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wildwood66
Reviews
Black Swan (2010)
Difficult and unpleasant.
I really wanted to like this film. Indeed I wanted to love this film. However a film about self mutilation, mental sickness, sexual harassment and quite possibly abuse by a domineering parent is very hard going. This was a beautifully made film of a dreadfully upsetting story. There is no doubt that each of the actors within the film put their heart and soul into it and Darren Aronofsky is a film maker of courage and vision. It is just that the story is so bloody dire and unpleasant! I would have enjoyed seeing how the main character managed the transition from the White Swan to the Black Swan without the gratuitous (and incredibly un-erotic) sex scene. There is definitely the foundations of a wonderful film on this most beautiful of ballets, but this film most definitely did not manage the transition from a cygnet to a swan, either black or white.
Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (2004)
In a word - Frustrating
Reading through the other reviews, obviously the majority are massive fans of Townes Van Zandt (as I am) and their views are from the side of people who were already very familiar with Townes and his combination of self-destructiveness, married with some of the most sublime songwriting ever heard. However, what about if you were one of the people who had never heard of Townes (and lets face it, he was largely a cult figure)and you watched this film from the perspective of trying to learn something more about the man. Would you know more about what made him so selfish, so distant to those that he professed to love. Would you have learnt about why he chose to play guitar, what he read or absorbed to be able to write such perfect prose. Who were his musical influences apart from Lightning Hopkins? In my opinion this film does not answer these questions satisfactorily, if at all. In that way I found the film lacking depth and substance. Make no mistake, I loved being able to see Townes play live. I loved hearing largely gushing comments about his talent (Steve Earle excepted with his story about Townes playing Russian Roulette), but somehow this film left me uninvolved and without any deeper knowledge about the life of Townes Van Zandt. As I said in the title - In a word - Frustrating.
Gangster No. 1 (2000)
violent, compelling and amoral movie making - very good
It is rare to watch a movie where the makers do not attempt to soften the ending, especially if the main character is as utterly repellant as is the eponymous individual of this film played by Paul Bettany and Malcolm McDowell. Bettany plays "Gangster 55" as a young man and Malcolm McDowell fills the role thirty years later. He is as ugly a screen creation as I have seen. Even in a film like Scarface, there is a period where Al Pacino's character is likable as he begins his climb up before the inevitable fall. In this film the director, Paul McGuigan, has made no attempt to make Gangster 55 even slightly less than loathsome. But despite this he is human, and while some reviewers have been critical of the ending, I found it to be credible and almost Shakesperean in its intent. Whether that makes the film guilty of ambition outstripping the limitations of the script, it does not lessen the impact.
This film is riveting viewing, but be warned, the violence is extreme and there is an awful lot of use of the "c" word. Highly recommended.