Reviews
The Cider House Rules (1999)
Charles Dickens is Reborn
I've been critical in the past of John Irving's novels (and their film adaptations), but The Cider House Rules was a pleasure to experience.
It is, first of all, one of the most gorgeously photographed movies I've ever seen. Don't wait for the video -- the scenery alone is worth the price of a prime-time theater ticket.
The storyline evokes Charles Dickens (I think deliberately) with its depiction of underprivileged youngsters learning how to make their way in a difficult world. The focus is on only one, but there are worthwhile glimpses at the lives of some others.
Much credit must go to the director, because performances by all the cast members, great and small, are dead-on and most gratifying. Michael Caine is, to my mind, at his career-best, and his two nurse-assistants, Jane Alexander and Kathy Baker, are perfectly cast and seem to have put all their energies into their relatively small roles. A commenter or two who worked on the film has said in this space that all the cast gave it their best, and I believe it is true.
The characterizations are multi-dimensional (especially considering that this is from John Irving, who hasn't always seemed to be in the real world). The people who populate this film display qualities of goodness and gross imperfection that ring true and provide an accurate-seeming representation of the human condition.
I never thought I'd say it, but I'm gonna go back and give John Irving's novels another chance! ...Maybe two chances!
La vita è bella (1997)
Disappointing
Normally, I'm an incredibly easy mark for films that feature heavy doses of sentiment, abiding love, and the like. I can cry at the first gush of bathetic melodrama. This film, though, disappointed me thoroughly.
I managed a few tears at the very end, and there were a few scenes that touched me in other ways, but, on balance, I thought the movie drastically short-changed the subject matter. Conditions in the concentration camp there depicted were dismal but essentially benign as compared to the reality; the earlier part of the film was unconvincing, almost slapstick in nature.
Much, much better was the treatment in an autobiographical film by Primo Levi that I saw a few months ago...I can't remember its name, but it was about an Italian Jew (Levi) released from a concentration camp at war's end, and his long, winding trip home from Germany to Italy by way of eastern Europe. It was much more real -- much more compelling from beginning to end.
"Life is Beautiful" was an original and somewhat startling idea for a film, and perhaps in better hands it could have been as wonderful a story as some people think this film actually was. On balance, though, I think the idea just couldn't work in execution.
Friends & Lovers (1999)
Oh, wow, this was one awful movie!
I generally am very accepting of movies. I don't demand perfection. But this was a TRUE stinker! The acting was terrible, the dialogue was worse. The thing had absolutely no redeeming social value. It was really hard to believe it was as bad as it was. I kept waiting for it to get just a little better, but it never did! It just went into the toilet and stayed there throughout.
Do yourself a favor. Forget it. Close your eyes in the video store, turn around six times, and stagger to the nearest row and pick the first VCR your hand touches. ...I GUARANTEE it'll be better than this turkey.
For Love of the Game (1999)
If you love the Game, you'll like the movie.
The critics have been lukewarm at best, and, objectively, I guess they're right. But if you love baseball and are into romantic themes, you'll forgive this film its trespasses and you're likely to really enjoy it.
If you think baseball is boring, you'll think this (somewhat overlong) movie is boring, too.
Incidentally, the Shaara novel on which the film was based is first-rate.
Somewhere in Time (1980)
'Feel sorry for people who don't like this film.
"Somewhere in Time" has many of the flaws its amateur and professional critics have pointed out, but it is a visually beautiful, wonderfully scored, sentimental, romantic masterpiece all the same.
I am pleased that at my relatively advanced age I am still not so jaded as to ridicule or dismiss such a lovely story. I truly feel sorry for the people who don't like this film...not because they're "wrong," but because it must be perfectly awful to have so little romance in one's soul!
Braveheart (1995)
Reminiscent of the Roadrunner
An impressive film in many ways, but twice before the hero finally is dispatched by the super-evil, tougher-than-Hitler English king, Wallace evidently is mortally wounded -- once on the field of battle, later again in a treacherous ambush by his own Scottish "noblemen".
In the next scene (twice) our boy Mel pops up again, all bright-eyed, clean-shaven and looking fit as a fiddle, ready to fight on.
In the midst of all the grandeur, this gave me illicit thoughts of Wiley Coyote and his similarly instant recoveries from mayhem at the hands of the Roadrunner.
A grand, impressive, but very flawed film.
A Civil Action (1998)
Skillful rendition of the book on film.
How to interpret viewer comments on this film:
"Slow-moving" = ...no car chases.
"poor acting" = ...no karate chops
"too long" = ...longer than a music video
"dull" = ...See "Slow-moving"
"A Civil Action" was a fine book, and the film does it justice. No, it's not perfect, but it is emotionally moving, and faithful to the non-fiction account of the case.
Some of the heart-rending short scenes featuring parents of the child-victims (the father at the deposition; the parents trying to revive the dying child in the car) were absolute masterpieces. There should be special Academy Awards available for brief scenes of this kind that are too "small" for Best Supporting Actor awards, but are, in themselves, worthy of acclaim.
The Spanish Prisoner (1997)
deus ex machina
Starts off nicely, moves right along, etc., but figuring out that there's a con going on (and who's conning whom) isn't much of a challenge, and the ending is 'way, 'way too easy.
A disappointment. Alfred Hitchcock, somebody said? Plu-leez!
...More like Alfred E. Neumann.
A Civil Action (1998)
Skillful rendition of the book on film.
How to interpret viewer comments on this film:
"Slow-moving" = ...no car chases.
"poor acting" = ...no karate chops
"too long" = ...longer than a music video
"dull" = ...See "Slow-moving"
"A Civil Action" was a fine book, and the film does it justice. No, it's not perfect, but it is emotionally moving, and faithful to the non-fiction account of the case.
Some of the heart-rending short scenes featuring parents of the child-victims (the father at the deposition; the parents trying to revive the dying child in the car) were absolute masterpieces. There should be special Academy Awards available for brief scenes of this kind that are too "small" for Best Supporting Actor awards, but are, in themselves, worthy of acclaim.