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Reviews
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)
Read the Book
I loved the book and it occurred to me more than once while reading that it would make a terrific movie. Maybe not so much. Perhaps the kind of books you see instantly as a "terrific" movie should be left in the film can in your head. From the opening scenes to whenever we petered out and turned it off, this film feels false. The platoon doesn't feel like young men who've lived and fought together. They seem like actors who have never crossed paths with people who make up our military these days. That may not be the case but that's what it feels like to someone who ...also doesn't cross paths with soldiers often. And maybe that's what's wrong with movie. Fountain's point is the disconnect between Americans and the warriors they send off to do battle for them. Perhaps it is expecting too much for that sentiment to be captured by those so removed by privilege. Read the book.
Johnny Cool (1963)
An Odd Film
This is not a good film but it's almost bad enough to be entertaining. Henry Silva seems like a menacing presence to many reviewers but to me he seemed intimidated by his shot at the big time. The scenes in which Elizabeth Montgomery and he interact seem spliced together from different movies. Montgomery is convincing in an impossible role and appealing in a way that makes you sad her career reached its apogee in the dreary wasteland of TV sitcom. She clearly had a great spirit and wit that would have made her an engaging presence if she'd had better scripts. The most annoying thing about this movie has got to be the cameos by Peter Lawford's pack of hacks. One can imagine Lawford saying, "Hey, you wanna be in my movie?" and then poor William Asher has to write in scenes which derail the plot (not necessarily a bad thing in this movie). There's an odd moment when Silva meets Sammy Davis Jr. at a crap game and Davis gives him a weird little grin. What does it mean? Nada apparently. This film is filled with these little oddments. Venerable Robert Armstrong shows up as a mobster and has a couple of deliciously cheesy lines which he seems embarrassed by. But he can't touch Mort Sahl's cameo for cringeworthiness. Sahl plays a gangster who faces death with such laidback indifference that you expect him to give us a couple of quips about cold war politics before he exits. No such luck.
All in all, it's an odd Whitman's sampler of schticks and groans with a void at its center. See it for Liz at the height of her beauty and with her natural hair color.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)
Thumbs sideways
I find myself disengaging from pop culture more and more because when you reach a certain age it all seems so recycled and pre-masticated. That's why I really wanted to like this film. It seemed to be trying for something beyond the normal Hollywood product. But in the end I just couldn't connect the two lives of Pippa. Perhaps it's my age but I just didn't see anything compelling about Blake Lively's Pippa that would interest an older man except for her nubility and I don't think that Arkin's character is meant to be that one-dimensional. That "sadness" he sees in her just seems like the blankness of youth. Perhaps if her role hadn't been so underwritten then when older Pippa is reunited spiritually with her younger self it would feel more real but as it is the ending just feels rushed and arbitrary.
Nobody's Fool (1994)
Sorry but this is tripe
I hate to be the one to tell you but this film is the sort of crap that Hollywood thinks is a film about "real" people ie the working class. And maybe the book, which I've not read, is about a real working class town but the film they made from it is so predictable, so covered in self-congratulatory ooze about its curmudgeonly hero and so bathed in hero-worship for Paul Newman that it becomes a Hallmark Hall of Fame special. And I like Paul. And his performance is fine but the whimsy is leaden and the "quirkiness" of the characters weighs you down with its lack of invention. For example: Has Pruitt Taylor Vince taken a patent out on his slobby slow sidekick who aches with human feeling. (see Heavy). Don't get me wrong (I'm sure you will anyway)...this is a well-made Hollywood product with good performances by all (I even thought Melanie Griffith was half-way believable) but the whole construct is made by cynical minds who want to neuter the people of this town with a treacly gloss that would have embarrassed Frank Capra. We all want to honor the memory of Paul Newman but this film is a poor memorial. Frankly I find it depressing that so many people thought this was a good film. TV has rotted your brain, people. Now go watch Hud as penance.
A Kiss Before Dying (1991)
Time Capsule Material
I won't dwell on the badness of this film. That was evident. But as an indictment of 90s fashion I don't think this film has a peer. In fact, to those who haven't seen the film and are interested in fashion, rent it, watch it with the sound off and just enjoy the pure platonic horribleness of the clothes Sean Young wears. From the kitschy Santa Fe style jackets to the high waisted pants to the lumberjack shirts it's a non-stop parade of unflattering fashion don'ts that upstages every scene and that, obviously, is a good thing. A friend blames Ralph Lauren for the "western" look that achieved a gender-reversed funhouse mirror image of clothes men wore in the 1950s. (Not actual men of course. Just the ones you see in old shirt ads). Who knows? But clearly the costume director picked clothes they thought a wealthy young woman might find appealing at the time. What's amazing is that a relatively recent film could induce so many head-scratching, what-in-the-world were they thinking fashion moments. Afterthought: maybe it was a director's ploy to divert attention from everything else in this lame movie. Afterthought two: maybe it was the costume director's revenge on Sean Young's bad behavior during the film. And don't get me started on the hairstyles...
Dan in Real Life (2007)
The Unbearable Flatness of Being in Love in Modern Movies
I saw the trailer for this film and was intrigued by it however it turns out that all the good moments seem better when the tedium is subtracted. As someone else pointed out the trailer contains a scene that got cut. How often does that happen? Normally I stay away from romantic comedies because unlike a good slasher film which leaves you feeling soiled for an hour or two, a bad romantic comedy can sour you on the state of romance between the sexes forever. Dan in Real Life goes a long way toward that goal. It occurs to me that the filmmakers discovered a plentiful lack of chemistry between the stars and made a command decision to evade the moments when they fall in love by drawing back mercifully to observe Dan working his magic on Marie from a distance. Up close it evaporates pretty quickly. On a cringeworthy scale the bowling scene is off the charts which is the real reason the bowling alley owner turns the lights down. She wanted to spare us the embarrassment. But here's the really sad thing: contemporary writers have no idea what romance is or why anyone would or does fall in love. Sad thing #2: That there's a demographic who finds Dan's character appealing. As someone else pointed out he has the charisma of a stalker and that would be okay if...he was somehow transformed by love but, to me, he never entirely leaves his creepy sexless self behind. What we have here is a failure to communicate...the strange elusive alchemy of desire. In this movie they didn't even bother to try.
How to Steal a Million (1966)
Slight to be Sure
This film was disadvantaged from my perspective by virtue of the fact that we watched "Roman Holiday" just before it which seems to have everything this film lacked. Hepburn is lovely as always but the script gives O'Toole the best lines and he works wonders with them however Audrey is left looking ravishing and occasionally ravished. It's a far cry from the breathtaking impact she made in RH where she had a much more nuanced character to play, a better script and a leading man who seems to stand in awe of her blossoming talent. Curiously the older film feels more fresh. HTSAM has so many of those damned cornball rear projection shots, the French don't speak French and Audrey's wardrobe while of its time seems more like a parody of Carnaby Street than chic. All those things conspire to take you out of the picture whereas in RH, the rear projection on the scooter is handled deftly (and briefly), the Italians speak Italian and her wardrobe (by Edith Head) never threatens to upstage the actors. Farce and fable are like apples and oranges of course but it is Hepburn and Wyler together again and the magic just isn't there - for me anyway.
Moulin Rouge (1952)
I'm afraid it's thumbs down for me
I'm afraid I have cast my vote with the philistines on this one. I thought this was a static biopic with a terrible screenplay and with the exception of Colette Marchand, mediocre acting. I'm fascinated that so many people thought Ferrer did such good work and I'm wondering if this is because they viewed the movie in the theater as opposed to TV. Perhaps, his "compressed" emotional state translated better when his 4'2" body was viewed at 10' 6". I sorta doubt it.
I have to say that as an admirer of Huston's films my expectations were high. His best films have a vitality and freshness that transcend the era they were made in. This one, for me, did not. Yes, there were plenty of tableaux vivant but after a while I felt that Huston was merely amusing himself with these recreations once he realized the film was DOA with a leaden, unimaginative script. Perhaps, he, like Lautrec, should have focused on the art instead of the artist's unhappy love life for dramatic material. One feels the heavy hand of the studio in the placement of the "romance" in the foreground and in the insertion of zaftig talent-free starlet Zsa Zsa as the tall, angular and probably far more interesting Jane Avril.
Huston was a complicated man with a great thirst for veracity in his depictions of the human experience. That's why The African Queen or The Asphalt Jungle never seem dated and why even lesser films like Night of the Iguana have moments of startling realism. Aside from bringing Lautrec's posters to life, this movie has to be regarded as one of his failures.
All the Real Girls (2003)
Artless but not Art
This film seems to have inspired a lot of ambivalent verbiage and it's easy to see why. In a world of Hollywood emptiness we yearn for real, human situations that transcend sit com and mayhem. But as earnest as this film is, it just didn't cut it for me. Art, even art as lo-tech and anti-Hollywood as this film is, must be shaped. It has to have a rhythm that builds, not one that peters out. Yes, this film achieves an admirable improvised feeling but what does that matter if it doesn't come together ultimately to move you. And a personal peeve: an adult should have intervened when the script calls for Clarkson to say "I used to be beautiful." She is still lovely. Only a callow youth would see it any other way.
Tempest (1982)
Was there ever anything more beautiful...
...than Susan Sarandon at 36 in The Tempest? Or more intense than Cassavetes? Yes, the film does meander and my attention wandered a bit at the second viewing but the film has many great moments. 1) Cassavetes coming home drunk to a party of his wife's friends and asking her producer played by Paul Mazursky to dance. 2) Susan Sarandon and Molly Ringwald singing "Why do fools fall in love? 3) Cassavetes imploring the gods, "Show me the magic?" Whether or not it's a faithful reinterpretation of Shakespeare is beside the point. One more moment: as the credits roll the actors take their bows, emerging one by one from a Greek doorway. Cassavetes is last. Refusing to bow, he simply walks out the door, gruff and unamused and that's why we miss him so.
Wendigo (2001)
Wendi ....go! A Misbegotten Mess
The worst. If memory serves Larry wrote, directed and edited. Never has there been a more compelling argument for spending a few shekels on a real editor. My guess is Larry falls in love with his scenes to the point where there is no pacing whatsoever. You keeping thinking there's a reason for this scene to go so slowly but there never is. One wonders how the director viewed his "creation." Did he see it as an art film, a horror film, a mythic beastie film, a through-the-child's-eyes film? It manages to fail at every possible level. What I'll never understand is how films this poorly conceived ever get funded.
To teleftaio psemma (1958)
A Gem!
In preparation for a trip to Greece I've been renting all the Greek movies I can find, (alas, it's only a handful) but luckily in Santa Fe we have a wonderful foreign film video rental place that happened to have this film. Usually I try and keep my expectations low but I was pleasantly surprised to discover this black and white gem and more particularly the beautiful Elli Lambeti. She's Audrey Hepburn's tragic Greek shadow. Cacoyannis' political pretensions aside (some have indicated the movie is an indictment of the corrupt postwar middle-class)the film is riveting as human drama and Lambeti shines as a young woman torn between her loyalty to her parents and her deeper commitment to the truth. Alas, Lambeti made far too few films before her death in 1983. Based on this film alone her achievement is solid. A great actress.