Nynaeve Reviews

Sirens (1994)

product of its time

[6/10 · 27 June 2019]

Entertaining, nicely shot, well-scripted for the most part, even if the themes and plot aren't original. Good performances by Tara Fitzgerald and Sam Neill in particular and Estella is a sympathetic character as a woman in a lust-free marriage discovering her sexuality.

There were a few issues that personally interfered with my appreciation of the movie and its message that cause it to not hold up so well 25+ years later. One is that the approach to sexuality and consent feels outdated. The characters' regularly intruding on the protagonist's boundaries often gets in the way of what the writer/director apparently intend to be a sex-positive narrative. The direction is male gazey - nearly all of the nudity is female. Boundaries are intruded upon, consent is negligable (including tricking the local stud into thinking he's sleeping with a different woman - it was creepy in Revenge of the Nerds and it was creepy here) , sexual harassment is rampant (and not criticized - Estella's fault for being so uptight) and skeevy behavior - unwanted touching, being watched while asleep and half-naked - from men and women - is prevalent. I assumed watching this that some of this creepiness was intentional in order to add nuance and balance to the conversation about sex, prudishness and the concept of decency, but the end of the film seems to idealize the Lindsay crew in a way that doesn't feel deserved based on the story and characters up to that point.

God Help the Girl (2014)

Belle and Sebastian, the movie

[6/10 · 16 September 2014]

There was a lot to like about God Help the Girl but despite a few good individual scenes, but it didn't flow together as a story that well. Maybe writer/director Stuart Murdoch needed more creative feedback and better editors than he got. Certain scenes and characters just show up out of nowhere with little connection to the rest of the story, like the WTF scene of Eve going on a bender with some girl we never see before or since. The main character of Eve was weakly written. Her past and her motivations were vague. The movie would have been far better with James and Cassie as main characters and Eve as a side character.

You could see God Help The Girl as a culmination of Belle & Sebastian's (a band named after a fictional band that Murdoch's songwriting centered on) characters and themes spanning their nearly 20 years as a band. James, Cassie and Eve seem derived from the archetypal characters from B&S's songs. The movie though develops them in a shallow and haphazard way that doesn't really do justice to the insights and characters brilliantly explored in the individual songs. I think Murdoch could make a good movie, but God Help The Girl was just so-so. The music was excellent at least.

The Red Violin (1998)

Unsatisfactory

[4/10 · 5 February 2000]

Visually, this movie has everything going for it. Costume and set design and cinematography win my applause, and maybe some awards. Unfortunately, though, the script was weak, and much of the acting weaker. Maybe due to the brevity of each piece, I couldn't connect with the the characters or their relationship to the violin-the central theme in each of the 5 stories. Maybe you have to be a string player to fully appreciate this one, it seems to be written by and for violinists.

Excalibur (1981)

A good story, but nothing special

[19 November 1999]

Maybe the filmmakers thought that realistic delivery was inappropriate for such a legendary subject, but often the acting, which was overdramatic but showed no real passion, detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. No one ever seems to crack a smile. The overall telling of the story also was overdramatic and lacked spirit. It somehow missed a magical, epic feel--as I watched I didn't feel that anything truly extraordinary was happening. Hair and makeup had an unmistakable early 80s look. And the score, which everyone else seems so impressed by, felt uninspired to me. "Merlin", the TV movie, one of the few other "Arthur" movies I've seen, though flawed in its own way, had at least some lively performances. And once you've read The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, any other take on the story seems somewhat dull and incomplete.

It was better than "First Knight", at least

Oh, and it most certainly does NOT put "Braveheart" to shame.

The Phantom of the Opera (1990– )

Underrated

[8/10 · 12 November 1999]

This version of "The Phantom of the Opera" (which was obviously written for the stage and carries that atmosphere throughout the movie) seems to have been made for those who savor a lush, epic feel- the music, framed around the operatic bits which are central to the story, is gliding and hypnotic (the "Angels Pure" finale may well have been badly dubbed, but I was too entranced to notice) and the sets are appropriately opulant and surrealistic (my favorites being, of course, the catacombs, as well as the scene at the Bistro). And it's rare that I see a movie that has succeeds so well in making almost every single actor, usually under candlelight or a faint bluish glow, look as ethereally beautiful as their surroundings. These two factors alone make the movie worth watching and, when it's all said and done, was probably what was most strongly impressed on me at the end of the four hours. It's very deliberately paced, forcing the viewer to drink in all of the movie slowly and, I think, reshaping the traditional way this story has been told--this movie is character-driven, not action driven, a way of storytelling that appeals to me. When the action finally does happen, we get a clear understanding of why.

The characters, though, weren't necessarily the most believable bunch I've ever seen, a fact that owes some to the writing, which gives them poetic but improbable dialogue, and the woe-is-me soliloquies, particularly on the part of Erik, start to wear. But of course, I can't complain too much--"Phantom" is played as either as a horror story or a melodrama, (or both), and thanks to the (overdone?) effort to make the viewer sympathise with the tragic antihero Phantom, it's not much of a horror story. The acting, too, is a little over-the-top...though a lot of that is probably intentional (and fun to watch!). I wished Christine was a stronger, less wishy-washy character (of course she really isn't shown as anything but, no matter which version, including the Lloyd-Webber "Phantom") and I wished that Phillipe was more of a presence, more of a deserving rival to the gloomy phantomized Erik. I also thought that the fact that Christine not simply sounded like, but also LOOKED like Erik's mother (prompting him to fall in love with her, the old Oedipean twist), shot down one of the main themes of the movie, voiced in Erik's complaint that Phillipe came to the opera for the wrong reason: the love of faces rather than the love of music. Much better if they would have used a different actress in the flashback scenes with Gerard (Burt Lancaster) and Belladora (?), the mother. Still, there are scenes which seem to shrug off the need for realistic dialogue or flawless acting in the beauty of their execution. Some of my favorite parts, the flashbacks, are more-or-less mimed, and to me, the movie is most effective either when the characters are singing or when scene is taking place without much dialogue. The movie is fantasy-oriented, after all, not gritty realism, and after a while you DO grow attached to the characters. All-in-all, the movie is best enjoyed in a dark room and a thick blanket, with a mentality open to fantasy and escapism and cynicism pushed off to the side.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Different than the other 2--but not entirely bad

[5/10 · 3 November 1999]

Well, first of all, my perceptions of this movie are shadowed by the fact that it was one of my favorites when I was a kid (as in a lot of other posts), if not THE favorite from when I was 8 to 10, so I can't look at it the same way as if I had seen it for the first time as an adult. As an adult, I would have been more aware of a weak script, absence of a good theme, somewhat offensive and stereotypical portrayal of the Indian villiage and of India itself, and filler gross-out material. Watching it recently, I was a little more put off by the one dimensional female sidekick than I was back then. Why? Because a nine year old can sympathize with the kind of squealing, self-absorbed, dependent nature that Willie portrays. Now I just kind of wish she would have "accidentally" taken a fall off a cliff early in the movie. A 3 dimensional character would have shown at least a little development and competance.

Nevertheless, a lot of what drew me in as a kid holds true. The action is great, and fun even in repeated viewings. For those who say it's overkill-well, this is Steven Spielberg, not Merchant-Ivory. The scenery (which I'm a sucker for) is well done and along with the fantastic score (one of my favorite of John Williams'), creates a memorable atmosphere. I liked Short Round a lot. And the theme, though not meaningful, was at least different from Raiders, which Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade unfortunately duplicated completely. And it's main character is Indiana Jones, whom Harrison Ford carries off so well (and looks good doing it!) Indiana Jones succeeds so well because he's both a larger than life adventurer who everybody roots for but also has weaknesses enough to keep him from being boring. And the fact that Indy is a different than in Raiders, greener and more inexperienced, emphasizing the fact that this is a PREQUEL, gives me a sense that the screenwriter wasn't a total hack.