cjpmak Reviews

Don't Look Now (1973)

Excellent film.

[8/10 · 19 July 2005]

And what makes it excellent is the classical music, the setting in Venice, a great performance from Julie Christie, and the story itself, which was well-written, interesting and suspenseful, fast-moving and with sympathetic characters. I also thought the cinematography was well-done. Not too many downsides to the film. LOL Even the Blair Witch type ending would have worked if only the character had been revealed as less grotesque, which was just too much. It seemed sort of anti-semitic, how that role was cast. But that's certainly arguable. Great film, nonetheless, especially considering that it is a film from the 70's, and many films from that era have dated badly, whereas this one hasn't hardly at all. See it.

Crash (I) (2004)

Tries to cover too many topics in one film

[3/10 · 9 May 2005]

I really did not enjoy this film. It tries to cover too many issues in two hours, and tries too hard to be a tearjerker.

It's about a car crash and the way in which the people involved in it possess lives which are linked with each other. It takes a modern "serious" issue like racism or guns and assigns it to a subplot woven into the film, but as a result, you're pulled in a lot of different directions, and the film just never seems to find a focus. It seemed like a greeting card's evil twin - covers serious issues superficially, gives us MTV emotional moments, doesn't satisfactorily resolve loose threads, doesn't really have a point.

I would not recommend this film.