Change Your Image
katriona-1
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Our House (2022)
A first.
Apart from the actors hired to play out this dreadful farce, this has absolutely nothing to recommend it.
In fact it's the only episodic adaptation of a novel, that should certainly depress the numbers of copies of the book sold. Having seen it, I would never read the book. In fact, I might even return it. What a waste of everyone's time including the performers directors and crew. The characters are unbelievably idiotic, particularly the lead, followed by her dim witted " friend", and his scheming blackmailers. Each one of them makes choices that a child would not have...insane plotting. And to cap it, a police investigation from the Keystone Cops. The husband may have made the best choice. He's well out of a plot line like this.
Silent Witness: True Love Waits: Part 2 (2013)
David Murray!
Can I take a moment to extol the brilliant work of David Murray , who plays the cop/psychopath Alan Lane? He is an unbelievably frightening man who exudes cold reptilian menace on moment and reasonable aggreivedness the next. He is fast as a snake, and unremittingly violent. He scared the bejesus out of me. The rest of the cast is up to there usual high standards, and the story structure is excellent, it's also good to see "Jack" slipping into the cast , and making good use of his boxing skills...Clarissa and Leo are as usual doing a fine job, but it's the terrifying crazy of David Murray, that mesmerizes from start to finish!
Svideteli Putina (2018)
Hugely undervalued.
I think this is a brilliant documentary, and am shocked at the "meh" attitude of the other reviewers...it's is a fly on the wall view of Putin's rise to power, and it plays like a psychological thriller without a third act. Watch Putin as he betrays everyone who helps him. Check out his wife in the celebration of his election in his campaign rooms, looking like a damned soul in hell. Watch as Yeltsin slowly realizes he's been used, waiting for a thank you phone call that never comes. It is all so acutely realized, you can't believe you are not watching a dramatic reenactment. And Putin toggles back and forth behaviourally from nice low key guy to a strangely unsettling presence even among his enthusiastic supporters. He is hardly even trying to connect with them..it is FASCINATING.
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Greater than the sum of its parts.
I have seen The Deer Hunter 7 or 8 times over the years, and have grown into middle age while it's characters (and actors) remain eternally youthful, and the film always leaves me shaken and near tears. Reading some of the reviews of people who were less than impressed with it, I can see many of their objections as valid. The film is very long. The script is sometimes inchoate, incoherent, and clichéd. The pace lulls you, then yanks you forward. Some plot points are certainly in the realm of coincidence,and the ending is very ambiguous.
But the film becomes a country in your mind. The slow start allows you to know these people in the most intimate way. If the script is clumsy and clichéd, it is because the characters are small town people, not adept at tossing off bon mots, and their own experience of movies informs how they express themselves, in ways that are no less sincere for being derivative.The disjointed pacing makes the viewer struggle to follow the story, experiencing the same dislocation and alienation as the three men. And coincidence does happen in life, which is what makes life remarkable.( Charles Dickens used coincidence continuously to great effect!)
I think the Cimino's genius in this film was casting superb actors, and giving them the opportunity to breathe in these roles. He shot tons of coverage, and you have the impression that the actors lived, breathed and dreamed in character. Their commitment to the characters they inhabit bridge the gap created by a less than "perfect" screenplay--in fact it makes you feel that every second in this long, lurching movie is absolutely inevitable, totally right and completely necessary to a proper understanding of these people.In fact, the spare script is a simply a vessel that holds these burning performances, and allows the actors room to live in the film. I had the same feeling after the first time I saw this film, as I did with Manon of the Spring, that I had known these people all my life. They take up a very large place in my psyche. I love them, with all their faults and their dreams. They simply don't make films like this anymore!
As far as ambiguity is concerned, I'm comfortable with that. A friend of mine from Australia once described his view of American films:"First, they tell you what they're going to tell you, then they tell you, then they tell you what they told you." Kudos to Cimino for leaving his characters, (and us) on the razor's edge of uncertainty, after everything they believed in (except each other) has been devastated by war and loss.The tenderness the characters show each other in the final scenes of the film is transcendently beautiful and poignant, and more important than a well-formulated conclusion.There are no lessons to be learned here, just life unfolding itself in front of you. A very rare experience in cinema.
The Tudors (2007)
A disgraceful treatment of fascinating raw material.
Considering that nearly everyone has seen some version of the reign of King Henry the eighth, this shows unbelievably sloppy writing, woeful miscasting in key roles, and reduces the central character to a narcissistic sociopath, and not the deeply flawed but charismatic ruler, scholar and musician he was. It also blithely ignores the speed with which the King degenerated from being the athletic, idealistic, hero of his people to the bloated, diseased, morally bankrupt tyrant he became, as the consequence of his desperate desire for an heir.
The fact that the writers ignored the real drama, inherent in the historical facts, for some cheesy sex scenes with the royal frat-boy depicted, just shows the inherent cheapness of their intent.
Truly the worst historical adaptation I've ever seen. The only good things about it are some excellent actors trying to cope with the dreadful material, and really admirable production values.