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Reviews
'As You Like It' at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (2010)
Shakespeare As You Like it Best
Outstanding production of classic Shakespeare pastoral romance. Directorial interpretation, pacing, choreography, fights, and music all work harmoniously under flawless organization by Thea Sharrock. The dance scene at the end is especially effective and energized. Naomi Frederick (Rosalind) and Jack Laskey (Orlando) exhibit striking chemistry with beautifully crafted deliveries and sexy, poignant ironies where needed. As Jaques, Tim McMullan reveals an entertaining combination of self-deprecating humor and silly melancholy as befits the role. Musical interludes and songs: first-rate. This is Shakespeare at his best, and you will like--even, love-- it.
Elegy (2008)
Love Means Never Having to Say . . . Much
As many of the reviewers on this page have noted, the movie "Elegy" is beautifully filmed, stunningly acted, and ferociously under-motivated. It is the story of a much older professor and his much younger student, who pass through each other's lives with minimal emotional contact with each other and virtually none to engage the viewer. I find both characters superficial, foggy, and distant. Is that the point of the film? Penelope Cruz is pretty, fresh, and shallow. What does the professor, Ben Kingsley, see in her? A diversion only? His rhetoric promises more, but what? He is pompous, cold, old, and filled with NYC intellectual abstractions that are thinly disguised veils for his creepy (read "cultural critic") narcissism. Is she simply deluded in her interest in him and he so "self-individuated" as to be rigidly remote? Where is real feeling here? As for story structure, two deus-ex-diseases--Hopper's stroke and her cancer--are more than my tolerance for fatalistic sentimentality can bear. At the end, when she is dying (I presume) of her disease and the professor crawls into her bed at the hospital, it would not surprise me if Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw joined them.
Tenure (2008)
This Movie Should Never Get Tenure
If there is an academy award category for the most tedious movie ever written, "Tenure" should win in a landslide. The story centers on a boring, nontenured professor at a small college, coming up for promotion, who can't get his articles published. I understand why. This man has no discernible talent of any kind--no wit, no intellectual skills, no insight into much of anything. Why we should find him interesting is beyond me. The movie "says" he is a good teacher, but after more than a quarter of a century of teaching, I can't find anything he does in class that illuminates either students or subject matter. A few moments in the movie are droll: the goofy Bigfoot stuff, the crazy woman professor's complaint about the toilet seat, and the professor's father in the retirement home. The love story--is there one?-- between the prof and the new hire is undeveloped and shallow. The main character is passive, depressing, and utterly without passion. Even the secondary characters are dull. Does the professor get tenure in the end? Who cares? Acting is fine. Script = D+.
V.I. Warshawski (1991)
Sweet Home Chicago
As a native of Chicago, I can't say enough about how beautifully the city was photographed in this movie. As for the film itself, the story kept moving at an engaging pace as detective V.I. Warshawski "follows the money" and solves the murder of a former pro hockey player. Turner is aggressive, sexy, sultry, and vulnerable in this role. Maybe more street-smart, Chicago toughness in her delivery. The writing, overall, was adequate. Warshawski's general observations about the stupidity and gullibility of men tasted to me like watered-down feminism on a piece of stale, Chicago deep-dish pizza after a while. I wasn't often convinced that the female detective was a physical threat to the male villains. The ending with a double-opponent elimination was OK but I would like to have seen her action skills equal those of Bruce Willis for true equality to prevail. After all, the key to this action genre is the ability of the detective to overcome overwhelming physical and mental opposition. A pleasant, movie-of-the-week kind of yarn, though better. And that beautiful city!
Let It Be Me (1995)
Vapid romance with OK dancing
Sweet but empty dance movie about three couples, two of whom change partners then return to their original love interests. The problem is that the characters in the love quadrangle are boring and superficial. They seem less than passionate about their dreams--love or otherwise--and when they break up and return, their motives are strikingly flimsy and unconvincing. What did they see in each other in the first place that they can so easily drift? Regardless of the backstory about their lost love, pregnancy, smiling in bed at each other, nothing in their motivation defines distinctive, memorable, or engaging characters. Dialog is trite, lacks freshness and wit. Actors are fine: Jennifer Beals is appealing, Yancy Butler sexy and smoking. The third, older couple, Patrick Stewart and Leslie Caron, whose lives end happily, have no discernible story to portray. The writing in the film fails them utterly. Dancing is fun but not great; contrast mediocre sequences here with the dynamite dancing in Flashdance. Script = C-.