Thursday, February 13, 2003

Hilary and Jackie

I dithered quite a bit on rating this film. I thought the acting was bravura. Emily Watson can do highly emotional characters like no one else. She really makes you feel the pain she's acting. (Someday I'll do a review of Breaking the Waves, which is nothing if not an emotional roller coaster ride.) I think my problem is with biopics in general. In this cinematic biography, we learn about the incredible life and horrible death of Jacqueline du Pré, the famous cellist. The film is based on one book on du Pré, written by her sister and brother, and reveals that du Pré slept with her sister's husband on a regular, and regularly condoned, basis. This is followed by her slow decline to death from MS at 42. And this is where I take issue. Biopics show a complete life and often we see the death at the end, which ends up overshadowing the themes in the life portrayed. It's clear that she was lonely and difficult and aching for something she couldn't have in her celebrity, but it's too closely connected in the film with her death. As if, because of the way she died, she is absolved from her life choices. That ended up leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

year: 1998
length: 121 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150915/combined

In the Heat of the Night

One of those rare films that strikes all the right chords. Sidney Poitier plays a detective who happens into a Mississippi town reeling from a recent homicide and sticks around to solve the crime. That's just the base coat, though. It's a race drama in which the acting, screenwriting, heck even the cinematography, are so finely tuned that you want to clap every time a scene has ended. I suppose it's another film that could have been done as a play, but the camera does great things with the material. I particularly liked the scenes in the police chief's office. The camera treats each "victim" who ends up in there differently.

year: 1967
length: 109 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061811/combined

Chicago

A superb musical? Why, yes! I had a grin on my face the whole time. The premise is dopey, in that all these women killed their lovers because they...for God's sake...popped their gum, but the musical numbers are so much dang fun that it doesn't matter. Everyone's good -- Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones (she and Nicole Kidman vie for the most porcelain beauty in Hollywood award), Queen Latifah, but Renée Zellweger is stunning. She seems able to do anything. Why, she even gives us stand-up comedy in the middle of one of her numbers.

year: 2002
length: 113 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299658/combined

Elmer Gantry

Not at all what I expected! A rousing tale of revivalists, their beliefs and their struggles. A slick ladies-man con-man who becomes a revivalist preacher, at first just to get close to the head preacher, a beautiful woman (of course), gets conned himself and realizes that he really does love her and wants to reform his ways. Unfortunately, fire and brimstone get in his way, in more ways than one. Burt Lancaster as the preacher is surprising. Maybe because I never knew what a fine actor he was. A knock-out! And he sure can sing. "Glory, glory, hallelujah!"

year: 1960
length: 146 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053793/combined

Monday, February 10, 2003

The Hours

Better than the book (by Michael Cunningham), incredibly enough. I liked the book, but it was a bit confusing. This movie took all the confusing stuff and used it as leit-motif, so you could understand the themes that confused you when you read it. Look for things related to trash, eggs, kisses, and being late. You could imagine watching the three lives of the women portrayed as a play, but there is a distinctly filmic twist to the movie (mostly having to do with use of montage). It's very subtle, but you don't need to have read the book to understand it. Julianne Moore gets my vote for best of the three (although this is really tough) because she does so much with so little. Which is precisely why I find her so interesting an actor.

year: 2002
length: 114 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274558/combined

Wages of Fear

Probably the first action-thriller ever made. Bear with the film for the first 30 minutes (a visual description of a poor South American town and the men who will do anything to get a job), then it gets really fantastic. I'd never seen a Henri-Georges Clouzot film, and now I want to see more if this is part of his oeuvre. Out on DVD under the Criterion label, but not very well cleaned up, full frame, and no documentary. But those are my only complaints.

original title: Le Salaire de la Peur
year: 1953
length: 141 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046268/combined

Dodsworth

A Sinclair Lewis book adaptation, about a man who leaves his work to discover what leisure really is. His wife desperately wants to leave their town, they sail to Europe and she becomes an unabashed flirt, in a desperate bid to stay young. Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton do amazing things with these roles, but the real prize goes to Sinclair Lewis and Sidney Howard for the writing. This is not your everyday tale of a wayward wife! Remember the times when you watch this film.

year: 1936
length: 101 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027532/combined

The Green Mile

Even though the performances are strong in this film (hey, there's Sam Rockwell again!), there was something about it that didn't quite work. My guess is because it all hangs together too neatly. Something that happens early on in the film, and that you were scratching your head over to figure out why it was included, is brought back later as explanation. Other that that, it is very reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption, the first Frank Darabont film, which holds a special place in my heart. He is clearly drawn to stories of wrongly convicted men, and obviously Stephen King, since both films are based on his stories. Where he gets the film right is in the production design -- you really do feel you're in a 1920s prison.

year: 1999
length: 188 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120689/combined

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

Adaptation.

I was not as enamored of this film as everyone else seems to be. The consensus seems to be that it's a quirky film, which is neat in and of itself and therefore worth seeing. I'm not sure I agree. The acting is stellar. I have no quarrel with that. It's that the concept of a screenwriter having trouble writing a screenplay and therefore showing us that particular struggle was irritating to me. In fact, he says it himself in the movie -- it's solipsistic. Why should I care about him and his struggles with the screenplay? I'd care a lot more about a movie about the actual book! I fully understand that the premise of the film is also the "trick" of the film, but that's all there is to it. The theme of finding something you're passionate about (i.e., flowers) is engulfed by the theme of discovering a way to write something you can't write. Besides which, in the "third act" he gives us a completely untrue fantasy tale about Susan Orlean (the author of the book it's based on) and drug smuggling, which if it's not supposed to be a cliche, what IS it supposed to be? I was rather appalled by that choice of ending. I hope Orlean was. I fully expected to love this film (as I loved Being John Malkovich), so I'm honestly surprised at my reaction.

year: 2002
length: 114 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268126/combined

The Pianist

Really, it's a horror film, the horror of the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. While there may be people out there who would characterize it as "Schindler's List meets Shine," that's just not giving enough due to how beautifully this film depicts Wladyslaw Szpilmann's life for these several years. There are scenes that will make you want to crawl under your chair because you're not sure you can bear watching them -- at least the scenes ought to make you want to do that, or else I'd be concerned. The best part is the last 1/4 of the film, in which hope and honor and heroism are portrayed so lovingly, and without melodrama, that it breaks your heart all over again.

year: 2002
length: 148 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0253474/combined

Catch Me If You Can

Steven Spielberg is a widely mis-understood director. I walked away from this film initially thinking, oh, what a nice fluffy comedy. And, as usual when I watch Spielberg films, about 2 hours later I'd revised my opinion completely. The story of a boy who manipulates the world around him into thinking he's an airline pilot, medical doctor and trial lawyer is actually not even a comedy. It's a rather astute analysis of what appearance means in our society (is that person really what he seems to be?), the role of family (as in all Spielberg films, the subject of family is in the foreground), and the myth of cinema in general (what are we really seeing when we watch film?). Besides which, as mentioned in the L.A. Times in an article entitled "The Iowa of the Oscars," Leonardo DiCaprio is noted as a possible Best Actor contender for this movie, with the tag line "Maybe We Were Wrong About Him." Oh, we sure were. But, that's a rant for another day.

year: 2002
length: 141 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/combined

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

I wobbled between a 3.0 and a 3.5 on this one, but thought that George Clooney did such a nice job as a first-time director, particularly in terms of color and mise en scene, that I ought to give him the higher mark. As I watched it, I gathered that Clooney was subtly (or deliberately, it was hard to tell) making fun of Chuck Barris (host of The Gong Show and supposed CIA hit man). And, really, by the end of the movie I was convinced that he'd never done any of things that he purports to have done. The film's story line says exactly the opposite, which is why I think it's subtle. Of course, it has Sam Rockwell in it, and any movie with Sam Rockwell in it is a cut above, in my book.

year: 2002
length: 113 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290538/combined