pierotti Reviews

The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)

Intersection of Nature and Spirit

[10/10 · 18 August 2008]

This is the most emotionally satisfying film John Sayles has ever made, which tops a long and excellent list. Working with a virtually unknown Irish cast, Sayles brings to life a story that wanders on the borderland between mystical and blue-collar realism, without becoming cloying or simplistic. The only film to which i think Roan Inish can be effectively compared is Whale Rider, but with no insult intended to Whale Rider, to me Roan Inish is a richer and more complex film.

The basic story concerns the relationship between humans and non-humans and how long- standing relationships between species can be torn apart by world events; in this case the Second World War, which forces a community of Irish fisherfolk to relocate to the mainland. A young girl, whose family has been damaged through these actions and other forces, is sent to live with her grandparents on the coast, at which point her nonhuman relatives contrive to bring her and her family back to the home they once shared with other life forms.

The little girl, Fiona, who is the primary human character, played by Jenny Courtney, is wonderfully written and played. She is not your standard cutie-pie, but a budding force of nature. It is obvious why of all the members of her family, the nonhumans single her out for their attention. The story is drawn from the traditional Irish and Scots stories of relationships between humans and seals, or selchies, but transposes this into a more modern setting, without losing any of the mystery or wonder.

One of the strongest recommendations I can give this film is that has become one of the most popular and respected films at Haskell Indian Nations University here in Kansas. Indigenous Americans seem to identify with the experience of the Irish, which shows them that modern European culture has been destructive to Indigenous peoples in Europe, and allows them to realize that there have been and continue to be, Indigenous people with distinct cultures in Europe as well as the Americas.

I was once in a video store, when a person I knew slightly asked me if I could recommend a film that would appeal both to him and his children. Without hesitation I went over and picked up the store's copy of Roan Inish, and told him, "Not only will you enjoy this, but it will give you and your kids a lot to think and talk about." I make the same recommendation to anyone who reads this.

Comanche Moon (2008)

A misleading and bloody mess

[1/10 · 15 January 2008]

This series is supposed to be about the interaction between the Comanche people and the Texas Rangers during the period surrounding the American Civil War. This version however, changes everything around in an attempt to make the Rangers seem sympathetic and the Comanches seem vicious and animalistic. The first episode opens with the Council House Massacre in San Antonio, which was supposed to be a peace negotiation between the Penateka Band and their Texan neighbors. Some Texans started shooting and many individuals from both sides were killed. Another reviewer has argued that this was not the beginning of hostilities between Comanches and Texans, citing the raid on Parker's Fort the previous year as the true beginning. The problem with this line of logic is that the raid on Parker's fort was carried out by Quahada Band Comanches from northwestern Texas. This is well-established because Cynthia Ann Parker, one of the children taken from Parker's Fort ended up living with the Quahada and became the mother of Quahada leader Quanah Parker, who took his mother's name.

The Penateka were meeting at the Council House in San Antonio to explain that they were not responsible for the raids carried out by other Comanches. Texans who decided that any Comanche was guilty started the massacre. After this the surviving Penateka decided to try and avenge themselves and attacked the small coastal town of Linville. In Comanche Moon, however, the writers and director have moved the attack on Linville, which took place in 1836 to an attack on Austin in 1858, with which they open the second episode. The Penateka were demoralized and leaving Texas by 1858, although the Quahada and a few other bands continued to fight. This might not matter, except that Buffalo Hump (Potsanaquip), who is the leader of the Comanche raid on Austin in Comanche Moon, was the Penateka war leader and had abandoned his fight long before 1858.

The irony is that Larry McMurtry purports to be creating a true picture of how Texas was during its early history. Comanche Moon is so inaccurate, however that it ends up being no more accurate and a lot less dramatic than The Searchers, which is a better film. As a result what we end up with in Comanche Moon is vulgar and violent without being enlightening. It is misleading about the behavior of Comanches and acts as if they had no history other than to be bogeymen for Woodrow Call and Augustus MacRae and their friends and loved ones.

Pucked (2006)

A weak episode of Married with Children

[2/10 · 25 May 2007]

I found this film very confusing, because it didn't seem to be about anything, except possibly that Jon Bon Jovi thinks that he or anyone he plays can get away with anything. The character he plays (sort of, he really isn't an actor, but an attitude), seems to sleepwalk through life expecting everything to work out to his advantage, and by god, it does. I really like Estella Warren as an actress, because she knows how to convey dignity and emotion without becoming a cartoon, but even she seems annoyed and disinterested in this film.

David Faustino (best known as Bud Bundy) basically narrates the film, which means that it comes off as an unfunny and weak episode of Married With Children. There is even the obligatory scene where Faustino is taken by a large and presumably unattractive woman. Oddly in this case the premise is that he then falls for this woman, which makes sense, because she (Wendy) is one of the more appealing characters in this film. This relationship makes a lot more sense than the one between Bon Jovi's Frank and Estella Warren's Jessica, which seems based on her conflicted feelings about his irresistibleness and his irresponsibility. Warren is one of the more attractive and appealing actresses around, but she seems to have difficulty working up any enthusiasm for this romance. They have a sex scene that really isn't one, which is odd because this film has lost of shots of bare breasts, but they aren't related to any of the romances.

The title of the film comes from Frank's dream of a female hockey league, but it really ends up being about how easy it is to obtain credit cards in 21st century America. Maybe they should have named the film "Overextended". It would make more sense than "Pucked". Spoiler Alert: If this film really was a cautionary tale about the trouble you can get in using credit cards it might have some redeeming social importance. Instead after acting without concern for anyone, Frank is both redeemed and saved by an absolutely unbelievable deus ex machina, so there appear to be no consequences to the way he acts. In fact the scene where Jessica, who is supposedly a brilliant lawyer, tells Frank how brilliant he is because he is so original, stuck in my craw. It apparently stuck in Warren's as well, because she plays the scene like she is being forced to apologize for something that she doesn't want to feel.

If you are like me, and enjoy watching Estella Warren, and want to see her play a three dimensional woman figuring out relationships, rent Her Minor Thing, which is a much better, and funnier, film.

Her Minor Thing (2005)

Learning the meaning of love

[8/10 · 7 April 2007]

I may be alone in this, but I think the point of this movie is the emotional growth of a tough and impressive but vulnerable young woman. The way Jeana (Estella Warren) is presented at the beginning of this film she comes across as very naive and idealistic. She has been wounded in love, but thinks she has found Mr. Right in Tom (Michael Weatherly) a shallow self-centered TV news reporter who seems to think or talk about little besides himself.

Tom wants to have sex with Jeana but she keeps holding him off. When she explains why she is holding back Tom is so self involved that he can't see this as an interesting aspect of a complex woman, but instead seems to treat it as a weird quirk. He ends up blabbing out Jeana's secret to his cameraman Paul (Christian Kane) over a live feed broadcast to the entire city.

The rest of the film examines the consequences of Tom's lack of discretion on his relationship with Jeana. At first Jeana is very understanding and forgiving, but over time Tom's lack of sensitivity and his ceaseless self-involvement begin to wear on their relationship. Jeana still tries to love Tom, but he seems to care more about sex than he does about her, which may not be what she really wants.

I realize that many viewers of this film have criticized Estella Warren's performance, but to me they have missed the point. Jeana comes off as a young woman who has a pretty good sense of herself, but is weak when it comes to men. Estella Warren seems to wear her beauty more lightly than any other actress. She is a powerful physical presence, but she also comes off as intelligent and self aware. She does not do the histrionics that lead most people to think a person can "act", so she is considered to be a flat or indifferent actress. To me she is more like a female Jeff Bridges or Henry Fonda, an actor who underplays their emotions and seems self-contained.

The last few scenes that Jeana has with Tom are very powerful but they are not blatant or obvious. Some have questioned whether Jeana loves any of the men in this film. I think the answer is obvious, but she has to learn to identify love and distinguish the real thing from her fantasies. By the end of this film it is obvious that Jeana has grown considerably as a woman through her experience and that Tom may never understand what he did wrong, although it should be obvious to anyone who pays attention. Both Weatherly and Warren effectively reveal their characters in these sequences: the depth of Jeana and the shallowness of Tom.

I know this film did not get a wide release but I would rather see this film 100 times than ever see another of the widely released films starring some combination of Ashton Kutcher, Matthew McConaghey, Kate Hudson, Brittany Murphy, Jason Biggs, Sandra Bullock, etc. In Her Minor Thing you get to see a couple of interesting characters actually grow and mature. As a result, this film had one of the most satisfying endings I have ever seen in a romantic comedy.

North Country (2005)

Good Film but Unfortunately not a new Story

[8/10 · 6 November 2005]

This is an excellent film with a first rate cast. It's important for people in the US to realize how systematic behavior like this is in American workplaces and how long it takes to resolve such matters.

One point of interest. North Country is a well-reviewed major film with a wide release yet after seeing it I was reminded very much of a small Canadian film barely released outside of Canada which tells a similar story equally well on probably 10% of the budget of North Country. The film to which I refer is I Accuse, which tells the story of an even more serious case of sexual misconduct on the part of a Canadian MD and the woman who challenges him. The themes are similar, the disbelief with which the first charges are met, the fact that the community, including many women, turn against a woman who tries to speak out against inappropriate treatment. Interestingly, this film stars Estella Warren, a woman every bit as lovely and whose performance in I Accuse is every bit as good as the Charlize Theron's performance which is being pushed for Oscar consideration.

I encourage everyone, especially women, to see both of these films. Together they give people a good understanding of what can happne even in our supposedly liberal societies.

Pursued (2004)

Corporate Crooks

[5/10 · 4 November 2005]

I am going to disagree with every other person who seems to have commented on this film. The worst thing about it is Christian Slater, who plays what I like to think of as a "Garden Variety Hollywood Psycho". Think Bettlejuice with a better complexion in an Armani suit or Hannibal Lecter on a diet of espresso rather than Fava beans. Slater's character Vincent chews the scenery shamelessly and seems to have the omniscient information that these psychos always seem to have. I do agree that Gil Bellows is largely an empty cipher in the center of the movie, he's basically playing the same troubled weak guy he played in Ally McBeal. The only time he comes to life is when he's attacking Slater's character.

As Bellow's wife Estella Warren does her usual decent job, playing a woman confused by her husband's behavior, although the smart woman she seems to be would have seen through Vincent in about 5 minutes. She also needs to work on that anxious look she perfected in Planet of the Apes and uses as her predominant expression throughout most of this film. Still this movie does establish one thing. If Angelina Jolie has the finest lower lip in Hollywood, Estella warren definitely has the mosy sensuous upper lip. There is one scene where Warren comforts her PlanetOTA co-star Michael Clark Duncan, who plays, of all things, a venture capitalist.

Unfortunately all this scene did for me was to think what a great General Thade (another classic Hollywood Psycho) Christian Slater could have been.

The continuity in this film seems odd. Key scenes of exposition, especially between the husband and wife, are missing. The wife appears to change her opinions about her husband and what is going on without ever having a scene where she realizes that Vincent is dangerous and her husband isn't crazy. There are also scenes of high tension with no payoffs. I especially would have liked a scene that wraps up how the situation with Vincent was resolved and whether the crooked cop got taken down. All we get is Vincent dies and Billy, er Benji's company becomes a success with no explanation how or why. I suspect that the filmmakers were trying to make the standard 90 minute film and cut out too much in their effort to meet this demand.

To conclude, if you like Hollywood Psychos and their near invincibility you will probably enjoy this film. If on the other hand you are bothered by bad editing and odd inexplicable motivations on the part of major characters you should probably save your money. On the other hand this is still a better movie than Stra Wars I or the Fantastic 4.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

Tim Burton has always been overrated

[1/10 · 3 August 2005]

It may be a bit late to weigh in on this film, but I feel compelled to if for no other reason than that Tim Burton has just arrogantly messed with another classic, Charlie and Chocolate Factory, and has once again screwed things up. Burton has no concept of plot or acting, his style is entirely visual, and he is dishonest as all get out when he wants to make a point. I'm sorry that Tim had problems with his parents, especially his father, but that does not justify his screwing with classic stories so that he can whine once again about how parents just don't understand you and might even abandon you.

Having got that off my chest, I would like to summarize POTA as follows. The movie makes no sense and the reason it makes no sense is that the director has no vision, no sense of a story that he wants to tell. Even the highly touted ape makeup is a mistake, because the director has no idea whether the apes are supposed to be subhuman or better than human. As a consequence they behave in a manner that simply leaves the viewer confused.

I am a biologist who has studied behavior in apes, so I might be more picky than most, but I defy any viewer to answer the following question. Why are all the female apes chimpanzees? I have watched the ape village scenes several times and to my view there is not a single female gorilla or orang utan in the entire place. Also these female chimps don't look like chimps, but like some sort of odd chimp/human hybrid, which might explain the attraction between Marky Mark and Helena BC, but otherwise feels just thrown in (This is what I mean by Burton throwing logic out the window to make his themes fit his preconceptions). For example why does the female chimp (Carter) have eyebrows, a trait missing from every primate but humans? Also why do chimps, which seem to make up the vast majority of the apes, walk upright except when they charge? This makes them very ineffective as warriors. They can't hold weapons, so why do they wear armor? The acting in this film is confusing and few characters seem realized, and once again I think Burton is to blame. In Burton films the only actors who are memorable are those willing to create their own characters and overact shamelessly, e.g. Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice, Nicholson's Joker, DeVito's Penguin, Walken's headless horseman. In this film this tradition is carried on by Tim Roth's Thade, a character so psychotic it seems amazing that anyone takes him seriously. The cast includes some good actors, but all are handicapped by bad direction. For example, Paul Giamatti an excellent character actor, tries hard to create a believable character in his whining sycophantic slave trading orang utan, but he is made up as a female rather than a male orang utan, which collapses the character completely.

Other actors fare no better. Wahlberg, at best a charming male ingénue, cannot act like a leader, so I was startled by the idea that all the humans would follow his lead when he seems to have no idea as to what he's doing throughout the entire film. The other humans seem to be merely tagging along looking confused. Michael Clarke Duncan, subtle and wonderful in the Green Mile, here plays sort of a King Kong who can talk. As a subtext, why are the Gorillas played by Afrcian American actors, and the chimps by white actors? This leads me to what I think is Burton's greatest weakness, his ability to direct actresses. The only actress who has ever turned in a memorable performance in a Burton film is Michelle Pfeiffer's sly, slinky Catwoman in Batman II. Otherwise excellent actresses have been left to flounder by Burton, e.g. Christina Ricci is Sleepy Hollow, Kim Basinger in Batman. Given this history, I find confusing all of the hostility and crass comments about Estella Warren's performance as Daena, the only human in the film with any personality. Estella Warren is a powerful presence, who in every film in which she appears works from the premise that she is, at the least, the equal of all the male characters and that she is smarter even than most of those. She tries to pull that off in POTA, but she is left to flounder, trying to work off the giant vacuum emitted by Marky Mark. Warren acts using her face to communicate subtle emotions and changes of mood, but that tactic backfires in this film, where subtlety is lost. She gets no perceivable reactions from Wahlberg, who seems lost in his own world, and she has almost no scenes with anyone else. As a result Warren has little to do but look distressed and confused. I think most of the negative comments directed at Warren's acting come from silly insecure young men who feel that a pretty woman should not also be strong and competent, and simply want to ogle her.

To summarize, this film is probably the worst big budget film ever made, but don't blame the actors. As they say in Russia, fish begin to stink from the head. In this case the head is the director.

I Accuse (2003)

Good film about a really strange case

[8/10 · 2 August 2005]

To deal with some of the comments made by others, this is a film made for Canadian television. As such it is well made, but does not have the fanciest production values. It does a good job of capturing the attitudes and social mores of a small town on the Canadian prairie and how the citizens would react when confronted with something they don't want to believe.

This is the first film where the former Olympic athlete and model Estella Warren is given the chance to carry a film by herself and she does an excellent job, making me wish that she would spend more time making films in Canada and less time in Hollywood. where I don't think she is taken seriously enough as an actress.

Basically the film explores how society reacts when a woman from a blue collar background (Warren) accuses a prominent small town doctor (Hannah) of rape. On a larger scale it is also an exploration of problems involved in many rape cases, where the accused is a prominent individual, and the victim becomes not only a victim of her attacker, but of society as a whole.

Warren makes the character believable. She actually underplays the emotional aspects, which makes her more believable and anchors the film in reality. As her accused attacker Hannah does a good job of playing outraged and smarmy. His attitude, especially during some of the final scenes in court are both hard to take and frightening in their arrogance.

Overall this film does a good job of exploring issues which society does not like to face and builds suspense and emotional power without resorting to the overdone histrionics that might be expected from American television or Hollywood's dealing with such an explosive issue.

Tangled (2001)

Whatever Happened to Lanie Boggs

[4/10 · 13 February 2005]

Tangled is an apt description of this film. It jumps around in both time and point of view so that you never really have a clear view of what actually happens in the climax.

The one thing that kept going through my mind while watching Tangled was that if Rachel Leigh Cook's Lanie Boggs from "She's all That" had gone off to college convinced that she was now attractive to boys she would have grown into the neurotic, annoying Jenny Kelly she plays in this film. Like Lanie, Jenny is pretentious, arty, and self involved. She does however have a doting admirer in David, a shy boy planning to become a writer who appears to be charmed by Jenny's bohemian, pseudo intellectual ways.

David makes the mistake of introducing Jenny to his wacko ex-roommate Alan, one of those guys who is apparently irresistible to women. Alan is better, or at least more dramatic, looking than David. He also appears strongly inclined towards a criminal career, which probably makes him a 'bad boy'. In any case Alan moves in on Jenny, posing nude for her and dragging her off to 'adventures' in the woods. For some strange reason this dysfunctional group becomes a threesome, with Alan and Jenny tormenting David with their romantic activities. I have never seen a crueler scene in a film than when Alan asks David to give him and Jenny 15 minutes alone while they are walking back to their car from an adventure in an abandoned house where something nasty took place in the past involving a good son and a prodigal son.

At this point sunshine temporarily enters this dreary film as Alan sets up David with Elise (Estella Warren) a big, funny, sexy girl who originally thinks Alan is asking her out, but manages to respond well when she discovers she has made a date with David instead. Many people have disparaged Estella Warren as an actress, but in the scene in the café with David when she realizes he is her date, Estella Warren does more acting using her face alone than Rachel Leigh Cook does in the entire film. Watching Warren's look change from disappointment to embarrassment to pity to sympathy in the space of a minute shows a genuine sense of how human emotions work. Later as Elise and David walk and talk, Elise's self deprecating humor and ability to poke gentle fun at David's pretensions mark her as a keeper, at least to me.

(Spoiler alert) Instead of thanking his lucky stars that a girl like Elise would be interested in him, David remains obsessed with Jenny. Jenny catches Alan and Elise together in flagrante delicto (apparently like Ado Annie, Elise is a girl who can't say no), causing Jenny to throw a monumental, but very arty, hissy fit. This serves to draw David and Jenny together, especially after Alan is arrested for possession with intent to distribute.

Alan is convinced that Jenny set him up, out of jealousy,and he plots his revenge during his year in prison. Turns out however, that David is not quite the wimp he appears to be. He used Elise to set up Alan and then turns in Alan so he can have the rebounding Jenny to himself.

Everything culminates a year or so later in the abandoned house where David shoots Alan, either to protect himself and Jenny (the official version), or from anger (the apparent true version) because as he says, "After all I did for her, she still wanted the a**hole". At least at this point most men in the audience will feel sympathy with David.

Evil Remains (2004)

Confusing but atmospheric

[4/10 · 13 February 2005]

Like some others the only reason I rented this movie was because of Estella Warren. Not just because she is a hot babe, but because she seems to be trying to develop into an interesting actress, however, she also seems to be struggling with the types of films and roles she is offered.

Overall Evil Remains is a mess. Most scenes are filmed in natural light which especially in the indoor scenes makes everything hard to see and action very difficult to follow. The film to which it bears the greatest resemblance for the first hour or so is not the slasher movies to which it is regularly compared, but the very strange and disturbing Session 9, which also concerns a group of people trying to function in place of great spiritual disturbance.

For some reason the male and female characters are completely separate for all of the crucial action. Perhaps this is related to the alleged lesbian theme, which is never developed. I still have no idea what happens to any of the male characters except two of them seem to die, of course that's hardly news in a movie of this kind. I'll return to the third male character later.

Meanwhuile the two women wander the woods and find lots of bear traps, the function of which is never explained. This keeps the women away from the house so they can conveniently return to be threatened by something? I'm still not sure what. Anyway during the whole film Estella Warren's Christy is the only character who ever seems to act in a rational matter, making her sort of the equivalent of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloweeen.

I think that one major issue with Estella's career is that she almost always plays a strong, sensible woman who happens to be lovely, For some reason this combination seems offputting, perhaps even threatening, to the teenage boys at whom most Hollywood films are targeted. In every movie she's been in, except for The Cooler, Estella has been the strongest and most memorable character. In the wretched remake of Planet of the Apes she was the frustrated young human who had to watch Marky Mark disappear up his own asshole. In Driven she played the only actual woman present. In Tangles she played a funny sexy girl caught up in the head games of a trio of self-involved neurotics. In Kangaroo Jack she appears to be the only character who can think things out. Now in Evil Remains she is again the strong woman faced with insanity and irrational behavior.

(Spoiler Alert) The intelligence of her character means that she is the only apparent survivor. My suspicion was that Mark was the actual killer, possessed by the spirit of the house, or some such nonsense. He is the only other character you never see die. This would also explain the professor's odd warnings about "being sure of your reasons for going" at the beginning and end of the film. Having said this, I hate the ending of this film. The implication that Christy, as the only survivor, would be accused of all the deaths and locked up is nihilistic and does not conform to the spirit of such films.

To sum up this film wants to be more than it is. It is not really frightening to anyone used to such films. Like Session 9, what it is is dreary and depressing.

Driven (2001)

Little heart and no soul

[4 August 2004]

I find myself perplexed by the hostile comments concerning Estella Warren's character, Sophia Simone, in Driven. Ms. Warren was chosen for this role because she fit the character, i.e. the type of model/minor actress that often hang around race car drivers. She was given the thankless task of having to play off two very wooden actors in Schweiger and Pardue, who seem to be obsessed with one another in a sort of odd homoerotic subtext. Other than her role as beard to these two, Estella's role in Driven is to stand around looking concerned, which she does reasonably well, especially considering this was her first major film role.

Sophia is given no backstory. Apparently she is a synchronized swimmer, which is the only thing that could explain her swimming pool scene, which is esthetically lovely but unrelated to the plot. Incidentally, that pool scene is the only scene in the entire film with believable emotions, which makes me suspect that it was not written by Stallone, and may even have been improvised. Not surprisingly, this scene is often left out of Driven when it is shown on TV. Thus the only scene in the movie with a discernible heart is removed, leaving the film even more cold and empty than it already is.

The problems with Driven is that is all about special effects, but pretends to be about human beings. Stallone has been milking the Rocky formula endlessly, and does so again, stressing male competition as a form of bonding. No female character in a Stallone film is ever allowed to do anything but look worshipfully at the male characters, waiting patiently for them to come to her, if they survive. In that pool scene Ms. Warren does something unique for a female in a Stallone film. She shows that a female character has a skill and a life outside of, and independent of, the male characters. The hard thing for me to accept is that a woman of such skill and beauty would ever allow a man to tell her she is just "a distraction" in his life and have anything to do with him ever again.

Overall, Driven is a fairly dull and pedestrian movie. It is not the worst film ever made, but it is what one would expect from a collaboration between Sylvester Stallone and Renny Harlin, two self important males with large egos and small talent. Neither has ever made a film with any real soul. Who would expect anything different when they work together?