Change Your Image
oliverio-p
Reviews
Touch of Evil (1958)
a geometer's gem
As a geometry teacher, I am anxious to use TOUCH OF EVIL in my
classroom. Triangles of light are set against planes of darkness.
Camera angles alter composition and comment and character.
Every actor is a polygon and there is an oleagineous octagon
named Hank Quinlin who is the mud that holds all things together.
The only pretty polygon draws, like flies, the leather chalk dust from
the binary set. American police efficiency (which some might call corruption) VS
grande Mexican slime with a face of righteousness brownchalked
onto Captain Vargas. I cannot equate Orson Welles without using words like brilliant,
visionary, stark-raving mad genius. QED
Hal Holbrook: Mark Twain Tonight! (1967)
the invisible genius of Hal Holbrook
I was convinced that there was no actor on stage in this brilliant production which basically recalls the man who invented stand-up comedy when he wasn't writing classic novels. That was MARK TWAIN on stage with sage words such as "Truth is our most valuable commodity. So we economize it." I woulda bet money that it wasn't Hal Holbrook but the genuine article of the former Samuel Clemens, pacing and puffing on his cigar with smoke rings to enshroud wisdom with humor. God made man because he was disappointed with the monkey. My only objection to that line is that I personally did not create it! What Louis Armstrong is to every trumpeter so be Mark Twain to anyone who ever tried to be funny or literary. MTT was ninety minutes long and if it had been nine hundred minutes of Twain-alia, my interest would never have flagged. Has any other country ever produced a more valuable commodity than Mark Twain? The genius of Hal Holbrook was that what he said was so impacted with wit that you never thought of the voice as coming from an actor.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
A mathematician's take on mathology
When a movie features stain-glass windows created by obscure
math formulae, madness cannot be very far behind. Russell Crowe gets there and far beyond. When numbers speak in a language that only John Nash can
hear, hallucinations become the norm. Then along comes a
student with ruby red lips and she is no complex number. This
variable called love is distributed through the equation and across
the ages as Professor Nash smashes through the function of
Reality.
Kafka (1991)
Have some paranoia with that popcorn
How to approach KAFKA, the movie... Activate your paranoia parameters and take this vow: As a pure art
form, Cinema cannot shine the shoes of Literature. Excepting Orson Welles, of course, and expect KAFKA, the movie,
to freely borrow stylistically and climactically. Would the original Franz Kafka have liked this movie? Of course not! Kafka, the writer, was incapable of liking anything. Excepting, maybe, Orson Welles' THE TRIAL. Should diehard Kafka readers like this movie? Of course they can, if they don't require their shoes to be shined.
Le procès (1962)
Franz kafka would have been proud of Anthony Perkins.
This is a thinking man's horror movie with the perfect person
behind the controls: Orson Welles. The sets are magnificently
macabre yet very simple: endless rows of typists and clerks or
human paramecium. Le Proces is based, faithfully, on one of the most important novels
of the 20th century: Franz Kafka's THE TRIAL. The book that added
the word "Kafkaesque" to the English Language. The book that is
the poster child for paranoia & was required reading for Sixties
hipsters. Anthony Perkins, as Joseph K, is creepier than his Norman Bates
character...He wakes up one morning only to be arrested without
ever learning why or for what...and then the labyrinth of the law
begins. Director / star/ mastermind Orson Welles welcomed this project
like a child prodigy with an absurdical erector set.
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
minimalist content maximum intelligence and talent
Sixteen yr old Eva (Eszter Balint) visits NY from Budapest with a
Hungarian tape recorder that only plays I Put A Spell On You by
Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Unexpectedly, she arrives at her slacker
cousin Willie's apartment. He hates the song and won't allow her
to speak Hungarian even though Willy understands the language
thoroughly. More importantly, Willie doesn't understand the need
for human communication. Brilliantly portrayed by John Lurie,
Willie seems to have stepped out of an Edward Hopper painting
and left all the color on the canvass. Shot in bleakest black&white, Stranger than Paradise, has a third
main character, Eddie (Richard Edson), a John Lurie look-alike but
whereas Willie has no heart, Eddie has no brain. He can describe
Cleveland and Florida in great detail though he had never been to
either. That changes by the end of this magnificent minimalist
movie. Jim Jarmusch articulated volumes with a sparse script, pregnant
silences, black spaces between scenes and an astounding
supporting cast of shadows and silhouettes.
Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)
brilliant enough to inspire dark scribblings
Zelmo says "people that listen continuously are much more interesting than people that talk continuously" He doesn't get the girl. Seymour says "I think about you so much I forget to go to the bathroom." He gets the girl. "When I'm with someone I want to get away." This is the girl speaking. Her name is Minnie . She also says "I don't like men. They smile too much. You see a lot of teeth." This is no ordinary love story. Correction this is an extraordinary love story where Minnie ultimately becomes a Moskowitz which is difficult to say with a straight face. But the ultimate romance is between John Cassavetes and the English language. Forget the popcorn, to eternally enjoy Minnie &Moskowitz, have a notepad and some shorthand and "if you have bread, we can make toast."
Popeye (1980)
Where was Captain Jack McCarthy?
I grew up in New York and tuned in to Popeye cartoons on The Captain Jack McCarthy Show on WPIX, channel 11. (It aired immediately before or after Officer Joe Bolton and the Three Stooges.) Naturally, I was hoping for memories in overdrive when I rented Popeye with Robin Williams and Shirley Duvall but I was terribly disappointed. Instead of recalling Captain Jack to mind, it was Jack the Dripper. If you want to make a funny movie, you do not splash ten jokes across the screen simultaneously. POPEYE was not without artistic intentions but the result was a fabled cartoon character as seen by Jackson Pollock.
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
minimalist masterpiece
Warren Oates adds color, verve, and humor to the monochrome look and theme of a movie that drones with the freedom of the road. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are outstanding in what are almost non-acting roles. Their silences speak volumes. There is the feel of a documentary and I kept waiting for the VO. The Girl seems extraneous and a nuisance but this is definitely by design. When boys need to be boys, having a girl around compromises freedom... Which is why the movie ends in a bizarre fashion
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
no place for zelda
Should not have the lead actors all been given double-billing for their shadows getting nearly equal screen time? Is that part of the Riefenshal influence?
There is no shortage of comments to be made about The Grapes of Wrath but I will offer only the following: After this screening (& having read a requisite # of JS novels), I can understand why F. Scott Fitzgerald hated John Steinbeck!