Reviews

If you can handle a world about half a bubble off plumb, there's a lot of fun to be had in "Free Money". It's quite obvious that all of these characters would vanish in a puff of smoke in what we call the "real world", but inside their own rules of logic and social constraints it all makes perfect and hilarious sense.

Brando's warden personifies what Joseph Heller once called "a gigantic belch of a man", and Hayden Church and Sheen are perfect as man's men dragged either unconscious or screaming into their twin high school bride's playhouse version of married life.

Donald Sutherland has a nice turn as a psychotic judge, and Mira Sorvino turns in a fine performance as a kind of bridge between "our world" and the asylum run by lunatics that the rest of the characters live in.

It's quite possible that we could have lived without some of the brutality (cattle prods, gladiator fights in the prison) but then again, what the hell. It's a 90's film.

--bt

I haven't read the Virginia Woolf original, so no comparisons will be made, illuminating or otherwise. This review refers to the DVD edition.

Excellent costumes, stunning cinematography, effective score, but only a seriously overheated feminist could find any hint of a serious examination of sexual politics in this film. It doesn't help that no one could believe for a moment that Orlando is EVER male, let alone masculine, at any time. It's quite obvious that Potter has chosen early on to avoid the real prickly issues of what it means to be male, female or ultimately even human in favor of creating a visual style that first amazes, then seduces but ultimately wears thin as one's brain kicks back in.

I hoped for a good deal more than style in a film this good in every way but substance. I was disappointed.

And when the number 8:27 comes up it's time to write a movie review...

Many critics seemed to see the basic premise of the film as a conflict between the "good" natural state of the bushman and the "bad" civilized state of the city dwellers and revolutionaries.

To me, it's more of a comment (and a pretty badly dubbed comment at that!) on the inherent comedy of culture conflict that proceeds from the completely arbitrary nature of ALL cultures. It's no funnier (or just as funny, depending on how you look at it) that a bushman doesn't "get" the nature of a car, than it is that a city dweller doesn't "get" the nature of a fire-stomping rhino or a wait-a-bit bush.

And you can play with the nature of god, if you like. Perhaps that ten commandments thing was just a "coke bottle of the gods" something wrapped around something that actually was important - at least to the gods.

If there were no other single redeeming feature of the movie, John Astin's incredible diatribe reviling every obvious wart of the benighted little town of Molly-Be-Damn as it's known for a truly tortured pun on Molybdenum, would be worth the price of admission.

There is a plot, but you don't need to worry about it. Go for Astin's bluster. He appears in a dual role and takes both completely over the top.

If you can take a comedy-western on a fairly broad tack, this is a good one. Crank up the popcorn machine, set your brain on farce and relax. And memorize that cussing. Someday you'll need it.

This is the only movie that I ever have, or ever would, raise myself from my palette of pain, site of the world's most crippling hangover and actually haul my butt down to a real movie theater to watch. Well, that and Citizen Kane.

I'm afraid a friend of mine and I caught several dirty looks and "shushing" from the audience for going into hysterical laughter BEFORE the opening credits ever rolled. We'd seen it on TV and just couldn't contain ourselves.

Many of the lines have made it into daily conversation (well, MY daily conversation)

I want ... I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!

Zero - How can you take the bread from a poor man's mouth? Landlord - I have to, I'm a landlord.

Do you know what this is? This is wine, women and song ... and women!

Zero - Here's to failure! Drunk - Thank you, it's so nice to be noticed!

We'll have to put something in there!

Hello, boys! (Zero to his safe full of money)

I'm going to buy myself a toy! I've worked very, very hard and I deserve a toy!

You will see very little of me in the coming days - I'm about to launch myself into little old lady land.

Wilder - Let's assume, for a moment, that you're a dishonest man.

Zero - Assume away!

Ah, well, I have to stop now. Soon I'll be on to Kenneth Mars, and there'll be no end.

The fuhrer was a good man, a kind, man, and the fuhrer could dance the PANTS off Churchill! He was a better PAINTER than Churchill! He could paint an entire apartment, one afternoon, two coats!

Stop me now ....

Seldom have I seen so many comments with so little understanding. The movie is not about Heston's "Mexican-ness" or lack of it. The movie is not about the 5 or 8 or 10 minute opening shot. The movie is not even, god help us, about Welles' descent from the heights into "slumming it" in a "Grade B" flick.

The movie is about two things : film-making, and character. Every shot worth remembering (and there are few that aren't) is an exercise in the possibilities of film, particularly black and white film. Woody Allen makes movies in black and white that are all conversation. Welles made movies in black and white because that's where the colors of the characters, the location and ultimately the meaning of the movie are possible. Black and white film is about the infinite possibilities of shadow. Touch of Evil is about the infinite possibilities of human nature.

Heston, for those of you who just can't see past a "bad" accent is about rigidity and short-sightedness. What kind of idiot would leave his wife in all those threatening situations? The kind of idiot who can't imagine that anyone would harm HIS wife, simply because she IS his wife! Akim Tamiroff's Grandi is about flexibility to the point of breakage. Always playing ALL ends against the middle he is the essence of "harmless" corruption, that ultimately harms everyone.

And Welles' Hank Quinlan ... I just don't have the time or space to explain that Quinlan is about the true cost of police work when the humanity has gone out of it. Ultimately Quinlan would kill his best and only friend, the only one, as Dietrich has it, who really loves him. At one time, perhaps, Quinlan WAS the image that Pete Menzies saw. But the man behind that image was eaten up long ago with alcohol and frustrated grief. It's all about winning and losing now, and things he would never do. Until he does them.

There are so many other moments and characters that I'm afraid you'll just have to watch the film with your eyes and your mind open instead of shut to "get it". Pay attention to what's on the screen instead of the smart, cynical, hip comments you can make about an actual work of heart.

Well, what the hell. Joan Didion said it best. Film criticism is petit point on kleenex.

Raoul Duke