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Reviews
Marco Polo (2007)
A missed opportunity
Given the fact that the makers had access to plenty of money, good costuming, and even to the locations (or convincing computer-generated substitutes), this could have been a very good historical movie.
Alas,the derogatory comments on this site regarding script, acting, and casting are perfectly valid. Who on earth cast Brian Dennehy as an oriental? There are established oriental actors who look the part John Lone would be an obvious choice.
The real Marco Polo could speak Italian and French, and on his way to meet Kublai Khan may well have learned Turki, the language Kublai sometimes used in his written communications. But the ridiculous scene where they meet bears not the slightest resemblance to Marco Polo's real-life account, in which the great ruler was the soul of courtesy. Dennehy's grumpiness was pure fiction, like so much else in this tedious production.
The question that begs to be asked is: if one wants to make a historical epic, why present bad fiction instead of interesting fact?
Oculto (2005)
Enjoyable
Only at the end of this movie did I find the illogicalities of the plot annoying. It was as thought the writer and director started out with a very good idea, but could not resist embellishing it with complexities regarding the dreams, premonitions and mysterious symbols.
The result is that A leads to B, and B leads to C - but then we learn that somehow C and B lead to A, and so on. What could have been a coherent, logical plot-line becomes a mess.
Having said that, I must admit that the movie is watchable to the end, and the actors are engaging and convincing within the constrictions of the storyline. Beatriz seems a little too naive and vulnerable for the revelations of her true intentions, and whoever gave her that appalling haircut should definitely not give up his/her day-job. The repeated references to "2001" seem unnecessary and distracting, and I feel that the same plot material could have been conveyed better in some other way.
Overall, the film could benefit by some judicious cutting, especially the pointless overhead sequence in the toilet, which has nothing to do with anything. Perhaps the director shot it as a student exercise, and couldn't resist shoving it into a movie somewhere?
However, despite its numerous faults, I recommend this movie as enjoyable and entertaining for the most part. Just put your logic on hold, and enjoy the acting and photography.
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
A ten-ton turkey
First, let me say that I enjoyed Superstar and Evita, on stage and on screen, so I expected "Phantom" to be good. With a spectacularly talented composer and an apparently unlimited budget, what could go wrong? The sets and costumes are magnificent, the photography first-class, and at least some of the cast, such as Miranda Richardson and Simon Callow, are always worth watching. Moreover, several of the songs are excellent, and memorable. Unfortunately, I was put in mind of the adage "Never mind the quality, feel the width". The dialogue in the recitatives is uninspired, and the melodies dull, the quartets/quintets/ umpteen-ets are messy and incomprehensible, like Sondheim at his worst unless one has the DVD subtitles on, whereas the patter duets sound like bad imitations of "My Fair Lady". The solo singing is variable The Phantom is good when volume is not required, but when it is, he sounds like a fishmonger yelling. Carlotta's singing is bearable, but her screeching dialogue is painful. The "operas" being staged are clearly intended to be mediocre, but instead are excruciatingly bad. The photography is marred by the currently fashionable chopping-up into 2-second cuts. The Phantom's disfigurement, supposedly the basis of the entire plot, is hardly worse than the effect of a bar-room brawl, and becomes progressively less pronounced until it appears no more than a serious case of sunburn. The silly plot, acceptable in its original Grand Guignol setting, is blown out to utter absurdity. Self-exiled to the opera house, the Phantom has nonetheless mastered a series of difficult crafts without assistance he is even a competent swordsman! Cut to about 90 minutes, the film might have been bearable. At 135 minutes, it seems to go on forever. I was thankful that I hadn't wasted money to see the stage show.
Blow-Up (1966)
Pretentiously bad
I suspect that the director intended this to be a satire, depicting the English as a bunch of incompetents, and was bemused to find that it was hailed as a serious film, even a masterpiece.
David Hemmings plays the ultimate professional incompetent, posing as a photographer but seldom doing any work. When he does get a commission he squanders his models' fees by becoming petulant, and leaving them standing about while he wanders next door and has a chat with a neighbour.
Not surprisingly, he makes very little money, and repeatedly complains about this, even though he drives a Bentley convertible.
London is depicted as a sleepy provincial town, where the traffic is almost non-existent, and the public parks are all but deserted. Suspecting that he has witnessed a murder, he demonstrates his ignorance of his craft by pinning up a photographic print and rephotographing it instead of blowing up the original negative the equivalent of copying a videotape and expecting the quality to improve rather than deteriorate. He then revisits the scene of the supposed crime, and being a "photographer", doesn't bother taking a camera with him. What a surprise.
After the unexpected success of this turkey, the director did a similar hatchet job on the Americans, with Jack Nicholson playing an equally stupid character. And sure enough, this too was hailed a good movie. Antonioni must almost have died laughing.
Le temps du loup (2003)
Snail paced, poorly acted and directed
For me, the most disturbing thing about this film was the zombie-like family at its centre. Isabelle Huppert's deadpan performance is matched by the two children, who react to their father's murder with no more concern than if their car had broken down.
Although a number of scenessuch as extended shots of the three walking and walking and walkingare slow and seemingly pointless, the film nonetheless jerks erratically from one scene to another as if footage has been accidentally lost. Plot twists are ridiculously contrived, as when the son disappears in the middle of a pitch-black night for no reason, and the daughter then does likewise, simply to allow an untended fire to get out of control.
Given a better script, a more competent director, and characters capable of enlisting the viewer's sympathy, this might have been worth watching.
Bérénice (2000)
Incredibly tedious
This play may have been a hit several hundred years ago, but it now comes across as five hours (Oh? Was it not that long?) of much ado about very little. Titus loves Berenice, Antiochus loves her, she doesn't love him, Titus has to send her away from Rome , but doesn't want to, and so on, and on, and on.
It was not helped by having two aging French actors playing the leads. Poor old Jacques Weber as Antiochus was dull, as always, and overweight Gerard Depardieu, then in his mid-fifties, was hardly convincing as the 35-year old Titus. Even a relatively young and beautiful Berenice (actually the historical Berenice was 12 years older than Titus, that is, 47) could not save this turkey from drowning in its own flood of verbosity.
Krakatoa: The Last Days (2006)
Typical Hollywood nonsense.
I taped this long-winded docu-drama, and intended to watch it right through. I found much of it moderately interesting, but unfortunately the black-and-white footage of eruptions did not sit well with the technicolor narrative. Was this old footage from the 1930s? If so, why didn't the producers bother to use computer technology to add some colour?
The first action sequence leading up to the tsunami was marred by the waving about of a hand-held camera. This amateurish attempt at realism never, repeat NEVER, approximates to real-life vision, as our eyes flick from one focus to another. They don't pan across a scene, blurring everything in sight.
I struggled on until the ridiculous scene of the ship riding the slow-moving giant wave. This was utter nonsense. A tsunami wave travels at several HUNDRED miles an hour, and over deep ocean is very very very long but quite low in profile. It is only when it approaches land and shallow water that it becomes a high wave. The depiction of the ship somehow remaining on the 45 degree slope of water with its bow pointing up at the sky, without sliding back, was so ludicrous that I gave up and switched off.
The Brave (1997)
An opportunity missed
Given that "The Brave" was based on a novel with a fascinating but disturbing concept, it could and should have been an excellent movie. Depp's direction is competent, the acting overall is good, but the film is overlong and poorly structured. The opening sequences give no hint whatever of what is to follow, and even the Brando character's payment of $50,000 in cash tells the viewer little. Is Depp supposed to come back in a week and carry out a contract killing? Who knows? Who cares? The closure was well handled, and the film would have been weakened if it had gone on to show the main character's suffering and death. But the film would have benefited from a brief glimpse at the very start, or at least an intimation, of what would happen at the end. It's not surprising that many viewers found the film boring. The pace is desperately slow, and much of the film has one itching to press the fast-forward button.
Tiresia (2003)
Snailpaced and Pretentious
This is one of the most incompetently directed movies I have ever struggled through. The subject material is worthwhile, and it could and should have been a good movie.
Unfortunately, again and again, scenes that have little point, for example Anna simply walking up a street, are filmed at some length, while important points in the plot , which ought to have been given some space, appear to have finished up on the cutting-room floor, so that the continuity is a shambles.
The street-walking scenes in the Bois de Boulogne near the beginning go on and on, as do the early scenes of Tiresia's captivity, and are so tedious that the first time I tried to watch the film I gave up out of sheer boredom. When the film was re-screened on TV I managed to watch it all the way through, but only by fast-forwarding through the scenes where absolutely nothing was happening, or where the same information was given over and over, such as Tiresia's explanations about her/his precognition.
The two roles (or it is one?) played by the male lead appear to have many viewers confused. Some commentators wonder why he played two roles, whereas others, like myself, took it that the abductor and priest were the same person. I did wonder why Tiresia failed to recognise him (and vice versa?) but I accepted that as just one more clumsy error in a pretentiously bad script.
Given a better script, a competent director and a professional editor, this could have been a film worth watching.
Cold Lazarus (1996)
Feeble
I am not a fan of Dennis Potter, although I believe that he could have produced good work if the producers of his TV series had been less indulgent, and had forced him to cut his scripts in the interest of wit, point, and (above all) brevity.
I once sat through "The Singing Detective", which was not bad apart from the umpteen pieces of repeat footage. I even endured the Bob Hoskins version of "Pennies From Heaven", which I thought would never end, and which was padded out with surely every third-rate song from the 1920's. At least half of it should have been left on the cutting-room floor. The shortened film version starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters was a perfect validation of the adage "Less is more".
In another piece Potter used grownups in the roles of children. This was a good basic idea, but he did nothing inventive with it. I found it as watchable as a one-joke comedy.
Some of Dennis Potter's other pieces were so dull and slow-moving that I gave up after ten minutes. But none was a feeble as "Cold Lazarus", in which it was proposed that all records of past history had been inexplicably lost (HOW?), and in which one character came up with a BRILLIANT (?) idea for a new TV series, which clearly was nothing more than a rehash of those old mystery/horror TV series produced by Rod Serling and others.
Maybe Dennis Potter had never watched TV back in those days. A pity, because he could have learned a lot.
Othello (1995)
Simply the best
For me, the Lawrence Fishbourne version of "Othello" is the best ever put on film. His performance is excellent, while not overpowering the villainous Iago. And the title role is played by a black man, as it should be, rather than a white man with boot-polish on his face. The film's marginal eroticism has been criticised, but isn't eroticism at the very heart of the story?
Olivier's "Othello" was essentially a film of the stage production, and for me the Orson Welles version was a failure, despite Welles' star performance, because most of the other actors were almost devoid of charisma. How could Desdemona possibly have been interested in a slob like Welles' Cassio?
I have always found the original play unconvincing, for several reasons. Iago's motive, resentment of Cassio's promotion, seems too trivial for the tragedy it precipitates. At risk of committing heresy, I found the Verdi opera more convincing, with the soliloquy by Iago explaining his innate determination to commit evil.
Also, given the closeness of Othello's friendship with Iago, his decision to bypass him in favour of Cassio makes little sense. Likewise, Othello's readiness to believe the worst of Desdemona, and the ease with which Iago leads him on to murder, makes the title character look quite pathetic, almost simple-minded.
In this film, the cutting of the text to the absolute minimum helps to hide the play's inherent faults and tighten the action, and Fishbourne's wordless suffering speaks volumes that more than make up for the loss of Shakespeare's lines. I couldn't help comparing this film with Kenneth Brannagh's "Hamlet", the longest and most tedious of his self-advertisements, in which every long-winded speech was preserved intact. Here Brannagh's Iago is almost as good as Fishbourne's Othello, and he makes the most of the lines he has.
To sum up, ten out of ten. I can only regret that Fishbourne is not offered more roles of this quality.
Wild Wild West (1999)
Great fun
I amazed that so many people disliked "Wild Wild West", and even compared it unfavorably with such formula movies as "Enemy of the State", the ultra-predictable "Independence Day", and the long-winded and tedious "Ali".
I enjoyed "Wild Wild West" so much that I grabbed the opportunity to see it again on TV. It does not pretend to be anything other than what it is -- light-hearted entertainment, not intended to be taken seriously. The plot is outrageous, the special effects brilliant, the complicated gadgetry delightful, and the performances over the top. Despite a few dull moments, the script is witty and amusing, and the characters, absurd as they are, are always consistent.
Perhaps those who disliked the film were expecting something different, that is to say, more of what they are used to. If so, their disappointment is understandable. But the very essence of this comedy was its sheer unpredictability. It is not "The Ladykillers" (the Alec Guiness version) nor "Kind Hearts and Coronets", but I found it highly enjoyable, and certainly laughed out loud.
The Baby of Mâcon (1993)
Yawn-provoking
Is it possible that "Peter Greenaway" is really a pseudonym for two people?
One of them directs entertaining, imaginative films that have remained in my memory, and that I have eagerly watched two or three times. I am thinking of examples such as "The Draughtsman's Contract", and "Prospero's Books". I have seen these movies in cinemas, and later on video, and enjoyed them immensely.
The other person is a would-be shocker who fails to shock, and who clearly spends an enormous amount of time, energy and money on brightly-co loured, predictable and tiresome films such as "A Zed and Two Noughts", "The Cook, the Thief . . ." and "Drowning By Numbers". I have managed (only just) to watch these on video, where I was able to fast-forward through the most boring sections.
"The Baby of Macon" was obviously the work of this second individual. Admittedly, he did achieve two remarkable things. First, he somehow persuaded competent, well-known actors to participate in this trash, and second, he presented a potentially appalling act, a mass rape, as long-winded, repetitive and tedious.
To sum up: an utter waste of money, talent and film stock.
Gladiator (2000)
A second-rate sword-and-sandal movie.
This could have been an excellent movie if it had set its sights higher. Unfortunately, the director settled for Hollywood mediocrity.
Joaquin Phoenix is impressive as Commodus, but Russell Crowe's Oscar seems to have been a belated reward for earlier work. He is a talented actor, but nothing much is asked of him in this movie apart from going through the motions.
And the motions themselves are often laughable. The movie opens with the general using siege engines against German infantry, firing heavy flaming arrows that are designed to set wooden buildings alight.
Even worse, he leads a cavalry detachment into the rear of the opposing force while the missile are still raining down. We have all heard about casualties from "friendly fire", but no competent general deliberately invites such a disaster. Richard Harris, as Marcus Aurelius, was clearly relieved that such an idiot had managed to win the battle.
The later action scenes were ludicrous, with lots of quick cuts to obscure the fact that the stunt work was nonsense. Where else but in a Hollywood movie could a group of gladiators overturn a heavy chariot by holding their shields down like a ramp? The real result would have been smashed arms. Russell Crowe then unhitches a chariot horse, catches a thrown sword, and rides between two other chariots, slicing the drivers as he passes. What ever happened to the knives on the axle shafts? His horse would have lost its legs.
Near the end of the film, the climactic duel scene in the arena was farcical. In real life, the mad Emperor Commodus announced his intention to lead a group of gladiators, widely regarded as scum, in a procession, and his mistress had him murdered the night before in order to avoid a riot by the outraged populace.
In the film, Commodus does something just as outrageous, apparently without offending anybody. He elects to put his life on the line to fight Crowe in the arena (despite being overdressed for the occasion), and predictably comes to a sticky end just like the movie.
The English Patient (1996)
Avoid the movie, read the book.
A viewer needs more than patience to sit through this tripe. The story is confused, the structure chaotic, the makeup ridiculous, and the photography poor.
An early scene in a troop-train appears to have no connection with anything that follows, except that it introduces a nurse, who is unidentifiable when she turns up shortly afterwards, because of the fact that (like many of the other characters) she is first shown some distance from the camera, in poor lighting. The identity-obscuring army dress doesn't help.
This ignorance of the basics of film-making is again evident when Kristin Scott-Thomas and Colin Firth appear. We see them near a plane some distance away, then when they come closer they are back-lit so that the viewer can't see their faces.
As I hadn't read the novel, it took me half the movie to realize that I was watching a series of flashbacks rather than, as I thought, mere switches of location. Part of the reason for this was that I was unable to identify the actor playing the English patient. The makeup was so extreme that the part could just as well have been played by Lon Chaney Junior or Boris Karloff.
A similar problem was evident in the scenes showing the pilot and his passenger. Presumably nobody on the makeup team had ever seen a dead body. Believe me, corpses do not look as if they have just come out of a beauty salon!
The plane was supposedly flying in a straight line, yet the position of the sun in several shots indicated that it was flying in various different directions.
To sum up, this movie was mess. Why it was praised by the critics is one of life's mysteries.
The Butcher Boy (1997)
Good film, incomprehensible dialog.
I tried to watch this movie on video, and could understand only about half of the dialog, which for the most part is spoken at a fast pace in thick Irish accents.
However, it has been praised by many people, and I can accept that it is an excellent film. The setting is convincing, the acting is certainly good, especially that of the young actor in the title role, and one can always rely on Stehen Rea and Fiona Shaw, who like a true professional, manages to speak her lines so that the words come out clearly, yet without sacrificing the Irish brogue.
I would advise anyone wanting to see it to hire it on DVD, with English subtitles.
Taking Lives (2004)
Mediocre formula thriller
I hired a DVD of this feeble movie for $1.00, and was sorry that I had wasted almost two hours of my life. I kept watching only because I was hoping for an explanation of the the various mysteries it throws up. For example
How does a serial killer take over the identity of a series of victims without running into problems such as encountering the real persons' friends? How does he get a driver's license, or a bank account?
In the first of his murders, when he shoves an acquaintance in front of a truck on a smooth roadway, why does the vehicle fly into the air and somersault to destruction?
Why does the killer's mother have photos of her son only as a child but not as a teenager?
Why does somebody you owe money to lurk about in the shadows but not meet you face to face until the plot requires it?
Why does a kidnap victim with a gun at his head drive at high speed through a city instead of switching off the ignition?
Why does a cop who is supposed to be guarding a potential victim wait out in the street next to a taxi?
And finally, why does Angelina Jolie get into the sack with sexless Ethan Hawke when Olivier Martinez is on hand?
The good thing about DVD's, of course, is that one can watch the last third of the film at 1.5 speed, with on screen subtitles, to the final contrived and unbelievable climax.
Better still, give up movies and read a book.
Scorchers (1991)
Bad is an understatement
I began to watch this movie after taping it on TV, and was simply astounded. The producers have performed a miracle, by somehow persuading talented and famous actors to take part in a piece of trash that would be jeered off the stage if written and presented by a group of retarded amateurs.
The long opening monologue was tedious, but it came as a surprise that it had no bearing on anything that followed. I admit that I didn't watch every scene and hear every word, as I was often forced to fast-forward by the long-winded and feeble dialogue. Even then, the bedroom scenes appeared to go forever.
My heart went out to the actors, who must surely have been painfully embarrassed. Presumablt y they signed a contract before they saw the script, if one could call it a script. But like true professionals (at least the four or five who could act) they slugged on to the end.
To sum up, it was like 1920's slapstick without the wit. In fact maybe it would be less tedious if it were screened without the sound. My advice: dodge this one and hire "Pass the Ammo."
The Apostle (1997)
Self-indulgence
The Apostle had some good points, among them competent actors, good production values and convincing locations. The noisy "Bible belt'" meetings were amazing to a foreigner, but nonetheless believable.
However the inappropriate casting, mumbled dialogue, and the poor script and direction appear to me to be unforgivable self-indulgences on the part of the film-maker.
Duvall was about 20 years too old for the role he played. The main character was supposedly born around 1936, and the cars in the later scenes were early 1980s models, so the Duvall character would then have been about 46. In fact Duvall was 66 in 1997.
For this reason, it took me some time to work out that Farah Fawcett, 16 years his junior, was his wife, not his daughter or niece. In the early scene at the car-wreck site, the woman riding with Duvall, Anne Carter Cash, born 2 years before Duvall, appeared to be his wife. Nowhere in the film was it explained how she came to give birth to the Duvall character when she was only 2 years old.
And while we are on that scene, do police officers at a crash scene really stand around on the roadway chatting while in the adjacent field the injured are dying in one of the cars, with nobody paying them any attention, let alone rendering assistance? I found this astonishing, and unconvincing.
With a better script and a more competent director, and of course an actor of the right age, this could have been a good movie.
Peter H.