piggy-7 Reviews

As You Like It (2006)

Kill Will

[1/10 · 2 October 2007]

KB has never been any less than the most ham-fisted of directors but with this film he finally manages to succeed in completely smashing poor Willy the Shake into a mashed-up pulp. Branagh's usual, undecided "style" - combining wooden theatricality with sudden and meaningless camera swoops that so very often miss the mark - resembles a picnic table after the party is over, leaving our senses smeared with an appalling residue of pretty much every reference you can find in the film dictionary, while its strangely out of place Benatton-ad cast fumble their way through the absurdly chosen Samurai world they've been instructed to make believable. Time and time again this hodge-podge of a piece seems to steer its way strangely into comedy, jarring to halt midstream as it - and we - realize it's completely devoid of anything particularly funny, unless you find a scrawny black Orlando knocking out cold a massive Sumo wrestler with a series of unbelievably silly slapping motions knock-down hilarious. What's most unfunny is that even such wonderful actors of the caliber of Romola Garai and Janet McTeer become unwitting victims, their performances buried beneath atrocious camera work and god-awful staging. Mr. Branagh needs to back off from parking on the director's chair, or the future of Shakespeare finding its way onto the big - or small - screen is sure to be very bleak indeed. And that would be a tragedy.

300 (2006)

Acting is the number one casualty in this battle!

[23 March 2007]

Magnificently filmed, form wins hands down over content in "300" and proves that while you can pour bucks into creating the look of a graphic novel, sticking to the same style of writing only causes a knock-on effect that results in acting that at best is cardboard-cutout, at worst (and mainly) excruciatingly campy. The very unfortunate, painful voice over only underlines it all. Personally I had to block out everything but the visuals and the real hero of the film is the Cinematographer, the Hair, Makeup and Art Department. Gerrard Butler's intense gaze holds it somewhat together, but even then one is more impressed by his massive pectorals than his mostly hidden, massive talent. Once again, Hollywood has created a nice-looking, high production-value D-movie. Perhaps if, following in the footsteps of "The Passion of the Christ" and "Apocalypto", the producers and director had chosen to have everyone speak in ancient Greek, it might have been bearable, but in English, one can only cringe and bear it whenever one of the actors has to utter a line. The superbly gifted Rodrigo Santoro, as Xerxes, is especially ludicrous. Buried within his makeup, the fact that you can't recognize him becomes a plus: at least he might live to act another day.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004)

One of the most poorly directed, strangely dispassionate pieces of film making I've ever seen.

[1/10 · 30 November 2006]

The most stunning thing about this film is that with all the talent gathered together none is at all visible - with the exception of Pilar Lopez De Ayala, who is literally the only believable persona in this unimaginatively directed, unintelligently constructed adaptation of what I would imagine is a delicate and resonant piece of literature, reading between the lines. Shockingly, the American actors lumber through the whole non-event looking like they're in the middle of rehearsal for some middle-aged pantomime forced on them by some Mid-West theater group, lacking any kind of dedication or true understanding of the words blustering from their lips. The performances are gruesomely ham-fisted and horribly one-dimensional - the pivotal "trial" featuring DeNiro, F. Murray Abraham and (non American) Gabriel Byrne as exciting and as heart-felt as watching the real-life trial of someone being accused of stealing the wheels off a tricycle. Even the ending smacks of: "Right, film's done, let's get on with the end scene", it's that dismally executed. The whole thing smacks of a cynical "film packaging" ethic - grabbing as many "names" as possible - the only passion perhaps the desire of the cast to have a bit of a "get-away" on a location they haven't been to as yet in their careers, all expenses paid. "Let's put bums on the seat, who cares about the film really, it'll look good on the DVD cover, we'll put nothing into it and it'll still sell". Among the countless excruciating presences include the clichéd non-acting of identical twins The Polish Brothers - who seem only to exist in order to fulfill such hideously stereotypical moments in film - and the wastefully camp presence of Dominique Pinon who at least assures us his English is fabulous. No texture, no taste, no sensation of the world or time we are supposed to be in is ever allowed to filter in this worst of TV movies and we are left absolutely care-less of any singular person we have been forced to watch for what seems to be a whole mini-series length of time. With all the disinterest on display from both sides of the camera, one wishes the tiny presence of John Lynch was expanded to obliterate all the rest: he conveys such a world of emotion in a single glance it makes you wish the story was about him, not the fumbling cast collecting their pay checks and drinking with the "natives" around him. A shame on everyone: if this were the first film that Deniro, Byrne, Keitel, Bates, and the rest were in, they would never have made it out of the D-list.