ahab-5 Reviews

Cecil B. Demented (2000)

Brilliant & Hysterical Satire

[10/10 · 19 August 2000]

This is John Waters' best movie, and one of the best of its kind by anyone in a long time. It is an incisive and intelligent indictment of the drivel Hollywood puts out and the cynical marketing and distribution systems in place, while at the same time getting good comic mileage from its over-the-top celibate "art terrorists." There are so many funny lines and great moments, talking about it is almost in a league with Spinal Tap. The Forrest Gump slam is pure joy for anyone who hated that piece of crap as much as I did, as are the scenes in the porno theatre and the "all action" theatre, as well as that impossible jump from the roof and the savaging of the multiplex cinema. Lines like "You call this a medium?", "Come here, little gerbil", and "I had nothing to do with that movie, I´m only a senior VP in charge of Development" are hysterical when you hear them in context. I laughed my butt off almost the entire time, and was in awe of the fineness of the satire. That movies like this even get made any more is a wonder. See it before it is banished to obscurity by the very forces it so deftly criticizes.

Dead Man's Curve (1998)

pretty stupid

[5/10 · 22 August 1999]

It is not only the premise of this movie--that you get a 4.0 if your roommate commits suicide--that is stupid, it is the underlying and unquestioned correlation that a 4.0 GPA by itself will get you into Harvard Grad School: in business, law, drama (is there even a Harvard Drama School?), whatever. This is ridiculous. I have nothing against suspending disbelief if a story otherwise holds together, but the writing in this movie was really bad, the characters were uninteresting, and the direction was highly derivative and uninspired. This movie just doesn´t hold water.

One question, though. The credits say that it was shot at Towson University in Maryland, but I could SWEAR that the opening quad shots are at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, my alma mater. Does anyone have any info about this?

Short Cuts (1993)

Staggering, profound, amazing

[10/10 · 15 April 1999]

Basically, there are two types of people in this world: Those who appreciate "Short Cuts" for the work of genius that it is, and those who miss the boat entirely. If you´ve ever felt that your tastes are a bit out of step with the mainstream, and that quirky characters and challenging ideas interest you more than explosions and predictability, then this might be a movie for you. If, on the other hand, you freak out because a film can be "depressing" or its characters "weird" or the length is more than 92 minutes, then don´t waste your time here.

But for those who belong to the first category and, for whatever reason, have not yet seen this masterpiece, then I urge you to do so as soon as possible. "Short Cuts" is a movie for the ages, a truly disturbing, funny, entertaining, profound and shocking vision of America at the close of the 20th Century. I recommend that you watch the film with someone whose intelligence you respect, because the chances are you will want to discuss this one for a long time after the closing credits are through.

Needless to say, 10 out of 10. "Short Cuts" is the standard against which others are judged.

In Dreams (1999)

Really really bad

[2/10 · 10 April 1999]

Wow, this movie just totally stank. It´s hard to know where to start placing the blame. The acting was lousy (Robert Downey Jr. was abysmal, and Stephen Rea´s ridiculous Boston accent was a hoot). The story was ludicrous, without even a hint of plausibility or anything that would make me want to suspend my disbelief. The pace was tedious and meandering, with so many strands that never lead anywhere. And, as mentioned elsewhere here, the microphone kept popping up in scene after scene. This is truly one of the worst films I´ve ever sat through. At no time does it move the viewer in any way: it doesn´t frighten, it doesn´t amuse, it doesn´t make you sad, it doesn´t make you reflect, it doesn´t even gross you out or transport you to some fantasy world. No, it just makes you ask yourself: My God, how many thought-provoking and entertaining films could have been made with the budget they blew on this turkey?

And can SOMEONE please tell me why the husband, only a short time after his daughter has been abducted and murdered, is so STUPID as to respond to a mystery telephone call about his DOG´s whereabouts by visiting an abandoned hotel all ALONE without even notifying the police or anyone that perhaps something a WEE BIT SUSPICIOUS is going on?

Yuk, yuk and more yuk. Save your money, save your time: AVOID this one like the plague.

A Thousand Acres (1997)

Competent screen adaptation of an excellent novel

[8/10 · 2 April 1999]

I liked this movie a lot, but the feeling that I most came away with was the memory of how much I´d enjoyed the novel. The film features two of the best actresses working today--Jessica Lange, who is great here, and the divine Jennifer Jason Leigh, who does the best she can with the thinly-drawn character she is given--as well as a surprisingly excellent Michelle Pfeiffer and a steady Jason Robards. The adaptation is basically faithful to the book, at least as faithful as it can be in an hour and forty minutes. The film doesn´t really dazzle, except for certain scenes between Lange and Pfeiffer, but it does a thoroughly competent job of visualizing this wonderfully tragic story. As far as movies adapted from novels go, this was definitely among the better ones. If nothing else, it has sent me back to my bookshelves to rediscover favorite passages from Jane Smiley´s excellent novel, and back to King Lear to brush up on the minor characters in order to see just how deep the parallels go. Worth your time as a film, definitely, and hopefully enough to make you remember that reading great literature is a joy as well.

Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

Lizzen, I haf a gret idea for zis movie!

[4/10 · 1 April 1999]

OK, here it is: "Nazi mountaineer befriends the Dalai Lama." What we do is, first we get a major star with no idea whatsoever how to do a Germanic accent, and we let him flounder around between French, German, American, and British for over 2 hours. Then we concoct a series of wildly improbable events and space them apart very widely, so that the plot inches along almost imperceptibly. But just to make sure the viewer doesn´t fall asleep, we throw in details which are shockingly absurd, such as our hero smoking a cigarette at an altitude of 22,000 feet. Naturally, we must also remember that our target audience does not want to read too many subtitles, so we have every character, even the lowliest peasant in the forbidden closed-off city of Lhasa in 1943, speak perfect English, also with dubious accents. Of course, the trickiest part is how to handle the spiritual and political aspects of the story, so what we do is this: we have the Dalai Lama befriend the now-reformed Nazi because the latter is so good at fiddling with film projectors, radios, antique cars, and any other devices with represent the freedom of the capitalist west. In return, our hero learns from his young protegé a kind of vague, undefined Buddhism which is never really brought out or treated in a serious fashion. We also have lots of scenes with the hero flaunting all the marks of respects and protocol which the rest of the Tibetan society accords the Dalai Lama, even as we pretend that the hero has deep and profound reverence for these people and their spiritual leader. In other words, we just expect the audience to believe that this guy is now a Buddhist, sort of, in his own way, even though we ourselves don´t seem to know what his transformation entails or how far we want it to go. And last but not least, we hang a statistic onto the end of the film about how appallingly the Chinese have treated the Tibetans (which is certainly true), thus opening ourselves up to charges that we have made a "political" movie, even though it is nothing of the sort. So, zat ist my idea. Vat do you zink? Can ve make zis movie?

Celebrity (1998)

Same formula, different protagonist

[20 March 1999]

I must give Woody Allen credit for one thing: At least he seems to have stopped pretending that every gorgeous woman on earth is standing in line to throw herself at his protagonist. But what has he done instead? He has simply cast Kenneth Branagh in his place as a somewhat younger and more handsome substitute, but one who is, alas, no less frumpy, neurotic, unaccomplished and ultimately dislikable as Allen´s now-stock character has become in recent years. Really, watching Branagh imitate Allen to a "T" may be an interesting idea for a skit, but after about 25 minutes it is painful, and by the end of the film it is downright embarrassing. The Allen theme of "womanizer gets his comeuppance" is by now quite predictable, and this film does not deviate from it one bit. Some of the social satire is clever, as usual, but "Celebrity" ends up dying on the vine because of its wildly improbable insistence that nymphomaniac supermodels and barely-legal literary beauties cannot keep their hands off of a male protagonist who neither exhibits any sort of charisma nor has any kind of achievements to his credit. At least in many earlier Allen movies--and despite this and other recent efforts I am still a big fan of his work as a whole--there was a certain charm and allure to that one-note character of his. But merely inserting Kenneth Branagh to talk and act exactly like Woody Allen was definitely not the solution to the creativity problems which have plagued his films lately.