In marked contrast to Vacation – who would think the first two films I see at the Santa Barbara Film Festival would both take place inside prisons! – the Bulgarian esthetic is apparently raucous and messy. Or, you could say, loud and lewd. The story involves a petty criminal who wades through unbearable shit in […]
An engrossing, oh-so-Japanese indirect reflection on the death penalty, told through the story of prison guard Toru Hirai, who volunteers to assist at the execution-by-hanging of prisoner Kaneda the day before his wedding. I was confused by the intercutting of his two worlds: the prison drama unfolded in orderly fashion, but the world outside proceeded […]
Here are some of my questions: If Hannah was not intellectually curious, why did she take so readily to Homer, Chekov and Mark Twain? If she was intellectually curious, why had she not taught herself to read, or asked someone to teach her, before she was 60? If she was a shy recluse, why did […]
Yes, it was a virtuoso acting performance by Mickey Rourke, onscreen the whole movie, but it was like he was acting in a vacuum, or a paper bag. Evan Rachel Wood and the marvelous Marisa Tomei notwithstanding, there was no interaction with another person that engaged or convinced. No man approaching 50, who had abused […]
The point, the argument, and the cases were muddled in this recap of Nazi art looting. What the Nazis did was despicable, of course, but the case of a distant heir against a good-faith purchaser (or beneficiary) is not a case of good v. evil, and the film never recognized this. Whether Klimt’s portrait of […]
It’s hard to tell how much of the film’s power comes from its production and how much from the underlying historical events it portrays. Not in question, however, is the virtuosity of Sean Penn’s performance: the distance of Harvey Milk from the world of Mystic River adds to Penn’s credentials as the greatest actor of […]
A character study – no more, no less – of a high-energy, happy-go-lucky 30-year-old who is putting off adulthood for no bad reason. Her goofy intensity, or intense goofiness, can rub people the wrong way or be endearing: characters in the film showed both reactions and I shared them. At the end, however, I was convinced I […]
This movie was supposedly about how we learn and aging. I learned nothing, but was 140 minutes older when it ended. Or maybe it was about love – but I found Cate Blanchett cold, Brad Pitt bloodless, chemistry lacking and their relationship an unconvincing Hollywood cliché. So what I was left with was a Forrest […]
Quel plaisir to spend 152 minutes with a French family, even one as dysfunctional as this. It took a while to figure out who was who, let alone why, and then part of the fun was deciding whom you liked the most and why. The men were either reprobates or ciphers, except for the short […]
A nicely done theatrical piece, more than a movie – and I’m not sure how well it relates to actual history. Frank Langella’s portrayal of Tricky Dick was superb, but even with all the layers he conveyed, one felt it didn’t come close to plumbing the actual depths of Nixon’s character. What really drove the […]
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