Change Your Image
mcman
Reviews
Queer as Folk (2000)
Worth watching
I watch this show to be entertained, to laugh a lot, to oggle, to
ponder, to cry a bit. I also watch it because I yearn to see stories
told that speak to me of my life. Straight love stories go a fair way
but in the end can't reproduce the nuances, the flavour that comes
from the interaction of characters living in contemporary gay life.
But that alone isn't enough: I also want good production values,
good acting, credible writing and sufficient plot choices, conflicts or
dilemmas to make it worthwhile to come back week after week. Queer As Folk does all of that for me.
Tigerland (2000)
Interesting and enjoyable
I enjoyed this film. Most of my reasons for doing so have been
canvassed by other reviewers, so I'd like to add a few observations
of my own that I haven't read elsewhere.
Firstly, this didn't seem to me to be a film specifically about the
Vietnam War, though it is anti-war in the final analysis. I saw this
film as being about the brutalising at home of decent young men
by our military so as to create efficient, disciplined & uniformed
killers. The setting is 1971, but we it might just as well be 1941 or
2001, just as much a preface to "Saving Private Ryan" or "Black
Hawk Down". Several of the characters in this ensemble piece do
not make it through the training; some manage to find the legal
means to opt out, while others are terminally warped by the vision
of cold humanity taught by their trainers.
Secondly, it seems to me to be also a film about the survival of
humane spirit despite this process. The lead character, Bozz,
knows how to escape, legally or otherwise, but he discovers a
reason for staying that has nothing to do with any flag-waving
notion of glory; but rather to share with and not shirk from whatever
might happen to his comrades, his fellow trainees.
Thirdly, the cast lacks a high-profile lead and this helps avoid any
of the characters being imbued with a star actor's personality.
This helps the film achieve its aim of allowing us to look
disinterestedly at this diverse group of young men, and observe
the different ways they react to training. The even distribution of so
many roles (as in "Black Hawk Down" or "Gosford Park" or
"Amelie"), incidentally, will hopefully help dispel Hollywood
scriptwriter William Goldman's strange theory that there can't be
more than 6 chief characters in any good script.
Fourthly, and finally, it intrigues me to see yet another example of a
non-native actor playing a character from another culture. Colin
Farrell possesses a George Clooney-like half-charm, half-cheekiness about him that endears him to the audience,
although I'm not sure how good a Texan identity his performance
might be. I don't doubt the talent and brilliance of Englishmen like
Tim Roth and Gary Oldman playing Americans, or Americans like
Renee Zellwegger and Julianne Moore playing Brits, or Australian
Cate Blanchett playing both, and similarly, Colin Farrell here; but
are we seeing the internationalising of character performances in
this most international of artforms? How differently would an
American actor such as Matthew McConaughey, for instance,
have handled the scene in the mess kitchen? The sense of locale
that was significant in "Fargo" or "The Straight Story" can be lost by
a different casting choice. Every character "lives" in a specific place
and for an actor to take us, the audience, there needs more than
just a good accent.
Shallow Grave (1994)
Starts well, ends well; pity about the middle
There's a lot to admire here: good camerawork, fine acting. But the
film was for me a disappointment, with an unsatisfying middle
bookended between an arresting beginning and a chilling and
bloody ending.
Here we have 3 young characters, who share an apartment and
who have graduated with honours from the Seinfeld School of
moral behaviour, who take the opportunity presented to them to
enrich themselves with someone else's bounty. The triangular
household begins to unravel as the stolen money and what they
do to conceal their theft of it effects each of them and how they
regard each other.
Director Danny Boyle is very good at creating an almost
claustrophobic atmosphere between the three leads, very well
played by Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox and Ewan McGregor.
But this middle section of the film, which feels almost like a piece
written for theatre with its theatrically sized apartment filmed
heavily around its centre-stage front door, ultimately lets the film
down. Unlike "A Simple Plan" (mentioned by other reviewers), I
never felt these three to be trapped in their characters, and that
they were responding to the unfolding events with inevitability.
Rather it felt to me as if sufficient screen time had elapsed and it
was time to give the audience a climactic jolt. And a fine jolt it is,
too, worthy of the film's beginning, but not sufficiently connected to
what has been happening in-between. A pity.
The Maker (1997)
Starts well, ends badly
If ever I need to renew my enthusiasm about current filmmaking, a film featuring the talents of Mary Louise Parker is a pretty good place to start. Her part in this film is as a supporting character, and the few scenes in which she appears and fleshes out the kindly but down to earth police officer underline how this film's best parts unfortunately don't add up to a good movie.
The leads are good (Rhys-Meyers is a talent to watch, Balk has always interested me and if Modine just sat and dribbled, I know he could make it look rivetting), the script contains some nice character exchanges, the camera work has some nice touches, and director Tim Hunter puts effort into giving the film some unexpected lift (such as sitting a crim at a desk on open ground beside an airport runway, and getting the art department to set up a backyard breakfast patio of white picket fence and red flowers under the threatening gaze of power lines.)
But although it started well, in the end, this is too many good individual stories fighting with each other instead of making a coherent whole. Any one of the various plot lines could've held their own. At film's end, the script has to literally shoot its way out of the entwined mess its in to reach a conclusion. Maybe this goes down well on cable. I think a viewer, whether sitting in a cinema, or in his own home, is entitled to better.
The Patriot (2000)
A kitsch repeat action flick
Just by chance, a CD of John Williams' film music was still playing on my CD player when the DVD entry screen of 'The Patriot' first came onto my video screen and for a moment there, I actually thought that the music I was hearing from 'Saving Private Ryan' was the theme music for 'The Patriot'.
My mistake had merit. Because, sadly, while being an admirer of John Williams, his work on this film seems to have caught the producers' disease of flat commercial repetition.
No doubt someone early in the piece was inspired by the thought that there hasn't been a good War of Independence film for a while and saw a commercial opportunity. And the idea of paralleling the long, difficult and bloody struggle of a father with that of the young American nation was roundly applauded in all the pre-production meetings. But the script is appalling: a little 18th century rhetoric with a lot of midday television kitsch. And the chosen director, Roland Emmerich, has as much emotional finesse and subtlety as the cannonballs hurtling towards camera.
My conclusion is that the producers milked the historical connection for what they could make of it; it barely managed to come second compared to the lavish attention vested on the battle scenes (really the only cinematic reason for seeing the film at all). What triumphed here at the end was not freedom and independence, but another repeat dose of action with digital sound and digital fx. Producers like these should be forced to make films for 10years with budgets of under $100,000 and on a low wage so they can relearn what honest filmmaking is all about.
The Perfect Storm (2000)
Great effects, awful script
The special effects department do a terrific job on this film and congratulations to Wolfgang Peterson for a professional effort in action and suspense. Congrats also to John Seale's photography.
There's a major problem though in the plot-line which intersperses the main characters with a sub-plot of a helicopter crew rescuing three persons from a stricken yacht and then the coast guard rescuing the rescuers. These scenes are fairly exciting in themselves and give a foretaste of what is to befall the main cast, plus they raise tension by creating audience hope that a rescue of Clooney and Co. is on the cards. But the price of interrupting the main storyline is to force the key scenes to do double duty in the time available to them. This might even have been possible had the script been a good one.
The script however is 'B' grade in its dialogue and woefully thin in creating characters and relationships. In fact, take out the dialogue soundtrack and put in a voice-over narration and you'd get a perfectly acceptable dramatised documentary. Come to think of it, maybe that's what the producers have in mind - spend all the 'below the line' money on the special effects and after the commercial release, sell the storm footage for a television series on "The World's Worst Storms".
Final note: James Horner's music, sadly, is as overinflated as Diane Ladd's lines.
Notting Hill (1999)
Well written
Well, I liked this a lot. Particularly, Michael Curtis' clever script. My favourite scene would have to be the birthday party where writer and actors together create a wonderful ensemble of comic moments and warm human interaction.
Worth seeing for its slant of celebrity fame but worth seeing again for its story of two people working their way through the short-sightedness of their present-day reality to discover their more worthy and long-term fulfillment together.
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952)
A worthy Claude Rains film
It was a surprise to see this title on the shelves at the local video store: although Claude Rains is one of my favourite actors, and this film features other fine actors such as Herbert Lom, Marius Goring and Felix Aylmer, the story line didn't seem to be the usual fare rewarded with a video release. And indeed it is the story that both fascinated me and left me flat at the end.
Rains' meek company clerk is nicely judged; cunning but not worldly-wise, and seduced by the lights of Paris, in contrast to his small home town. The contrast, though, is poorly made - Rains' clerk suit looks perfect throughout, even at Maxims - and we don't see a return to family or their reaction to his plight. Even so, the story's unfolding was interesting enough to keep me watching, (as well as for the technicolor exterior shots of Paris in the early 50's).
Meet Joe Black (1998)
An admirable fable
I enjoyed this film immensely. A fable about Death coming to earth as an atheist and leaving as an angel is going to test a lot of people's ideas about film as entertainment, including the film's producers. Brad Pitt is a major draw card and has a number of good scenes, but for me his Death lacked authority. Anthony Hopkins kept the piece going though with a convincing performance of the businessman out-negotiated in the ultimate deal. Jake Weber's Drew was also good, deftly handling the character we like at first but would grow to hate as we got to know him better. I heard friends complain of trite dialogue. Yet, talking is the opposite of what this film is about: I loved the pared down dialogue and the use of silence (how do you converse with Death?). Non-verbal communication gradually increased through the film and was triumphant in the climactic scene with Pitt and Forlani. This scene was a winner for me: from being a scene of a large party crowd, the camera pulls focus while the crowd soundtrack disappears and we are in the intensely private and concentrated moment of these two characters. Susan's love is without restriction, even knowing who he is and that he won't stay; Joe's receipt of that love and his new-found capacity for love in return converts him from Grim Reaper to Angel of Life. Only hardened cynics or those who missed the cinema door to the action flick will leave without a smile or a tear or both.