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Reviews
Always (1989)
A film worth revisiting
It has been a while since I have seen this 'Always.' The years, I should say, have done this film justice.
A noted cinephile, I know when to eat my words, and this is one is for the books. Sincere. Honest. Touching. Obviously sparked with a late-eighties, Spielbergian hyper-real, cinematic extensions and flair, these elements do not bog the film downs as, say, with '1941' or 'The Color Purple.' And why should we expect modern filmmakers to be like those of the forties or fifties? Modern filmmakers are just that -- modern.
Holly Hunter is a walking dream and she has talent in droves. I have long had a crush on her and her funny mouth. She is simply enchanting and steals the show. Goodman, for once, is kept under control. Dreyfuss, with the thankless role of revisiting his past and commenting on the future, is the weakest link but only just. Sumptuously photographed by deftly edited, this story of unrequited love is as universal as mothers and babies. If it doesn't bring tears to your eyes, shame on you. The best advice to view this film is to forget it is a Spielberg film. Enjoy it for the love story that it is and sink into its voluptuous and charged charm.
We should all hope we become angels in the mist, able to return to Earth to right all the wrongs of the world.
This may be one Spielberg's most romantic films, next to A.I., which is a supremely magnificent film and, also, equally dismissed when it first arrived on the scene.
I urge all to give this film a second chance.
Gangs of New York (2002)
2 Stars (out of five)
I have just come back from "Gangs of New York" and, low and behold, after turning on the TV and surf the net, Scorcese's "Casino" is on. Interesting to compare the two, as they are essentially the same kind of film
"Gangs," as it turns out, is a minor Scorcese film that wants to be a great one. It lacks drive and dimension and, worst of all, substance. Words, always an important part of a Scorcese film, are usually delivered with a force and reckoning similar to the staccato of machineguns but in "Gangs" are dull and plodding. Only Day Lewis can manage to lift his character above the material (but then again bad guys always play better on film), whereas, DiCaprio and Diaz are woefully miscast.
This film contains all of the standard elements that Scorcese is known for, a worthy soundtrack, narration (but only by one character this time), editing by Shoonmaker, cinematography by Ballhouse, a decent set of actors, a script by Zaillian, but something went wrong somewhere. A quick scan of the credits and one could see why -- too many writers and way too many producers. And it probably didn't help that the film was shot in Italy (no disrespect intended to the fine Italian crew). But the film felt off-center from right after the opening fight which killed "Priest" and never regained form. Liam Neeson had a terrific presence -- its too bad he got killed after the first 15 minutes. Perhaps a way should have been found to keep him around until the first half and then shortened everything else. Perhaps then the movie would have had better pace.
The movie also feels like many, many scenes and/or characters wound up on the cutting room floor or, even worse, tried to be saved in the editing room. Let's face it; this film got the better of a great director.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
A great and grand epic of incomparable perfection
I purposely held off reading anything on IMDB (except for a NYT review) on this film by wanting to experience this film-as its predecessor-as `clean' as one can view a film without any preconceptions. I have not even read the novels the film is based on as half the world has. So, I come to this epic unadorned but enthralled.
Without a doubt, this second installment is a powerful-perhaps even more so-than the first. This story itself is not burdened with set up and character development, as the first was, and opens where the last stops-with the band of brothers separated and scattered to the four winds. Jackson very quickly establishes the scene and moves the film forward, culminating in the battle at Helms Deep. There are few wasted moments as the film continues at a frantic but never rushed pace throughout. When Merry and Pip end up with then Ents, only then does the film slow a bit but not to its detriment. The film crosscuts between the separated principles but the viewer is never confused. The actors all seem to be defined by their characters (as opposed to the other way around) and a very comfortable in the company of others. Truly amazing considering all three films were shot concurrently and out of sequence.
There are many, many outstanding moments in this three-hour film starting from the first, where we see what happens to Gandolf after his fight at the bridge and as he falls into the abyss. The second is the visualization of Gollum. The third would have to be the Ents. And the four-oh boy-the battle at Helms Deep is quite simply a stunning, excessively violent exercise in cinematic genius. And it is only genius that can make a complicated battle and all its confusion accessible. And it is nothing short of genius to be able to deal with seven years of pain and deliberation, passion and art, actors and actresses, crew and extras, artists and artisans. I wish my father were alive to see this epic. LoTR was a favorite of his as a novel. Alas, he died just a CGI effects where really starting to make a tremendous impact in the world of cinema and missed many-a fine film-from Twister's kitsch to Titanic's operatic doom. But LoTRs would have particularly pleased him.
Peter Jackson has left an indelible mark and permanent mark on cinema, making what was regarded as impossible possible. But look how he achieved this-this was no mere achievement by a single studio but by a whole country. To the Kiwis, LoTR became akin to a national obsession by marshalling casts and crew of thousands for years and years, using the entire country as a backlot. Imagine most of Hollywood working on a single film for five years! Mind boggling and now legendary. We will never see anything like it again. The Harry Potter films could have approached this (in that there are seven novels with four give green light) but are laughably inferior and infantile to a fault. Perhaps, now, the green light could be given to some other long series such as Asimov's Foundation saga or CS Lewis's Narnia series.
The Horsemen (1971)
A Frankenheimer Classic!
Not having seen this film since its initial release, I have vague moments of recollection (I was eleven at the time) but, after all these years, I still remember this film, a few scenes-even the theater where I saw it-so that has to count for something. We, my parents, and myself went to many, many movies so it was not unusual for me to come along, even at decidedly adult fair such as this. My mother had a crush on Omar-notwithstanding that they share the same passion for bridge. Frankenheimer had a good reputation for producing and directing interesting, offbeat films that hit as often as they miss-The Manchurian Candidate, Grand Prix, and Black Sunday come to mind. So, we gave this film a shot.
While I do not remember the plotline to any great extent, what I do remember quite vividly was that this film took place in Afghanistan, and features quite prominently the national sport of Buzkashi-a sport whereby riders on horses attempt to deposit the carcass of a lamb in a circle. Also, this has what is quite honestly the best performance in a film by Omar Sharif you will ever find. He plays a great rider who is injured early in the film. He broads about a lot but finally finds redemption by returning to the sport that nearly killed him for that one last ride. I do not remember if he makes it through alive.
Buzkashi is an old, old brutal sport/ritual full of tradition and ceremony. The film took great pains to present this dying spectacle as realistically as possible and is the great set piece to the film. A true Man's man sport, it is not for the fainthearted. For me, at eleven, I was not used to cinematic `realism' even though by then I had seen hundreds of films. Perhaps it is why I remember it so for it made quite an impression.
The film was transferred to video but is long out of print and only available through collectors. It has not made it to DVD, unfortunately. I have not seen it since it initial release.
Still, in a long career for Frankenheimer, this is a film that should not be forgotten and is probably one of his best.
Solaris (2002)
Existentialist Space Opera
We will wake up one day to discover that Steven Soderbergh is a great director. He is a true auteur working in an industry of philistines. A quick scan of his filmography reveals an artist not content with the ordinary repetition of craft, but one who dares to explore the edge from time to time.
Like Kubrick before him, he does it all. He writes, directs, photographs, and edits. "Solaris" is essentially a one-man show. I don't think it is any accident that his best films are those single explorations of theme. "Solaris," "The Limey," "Out of Sight," "The Underneath," "King of the Hill," and, of course "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," are amazing in their delicacy, or brash in audacity. "Traffic" is, in this critic's opinion, the only true, large breakout film for him. "Ocean's Eleven" was unwatchable. "Erin Brockovich" the most overrated film in 2000. Soderbergh's heart is large but his filmmaking sentiments are more intimate.
Now, "Solaris." I have seen the Tarkovsky version but I have not read the book. The '72 Solaris was long (almost three hours), very talky, and very Russian. Tarkovsky's visuals were in line with the cinematic experimental vogue of the time. Neither groundbreaking nor revolutionary in general terms, Tarkovsky's Solaris was his attempt to capitalize on and experiment with a medium that was finding powerful legs in the brave new world of anything-goes cinema. "2001" opened many doors, and Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" was to come next year.
Soderbergh's "Solaris is neither dyspeptic nor vacuous. It's colors are rich and saturated--which I find a curious style choice given its metaphor--its music evocative, and its actors engagingly human. Perhaps one could have wished for a film more antiseptic, more Spartan, more "Kubrickian," but that would go against the grain of the director's intent. If Kubrick was the director of opposites, so is Soderbergh, giving you a SF film without science, a psychological film without the psychology, whose inherent truths lie deep in the penetrating eyes of its stars--those of the actors and the star-like planet their ship revolves around. And what of Solaris? It's not so much a planet than a mass of neurons and electrical impulses that sparks and flares in resplendent glory not unlike our own brain. Tarkovsky's Solaris was made of water. Here, we are treated to phantasmagoria as psychic malevolence.
Clooney and McElhone give understated but excellent, brave, performances. In their eyes we see their love, angst, confusion, despair. This is Clooney's 3rd film with Soderberg and one can see why. Clooney is becoming the great actor of age, honing his craft in small but important films. His role in "O Brother Where Art Thou" is nothing short of genius. As Clooney begins to embody the elemental force of the "everyman," to use Clooney is to suggest, through cinematic shorthand, as vast range of emotions in a short amount of time. His time has come.
Soderbergh may never make the multi-billion dollar success. In fact, I hope he doesn't. I would rather him make more pictures like "Solaris" and less like "Ocean's Eleven." Small, in this case, is definitely better.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
An Epic for All Time
Now, having seen the Platinum Extended Edition twice in three days, and as and experienced cinephile and life-long watcher of films, I can safely say that the LOTR is one of the great cinematic experiences of all time. It represents a magnificent achievement in filmmaking and its process--easily taking six-seven years of constant work by Peter Jackson and his genius craftsmen. By the end of the the trilogy, Oscars should be given to every one of the principal designers who shared in its vision.
Many people will wish that this scene or that scene should have been added. Given the complexity of this shoot, it's a minor miracle any kind of coherence exists at all. This film was not film back-to-back-back in order, with Fellowship coming first, as some have reported, but filmed as one film--one that was twelve hours long. Locations were secured--and then all the scenes that would happen there throughout the three films were then shot. Many of these scenes would have to fit with scenes shot, perhaps, a year later. Jackson is still editing the picture--two years after principal photography has finished!
One still has to judge the film as a whole, however and, to this critic's eye, most everything rings true. Everyone has a couple of quibles and I am not immune. My particular quibbles are with Sean Astin as Samwise, and Liv Tyler as Arwen. Those two actors, fine in their own right, are too "American" to suggest Middle Earth. Astin will always be Rudy--the role he was born to play and Tyler will never eclipse her role as Affleck's main squeeze in Armageddon.
Filmmaking is all about making decision. On an average film with a 60-day shoot, the director is, perhaps, making 200 decisions a day. That breaks down to 12,000 decisions (just for principle photography.) Add in a pre-production of eight months or so and you can add another 40,000 decisions. The LOTR was THREE YEARS in pre-production, 15 MONTHS in actual filming, and another THREE YEARS in post-production. If you are an absolute genius, you could not expect to get more than 95-97 percent right. With 200 decisions a day, that means 10 or so answers a day are not based on concrete knowledge but instinct and that illusive talent: creativity. With LOTR, just during the production phase alone, 2,500 decisions were made just that way. Mind boggling.
No, my friends, I am not going to quibble that Jackson should have done this, or sustained that, had been more poetic here, or ethereal there. Certainly, Peter Jackson is a great director but he is no David Lean--but let's not hold that against him. LOTR will stand the testament of legend and rank as of the great epics of all measured time, savored for generations to come.
See it. Be it. Live it.
Beloved (1998)
A Great Cinematic Epic
This is easily Demme's finest film--the kind of film a director spends his entire lifetime working towards. Up until this film, he was mainly known for great--if unspectacular--films. "Something Wild," "Philadelphia," and "Silence of the Lambs" come to mind. "Beloved" erased any doubts about his veracity as a director. He took a very, very complex book and, gratefully, unusually, did not "dumb down" the story. This is filmmaking with a mission--a take-it-or-leave it approach that succeeds because it has the courage of its convictions and the brass balls it proudly wears.
This is not a film for everyone, however. It is deeply complicated with a plot that is decidedly non-linear. The film shifts, alternately, from nightmare to reality to dreamstate with equal ease with little to no distinction. Perhaps if you had read the book, you might get some of this. But, if you hadn't (as I had not) unless you are an extremely seasoned cinephile, your may not appreciate or grasp its highly cinematic language and tone.
Many would say this is elitist filmmaking. And to that, I would say they're right. This is Demme's "Moby Dick." And, appropriately, it made no money and disappeared from our multiplex landscape quicker than you can say Toni Morrison. In future years, Demme's masterpiece will be recognized for what it is and amazing, brave film.
There are scenes that will haunt you as long as you look at movies. Scenes that echo a brave new world of a director at the top of his craft. Unfortunatly, this bravery seems to have cost him (Demme) some pull in that he hasn't made a film in four years, now. Like Kurosawa or Kubrick before him, it matters not that you have suffered defeat in the eyes of an disinterested public and empty movie theaters, but that you stood your ground and made the best film possible.
Heaven's Gate (1980)
Wasteful but brilliant examination of a not-too-perfect past.
Anyone who saw the brilliant and unforgetable "The Dear Hunter" should not have been surprised by "Heaven's Gate."
Driven more by directorial hubris the logic, this grand experiment in non-narrative cinema was a bold as it was frustrating, as misguided as it was relevant. It is true that the film was criticized more because of what it had become than for what it was.
By the films release, many of the details of the films 1 & 1/2 year shooting cycle and vast cost overruns for what amounted to little more than vanity that bankrupted United Artists, were the stuff of cinematic urban legend. (There is much, much more, brilliantly documented in a book titled "Final Cut," by Steven Bach).
But looking at the film today as a single entity, what exists is less about reality than about art and the vanity of creativity. It's not so much a what had been done than about it "could" be done. Is Cimino really at fault here? United Artist didn't pull the plug because Dear Hunter earned a bucket full of Oscars. So who is more vain, the director with the blank check or the executive who hands the check over with visions or more buckets full of golden statues.
I said before, Heaven's Gate is more of an experimental film than a full-fledged narrative. It is set-piece cinema at its best, designed and digested more as vignettes than in one full swing, much like one would return to a painting over and over again, finding new imagery and imagination with every showing.
No doubt Cimino was partially influenced by Kubrick or Kurosawa, while still trying to find his own unique and American Voice. Okay, perhaps Cimino shouldn't have purchased land in Montana with Studio money. Perhaps he really didn't need to throw a huge party after exceeding one million feet of film shot. And doing over 50 takes of a drunken Kristofferson using his whip seems rather excessive.
All in all, this film is worth your time. I hesitate to say that the film could "have been better." Certainly, it could have been shorter, more historically accurate, and scripted better but, then, it would not be the failed masterpiece it is.
Give the film a break.