Archive for category: Reviews

I realize that smoking was more common in 1941, but why did Guillermo del Toro put cigarettes in almost every scene of this movie? It’s unneeded as an acting crutch, and it diverts the viewer’s (or at least my) focus from the story: what must his breath smell like when he kisses her?, I wonder extraneously. My bigger peeve is that it glorifies cigarettes to young people who are tempted to take up the unhealthy, filthy habit. If Bradley Cooper does it and looks cool, why shouldn’t I do it, too? This, of course, is not the only movie featuring cigarettes. My guess is that 75% of the ones I see do, and it’s almost always unnecessary to the plot. Why, then?
As for the movie itself, one wonders why it was needed, or wanted. Del Toro is known for his personal fascination with horror chambers, and the carnival setting allows him to wallow in the grotesque, while the story is textbook noir. Cooper’s character is not really convincing, but you feel Del Toro is more enamored of his scenes and settings than his people, none of whom we actually care about. Which is a problem.

The first-person story of a young refugee fleeing Afghanistan in 1984 is a sure-fire heart-tugger, but at the moment it mainly reminded me of man’s inhumanity to man and our failings as a species. The comic-novel format was curious at best, less and less satisfying as the film went on. And it did go on and on, yet leaving a gaping hole: how did our hero get from there to here, from poverty to Princeton?

Powerful and sleek, this compressed Macbeth begins in intensity and never lets up. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are good, not great, as the title couple (and closed captioning was an aid in following the dialogue). The black-and-white cinematography, modernist architecture and insistent score create an atmosphere of constant foreboding. Kathryn Hunter’s “Sisters” helps, too. The fault, if there be one, was in the play: we never understood why Macbeth turned on the king–a rather crucial point.

Cook-a-little, talk-a-little, cook-a-little, talk-a-little, cheep-cheep-cheep, talk-a-lot, cook-a-little-more. For a non-foodie, there was a lot of same in this documentary recounting of Julia Child’s admittedly amazing career. There were occasional plot twists–Julia’s derision of nouvelle cuisine, her support of Planned Parenthood–but they disappeared as abruptly as they arose. The movie announced its theme at the outset and replayed it all the way to its close.

This was Aaron Sorkin in overdrive, with every scene in a five-day period a crisis, and more issues than I could count. Unfortunately–and this was a big problem–I could never accept Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz (whom I don’t know).  He was too big, too physical, too much Javier Bardem, and I couldn’t sense any chemistry with Nicole Kidman’s Lucy. The gap between Lucille Ball offstage and on was also a bridge too far. Interestingly, my favorite parts of the movie were the black-and-white recreations of actual “I Love Lucy” episodes. I’m sure the threat of Communist exposure was as real as depicted, but everything about that plot seemed overdramatized. Partly this was the fault of the portentous score. Perhaps Sorkin was trying to recreate the feel of a 1952 movie, but if so, that just added to the confusion of trying to shoehorn ten stories into one movie. As a six- or eight-part miniseries, each plot would have had room to breathe. But still, there would be Javier Bardem.