Reviews

Performances were all top notch: great singing on the parts of all the cast. James Corden is fantastic as the Baker. Streep is in excellent voice. There are some things lost in the move to film (the more comic elements get toned down too much, for example - thankfully there's still "Agony"), and some things brought into sharper focus.

What I cannot believe about this movie is the number of people taking young children to it. Seriously, people? The trailers were not that misleading, creating a sense of foreboding that telegraphs the darkness of this musical. Any review that complains about how horrible it was for the child they took should be completely disregarded, and the writers should take some lessons in responsible parenting.

The premise for this movie sounds a little cloying and frankly wasn't a big draw for me, but I've just seen Young at Heart and I believe! This energetic bunch of septua-, octo- & nona- genarians dive into rock, punk, disco and more, and you'll be surprised what a goldmine they find. Seemingly wacky choices for music to be sung by a choir of oldsters (I Wanna Be Sedated, Golden Years, I Feel Good, Stayin' Alive, etc.), these familiar "youth" oriented songs become revelatory in their hands. Watching them cope with the aging process while making time to rehearse rock is amazing, and it's great fun to get to know all of them in the process. Now I believe that you can be 90 and still be young at heart.

This is a beautifully shot movie from Argentina about a small band of men engaged in small time, get-rich quick schemes, with a charismatic but shady leader. The film is stylish, with beautifully lit black and white cinematography, elegantly seedy costumes and a lush dark score by Lalo Schifrin (his first film score, with a moody sax performance by Gato Barbieri). The uniformly fine cast give tense, sexually-charged performances that keep the more melodramatic moments from bogging down. A really gem of a film.

M Night has a style that is annoying. Seemed to work for me in 6th Sense, but the next 2 -- yuck. His stilted directing style loads lead weights onto the characters and makes the poor actors struggle to be able to create living, breathing people. Unfortunately, in this movie, the actors pretty much sink under M Night's heavy hands, w/the notable exception of Cherry Jones as Officer Paski. Of course, she has the BIG advantage of not being in that "locked in the house" segment, which went on & on & on &... , well you get the idea. She brought the movie up from being a 1 for me, and the first 1/2 hr or so seemed to be going somewhere. But then, yawn time. It's amazing, usually I dislike movies for too many special effects and not enough character development. Now here's a man who brings NO special effects and still NO character development. Yuck.

This is not so much as a comment on the movie as a lament of another forgotten song. When making the movie R&H added a song cut from the original stage production and it's short & lovely. I actually thought it would be done in this version as there was a perfect scene for it, but they let it drop. The song is "My Girl Back Home" and adds another dimension to the conflict Nellie & Joe are going through. Check it out in the '58 movie.

Oh, was it supposed to be a horror flick? Oooooppps! I saw this on the big screen and when I wasn't grossed out by some tacky gore, I was laughing at the stupidity of the so-called plot and the pretensions of the film to being artistic. The maggot scene and the room of barbed wire really stand out as some of the funniest in horror history, though the scene with the professor is particularly delicious for its pretentiousness, using oblique camera angles in a misguided attempt to be unsettling, but winning awards instead for best comedy performance by Jessica Harper's hair. No need to discuss the acting, especially Joan Bennett's.

A pale shadow of a great musical, this movie suffers from the fact that the director, Richard Attenborough, completely misses the point of the musical, needlessly "opens" it up, and muddies the thrust of the play. The show is about a group of dancers auditioning for a job in a B'way musical and examines their drive & desire to work in this demanding and not-always-rewarding line of work. Attenborough gives us a fresh-faced cast of hopefuls, assuming that they are trying to get their "big break" in show business, rather than presenting the grittier mix of characters created on stage as a group of working "gypsies" living show to show, along with a couple of newcomers. The film has one advantage over the play and that is the opening scene, showing the size of the original audition and the true scale of shrinkage down to the 16/17 on the line (depending on how you count Cassie, who is stupidly kept out of the line in the movie). Anyone who can catch a local civic light opera production of the play will have a much richer experience than seeing this poorly-conceived film.

Animation short showing a dirty little baby doll washed up on the shores of the Pines on Fire Island. In exploring the area, she gets some lessons she didn't count on. What's amazing is how expressive Dirty Baby is, even though the features never change -- a tribute to the filmmaker. Saw this at OutFest a couple of years ago and laughed myself silly.

I read this book a couple of years ago and was fascinated by the inexorable pull of the protagonist into his actions, step by step. Throughout I kept realizing that as dumb as everything seemed, I completely understood how each decision could be made, causing a good man to do bad things. When I heard about a movie possibly being made, I was not happy, figuring that Hollywood would turn a hard-hitting story to c**p. But, the movie is an excellent adaption of the book. The ending is significantly changed, but the ending stays faithful to the feel of the book and works much better cinematically than a direct rendering of the book's action would. The pace of the movie is slow, but it grips you in the gut and draws you in to the psychological twists & turns.

Nothing in the action is "simple," so if you're looking for a simple film, with everything completely logical and clear-cut complete with a neat, tidy progression and ending, don't see this movie. If you're looking for complexity, see A Simple Plan.

As many people have commented, Tori Spelling gives a fun, over-the-top performance as a not-too-talented actress trying to make it in NYC. (Having never seen 90210, I must admit that I have enjoyed every other performance I've seen her give, and love her ability to laugh at herself: witness this performance and her cameo in SCREAM 2) JP Pitoc is a wonder as the go-go boy, giving an intelligent, subtle, sexy performance. I would normally find such a character uninteresting (similar to Billy's love interest in BILLY'S HOLLYWOOD etc -- yawn!), but Pitoc shows us how he takes a *real* interest in Gabe as the night progresses, and he is so comfortable in his sexuality that he sends sparks off the screen in a big way.

Not an earthshaking movie, but I had a great time. Take a date.

As one of my companions said, "what a waste of a perfectly good score." The other companion's comments shall go unprinted. Boring, improbable, cold, clinical. If you really like Kubrick's other work, you'll probably like this one. I didn't. Dull, heavy-handed, portentous, plodding. And I usually like both Cruise & Kidman. Not in this one. Unconnected, unbelievable, forced, uninspired.

But the score's good! (Except for those single piano notes repeated over & over & over & over & . . .)

Of all of Shakespeare's plays, MacBeth seems to be the one most likely to be badly produced on stage. Polanski's screen version brilliantly takes all the things within the play which make it difficult and instead turns them in his favor to provide a dark, compelling rendering of the Scottish Play. Taking us back to a primitive, dirty period of history, he presents it in all its gritty reality. Eschewing prettified Shakespeare, the camera allows us to see clothes dragging thru the mud, and animals running around the castle environs. The men look as though they cut their hair by hewing it off with a broadsword, and the Scottish countryside is shown cold and hard as it can be when the mist of May isn't in the gloaming. The society of the play is one filled with political intrigue, where war is waged using crude, blunt weapons which essentially are used to bludgeon opponents to death, and where advancement often comes at the expense of other peoples' lives. Polanski takes this setting and moves his dark vision along in it, giving us new glimpses into the play. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis, cast age-appropriately, are excellent in the lead roles, but Polanski also gives us a superb supporting cast to frame the leads, injecting more character into the all too often faceless cast list: watch Ross expediently switch political alliances probably more often than he changes his underwear; see what could have happened to Donalbain, whose function disappears out of the play early in Act II; and watch the portrayals of the 3 leading weird sisters, which meet all the requirements of the scripted descriptions, and go a few steps further (have a drink out of that bubbling cauldron!!). The transition of Mac and his Lady from upwardly mobile nobles, to King & Queen, and then through their respective downfalls is handled believably and without the seams which often show in productions of the play. Finch & Annis plumb the depths of the psyches of these characters and each provides a clearly defined and fascinating interpretation of the roles. Blood is a major image in the Bard's play and Polanski makes sure the audience knows it. MacBeth almost literally becomes steeped in blood, and the actual existence of it in the movie makes his descent even more believable, if more difficult for many to watch.

All in all, I think it's a fascinating production which pulls no punches.

Other viewers are griping about special effects. As one who is tired of special effects being the raison d'etre for way too many movies, I appreciated this movie for relying on the script and the actors' craft and letting the special effects serve the movie (LA dwellers: Watch for shots of LA pre-development, especially the Ambassador Hotel and a quickie of Desmond's on Wilshire without buildings everywhere around it). Good performances and a compelling story make it well worth seeing. Though it's not a `great' movie, it's still far better than the boatload of crap that is about to be unloaded on the public by the studios for the summer crowd.

It seems a lot of people are expecting this to be THE interpretation of Shakespeare, and they are sadly disappointed. But, if you're looking for a reasonably good version of one of Shakespeare's most delightful plays, with much of the language intact, and few mis-steps by the actors, this movie works well. Stanley Tucci is brilliant as Puck, and, with Rupert Everett, delineates beautifully the relationship between the brooding Oberon and his scheming servant. The lovers work well together. The mechanicals are an excellent troupe, and Kline is, of course, a stand-out. Where problems appear are in the direction and the production values, which are tremendously mixed, giving us lush Tuscan hillsides with beautifully costumed characters, and then transporting us into the magical woods, which are stagy and peopled with fairies costumed with fake Walmart Halloween costume pieces. Hoffman attempts to add some different concepts to his interpretation, then fails to fully realize them (the wife of Bottom sub-plot), or botches the direction of them (notably the attempt to have Flute deliver a truly moving performance as Thisby). However, if you're willing to sit back and enjoy the ride without expecting the ultimate Shakespeare (which is what, anyway??), you should be rewarded a lot more than by the rest of the fare that's beginning to hit.