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Reviews
The Leisure Class (2015)
Fine Performances, Flawed Writing and Direction
Personally, I think they should air the movie BEFORE Project Greenlight airs. It's difficult to say how much of a heavily edited TV show taints one's views on the final product. It's like shopping for a new car and discovering food stains on the upholstery before you make your purchase. That being said, I feel I was pretty objective.
I thought the movie was visually striking, the performances were sound (Bruce Davison's performance was sheer brilliance and Emmy worthy), the score underwhelming and the writing flawed but with solidly compelling moments. I give the benefit of the doubt that this is due to the time constraints on the production and the inexperience of the director.
The problems with the writing had less to do with character, more to do with the plot, pressing situations with characters reacting unrealistically in order to move to the next scene. For instance, while I found Tom Bell's character Leonard realistic at its core, his reactions and behaviour felt falsely nihilistic rather than truly characteristic. Returning to the house with a hooker claiming to Ed he knew how to make it right... these types of situations just felt laboured and contrived. Metaphorically, rather than figuring out how a male cat would react to having another tomcat encroach on it's territory, they just threw two cats in a bag and threw it into the audience hoping we'd find it funny.
That being said, the fixes to Fiona's character worked for me. She had depth of character, despite having shallow values. I felt all the actors gave solid performances and as I mentioned earlier, Bruce Davison excelled.
The strongest scene in the film for me was when Edward confronts the brothers, then turns on the family. Despite the discomfort it was an extremely powerful scene.
Overall, I thought it was a decent flick that didn't know whether to be more farce or cerebral. I only laughed out loud once, when Edward wakes up with phalli marked on his face by Leonard. That being said, I wish they'd gone the cerebral route rather than beating us on the soles of our feat with forced gags.
While watching Project Greenlight, I felt that director Jason Mann was overly picky, despite everyone's claim to his being a genius and respecting his vision, which is fair enough. It's great that he has an aesthetic vision, the film was beautiful to look at and I did notice continuity problems with the lighting with which he expressed concern. But you know what? If that information hadn't been telegraphed during the episodes, I probably wouldn't have noticed. They didn't really fix the car crash, there was a noticeable jump in the cut during one of the shots. They should have spent more time on the writing, less than arguing about locations and film vs. digital. My take? He needs to learn how to properly prioritize. Hopefully, that will come with time.
Wo hu cang long (2000)
A fine film, but Best Picture?
I liked this flick overall, but I'm afraid I can't endorse it carte blanche as others seem fit to do. While Michelle Yeoh's performance was excellent, I found Chow Yun Fat's performance contrived for the most part. He seems to have 3 expressions to cover most situations: solemn, earnest and solemnly earnest. There is a certain sense of amused charm that glows in selected scenes, however these are few and far between. The cinematography was lush and a joy to the eye. Oddly enough, the problems I had with this film for the most part were with the fight and flight sequences and not because I had a problem suspending disbelief, I recognize this film is a fantasy. It was the quality of the effects, or lack thereof that was striking *on occasion*. The first sequence involving the flight over the rooftops felt off to me in many ways. They looked like actors suspended from wires for the most part. They would change direction by pushing off a wall or a rooftop except that it was plainly obvious their foot hadn't touched the surface of the roof or wall. In the Matrix there were similar scenes but one always had at least a vague sense of a body's *mass*. With Crouching Tiger sometimes this would be conveyed and at other times it wasn't. I think it was the inconsistency that bothered me the most. The most compelling fight sequences were those involving Michelle Yeoh and/or Ziyi Zhang. The writing was good, but not exceptional. It's interesting that the thrust of the martial arts tends to be inner harmony and mental discipline, yet every film of this genre seems predicated on revenge and Crouching Tiger certainly doesn't break the mould in that respect. For the genre it was exeptional and I can see it being nominated and winning Best Foreign Feature, but Best Picture? That's a stretch.
American Beauty (1999)
Acting made this work.
I enjoyed this flick for the most part. A couple of things bothered me about the writing. Keep in mind, I *liked* this movie.
***WARNING***
Don't read the rest of this if you don't like "spoilers".
First of all, the gratuitous and unnecessary climax and denouement. I was satisfied after Spacey had his epiphany when he discovered the fact that Suvari was a virgin. A very nice touch. Perfect. But NOOOOOOOO! Given the fact that this is a studio flick, we can't have subtlety. Let's blow his brains out and give the viewer a 5 minute "whodunit," despite the fact that the culprit was as obvious as to who started world war II (Hitler for the uninitiated). As well, the conversation in Spacey's garage with Cooper couldn't have been any more unrealistic. *Every* word out of Spacey's mouth confirmed that he was gay. This whole line of reasoning... did I say reasoning? Sorry. Was so contrived and obvious that it killed the momentum that was flowing up to that point. Suddenly *CLUNK*. The whole thing ground to a halt for me. The gay subtext was interesting, but superfluous. It could have been handled better. Despite this, I really enjoyed this movie. The performances were awesome! The art direction and cinematography were unparalleled. I thought the scene where Spacey was fantasizing about Suvari, with her on the ceiling (so to speak) and the rose petals dropping on him were amazing! Did it deserve to win over the other offerings at the academy awards this year? Dunno. But it certainly deserved to be nominated. Basically, I thought the perfromances were incredible, the actors really pulled this one off. The writing left something to be desired, but was okay overall.