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radi88
Reviews
Black Swan (2010)
The Emperor Has no Clothes
The fact that this movie is getting so may good reviews speaks to the dumbing down of the movie-going public.
First of all - as someone with experience with the dance world, let's set the record straight - Natalie Portman may have tried hard, but she is strictly an amateur dancer. If you know dance she is simply unbelievable as a prima ballerina.
More importantly - the combination of genres Aronofsky tries here doe not work. Its not a dance movie, not Rosemary's Baby, not a Vampire movie - some strange and unconvincing combination...
I saw the film at the Hamptons Film Festival - if I hadn't been trapped at the end of a row I would have walked out. My neighbors on both side - strangers to me - shared my opinion.
The wave of good reviews this movie is getting is totally unwarranted - people perhaps swayed by the pretentiousness of the film ,and reviews, who don't won't to buck the current. But this emperor has no clothes - stay away!
Maria Full of Grace (2004)
a film full of grace
Having watched this film a number of times now on DVD, I've found that it has only grown in my estimation. In its own quiet way, this is as good a film as I've seen - ever...
There is not an actor in the film who doesn't give an excellent performance - a sure sign that the director is good and that the cast believes in the project. The ensemble scenes are acted with such veracity and naturalness that you almost have the feeling that you're watching a documentary. The director, and editor, handle the material with poetic restraint - when Maria quits her job, for example, we never see the confrontation with her boss - which actually increases the impact of the scene later when we discover that she has quit, and draws the viewer's imagination into the movie. The film paints Maria's story with such care that it is easy to extrapolate from her story to the wider social issue - much more effective as a way of understanding a problem than making a simple polemical film would be. And at a time when debate on immigration policy is at the forefront of national attention, the film speaks volumes about those who would try to come to our country - for at the film's end, it is Maria who decides to stay, and Blanca who heads back.
The use of music in the film - both composed, and popular - is superb.
Maria Full of Grace is as good a film as you will ever see.
The Fountain (2006)
Brad Pitt Was Right
If you're impressed by the fact that this film has received a number of high votes on this site, do not be deceived. Just remember - George Bush is president and O.J. Simpson was Not Guilty. Purportedly, this film was booed at the Vienna Film Festival - I'm with the Viennese. Seeing it at the Hamptons Film Festival, where there were a substantial number of walk-outs, my seat-mate, a complete stranger, turned to me at the end and said "I feel like I need a shower." I concur. Its a testament to Brad Pitt's judgement that the dropped out of this project, and he must be thanking his lucky stars. This film is simply an embarrassment.
"The Fountain" has to be one of the most awesome vanity projects ever conceived. One can only imagine that the success of his previous projects has gone to the director's head, and that he is surrounded by yes-men. The film is a hodgepodge of pseudo-science and mysticism. Trees morph into nebulae, monk-like figures in seated-lotus position float away in bubbles, and apparently we're supposed to be impressed by the Deep Inner Meaning of it all . However, behind this here is little plot to speak of, and there is NO character development and NO visible editing . If you cut up the last half-hour of the film and rearranged the pieces randomly it would be indistinguishable from the finished project. (In fact maybe that's how they did it...) If you like having a friend describe to you, in excruciating and exhaustive detail, the step-by-step progression of his latest acid trip, then this is the film for you.
The rating scale on this site can not do this film justice - negative numbers, anyone?
Little Children (2006)
Like Car-Crashes in an Action Movie...
Sorry, but the fact that 'Little Children" has received so may high ratings speaks more to the general loss of standards of the movie-going public than than to any elevated quality on the part of the film itself.
While many deep and meaningful issues are ostensibly explored by "Little Children" - the loss of love, and lack of communication between husbands and wives, the tedium of life in suburban America, the difficulty of maintaining one's own inner life while raising children - the characters are so thinly drawn and so poorly developed that there is no emotional reality or logic to their actions. Thus, everything they do seems arbitrary, and merely willful on the part of the filmmaker, a kind of deus ex machina to serve the "message" of the movie. As the viewer, one is frequently shocked by the actions of the characters, but it is not the kind of shock associated with having seen deeper into the heart or soul of the character. Rather it is the kind of shock that occurs because the action seems to come out of nowhere, and is produced for its own sake - shock for shock's sake. In this sense, the actions in the film are as manipulative as are car-crashes in an action movie. Instead of the story arising from out of the characters, the characters have been cut and pasted to fit the demands of the story- board, and false notes abound.
An unpleasant and un-meaningful film.
Journey to the End of the Night (2006)
Journey to the End of the Film....
Journey to the End of the Night has a wonderful cast and an interesting premise. From that starting point, however, its all downhill. The film collapses into such a morass of cliché, confusion, and violence that it leaves you wondering why you bothered to take the journey with it.
Set in Sao Paulo, the film is (I guess) striving for a tone of gritty realism. Mos Def is, quite honestly, superb in his portrayal of a Nigerian immigrant drawn abruptly into a world of corruption. He is the only real winner in this sorry affair - the sky is the limit for this wonderfully talented actor. Catalina Sandino Moreno and Alice Braga also do not discredit themselves, but they are playing for a losing team.
The film dissolves in a mish-mash of stock characterizations and improbable plot turns. "Good" bad girls, corrupt cops, drug deals gone bad - we've seen this all before, but here there is not enough internal logic to make us believe in any of it. Ultimately, in the film's violent, climactic scene, the cliché-level becomes so high that the sounds of laughter you hear are from people laughing at the film, not with it. Sorry to say, but Journey to the End of the Night is not a journey worth taking.