A man and a woman co-exist for twenty years in the same heavenly space -- a kitchen garden and all that comes from it -- self-absorbed in a craft and hardly interacting. Call them Adam and Eve. Then one day she feeds him -- a French apple so to speak -- and he feeds her, and after that reality emerges and they experience desire, evil, and mortality. Or maybe they just dream that they do. This French-Vietnamese take on the Book of Genesis is overly long and, I'm sorry to say, ultimately not all that interesting. See it if you enjoy 18th or 19th century kitchens and their daily routines. Otherwise consider spending the price of admission elsewhere.
Reviews
62 Reviews
The Bookshop
(2017)
Intolerably Slow and Affected
24 September 2018
This film, although set in 1959, was apparently intended to mimic the sensibility of a 19th century British novel of manners. Accordingly, nearly all of the action takes place between the ears of its overdrawn, class-conscious characters, who, between servings of tea, speak in modulated tones about their hopes, expectations, trepidations, and uncertainties. I never stopped checking my watch. This is a genre that worked until about 1870. It doesn't work here.
Norman
(2016)
Didn't Buy the Premise, Didn't Buy the Bit
29 May 2017
Warning: Spoilers
That a minor New York con artist, not to mention the up-and-coming Israeli politician he seeks to influence, would be so utterly naive about their interactions, as portrayed in "Norman," might have been intended to make for a feel-good movie that lightly touches on important political matters. But I couldn't buy the premise, so I couldn't buy the bit. The Richard Gere character, in particular, comes across as puckish, almost likable, and wholly transparent as a minor liar. Only the conversations between the Israeli PM and his wife and a few of his staff members seem at all authentic.
Accordingly, the redemption that arrives in the last reel struck me as forced and inauthentic. Maybe the film would have worked better as a musical.
Accordingly, the redemption that arrives in the last reel struck me as forced and inauthentic. Maybe the film would have worked better as a musical.
La Sapienza
(2014)
Just Dreadful
5 July 2015
How this picture earned 89 on the Rotten Tomatoes scale, I will never know. Except for some routine tourist videos of Italy, there is nothing to recommend here. The characters are stand-ins for ideas. The parts are not so much acted as spoken. The actors are leaden except when they are smiling, which they rarely do, and then they are leaden and smiling. There is a ton of clap-trap dialogue about light, rooms, specters, sacrifice, becoming an opposite, and the like. Death plays a part.
I gather that architecture is a metaphor here for film making. An architect's room is a director's camera ("camera" is the Italian word for "room," of course). Light enters both. The architect protagonist's musings about Borromini and Bellini, and the like, are stand-ins for the director's musings about making movies. I am afraid that none of this worked for me. The movie failed to engage, much less to enlighten.
I gather that architecture is a metaphor here for film making. An architect's room is a director's camera ("camera" is the Italian word for "room," of course). Light enters both. The architect protagonist's musings about Borromini and Bellini, and the like, are stand-ins for the director's musings about making movies. I am afraid that none of this worked for me. The movie failed to engage, much less to enlighten.
Forgettable
1 February 2015
This film will be forgotten in a year. It may con the voters in 2015 and win a handful of Oscars, but still it will be forgotten in a year.
Alejandro González Iñárritu's ironic comedy "Birdman" is an outsider's take on the supposed battle between Hollywood (i.e., popular entertainment) and Broadway (i.e., theater art), in which the director dumps on both before siding with -- well, no spoilers here, but the ending is bound to appeal to sixty-something white males who happen to be members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The script is far from realistic, unnecessarily profane, only occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, and sadly centered on the insecurities and ruminations of a barely likable cast of actor-addicts intent on bringing Raymond Carver to the stage. Maybe the script read better in Spanish.
Buy the premise and you'll buy the bit; I didn't buy the premise. The acting is fine, but the cinematography, with its hand-held cameras mostly following Michael Keaton as he walks through the set, cloyingly emulates cinéma vérité even as it blows kisses to Broadway. Most disappointingly, there is no hook, nothing to get into in this film, nothing to justify its two-and-one-half-hour run.
By the end I was checking my watch. This was one film I didn't stay for the credits.
Alejandro González Iñárritu's ironic comedy "Birdman" is an outsider's take on the supposed battle between Hollywood (i.e., popular entertainment) and Broadway (i.e., theater art), in which the director dumps on both before siding with -- well, no spoilers here, but the ending is bound to appeal to sixty-something white males who happen to be members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The script is far from realistic, unnecessarily profane, only occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, and sadly centered on the insecurities and ruminations of a barely likable cast of actor-addicts intent on bringing Raymond Carver to the stage. Maybe the script read better in Spanish.
Buy the premise and you'll buy the bit; I didn't buy the premise. The acting is fine, but the cinematography, with its hand-held cameras mostly following Michael Keaton as he walks through the set, cloyingly emulates cinéma vérité even as it blows kisses to Broadway. Most disappointingly, there is no hook, nothing to get into in this film, nothing to justify its two-and-one-half-hour run.
By the end I was checking my watch. This was one film I didn't stay for the credits.
Gravity
(2013)
It's a Movie, Folks, Not High-Brow Fiction
2 January 2015
It's no spoiler to state at the outset that "Gravity" won no best-script awards. Why? The writing is third-rate. Maybe even intentionally so. Editing apparently left plot connections, and with them story-telling logic, on the cutting-room floor, and you can count the clichéd lines recycled from Westerns and lost-at-sea flicks.
But so what. This movie features stunning visuals, great special effects, credible action, a welcome touch of international politics, and a pair of actors the camera plainly loves, even in space suits. And so did I. Clooney plays a sensitive macho with style, and -- notwithstanding the catty comments you'll read elsewhere on this review webpage -- Sandra Bullock deserved to win the Academy Award. She's beautiful, sure, but she can also act with a decent range of emotion.
So don't see "Gravity" expecting to see Shakespeare, or the Lunts, or Helen Hayes, or even the latest English biopic set in a countryside manor. Go for a good time.
But so what. This movie features stunning visuals, great special effects, credible action, a welcome touch of international politics, and a pair of actors the camera plainly loves, even in space suits. And so did I. Clooney plays a sensitive macho with style, and -- notwithstanding the catty comments you'll read elsewhere on this review webpage -- Sandra Bullock deserved to win the Academy Award. She's beautiful, sure, but she can also act with a decent range of emotion.
So don't see "Gravity" expecting to see Shakespeare, or the Lunts, or Helen Hayes, or even the latest English biopic set in a countryside manor. Go for a good time.
Night on Earth
(1991)
Deadly Dull
10 August 2014
Jim Jarmusch is an acquired taste, at best. This 1991 movie, which was produced, directed, and written by Jarmusch, is slow, self-indulgent, and horribly scripted. Five scenes, in five dark cities, play out at night. These are taxi scenes, but take it from me, folks: I have driven a taxi in two cities, only one of them dark, and every night that I drove I returned home with at least one story to relate that was better than these. It is painful to watch Gina Rowlands or Winona Ryder, for example, deliver lines that make them look like beginning actors. Only Roberto Benigni, who probably wrote his own comic bit, sustains any interest. Enjoy another film.
Museum Hours
(2012)
We Are All Subjects in a Painting by Pieter Bruegel
3 August 2014
This is a mostly plot less, mostly reflective, semi-serious, semi-whimsical movie with the tone of a PBS documentary. It is a lot like a landscape painting. It will work best for photographers, lovers of photography and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, museum goers who routinely rent audio guides, and anyone else predisposed to view the condition of humans in the 21st century as alternately harsh and exuberant (or punctuated by esthetic surprises), hemmed in by the state, and leading inevitably to the grave. Have a good life.
A woman from Montreal, in Vienna to visit a hospitalized childhood friend, meets a taciturn guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and together they take in the city and its inhabitants, which together become a reflection of the art housed in the museum.
"Museum Hours" is a bit ponderous at times but rarely slow.
A woman from Montreal, in Vienna to visit a hospitalized childhood friend, meets a taciturn guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and together they take in the city and its inhabitants, which together become a reflection of the art housed in the museum.
"Museum Hours" is a bit ponderous at times but rarely slow.
The Art of the Steal
(2009)
One-Sided
27 January 2014
This documentary, while reasonably well-made and engaging, is essentially a piece of agitprop. It was produced and directed by, and stars, the loose connection of former Barnes teachers and other Friends of the Barnes who opposed the reorganization and relocation of the Barnes Museum of early modern masterpieces to downtown Philadelphia. Sure, politics was played and facts may have been concealed, but the counterargument for not moving the museum and opening it more broadly to the public never really surfaces in this film.
The Barnes was undercapitalized, the last of the original trustees had passed, the trust beneficiary, a struggling state college, did not want manage it actively, the residential neighbors in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania were crying "NIMBY" over the arrival of busloads of out-of-state visitors, and there were no living lineal descendants of the trustor, a quirky pharma pioneer described in the film as a "misanthrope," who died in a 1951 automobile accident at the wheel of his old Packard convertible. The art collection was literally and figuratively orphaned. No wonder the case was brought in Orphans Court.
The film convinced me, but it convinced me only to visit Philadelphia and take in the art collection in its new downtown home.
The Barnes was undercapitalized, the last of the original trustees had passed, the trust beneficiary, a struggling state college, did not want manage it actively, the residential neighbors in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania were crying "NIMBY" over the arrival of busloads of out-of-state visitors, and there were no living lineal descendants of the trustor, a quirky pharma pioneer described in the film as a "misanthrope," who died in a 1951 automobile accident at the wheel of his old Packard convertible. The art collection was literally and figuratively orphaned. No wonder the case was brought in Orphans Court.
The film convinced me, but it convinced me only to visit Philadelphia and take in the art collection in its new downtown home.
A Late Quartet
(2012)
Nonsense
23 November 2012
Most reviews of "A Late Quartet" are nonsense. Don't see this movie if you expect to better your understanding of Beethoven's last compositions. Don't see this film if you expect to listen to his Opus 131 uncut. Don't see this film if you have a hyper-sensitivity to melodrama. This film isn't in the least a melodrama even if, thank goodness, it is far less heady than anything Henry James or Jane Austen might have created.
What "A Late Quartet" is is a simple psychodrama that happens to deal with the lives of performing artists in New York, New York, a particularly artistic milieu. Are artists sometimes conflicted? Do they experience loss? Do they love? Do they debate whether instinct or methodical behavior yields the better result? Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
The story line is interesting enough, the acting is first-rate, the direction is tops from the top dog to the second assistant viola instructor of Ms. Keener. We liked the film, which was apparently a big-budget production. That's a shame, because, judging from the box office numbers, it may never cover its costs.
Go see it.
What "A Late Quartet" is is a simple psychodrama that happens to deal with the lives of performing artists in New York, New York, a particularly artistic milieu. Are artists sometimes conflicted? Do they experience loss? Do they love? Do they debate whether instinct or methodical behavior yields the better result? Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
The story line is interesting enough, the acting is first-rate, the direction is tops from the top dog to the second assistant viola instructor of Ms. Keener. We liked the film, which was apparently a big-budget production. That's a shame, because, judging from the box office numbers, it may never cover its costs.
Go see it.
The Flat
(2011)
Good Premise, No Bit
3 November 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Both of the previous reviews contain spoilers, and both are spot on in their discussion of the context and premise of "The Flat." However, as a viewer who enjoys documentaries and mysteries, but is neither Jewish nor Israeli, I found this film lacking.
"The Flat" posits and develops a mystery but goes nowhere with it. It ends focusing on little more than the relationship of the inquisitive film maker (a third-generation Israeli) and his see-no-evil mother (a second-generation Israeli), the two of them stumbling about in an overgrown German graveyard looking for a stone that isn't there, and that is unsatisfying.
Sure, German Jews, from not later than Mendelsohn, were pulled in different directions simultaneously, and that tension makes for a potentially powerful story. But ultimately the story here is that there is no story. "No one reads Balzac anymore," an estate sale buyer, with bound volumes in his hands, says dismissively in Tel-Aviv. Another tosses a piece of furniture off a third-floor balcony to the parking area below. Such insights into contemporary Israeli attitudes are interesting, but they fail to sustain this motion picture. When the credits rolled, I felt cheated.
"The Flat" posits and develops a mystery but goes nowhere with it. It ends focusing on little more than the relationship of the inquisitive film maker (a third-generation Israeli) and his see-no-evil mother (a second-generation Israeli), the two of them stumbling about in an overgrown German graveyard looking for a stone that isn't there, and that is unsatisfying.
Sure, German Jews, from not later than Mendelsohn, were pulled in different directions simultaneously, and that tension makes for a potentially powerful story. But ultimately the story here is that there is no story. "No one reads Balzac anymore," an estate sale buyer, with bound volumes in his hands, says dismissively in Tel-Aviv. Another tosses a piece of furniture off a third-floor balcony to the parking area below. Such insights into contemporary Israeli attitudes are interesting, but they fail to sustain this motion picture. When the credits rolled, I felt cheated.
A Single Man
(2009)
The Gay Experience
9 December 2011
The script by director Tom Ford, from a novel by Christopher Isherwood, is autobiography squared. It is a slice of Tom Ford's life. It is also a slice of Christopher Isherwood's life. The life depicted -- that of an artsy homosexual intellectual in mid-century Los Angeles -- is interesting enough. What's really good about the film, however, is how skillfully the actors underplay the subtleties of homoerotic desire, love, and loss. Viewers who aren't gay will appreciate the gay experience without feeling put upon. Colin Firth in the lead is really quite good. Julianne Moore, as his straight British friend, is a bit manic, but that seems to be the role that was written for her. The two homosexual relationships depicted are positively glowy by comparison. The sets and costumes, like the music and hairdos, are all period pieces and to die for.
What doesn't work is the story. It is a self-indulgent tear-jerker that goes nowhere good. The moral of the story seems to be, Life's a bitch, and then you die, so -- especially if you are gay -- enjoy it while you can. Deaths occur from time to time to illustrate this not terribly profound point. The result is a movie that is more style than substance.
What doesn't work is the story. It is a self-indulgent tear-jerker that goes nowhere good. The moral of the story seems to be, Life's a bitch, and then you die, so -- especially if you are gay -- enjoy it while you can. Deaths occur from time to time to illustrate this not terribly profound point. The result is a movie that is more style than substance.
The Descendants
(2011)
Island Tour
27 November 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Don't believe the hype: this is a thin movie. George Clooney plays an everyman with a trust fund who, during the course of the film, reorients himself marginally on the moneymaking-family axis. That's it, folks. He has a pair of cute foul-mouthed daughters, a wife in a coma who has cheated on him, an extended family of laid-back cousins, and -- as the back-up child-rearer -- a terminal inability to recall his daughters' friends' names or remember when the pool cleaner will next arrive. In other words he's just like us except that he's gorgeous, has more money, is descended from island royalty, and lives on Oahu. If the film had been placed in Findlay, Ohio or cast with someone other than Clooney in the lead role, it would not have earned back its budget.
Clooney is cast so far against type that he isn't believable. In the opening scenes, as he struggles with his daughters' acting out and learns of his wife's infidelity, he sputters like a sitcom character, like Ozzie Nelson on a bad day. Later he learns to cry, but the tears spring from nowhere. Ultimately the director's resolution points us to memories and ice cream in front of the family TV. Satisfied? I'm afraid I wasn't. This film is nothing but a feel-good gesture to middle American values wrapped in Hawaiian shirts and accompanied by a soundtrack of native Hawaiian music.
Clooney is cast so far against type that he isn't believable. In the opening scenes, as he struggles with his daughters' acting out and learns of his wife's infidelity, he sputters like a sitcom character, like Ozzie Nelson on a bad day. Later he learns to cry, but the tears spring from nowhere. Ultimately the director's resolution points us to memories and ice cream in front of the family TV. Satisfied? I'm afraid I wasn't. This film is nothing but a feel-good gesture to middle American values wrapped in Hawaiian shirts and accompanied by a soundtrack of native Hawaiian music.
The Town
(2010)
Funny Face Masks
6 March 2011
"The Town" is fairly standard cops and robbers cinema -- enlivened, however, by color-rich shots of Boston and its once down-and-out neighborhood of Charlestown, the Town of the title. The Bunker Hill monument, Fenway Park, and assorted second-floor walk-ups never looked so good. Ben Afleck and Jeremy Renner play a Mutt-and-Jeff pair of local mobsters, the tall one pensive and troubled, with a dad in the pen and a mom who left him as a kid, the short one just mean and trigger-happy. Renner well deserved his best supporting actor nominations in 2011. The level of violence throughout is convincing.
Afleck improbably gets involved with the comely bank manager of the gang's most recent heist, played here by Rebecca Hall. She tends a communal garden, so you know she's sensitive. That sets up a contest for Afleck's character's soul in which the FBI, its special agents having apparently abandoned snap-brimmed fedoras in favor of T-shirts that read "FBI," intervenes. It all ends predictably, but getting there -- thanks to Affleck's direction and the cinematography -- is more than half the fun. Eight stars.
Afleck improbably gets involved with the comely bank manager of the gang's most recent heist, played here by Rebecca Hall. She tends a communal garden, so you know she's sensitive. That sets up a contest for Afleck's character's soul in which the FBI, its special agents having apparently abandoned snap-brimmed fedoras in favor of T-shirts that read "FBI," intervenes. It all ends predictably, but getting there -- thanks to Affleck's direction and the cinematography -- is more than half the fun. Eight stars.
Crimes and Misdemeanors
(1989)
The eyes have it
30 October 2010
Crimes and Misdemeanors is Woody Allen's ironic reimagination of Crime and Punishment. Martin Landau plays a successful man who commits a crime, not directly and certainly not for money, but for tranquility in the bedroom. A reawakening of religion resolves and dispels his guilt in unexpected ways. Woody Allen, in one of his comic gravedigger roles, plays an unsuccessful man whose longing for tranquility in the bedroom is ultimately resolved only by his child-like love of movies. Plot and subplot -- reality and fantasy -- neatly cross and veer in opposite directions.
Allen the scriptwriter here is outstanding even if, by 1989, Allen the on screen nebbish had become something of an outlier in his own movies. The ensemble Allen directs in Crimes and Misdemeanors is equally outstanding, especially Landau and Mia Farrow. The allusions to other movies and to music will keep cinephiles busy. Allen's toying with the Jewish tradition resembles the Coen Brothers', in A Serious Man. The eyes have it.
Allen the scriptwriter here is outstanding even if, by 1989, Allen the on screen nebbish had become something of an outlier in his own movies. The ensemble Allen directs in Crimes and Misdemeanors is equally outstanding, especially Landau and Mia Farrow. The allusions to other movies and to music will keep cinephiles busy. Allen's toying with the Jewish tradition resembles the Coen Brothers', in A Serious Man. The eyes have it.
Quiet Chaos
(2008)
I topi non avevano nipoti
28 October 2010
With sex and death, the two staples of literature, hulking mostly in the background, Caos Calmo deals mainly with parenting, by a single father no less, and the ties that connect concerned parents and their children. The result is a nuanced, always interesting film about human interactions in the semi-sane modern world. I mean it as a compliment when I say it is the sort of movie Jane Austen might have scripted had she survived to the ripe old age of 233. The film happens to be set in present-day Italy so there is a bit of local color for Italophiles, but it could have been set in any modern Western nation. Pietro, a successful businessman, confronts the sudden death of his wife as he seeks to ease the transition for his now motherless ten-year-old daughter. Apparently to show her he is fully there for her, he abandons his office and waits for his daughter in the piazza outside her school each school day. Tutto il mondo comes to that piazza -- gossiping mothers, a developmentally challenged boy, Pietro's hot sister-in-law on the verge of a nervous breakdown, his secretary with papers to sign, his colleagues from the office stewing over the progress of merger negotiations and what it means to them, a young beauty with a big dog who needs a hug (the beauty, I mean), even Roman Polanski in a cameo appearance. Over the course of the picture Pietro convincingly works through his feelings about marriage, loss, grief, friendship, family, and desire. The emotional center of Caos Calmo is like a toned down, more serious sitcom, like Seinfeld on downers. As in life, there are small mysteries unsolved, but no scene -- surely not the much-discussed nighttime scene that serves to affirm life -- is out of place. The film works. Enjoy it.
Painted Lady
(1997 TV Movie)
Bad
16 October 2010
Warning: Spoilers
"Painted Lady" is perfectly dreadful television fare. Don't waste your time with it. Plot strands, sometimes pretty and other times gritty, fly off in every direction without the slightest resolution. Characters -- a boy in the bath, street thugs, art dealers with Italian accents, restorers, purveyors of rough trade, even a dog -- come and go. The film begins as a British police investigatory, mind you, but the cops fail to properly investigate what should be an absurdly easy murder to solve. They are out of it by the second reel. (Where is Hercule Poirot when you need him!) Helen Mirren, unconvincing as a retired rocker with a pin in the side of her nose, is also unconvincing as a Polish noblewoman in disguise. She fails to save it. And the credits roll.
Mirren's character, you see, lives off the largesse of Sir Charles Stafford, the aged -- and debt-burdened -- proprietor of a great house somewhere in the British Isles. One night, while she lolls with a boy toy, Stafford is killed in what appears to be the heist of an Old Master hanging in the hall. The audience immediately knows who done it and why. For reasons known only to the scriptwriter, Mirren hides Stafford's gun from the police, reconnects with Stafford's wayward son, and sets out to recover the painting, which may or may not exist.
The audience is treated to a good bit of art history and one of those plummy high-stakes art auctions, but it is all pointless. Nothing happens. Nothing makes sense. And Mirren's song lyrics are just awful. "Painted Lady" is "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" light. Watch something else.
Mirren's character, you see, lives off the largesse of Sir Charles Stafford, the aged -- and debt-burdened -- proprietor of a great house somewhere in the British Isles. One night, while she lolls with a boy toy, Stafford is killed in what appears to be the heist of an Old Master hanging in the hall. The audience immediately knows who done it and why. For reasons known only to the scriptwriter, Mirren hides Stafford's gun from the police, reconnects with Stafford's wayward son, and sets out to recover the painting, which may or may not exist.
The audience is treated to a good bit of art history and one of those plummy high-stakes art auctions, but it is all pointless. Nothing happens. Nothing makes sense. And Mirren's song lyrics are just awful. "Painted Lady" is "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" light. Watch something else.
Widow of St. Pierre
(2000)
Not Your Ordinary Costume Drama
6 October 2010
Beautifully photographed, scripted, and acted, The Widow of Saint-Pierre pits individual responsibility, redemption, and forgiveness against pettifogging, career-hugging minions of France's shaky Second Republic. Set in 1849, on a group of tiny islands off Newfoundland -- France's last bastion in North America -- the film draws us in with the earthiness of the locals, the stops-out independence of a military captain and his beautiful wife, and the quizzical behavior of a condemned man. It carries us to the conclusion on the strength of the drama, a familiar one of enlightened values endangered, of modernity oppressed. Although the costumes are lovely, it is not remotely a costume drama or a feminine romance. This is the Dreyfus Affair, a half century before the fact. Ten out of ten.
The American
(2010)
Empty Calories
13 September 2010
The American will disappoint almost everyone. Viewers looking for an action film will find the pacing slow, the absence of fireballs and sonic booms truly creepy, and the ending less than climactic. Viewers looking for a psychodrama -- something John le Carre might have written or Orson Welles might have directed -- will find the absence of back story, character motivation, and plot explanation more than off-putting. Viewers looking for Italian opera will find some of the trappings but miss the music. Viewers looking for a travelogue will miss the little forks and dollar signs.
Here's the premise: Jack a/k/a Edward works for a nameless underworld organization hand-making guns and selling them for big bucks to good-looking women in tight skirts. How he got in and where exactly he got in, we don't know, but he wants out. Why? People are trying to kill him. Who exactly, we don't know and never really find out. He likes butterflies and takes a particular interest in paternity issues and pleasing himself at the expense of a gorgeous prostitute, whose good heart nevertheless appreciates him. Why, we don't know and never find out. Even though Jack a/k/a Edward spends most of his time in picturesque Abruzzo, it's a barren, still, modernist Antonioni landscape he finds himself trapped in. I kept expecting Monica Vitti to show up at every turn in the road.
What's to like? The cinematography is pretty and it's nice for a change not to be battered by a rock music score, but the movie? There's nothing there.
Here's the premise: Jack a/k/a Edward works for a nameless underworld organization hand-making guns and selling them for big bucks to good-looking women in tight skirts. How he got in and where exactly he got in, we don't know, but he wants out. Why? People are trying to kill him. Who exactly, we don't know and never really find out. He likes butterflies and takes a particular interest in paternity issues and pleasing himself at the expense of a gorgeous prostitute, whose good heart nevertheless appreciates him. Why, we don't know and never find out. Even though Jack a/k/a Edward spends most of his time in picturesque Abruzzo, it's a barren, still, modernist Antonioni landscape he finds himself trapped in. I kept expecting Monica Vitti to show up at every turn in the road.
What's to like? The cinematography is pretty and it's nice for a change not to be battered by a rock music score, but the movie? There's nothing there.
Ponderous
30 May 2010
Verdi composed Stiffelio, to lyrics by Francesco Maria Piave, during his great middle period, the period of Rigoletto, Trovatore, and Triaviata. Its first performance was in Trieste in 1850. A drastically revised version, with the action removed to England, was mounted in 1857, after which the opera sank, score and all, into oblivion. The discovery of a copyist's score in Naples in the 1960's, and of an autograph score in 1992, led to its revival.
The title character, Rev. Muller a/k/a Stiffelio, sung wonderfully in this 1993 Met production by Placido Domingo, is a married Protestant cleric and traveling evangelist living and working in a German-speaking country, rather like Austria, somewhere near Italy. While he is away proselytizing, his wife Lina, here the unremarkable Sharon Sweet, dallies with a count whose dramatic exit from one of their trysts – by leaping from a bedroom window into the river – is witnessed by a boatsman and relayed to Stiffelio. For most of two acts, Lina is traumatized by guilt, Lina's father – a uniformed colonel, wretch of a patriarch, and stand-in for the state – terrorizes Lina and her lover as he takes it upon himself, for the presumed good of his daughter and marriage and the state, to hide the truth from Stiffelio, the count keeps a low profile as he tries to win Lina back, and Paul Plishka, as a church elder, periodically shows up to lift his hands and sing "Pace!" As this summary suggests, the plot – which scandalized the Austrian censors in the 1850's – has little or nothing to say to today's opera-goers. "Get over it. See a marriage counselor. Do you love him or not? Do you love the other guy or not?" we would ask Lina. For today's audience, the state, the church, parents' wishes for and control of their adult children, and even marriage have largely withered away.
Rigoletto is an underdog who truly cares for his daughter; we sympathize with him. The elder Germont is a bourgeois prig, but his son is involved with a demimondaine; if we don't fully sympathize with him, we can at least sympathize with his attempt to reason with Violetta. Otello, of course, deals with presumed infidelity, and he deals with it badly, but it is a personal struggle, so we can sympathize with him. On the other hand there is nothing to sympathize with in Stiffelio, and the music only occasionally echoes – a gavotte here, a choral celebration there - the great scores of Verdi's middle period. Stiffelio is not a masterpiece, but this is a workmanlike production, with some fine singing, that is well filmed.
The title character, Rev. Muller a/k/a Stiffelio, sung wonderfully in this 1993 Met production by Placido Domingo, is a married Protestant cleric and traveling evangelist living and working in a German-speaking country, rather like Austria, somewhere near Italy. While he is away proselytizing, his wife Lina, here the unremarkable Sharon Sweet, dallies with a count whose dramatic exit from one of their trysts – by leaping from a bedroom window into the river – is witnessed by a boatsman and relayed to Stiffelio. For most of two acts, Lina is traumatized by guilt, Lina's father – a uniformed colonel, wretch of a patriarch, and stand-in for the state – terrorizes Lina and her lover as he takes it upon himself, for the presumed good of his daughter and marriage and the state, to hide the truth from Stiffelio, the count keeps a low profile as he tries to win Lina back, and Paul Plishka, as a church elder, periodically shows up to lift his hands and sing "Pace!" As this summary suggests, the plot – which scandalized the Austrian censors in the 1850's – has little or nothing to say to today's opera-goers. "Get over it. See a marriage counselor. Do you love him or not? Do you love the other guy or not?" we would ask Lina. For today's audience, the state, the church, parents' wishes for and control of their adult children, and even marriage have largely withered away.
Rigoletto is an underdog who truly cares for his daughter; we sympathize with him. The elder Germont is a bourgeois prig, but his son is involved with a demimondaine; if we don't fully sympathize with him, we can at least sympathize with his attempt to reason with Violetta. Otello, of course, deals with presumed infidelity, and he deals with it badly, but it is a personal struggle, so we can sympathize with him. On the other hand there is nothing to sympathize with in Stiffelio, and the music only occasionally echoes – a gavotte here, a choral celebration there - the great scores of Verdi's middle period. Stiffelio is not a masterpiece, but this is a workmanlike production, with some fine singing, that is well filmed.
Black Comedy
27 February 2010
There Once Was a Singing Blackbird (1970) -- a day in the life of Tbilisi musician Guia Agladze -- expresses a joy of unconstrained living, joking, art, camaraderie, and the pleasures of the flesh that is plainly opposed to the narrow expectations and petty bureaucratic requirements of the People in Charge. In its vision, pacing, and black-and-white cinematography, it is reminiscent of the early Fellini, such as Nights of Cabiria, and the Nouvelle Vague, with a touch of the Marx Brothers and their brand of playful anarchy thrown in for good measure. The camera follows Guia from place to place -- from the cramped apartment he shares with his mother and a pair of visiting Russians, to the theater, to a series of boutiques and restaurants, to the street -- as he does what he does, acting on his impulses, avoiding confrontation, until the day ends and his metaphorical song goes silent.
Mean Streets
(1973)
Break-Through but Flawed
19 February 2010
I have to go with the middle-of-the-road reviewers here. Scorsese is a gifted director and you should definitely see this movie, but Mean Streets, his break-through 1973 film financed on spec by Francis Ford Coppola, is a low-budget, low-production values, plot less piece of cinema verite that celebrates what used to be Little Italy in lower Manhattan, just as Marty celebrates the Bronx of roughly the same period. I suspect that Mean Streets was intended to ride the coat-tails of Coppola's Godfather I, released the previous year, and Godfather II, then in production, but it has not aged as well.
Still, De Niro gives an extraordinarily entertaining performance as a fun loving low life in hock to the Mob. Harvey Keitel is O.K. as a stand-in for Scorsese himself in what is admittedly the director's memoir of his youth. In the first half of the film, the dialog, especially that between De Niro and Keitel, is in the tradition of great screwball comedy. Later Keitel's uncle corrects his understanding of Mafia ethics, and there is a brief long shot of Keitel observing a zonked out line chef sneezing and smoking a cigarette over a pot of pasta. As script and image, these scenes typify Scorsese at his high and low comedy best.
There is also a fine sense of period here, from wardrobe to score, but the plot is mostly missing in action, and the characters (including the love interest played by Amy Robinson and even De Niro) are undeveloped or made to act in ways that flow from nothing. For example, a big point is made of the fact that Robinson's character is an epileptic, and at one point she even has a seizure on a staircase, but unless the purpose is to illustrate Keitel abandoning her in a time of need or the use of period first aid techniques on a staircase, it was lost on me. De Niro is a great impromptu actor. Keitel is not.
There are gratuitous if pleasant uses of nudity, the familiar Feast of San Gennaro, the Italian language, and unconvincing violence, the last of these a part of the low production values. The last half of the film is not well edited. When Scorsese waxes poetic, as in use of Catholic imagery and a graveyard at night, the poetry rings false. Some rental discs come with a short, informative, but truncated selection of scenes and voice-over by Scorsese and Robinson, and a grainy making-of-the-movie short with a ponderous, March of Time-like voice-over.
Still, De Niro gives an extraordinarily entertaining performance as a fun loving low life in hock to the Mob. Harvey Keitel is O.K. as a stand-in for Scorsese himself in what is admittedly the director's memoir of his youth. In the first half of the film, the dialog, especially that between De Niro and Keitel, is in the tradition of great screwball comedy. Later Keitel's uncle corrects his understanding of Mafia ethics, and there is a brief long shot of Keitel observing a zonked out line chef sneezing and smoking a cigarette over a pot of pasta. As script and image, these scenes typify Scorsese at his high and low comedy best.
There is also a fine sense of period here, from wardrobe to score, but the plot is mostly missing in action, and the characters (including the love interest played by Amy Robinson and even De Niro) are undeveloped or made to act in ways that flow from nothing. For example, a big point is made of the fact that Robinson's character is an epileptic, and at one point she even has a seizure on a staircase, but unless the purpose is to illustrate Keitel abandoning her in a time of need or the use of period first aid techniques on a staircase, it was lost on me. De Niro is a great impromptu actor. Keitel is not.
There are gratuitous if pleasant uses of nudity, the familiar Feast of San Gennaro, the Italian language, and unconvincing violence, the last of these a part of the low production values. The last half of the film is not well edited. When Scorsese waxes poetic, as in use of Catholic imagery and a graveyard at night, the poetry rings false. Some rental discs come with a short, informative, but truncated selection of scenes and voice-over by Scorsese and Robinson, and a grainy making-of-the-movie short with a ponderous, March of Time-like voice-over.
Chocolat
(2000)
Treacle
27 January 2010
What a waste of a great cast! Lasse Hallstrom's pretty perfumed fairy tale of a movie encourages the viewer to accept Juliette Binoche, blown into a walled town somehow surviving in 1950's France, as the chocolatiere daughter of a Mayan princess and local raiser of female consciousness; Johnny Depp as an Irish river boat drifter, single father, and handyman with doors; Judi Dench as a funny old woman who badly needs to sit down; Lena Olin as a kleptomaniac trapped in a marriage to an arsonist (but, hey, nobody's perfect, right?); and Alfred Molina as a prissy priest-controlling ax-wielding town mayor and the biggest baddest bad man in film since Walt Disney's wolf gave Little Red Riding Hood a hard time.
What brings these folks together? The magical, addictive, restorative, redemptive, but somehow non-fattening quality of chocolate creations whipped up on a shoestring and freely dispensed by Binoche's character, who exemplifies enlightenment, family, and pagan values at the same time and, when the going gets tough, typically lights out for the country in her, uh, red riding hood.
Just say no! As your mother told you, empty calories will spoil your appetite.
What brings these folks together? The magical, addictive, restorative, redemptive, but somehow non-fattening quality of chocolate creations whipped up on a shoestring and freely dispensed by Binoche's character, who exemplifies enlightenment, family, and pagan values at the same time and, when the going gets tough, typically lights out for the country in her, uh, red riding hood.
Just say no! As your mother told you, empty calories will spoil your appetite.
Troubled Water
(2008)
Two Acts Missing
12 January 2010
Death does not play chess and there are no wild strawberries in this Norwegian picture, but the spirit of Ingmar Bergman dwells within it. Life is hard, angst and guilt are always present, doubt (theological and legal) and temptation preoccupy us, but redemption is a possibility.
Jan Thomas, convicted for the abduction and presumed murder of a young child, is paroled from prison and emerges with a gift for music. He lands a job as the organist for an Oslo church, makes great inventive music, and falls into a relationship with a sexy pastor and her preschool-aged son. Meanwhile, the victim's mother pursues him demanding to know the truth. Did Jan Thomas, who continues to profess his innocence, kill her son or not? These two story lines, one told in flashback, converge, the truth comes out in a tormented confession, and the credits roll.
The production values and acting here are fine. The characters interest the viewer. Unfortunately, there is no dramatic basis provided for the protagonist's action in abducting the young child, and there is no resolution provided for the questions that inevitably emerge from the drama. Will the guy get the girl? Will the victim's mother find peace of mind? Will Jan Thomas be saved? We never know, because the director of "Troubled Water" has concerned himself only with act two of what should have been a three-act drama.
Jan Thomas, convicted for the abduction and presumed murder of a young child, is paroled from prison and emerges with a gift for music. He lands a job as the organist for an Oslo church, makes great inventive music, and falls into a relationship with a sexy pastor and her preschool-aged son. Meanwhile, the victim's mother pursues him demanding to know the truth. Did Jan Thomas, who continues to profess his innocence, kill her son or not? These two story lines, one told in flashback, converge, the truth comes out in a tormented confession, and the credits roll.
The production values and acting here are fine. The characters interest the viewer. Unfortunately, there is no dramatic basis provided for the protagonist's action in abducting the young child, and there is no resolution provided for the questions that inevitably emerge from the drama. Will the guy get the girl? Will the victim's mother find peace of mind? Will Jan Thomas be saved? We never know, because the director of "Troubled Water" has concerned himself only with act two of what should have been a three-act drama.
Up in the Air
(I) (2009)
Traveling Light
11 January 2010
"Up in the Air" is "The Accidental Tourist" light. A charming con man and road warrior (George Clooney) with, inexplicably, nothing to live for besides accruing frequent flier miles on a major airline eventually finds something (Vera Farmiga) to live for. Or does he?
That's it, and it's not much. Fortunately, getting there is at least half the fun. Until Clooney's character experiences his epiphany, the audience gets to enjoy the smooth illogic of his perverse sales pitches, the comedy of his office politics, the comedy of his sister's wedding preparations, his sophisticated banter with Farmiga's character ("I'm you with a vagina," she tells him) and her body double's well-equipped rear section, the angst of employees let go in a bad economy, Sam Elliott's increasingly face-dominating white mustache, and a couple of dozen high-definition shots of American cities taken from the air. If you like traveling by plane, you'll love this movie.
If truth be told, "Up in the Air" isn't Oscar material. As airplane movies go, it trails far behind "Airplane!," "Airport," and "The High and the Mighty." But there are enough pokes at hospitality industry loyalty programs, motivational speaking programs, and corporate business strategies and other laugh-out-loud lines to be worth the price of admission.
Clooney, whose real-life aversion to establishing a family is eerily similar to his character's, is fun to watch. He is a star who works in pictures as often as star system actors ever did. The other actors handle their material well enough. "Up in the Air" is from the director who brought us "Juno." There is some of the same wild premise and hip stoned sufferance here. It's a silly premise, but once you buy into it, it makes for a pleasant comedy and maybe a chick flick with a twist.
That's it, and it's not much. Fortunately, getting there is at least half the fun. Until Clooney's character experiences his epiphany, the audience gets to enjoy the smooth illogic of his perverse sales pitches, the comedy of his office politics, the comedy of his sister's wedding preparations, his sophisticated banter with Farmiga's character ("I'm you with a vagina," she tells him) and her body double's well-equipped rear section, the angst of employees let go in a bad economy, Sam Elliott's increasingly face-dominating white mustache, and a couple of dozen high-definition shots of American cities taken from the air. If you like traveling by plane, you'll love this movie.
If truth be told, "Up in the Air" isn't Oscar material. As airplane movies go, it trails far behind "Airplane!," "Airport," and "The High and the Mighty." But there are enough pokes at hospitality industry loyalty programs, motivational speaking programs, and corporate business strategies and other laugh-out-loud lines to be worth the price of admission.
Clooney, whose real-life aversion to establishing a family is eerily similar to his character's, is fun to watch. He is a star who works in pictures as often as star system actors ever did. The other actors handle their material well enough. "Up in the Air" is from the director who brought us "Juno." There is some of the same wild premise and hip stoned sufferance here. It's a silly premise, but once you buy into it, it makes for a pleasant comedy and maybe a chick flick with a twist.
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