Change Your Image
claudius131
Reviews
Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
Dross in the Moonlight
I would not have thought that anyone really needs more proof that Allen has completely lost his touch, but here he goes and proves it again.
I guess it's reached the point where actors and crew now feel so sorry for octogenarian Allen that they dare not tell him that his plots and dialogue are on the nose entirely.
In this case the actors did the best they could with the thin pickings doled out to them in the lame script, full of expository dialogue and lacking in any subtext whatsoever.
That said, Colin Firth appeared to be channeling Basil Fawlty most of the time.
One can only hope that Allen decides to give it all away now and thereby salvage some of his reputation as a movie maker.
The Burglar (1957)
Plot OK, script not so.
As others have noted, the script is not well written.
It's a good example of what can happen when a novelist adapts his own work for the screen. When it comes to editing, authors just hate having to kill their darlings, and so it was with Goodis leaving in those numerous dreadfully long monologues, which might be acceptable in a novel where the plot plays out in the reader's mind, but are inexcusable in a movie where the rule is 'show it, don't tell it'.
Unless dialog moves the plot forward it needs to be excised.
Goodis gave the director some real challenges, and what we end up with are characters not able to look at each other but instead stare without emotion while they babble on interminably about themselves, stopping the action dead.
Otherwise the plot, apart from some logic holes, is a good one, and typical of Goodis.
Casting is another problem for me. Mansfield's acting is simply atrocious.
Durea is a fine performer but having to act like and say that his age is 36, when in fact he is and looks almost 50, jars.
Peter Capell chews the scenery trying to depict Baylock.
Stewart Bradley (Charlie) personifies evil. I enjoyed his performance. I think Goodis writes best when he's writing for the villain of the piece.
Mr. Reliable (1996)
Nonsense!
A highly fictionalized account of the actual events. For a start the actual siege was in winter in New South Wales, not summer in Queensland as filmed. Glenfield in 1968 was not a deserted dusty piece of industrial outback wasteland but a suburb of low rent fibros, side by side.
And there was no Hollywood style ending for the career criminal Mellish. He was not accepted by the Army but instead he was interned for a term in a psychiatric hospital. Soon after release he was jailed for 3 years for demanding money with menaces.
Beryl Muddle divorced him immediately and Mellish never saw her again.
So much for "this is a true story".
Talk about making a celluloid hero out of a total loser.