overheated Reviews

Bridegroom (2013)

Now THIS is a love story!

[9/10 · 19 October 2013]

I had followed Mr. Crone's story on YouTube so I was prepared with a package of tissues when I went to the premiere. What I was not prepared for was the amazing amount of humor captured in the first half of the film. It completely disarmed my tension, and made the remarkable connection between these two men that much sweeter. The story of what happens to this couple is,for me, is as moving as the very special love they shared - their connection, their love of life, their strength, and the against-so-many-odds fact that they found each other, if only for a short while.

This film is a gift.

(I would have rated it 10 but for two edits that were so jarring I was taken out of the experience momentarily during the viewing - both came off like mid-sentence interruptions to the speaker being cut-away from)

Evening (2007)

Tedious until Streep walks in

[2/10 · 30 June 2007]

Almost as tedious to watch as it was to read, Evening is a gorgeously produced failure...until Meryl Streep walks in and quietly shows her other cast members how to act this kind of stuff. Vanessa Redgrave is shockingly off in her role as the dying Ann and Claire Danes is a cipher. Perhaps if Vanessa and Claire had switched roles we could have seen the vibrancy in the young Ann that gave her entrée to the rarefied world of the story and we could have imagined that the older Ann actually was dying.

I was hoping the addition of Michael Cunningham to the writing credits would smooth out the jumpy storytelling but alas. It gave me a headache.

...So Goes the Nation (2006)

Very entertaining

[7/10 · 21 October 2006]

Very entertaining. It's clever, lots of good personalities on camera, the editing is witty.

As a Democrat, a bitter pill to swallow.

While I appreciated the focus on campaign strategy, it was impossible for me to sit through this without thinking about the murkier questions surrounding this event. I left feeling that the filmmakers had to turn a blind eye to those questions in order to get the story they were after. I suspect it would be a deeper film if they had explored the chaos created by the surprises of the campaign.

line 10

The Laramie Project (2002 TV Movie)

Interesting but really strange casting

[28 March 2002]

Just caught an HBO repeat of this film. On the one hand, it was much better than I thought it would be. I saw it on stage in New York and was underwhelmed by the acting. I thought most of the performances in the film were terrific with the odd caveat that others have already mentioned: I don't think I've ever before been so aware of and distracted by the presence of so many familiar faces. Granted Kaufman drew lovely performances from his cast, but in some strange way he didn't let any of them disappear into the fabric of the film. And what strange twist of ego prompted him to cast Nestor Carbonell as himself? He went to such pains to de-glamorize everyone else, why use such a handsome actor to portray someone who is actually pretty average looking?