This page was born out of a desire to dish out more opinions than time constraints allow and from suggestions trusted critics have given me that shorter, more concise analysis would draw more attention to my site. I am not the kind of writer who is short and sweet- as anyone who has read my work knows, I ramble on and on and on and on and on sometimes. I get so choked by my passion, I cannot stop the flow of words. I do not consider the following blubrs to be significant writing, but the page is a platform for me to voice assorted musings and opinions and a place for those who are not really interested in in-depth writings to get a feel for my tastes and views on cinema.
Alphabetically:
An Affair to Remember (1957)
Affliction (1998)
All About Eve (1950)
Amadeus (1984)
An American in Paris (1951)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Black Orpheus (1959)
Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962)
Die Hard (1988)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Emma (1995)
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)
Le Million (1931)
The Miracle Worker (1962)
Orpheus (1949)
Out of Africa (1985)
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Sophie's Choice (1982)
Three Kings (1999)
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Walkabout (1971)
An Affair to Remember (1957) (C)
A romantic classic that falls apart with outrageously unnecessary musical numbers and an all-too-blatantly-foul tear-jerking move. Even the magnificent Grant and Kerr can't save this one.
Affliction (1998) (C)
Nolte and Coburn are superb, each turning in one of their greatest performances. The film itself is vomit-inducing in its complacency, voice-over narration that is corny and out of place, and a powerful message in need of a better movie.
All About Eve (1950) (A)
Gloriously venomous. Bette Davis relishes every line like a piece of heavenly candy, and the dialogue from Mankiewicz's great, celebrated script is crackling. Anne Baxter (is she related to Kathleen Turner?- they look like mother and daughter and both play evil characters) is devilish, and Marilyn Monroe shines with dumbness in a brief role.
Amadeus (1984) (A)
Offbeat, operatic, sumptuous, and theatrical interpretation of a rumored jealousy. Very strange, but always shaking and powerful, even during moments of giddy Baroque perversion.
An American in Paris (1951) (B)
Has the corniest storyline of all the Gene Kelly musicals, but is still a joy to watch. The visual aspects are fantastic and eye-catching, like chocolate, and the music 'swonderful. Too bad it just can't match the great (superb, one and only, magnificent, masterpiece, etc.) Singin' in the Rain, or even Donen's corny-but-delightful Funny Face (which uses some of the same Gershwin music).
Anatomy of a Murder (1959) (C+)
I have yet to understand what is so great about this Preminger dude. Anatomy of a Murder is your standard courtroom drama, unique only because it flung words about like "panties" in the Code era. Otto Preminger's Laura (which I saw for the first time, coincidentally, exactly a month ago) was quite bland too. Both films' plots are connected to the obsession of a female character which leads to murder. Perhaps it is that Otto's work was groundbreaking, and then became the template for everything after it, thereby seeming trite and banal after numerous clones had been produced. But I confess to enjoying the ridiculed Stanley Kramer melodrama Judgement at Nuremberg, another court movie, much better than this disappointment. However, George C. Scott is commanding here, as is Ben Gazzara in a performance that isn't consistently successful. The movie isn't bad- it's often compelling- but it's so mediocre. The film is worth seeing just for Duke Ellington's marvelous score, though, which is scorching, never intrusive, and lends atmosphere to this rather drowsy picture.
Anna and the King (1999) (B-)
Andy Tennant enjoys pageantry, and this film isn't bad, but it can't even come close to matching the unexpected semiprecious gem that was his Ever After. This movie is enjoyable, but do we really need another adaptation of the same story. The film is more politically, historically accurate, and the romance is accented but, c'mon, I'd rather watch the R&H one.
Apollo 13 (1995) (B)
A very straightforward docudrama, almost tediously so. Apollo 13 succeeds, though, because of wonderfully realized characters and subtly moving performances (Kathleen Quinlan is not as good as I expected her to be and as she usually is, though). Some parts drag, and some are exciting. I think the movie accomplishes what it sought to be- a film about camaraderie and the wonders of space. The facts are presented with a dry accuracy, but James Horner's score gets us through the stiff places.
Beloved (1998) (A-)
A beautiful, poetic adaptation of Toni Morrison's masterpiece. It doesn't try to compete with the book (how could it?). Instead, it understands that the novel and the film are different mediums. Awe-inspiring performances and cinematography; painful and intense to watch, but ultimately fulfilling.
Black Orpheus (1959) (B+)
In Cocteau's Orpheus, there isn't much passion between the title character and Eurydice. The film is mainly about the struggle of the poet. Here, the romance is all. In many ways, I prefer this film (the first to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, I believe) to Cocteau's more sober, gloomy version, though both are equally stunning visually in their own way. Black Orpheus is a fun interpretation of the Greek myth, and it's a spectacle with exquisite, sunny colors and a percussive score giving many scenes their life. The visuals seem more important than the actual story which, in this case, works for the film; Black Orpheus' greatest strength is its success in capturing the aura of this Rio de Janeiro Carnival setting, which seems more fantastical than real. The film makes a sharp shift from the tonic, exuberant Carnival scenes to the realization of the existance of death, with real images like ambulances and electric wires mixed with a little dark German Expressionism. As a work of cinematography and costume design and art direction, Black Orpheus is enveloping. Even the power of Lourdes de Oliveira's performace as Mira, Orpheus's fiancee, is visual; she has a cunning, selfish, prima donna-vixen thing going on in her face and posture, an attitude fully brought out by the flattering costumes. There's also an aesthetic tenderness to Breno Mello and Marpessa Dawn; they look like angels. Lea Garcia as Serafina is especially fun; she has a matter-of-fact passion for her slob boyfriend. The films' pacing allows us to absorb all these pretty images; we walk away from Black Orpheus remembering the sweaty, vibrant atmopshere rather than the story.
Children of Paradise (1945) (A+)
Often called the Gone With the Wind of art films. It has many parallels to GWTW- it is one of the great film soap operas, certainly one of the most sophisticated and moving. Arletty often seems too insincere in her exoticism for her romantic part (she looks a bit like Dietrich), but Barrault is sensitive and has an aura of infant-like innocence. The film is ultimatley about how difficult true love is.
City Lights (1931) (A+)
You wanna make a romantic movie, or any movie, for that matter? You watch this. This may be manipulative, but I say it may be the purest silent film, the purest romantic film, and the purest film of all time. Maybe. The final scene hasn't exactly made me cry before, but it just leaves me in partial shock. It is fragility-meets-true love.
Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962) (B)
Corinne Marchand is quite good as the title character, who we follow for 90 minutes on the day she learns she might have cancer. Directed by Agnes Varda, one of the great French New Wave directors, Cleo From 5 to 7 is an exercise in real time. It's unbelievable that all the things that happen in this film could happen during only an hour-and-a-half period, but that's quite irrelevant. The movie also fiddles around with an open ending (characteristic of many New Wave films, including The 400 Blows), which doesn't quite work (though the image of Marchand and Antoine Bourseiller, who gives a wonderful performance as her possible soul mate, is relatively moving). The film's most successful experiment is with its cinematography, which stunningly uses tricks with mirrors and such, and captures Paris beautifully. The first scene is done in color, which leaves us with the feeling that something's off-balance when we never see color again in the film. The quick editing, while usually very affective, sometimes only makes the film seem more off-balance. Cleo From 5 to 7 is still worth watching, even though the impression it leaves is a bit slight.
Die Hard (1988) (B)
Die Hard is a shameless teenage boy fantasy of gory heroism packed with action and dripping testosterone. It works. It cartwheels and backflips its way into an endless explosion of F/X, perverted violence, and exhilarating setpieces, like the magnetic Bruce Willis walking over glass shards. Die Hard employs a Hollywood action formula which goes something like this: a) find a setting where danger lurks from every corner, and b) put an ordinary man with bulging muscles in that setting and have him try to save the world and his wife (and have him take his shirt off in one scene so something will appeal to the ladies). Die Hard's hero is surprisingly charismatic for this kind of thriller. This movie has a slick villain and a good sense of humor about all the gushing blood, sweat, and guns that symbolize savage machoness. There's nothing highbrow here- you can feel the Hollywood pupeteers pulling strings- and the movie is a drawnout commercial, and an enjoyable one.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) (B+)
Luis Buñuel is such an assured director. This film is a delicious romp that pokes fun at six bourgeois friends who can't seem to ever get through a dinner without an interruption, and at us, the audience. The movie is lightly, charmingly cynical, without a seriously emotional bone in its body, and it is, as Pauline Kael wrote in her review, as much a delicate-yet-clever attack on the bourgeois audience as it is on the middle class. There are humorous connections, like food and sex to death, and organized society and religion to repression, but it never seems that Buñuel is irritated or angry. The characters go in a repetitive circle, as the two lovers did in That Obscure Object of Desire. The friends' arrogance is simply a delight, and the most funny scene is probably the one in which a couple must fornicate in their garden so they won't be heard by their visitors, and then later, a priest applies for a job as their gardener. The film is incohesive, though, probably purposely, but since the various vignettes don't seem to come together, the audience is left in stitches, but bewildered. The film is messy and scatterbrained, but infectiously nonchalant. It's a sort of precursor to Spike Jonze.
Emma (1996) (B+)
Emma is cute in a sophisticated way. Gwyneth Paltrow, the star of Miramax, plays a muddled matchmaker with charm and skill. Sophie Thompson has a lot of itchy, chatty, over-the-top verve.
The film is humorously edited, which gives it devilish irony, but the quick cutting eventually becomes a bit distracting. The film is so lighthearted, with its carefree tone and funny Rachel Portman score, that it makes one feel deliciously woozy.
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) (B)
This at-times gloriously sappy melodrama brings one to tears with its exploration of selfish unrequited love. But I don't think it ever goes beyond melodrama; it wades in the pool of its cliches, and does fine, pulling out all the tricks. It only becomes annoying when, at the end, I asked myself, "Is that all?" Still, Joan Fontaine, who I've never really liked as an actor, gives a excellent performance as the woman pining for the love of a famous musician. There's a frailty about her, and we become her, and also become protective over her. This is the only work of the celebrated Ophuls I've yet seen. I can't say I was extremely impressed.
Le Million (1931) (B+)
The two Rene Clair films I've seen, Le Million and Under the Roofs of Paris, are so simple in storyline that they've lost the ability to really impress a modern viewer like a Citizen Kane or a Vertigo can still do. But Le Million, which is, for me, the better of these two great films, is so elegantly done that when I think back on it, I feel nothing but fondness for it. Being one of the very first musicals ever made, it lacks the smoothness that Hollywood later established with their musicals. The editing is uneven in spots. There's a lot of charm in the movie, though, and Clair creates a glorious, reserved atmosphere. There's suspense and downplayed romance; the final scenes are supremely strung together. Clair uses such ordinary characters that one thinks of the film as short, sweet, compact, yet both Le Million and Under the Roofs of Paris are quite complexly structured. Both films have the mood of French romance in them that we've always connected the country to; there's something deeply romantic about the simple living that surrounds the simple-yet-spectacular stories the films tell.
The Miracle Worker (1962) (B)
The story of Helen Keller is one of great perplexity for us who have our senses: how can one possibly function without sight and hearing? Isn't it like living perpetually enclosed in darkness? Arthur Penn does a marvelous job of staging great marathons of determined energy in his The Miracle Worker; the most obvious example of this would be the long sequence in which Anne Bancroft, in a brilliantly acrobatic, gymnastic-type performance, and Patty Duke have a battle of wits in the dining room. This scene is executed using no dialogue and very active camera movement. Penn's work is too often botched up by the abominable score, which makes this otherwise unsentimental translation of the Keller story overtly melodramatic. Duke's peformance, like Bancroft's, is almost entirely physical, and it's great to watch.
Orpheus (1949) (B+)
Orpheus is just a splendid, mythical film about the struggle of the artist. I don't think it ever really soars, but that doesn't matter. The imagery is something to be wowed over, not because the visual effects are half as sophisticated as Jurassic Park or Independence Day, but because they're not sophisticated at all. Therein lies the poetry of the piece. Even though Cocteau brought the myth to modern France, it still has something ancient and Greek about it. Jean Marais does a nice job as the title character, and Francois Perier does my favorite piece of acting in the cast. However, Maria Casares never fails to own all her scenes. Whenever she's on the screen, all you can look at is her. As Death, she has a fuzzy distinctness, something very black-or-white about her, and what made her so annoying in Children of Paradise is what makes her so at-home here. Cocteau actually wanted Garbo or Dietrich in the role of Death, who seduces Orpheus away from his wife with inspiration for poetry. Garbo, who is certainly one of the greatest movie stars who has ever lived simply because her intoxicating aura has a real fragility, might have done great things with the role, though perhaps that emotional glint in her eye would have ruined it, and Dietrich, who has been the subject of the most intoxicating images of our past century, would have been an ideal Death. But Casares, dressed in a black gown that makes her look like a slinky dominatrix, embodies lethal seduction. Poets live and die a million times in one lifetime- they are masochists out for experiences to write about- and, because Orpheus is about that, it succeeds.
Out of Africa (1985) (C)
Who knew Meryl Streep walking through Kenyan grasslands could be so boring? I've never been a real Streep fanatic, though I respect her and love a number of her performacnes. Here, her voice reads the writings of Karen Blixen in voice-over and it sounds like poetry, and her face, which has made her suitable for playing European, foreign-looking characters, shows a strength and fragility that is poetic, too. It can't save the movie, though, or her flat deliveries of some of the dialogue. Out of Africa, with its breathtaking, picturesque setting, is simply Oscar bait. The movie is stiff, impersonal, and distant. And why is Robert Redford always playing the well-read man who knows everything about life and love and teaches the confused, pathetic woman about independence? Here, it becomes a major pain. "You confuse need with want- you always have," he accuses Streep's character, and all I could do was scoff. In the end, only the picture-postcard images of the sun rising over Africa is memorable, and the love story is disposable.
Raise the Red Lantern (1991) (A-)
A very sad thing to realize, for me, while watching this film, is that it is probable my ancestors experienced the horrors of China depicted in this film. In America and other free countries, we take for granted freedom and Zhang Yimou, the brilliant Fifth Generation Chinese director, reminds us that we should not. Raise the Red Lantern works beautifully as a melodrama- it has the twists and turns of a sophisticated soap opera- but it also works as a stinging indictment of Chinese government. The worst human feeling is hopelessness and, for the four concubines in the film, that is the one feeling they know by heart and the one feeling they must learn to push aside. The independent Fourth Wife finds it difficult to cope with the stringent routines, the 'formal' sex, and the competition for attention, so she goes crazy. In 1920's China, it was inevitable for a lot of women that they would either be a concubine or a servant. The dark Master's face is never shown, but actress Gong Li provides every note to evoke exoticism, emotional danger, and mangled humanity.
The Seven Year Itch (1955) (B+)
This sex farce is really watered down, but it still hits the nail on the head with wit and Billy Wilder's brand of skill. The film isn't great, but, despite an ending that leaves one desiring more, it's fun and humorous. Tom Ewell sinks into the background as the husband tortured by "the seven year itch"; the movie pokes fun at the stereotypical male addictions: cigarettes, booze, and women. This is truly Marilyn Monroe's film. She is obviously a believable male sex object, but she is so gloriously naive and almost childlike, she becomes more like a daughter to any man who knows her. She's brilliantly bubbly and frothy, and the "Chopsticks" scene is wonderful to watch. Her sexiness is tinged with a refreshing Orphan-Annie-innocence wheras other sex symbols like Rita Hayworth and Mae West (both of whom came before her) had intoxicating attitude.
Sophie's Choice (1982) (C+)
Sophie's Choice is so literary it can hardly succeed as a film. The narration by Peter McNiccol is dull and ends up just about killing the movie altogether; there are various allusions to literary giants like Whitman; conversations between the characters are oddly eloquent; and the characters do things in the film that are more movingly pulled off in books. The film is about a chivalrous writer from down South (McNiccol) who moves to Brooklyn to finish a novel, and is quickly grabbed by the tentacles of a singularly mysterious couple. Sophie (Meryl Streep) is the delicate beauty, and Nathan (Kevin Kline) is the violent dominator. Sophie's Choice attempts to tantalize us by gradually revealing Sophie's Holocaust secrets as our Southern gentleman protagonist watches in awe, recording every jerk of the head and every confession in his memory. Sophie's deep secret turns out to be amazingly heart-wrenching (it is revealed in the most brilliantly painful scene about the mothers' plight during the Holocaust that I've ever witnessed), but it is given such weight (it is, after all, the title of the film, and the final secret Sophie reveals) yet cannot even begin to explain all of Sophie's guilt and anguish. It is presented at the wrong time, too... it's supposed to be the most significant scene in the film, but the proposal/sex scenes surrounding it are so slightly and delicately done that they drown it out. McNiccol has a quality that really grounds this up-in-the-air film; Kline tries his best with a role that is hopelessly looney (his character has secrets too, but though Alan J. Pakula attempts to give them importance, the scenes are executed with silliness and are stylistically incongruous to those of Sophie's confessions.) The film is structured in a way that you know the gist of the story by the end, but the details of it become muddy in the mind because the director never seems to know what he wants to do or in which direction he wants to go. Pakula keeps zigzagging and taking detours that the film takes on a sluggish pace, like a tired donkey that never gets the heavy load off its back. Meryl Streep, however, is a marvel. She doesn't rely on mechanical emotions like she did in Out of Africa and the more recent One True Thing. All her thoughts and feelings are clear on the surface, which works for her worn-out, weary role. She evokes an image of cracked porcelain, and her mannerisms (she's constantly cowering) are those of a woman who has been jilted a million and one times, but still has hope. Her perfect European broken English helps a great deal; it has an instability about it. Sophie's only hope, after all her many tribulations, is to live for something, and she has found that something in Nathan's decadence and tenderness, and she can stand his manic abusiveness if it means she can get a little sunshine on his good days. The relationships between the three main characters is fascinating, particularly that of Sophie's and Nathan's. It's emotionally kinky and sadomasochistic, but in a romantically desperate way. Sophie's Choice tells us that these creatures are soft people, hardened by the horrors of the memories they've learned to bear, and perhaps a fetishistic, painful love is the only love they can ever know. They don't consummate they're relationship with marriage, but with death.
Three Kings (1999) (B+)
Three Kings is so fresh and invigorating- it is a new spin on the war film, both visually and content-wise- but it is also very mainstream and has Hollywood studio tendencies. Its director is David O. Russell, whose two previous films were independents. I saw parts of his gross-out comedy of incest, Spanking the Monkey, which I couldn't stand, and Three Kings is extremely different. This is his first studio film, and he manages to take the action-comedy-caper-war film conventions, add his brand of originality, wierdness, and MTV chic, and still have a crowd-pleasing ending which doesn't feel false. The cinematography bleeches the colors from most of the images in the first few acts, and it is a superb technique that sets Three Kings apart from other war films that are usually filled with golden, autumnal colors. The editing is inventive and effectively sloppy. The film manages somehow to sneak light political trappings into a big-budget movie, which is admirable. George Clooney's star status has been solidified. He is, first and foremost, a star, not an actor, but he is a great star and a very good actor in the old-fashioned sense of the words. He is our Bogart, our Gary Cooper (though he has not proved himself yet to be as great as either of them)- he always plays direct, authoritative characters who are charismatic heroes. He has the look, the voice, the posture, and the acting style to make the old good-guy character work, and he's magnetic. Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and especially Spike Jonze are good in this film, but Nora Dunn steals the show everytime she's onscreen. Three Kings is enjoyable, but the violence is sloppy (we enter a human body and witness what happens to it when a bullet enters) and very responsible, and is made awful to watch by the editing. The Iraqis in the story are very human, and the story becomes a welcomed mess of cultures, goals, politics, patriotism, family, race, and human dignity. The film is an oddity in the realm of Hollywood, but is absolutely mainstream.
12 Monkeys (1995) (B+)
Gilliam has crafted an eloquent, prismatic, and kaleidoscopic Blade Runner/Looney Tunes poem. The film is thought-provoking, but endlessly inventive and entertaining. Pitt is interesting, and the final sequence is marvellously sustained. It can be seen in many different ways, but I think it perfectly depicts the fear of inevitability and fate, and meditates on ignorance, authority, and illusion. There's a nice Hitchcockian-Vertigo strand in the last few scenes.
Walkabout (1971) (A)
Thinking about Walkabout sends chills up my spine- it is a quiet film that is busy with life and the torturous difficulty of connecting with others. Nicolas Roeg does not just contrast the modern world with the natural world, he compares the two also, in quick cuts and haunting juxtapositions. In the end, the modern world is a realm that covers up the raw human elements of eroticism, anguish, and killing, and the aborigine of the natural world cannot understand why this is so. Walkabout is not so naive to say his world is better off, though, as we realize that realism and honesty and rawness might not be what we're looking for either.