Change Your Image
pacoh1969
Generally as a rule, I dislike "Merican" "movies" PARTICULARLY adaptations of books or theatre as,clearly,American cinema adapters have serious issues when it comes to actual reading or "honesty" - this, I venture, is directly because of the pathetic state of US education. Don't feed me a storyline imbued with clues OR infect every scene of a movie with evidence or childish images or visual/auditory clues so I that when the denouement arrives (or if you arrive late and miss the first 20 minutes of the movie) even a neurological patient (very high on the Glasgow comas scale) with massive damage to the brainstem will be delighted three with himself at "having worked it out".....when someone with a modicum of intelligence, who left 40 minutes before the end, knew the ending before the director did!
That being said, I'm not opposed to occasionally paying to see some "chewing gum for the mind" ....but I will never use the terms "art" where it doesn't belong, "entertainment" maybe.
Poor acting is a breach of contract which can be settled out of court.
Poor directing, however, makes me reconsider my abolitionist view towards the death penalty.
People unable to critically see the difference between "cinema" and "cinematic art" remind me that there is a demand for ethanasia and population control!
Reviews
A Number (2008)
Drama tries to walk upright in front of a camera
(I guess I have included some spoiler-like elements)Having seen the Churchill play before an, I suppose, having an eye for setting or camera angles, this adaptation reminded me a lot of certain (low budget, I guess) BBC2/Channel TV dramas from the '80s/'90s which dealt with serious, current issues but nearly always in a harrowing or austere setting, and left me, as a younger man confused and isolated. Strangely as an older man (and I am struck by the focus on patriarchy in this movie, right down to the very last shot depicting the father holding (presumably) a grandchild, a child of one of his cloned sons, all the way to this urgency in older men to apologise for wrongs done). I have it 8/10 for the superb performances of the two venerable actors, the honest if stark adherence to the original play, but ultimately for (and some reviewers said they disliked it after a while) the very realistic talking over which occurs in those "serious conversations" in families where an observer would be forgiven for thinking nobody was listening to anybody else...but this is how man families interact. I found myself empathising with the father/perpetrator but also hating him in equal measures. The three "clones" we encounter seem to reflect the shock, anger, incredulity I would imagine anybody would experience when encountering such a revelation. It was certainly dramatic and very definitely emerging from theatre and perhaps this is why some reviewers were either apathetic or openly scornful, but this is precisely why I've enjoyed it a few times now. Definitely one for a film studies course as opposed to chatting enthusiastically about it in a cafe until 3am.
The English Patient (1996)
One of the best worst made movies of all time
I completely agree with other comments here: hopelessly romantic, filmed in a similar pace to the original writing, wonderful panoramic scenes, nice romantic theme throughout and steeped in steeped in pseudo-historical reference. But ultimately a cinematic disaster with so many mistakes, technical and cinematic errors, which is why it is often a bye-word for disaster amongst cinema lecturers and students. And still it won 9 Oscars, including: -Best Picture Saul Zaentz -Best Director Anthony Minghella (before cutting off Caravaggio's fingers, one of the German officers asks in German "what about the Geneva Convention?" which is curious considering that the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners wasn't signed until 1949 and came into effect in 1950) -Best Cinematography John Seale (despite crew or equipment or shadows of same being visible in almost every filmed scene) -Best Art Direction-Set Decoration Stuart Craig Stephenie McMillan (US flags in 1942 would not have 50 stars but 48) -Best Costume Design Ann Roth (despite US soldiers wearing Russian WWII army helmets and 3 German officers wearing conflicting badges and rank insignia (one being a Waffen SS officer, none of whom served in North Africa)
-Best Sound Walter Murch Mark Berger David Parker Christopher Newman (despite thunder incorrectly and unnaturally added to a sequence of a thunderstorm, and the flash, bang and shock-wave of an exploding bomb being experienced simultaneously at a distance) -Best Film Editing Walter Murch (Despite 3 scenes being sequenced incorrectly in the final movie)
One must ask why Ondaatje/Minghela were so sadistic? An apparently injured (terminally) pilot is found with horrific burns in North Africa (Libya?)) and is carried by road to Egypt where he is put on a hospital ship and transported to Sicily and proceeds to follow the front line up through Italy until a Canadian nursing officer takes it upon herself to leave the convoy to save the patient any discomfort etc etc WHEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EASIER TO simply place the patient on board the hospital ship in Tobruk or one of the many functional Allied ports in North Africa and send him directly back to Britain (as they thought he was English)...seems a little mean to the poor guy? The scriptwriter should have known that Ethiopia is not, as Katherine observed, in North Africa...tsk tsk! A disaster if a movie it may be, but it still strums the heart-strings....gets a tear every time...and I must have seen it 15 times in all
The Silent Storm (2014)
Stars occluded the potential and it should never have been allowed outside a dramatic theatre
Like previous reviewers, I sensed a definite air of striving, striving to be something which has long since gone, does not need to be recreated and smacked of arrogance in a directorial debut, which this was. It would have served the producers better NOT to get big names to balance the directors lack of experience unless those big names could add something to the movie. It certainly would have served the viewer better if the skeleton of a fairly obvious feminist superstructure had not poked through the fairly thin skin of plot. And this is another example of a movie relying on external factors/images such wild scenery, panorama shots (often completely irrelevant or thematically unconnected with previous or next scenes) and community decay because some dying industry breathed its last and the locals had become completely dependent on it (I actually find myself stifling a slight yawn as i typed this - it is a little common in movies (pick a movie about closures of coal miner in northern England, "The Grand Seduction" (Newfoundland) etc) and hopefully as a theme will not be revisited unless accompanied by some originality in script). Puritanical, anachronistic Scottish minister included, the characters/stereotypes/clichés read a little like a chapter ("Sco'lund, away wi ya") in a book entitled "Easy Ways to Assemble Stereotypes in one Plot". Because I found it very lowest-common-denominator and clichéd and not only slightly based on a political opinion derived from the deep and meaningful student drunken conversations which in the blink of an eye and with no experience of the world mutates into one of those after dinner drunken middle-class chats which are studies in ignorance. But it could have been made anywhere! Instead of a puritanical Scottosh minister, read Irish Catholic priest, mid-west US, dust-bowl preacher, Scandanavian minister etc. And now you can see why most reviewers think the director was, at least, emulating Bergman, with a bleak view on a bleak time with a bleak future. I've tried to avoid spoilers particularly as I was worried I would confuse my references with other movies, but primarily because the movement or kinetics which does take place, are inconsequential. I don't want to use Irish references too much but the movie could have been made there if the script had been adapted because the pain, references to abuse (patriarchy or otherwise), decay, xenophobia and insanity, could all survive a ferry crossing to Ireland, to any rural or island community, north or south. Having said all of the above, I still watched it, found it somewhat engaging....but I suppose I am a male, in a patriarchal world (regardless of sexual orientation), and a patriarchal world which is somewhat confused by re-definitions and constantly being redefined before we have a chance to identify what the last set of changes were. Not new, not dramatically exciting, not a well-chosen cast, interesting but unimportant scenery, good set decoration and costumes, buoyed up by some of the cast that tried to pull away from the fire in case it burned itself.