, educationally limited, fearful and bottled-up men who quite accidentally find each other -- and in each other, the love and joy of their lives -- during a hardscrabble teenaged summer herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, WY.

Since this is the rural American heartland, ca. 1963, neither of them even imagines the possibility of living a different life from what they've always known; they experience their first encounter as a one-time aberration, only to find out, much too late, that their deep joy and delight in each other's presence really is love, and they should never have married their unhappy wives just because marriage after a certain age was expected.

The tragic content of the film resonates with the real-life murder, not too long ago, of a young gay man in Wyoming (Matthew Shephard), and this resonance enhances the power of the film.

Best moments: Ennis' farewell to Jack's mother, with Ennis' old shirt in the brown paper bag; Ennis & Jack on Brokeback Mountain, lying side by side under the vast starlit sky -- Ennis says: "I'm just sayin' a little prayer of thanks." Jack asks "For what?" and Ennis replies, with a complicated smile, "For you forgettin' that damn harmonica, for the peace and quiet."

The Man Who Cried (2000)

Beautiful film about risk, change and difference

[9/10 · 2 January 2006]

The only reason I did not rate this film a "10" was that the Christina Ricci character (Feygele/Suzie), who is supposed to be a superb singer in the era before microphones, was not dubbed by someone who can actually sing. (Ricci, gifted actress that she is, can't, and to a musician, that's a problem). Other than that, I loved this movie. Ricci and Depp, as impossible lovers who just happen to be members of the two peoples most persecuted by the Nazis (a Jew and a Gypsy), are both perfection in their roles. John Tuturro and Cate Blanchett, as (respectively) an Alpha-male Italian tenor enamored of Mussolini, and Suzie's fellow dancer/confidante seduced by the tenor and his Fascist tendencies, are such compelling characters that they almost needed their own separate movie. The cinematography is beautiful throughout, and the sense of history, of the sweep of time, is wonderfully evoked. Last but not least, the score of the film memorably weaves together an old Yiddish lullaby with "Je crois entendre encore," the great tenor aria from Bizet's "Pearl Fishers." Both melodies share the same rhythmic and harmonic skeleton, and the film score reveals and celebrates it. A wonderful musical reflection on the theme of the film in general. Wait until the end of the movie to see what I mean -- the music explains it all.