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brucefoster
Reviews
Blast of Silence (1961)
Corner of Bleaker Street and Despair
This has to be the bleakest movie ever made. Nothing I've seen comes close.
It lasts a mere 77 minutes but seems twice as long. Identically filmed tracking shots of the hit-man, Frank Bono, walking along grey winter Manhattan streets as dozens of storefronts pass monotonously behind him take up 20 minutes. There's one static shot of Bono, starting as a speck, walking towards us from a full city block away that doesn't end until he literally almost runs into the camera. Add to these, two prolonged scenes photographed from Bono's car as he trails the man he has contracted to murder. These scenes kill about a half hour, leaving 45 minutes.
From this you can subtract another 10 minutes during which Bono goes into a Greenwich Village nightclub and sits drinking at a bar while his prey hangs with a group at a table. In this sequence, the camera dwells mostly on a bongo-playing singer as he belts out two or three full-length beatnik songs, each as boringly dreadful – and pointless -- as the next.
During all of the above not a single word of dialogue is spoken. Over most of the above is a relentlessly despairing and repetitive narrative voiced by a raspy actor speaking in comic book gangsterese. He provides Bono's boilerplate backstory and what's going through his mind as he endlessly walks and drives the streets of the city. Many, many allusions to hot hands/cold hands.
So, now we're down to about a half hour of actual interaction and (dull) conversation between four (dull) characters, plus three (dull) killing sequences. The last shooting is filmed in the frigid Jamaica Bay wetlands during a perfectly bleak sideways-blowing snowstorm that is the perfectly bleak icing on the perfectly bleak cake.
I know, I know. The movie is meant to be gritty and grim. It's noir, right? But what's its point? What of value is the viewer supposed to glean from this?
The Astronaut Farmer (2006)
Script is just plain lazy
I like corny Frank Capra and inspirational underdog movies as much as the next guy, but the reason "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Rocky" work is because they work hard for your money. Characters are fleshed out so you really care about them; their fully realized scripts demonstrate how impossible dreams are achieved in a way that makes you want to believe; they don't cheat the audience.
"Astronaut Farmer" is just a terribly lazy script. It's full of expository shortcuts and insurmountable lapses of reality. I have no problem suspending my disbelief, but a film must be persuasive about it -- this one takes audience obsequience for granted.
On the other hand, there's nothing sloppy about the cinematography. It's carefully conceived and beautifully rendered. What a shame it's wasted on such a lame script.
Japanese Story (2003)
What gives?
This movie has no point that I can figure out. The surprise twist, two-thirds of the way through, means . . . what? It happens and there's grief, but to what avail? If some kind of cultural -- or any -- statement is being made, the filmmakers are being awfully obscure about it. "Japanese Story" won a lot of Australian awards but the only one I think it deserves is for cinematography. Otherwise, the story's contrived, it smacks of pretention and there's no real chemistry between the two lovers. It has the sensibility of a film school workshop project more than anything. I can only recommend it if you're interested in some terrific Outback scenery. A chick flick that even chicks will nod off on!
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Two things which may ruin the franchise...
*SPOILER ALERT* This is a terrific movie. But I wonder at the wisdom of two of director Raimi's story decisions: having Peter Parker passionately kiss Mary Jane and confess his love, and revealing Spidey's identity to her as well. He never does either in the long-running Spider-man comicbooks, because not doing so is essential to the dynamics of "Spider-man" itself. It was crucial that Peter and M.J.'s desire for each other be unrequited to sustain that sexual tension. Now it's gone and can't be effectively replaced by anything the series' future writers will be forced to contrive. And revealing his identity -- even if to just one person -- eliminates the formerly eternal mystery of "Who's Spider-man?" His constant vacillation about these two matters were at the heart of Peter's nagging insecurities. What are we to make of a sexually satisfied, self-confident Peter Parker from now on? I think these developments can only diminish the franchise's future.
Pollock (2000)
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
The problem with most actors when they direct is their belief that performance is all. Well, what good are any performances without good storytelling? "Pollock" is as flat as one of Jackson's canvases, devoid of dramatic tension or even real character development beyond two notes. I never believed that Pollock and Lee Krasner were in love -- they never kiss, physical contact is strictly buddy-buddy arms across the shoulders, and the only emotions expressed with any conviction are anger and despair.
Something that distracted me throughout was Ed Harris' physique. The only exercise the real Jackson Pollock got was from lifting cigarettes and beer bottles to his mouth but here he's always utterly buff. Even at the end, when Harris put on 20 or 30 pounds, he was a buff-looking fatty.
Bottom line, Pollock's life was boring, and so's the movie.
Signs (2002)
YIELD to my sixth sense and STOP before buying tickets
What's a reverend doing living on a farm smack dab in the middle of a cornfield?
This is but one incongruity in a movie with more holes than a wino's underwear.
"Signs" feels much like "Eyes Wide Shut," which was clearly made by someone who didn't get out much. "Signs" feels embalmed, airless, claustrophobic, even when outdoors in wide open spaces.
Shyamalan has quickly slid from the fresh and scary "Sixth Sense" to a movie that is baldly derivative of a half dozen other movies, especially "The Blair Witch Project." Like Sam Mendes, he has gotten too much control too quickly for his own good. But "Signs" is a big hit and Shyamalan will have even more clout next time up.
Road to Perdition (2002)
Mendes' Sophomore Jinx, big time
I have to care about at least one character in a movie. That doesn't happen here.
"Perdition" also has some insurmountable problems and story holes that, amazingly, I haven't heard mentioned anywhere. One is the ridiculous staging of the big shootout in the night rain. At quite a long distance and for about fifteen seconds, Tom Hanks machine-guns all of Paul Newman's henchmen to death (about eight of them) as they just stand straight up in the open, firing back at him with pistols, getting picked off one by one. No flattening oneself to the ground, no diving for cover behind a car.
The movie takes place over six weeks in the dead of an icy, rainy winter. After he has killed the last of Newman's people, Hanks and his kid head for Hanks' sister's house on Lake Michigan, a few hours' drive. When they arrive it's the middle of summer. Huh? Did they take the scenic route, like through Europe, Africa and the South Pole? A dog lives at the house, but where's Hanks' sister? Nowhere! No explanation, nothing!
There's more, but what's the point. Hard to believe Mendes is the same man who directed "American Beauty."
Amores perros (2000)
Sensational movie despite one GLARING story flaw
Linking the three stories here is a spectacular and bloody car crash, where one vehicle is broadsided at an intersection by a car doing about 60. One person dies immediately and two others are seriously wounded -- except for a little white dog. Even though the dog is leaning out the window on the impact side of the struck car, he is COMPLETELY UNHURT! That's because he is key to the movie's second story, "Daniel and Valeria" and a dead or busted up dog ain't gonna work. In the wreck sequence the dog's sole purpose is to, by yapping, briefly draw our attention to the derelict El Chivo and his dogs on the sidewalk, but the screenwriter and director could have accomplished this connection in plenty of other ways with the dog out of the scene entirely.
Unbreakable (2000)
Given the choice, take a sharp stick in the eye
I can just hear the suits who produced "The Sixth Sense" after it shot into the box office stratosphere, licking their chops, clapping M. Night Shyamalan on the back with their cloven hooves, crowing, "Hey, my man, you are king of the world! What other scripts you got laying around the house?"
At which point Shyamalan thinks really hard and sort of recalls something he wrote in high school, something called "Unspeakable" or "Unthinkable" or something like that, it's been so long. And he can't remember exactly where it's buried. In the back of the bedroom closet? In the attic? Garage? Doesn't matter, he'll find it. "You bet I've got another script!" Shyamalan says. "And it's the one I really wanted to do in the first place."
"Great!" the suits cry in unison. "Consider it green-lighted right now!"
CUT TO: 10 months later, the same suits sitting in a screening room as the lights come up. They've just seen "Unbreakable." Sweat beads their brows. Throats clear. Eyes do not meet. How could this be? "Sixth Sense" was so good!
The studio head stands and faces the room. The suits sink into their suits. "Just who," he says, "is responsible for this?"
Fingers sprout from cloven hooves and point at each other in a furious hand ballet. Denials at SurroundSound decibels. M. Night Shyamalan, on hands and knees, has almost made it undetected out the rear door.
Ain't Hollywood grand?