What an expensively handsome emotional zero! A film eulogizing a murdering bank robber was probably misconceived to begin with, but then to direct both John Dillinger and G-man Melvin Purvis as one-dimensional ensured that our sympathies would not be engaged. The love interest, played by Marion Cotillard, set off no sparks, either. The only character […]
I had never heard of the “naïve” artist Seraphine de Senlis, but discovering at movie’s end that she was a real person explained in large part why this film was so dramatically inert. To take but one example, Wilhelm Uhde had to flee Senlis at the outset of World War I because that actually happened, […]
Powerful and suspenseful, beautifully directed and acted. Together with Dexter Filkins’ amazing The Forever War, which I’m currently reading, this gives a picture of the war in Iraq that makes you wonder, over and over, what are we doing there? Who is the enemy we are fighting? It could be anyone – the man with […]
It’s funny how a movie that starts with such an extraordinarily mundane, realistic view of New York City, not to mention such a depressing view of the human condition, ends up in a total fantasy – everybody happy, everybody fulfilled, and everybody together on that most depressing night of all, New Year’s Eve. But that’s […]
A must for lovers of Art Nouveau – dec arts and fashion – optional for the rest, this apparent synthesis of two Belle Epoque novels by Collette defines “longueur” (languor?) in the person of the title character, played by sole-eyed Rupert Friend. Now, if Michelle Pfeiffer were French, or even sounded, like the estimable Kathy […]
As a collection of gags, it had its high points and low points, and the best high points were pretty low, as well. Most of the art, if it can be so called, devolved from the mixing of the different personality types. In its favor, you didn’t have to wonder how these three, or four […]
A beautifully elegiac film about loved ones’ departing life and human beings’ finding their callings, enhanced by a side-story of cello-playing that fed into an ennobling soundtrack. I hope, however, that the Japanese ritual of “encoffinment” was an allegory. If so, it was justified. If not, then the movie has a lot of improbabilities to […]
A rich farrago of witty repartee, courtesy, I suppose, of Noel Coward’s original script. The American living by her wits, and considerable beauty, plopped in the middle of the decaying English aristocracy is, by now, a well-worn, time-honored conceit, but nonetheless open to japes and gibes, the latter most expertly delivered by Kristin Scott Thomas. […]
Stunning moviemaking that, seen on the heels of Gomorrah and Valentino, gave a pretty bleak but colorful picture of Italy. All those marbled floors, high ceilings and columned terrazzos, heavily made-up women and men with deep tans and coiffed hair, who would kiss you and murder you equally without expression. Any doubts that there was […]
Much – nay, most – of the fun in this movie came from a recognition of who the characters would become on the TV series of 40 years ago. If it sounds like I’ve got my verb tense confused, it’s only some time travel I borrowed from the film, specifically Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. The story […]
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