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jay_zhead
Reviews
The Cure (1995)
One of the few films that manages to be touching without being cheesy
I had seen The Cure when I was a kid and I loved it then. Now, years later, I got a hold of a copy almost by accident, and watched it again. Being a kid, you don't really have the ability to procure things for yourself that you want, that is usually a prerogative of your parents - but when I watched it again now I felt sorry that I did not do more to get a copy of this movie back then, and consequently almost forgot about it until today.
This really is a beautiful movie. It tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a hard-edged, misfit kid - who takes his cues from his horrible, abusive mother - and his neighbor, a slightly younger boy who has AIDS.
Right, you say. Another one of "those". A tear jerker. A bucket movie. A morality tail. Yeah, I know, I hate those too. Only this one isn't. It is one of the very few movies among those many I have seen that pulls off a very rare trick: it conveys a truly sad story (and yes, a morality tale) but without a single moment where it feels cheesy, forced or in any other way "hollywoody". It shows a REAL relationship between two REAL boys, who interact as REAL kids do. And through that interaction the good-natured, loving character of the older boy, Eric, starts to shine through his "tough-guy" persona, as he takes on a kind of big-brotherly care for Dexter, his HIV-positive younger neighbor. Together, they embark on an adventure to find a cure - which to Erik seems to be just around the corner - so that all this silly AIDS thing will go away and they can be friends forever.
The production is top notch. But, of course, what really carries this movie, is the performances of the two leads - Brad Renfro and Joseph Mazzello. Especially Mazzello, who is simply stunning - he does convey a sense of frailty needed for an ailing boy, but at the same time he manages to make Dexter a truly energetic and determined character. He shines at the scene where the boys confront Pony: his impulse to protect his older friend lunges him forth, drives him to say what he says - and only afterwards, the horror is depicted on his face, as he realizes that what he himself said is true: his blood is poison... Renfro also has his moments, in particular the scenes with his mother: he depicts perfectly how this macho, street-wise kid is left completely frozen and numb when faced with his abusive, storming mother, and can't get a word in to contradict her as she forbids his relationship with the ailing boy out of her fear and ignorance. Annabella Sciorra also gives a memorable performance as Dexter's mother, who ultimately becomes, in a sense, a mother figure to Erik as well.
I've first seen this film when I was at school back in America, and loved it - not at all a given concerning movies of this sort. But the behavior of the kids in this movie was so real, I could easily relate to them. Ironically enough, the teacher who had shown us this movie (a wonderful woman, I'm still in touch with her) got in trouble for it, as some uptight parent complained about it having the scene when the two boys are looking at a Playboy... Pathetic. Seriously, will Americans ever get over this ridiculous phobia, I do not know. There was a hardly-distinguishable shot of a playboy cover in the movie and thus it is not shown in schools... how sad. Kids need to see this movie. It is more inspiring and educational than all the "official" after-school specials put together.
Oh, and one more thing. I know I'm rambling, but nevertheless... The score. It's great. I am a musician, and as such I know Dave Grusin from his records: he is a well known Jazz pianist and record producer. Up until this movie I really did not know that he did movie scores as well, even though when I later checked I found out that I had unknowingly watched several movies he worked on. Really, a wonderful job there.
All in all, a solid Ten. I'd recommend this movie to anyone. And I'm definitely going to see it with my younger siblings - they can use watching a film like this among all the standard special-effect hysteria they usually see.
Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns (2001)
A flawed and incomplete overview of the greatest American music
When I learned that Ken Burn's "Jazz" was going to be on TV I was very excited; and prepared a bunch of empty tapes to record it. The previews made it seem like the most perfect documentary that I, then a jazz musician in the making, could watch. However, as the series went on, I became supremely disappointed. This series, though most of it was very interesting to me and I learned a lot from it, is seriously flawed in presenting this most American of art forms and leaves me feeling hurt for the great people that the series failed to even mention, while others much less great were somehow squeezed in.
The first few episodes of the series are great, they are superbly done and I enjoyed them throughly. However, passed the bebop era, the series goes rapidly downhill. It skips everything that stems away from the most traditional of jazz, mocks fusion - which is really, like it or not, definitely a big part of jazz and is mostly responsible for it's continued survival, skips all important jazzmen of the 70's and 80's - how could they have done a series about jazz without even a single mention of a giant like Chick Corea is beyond me - and ends on a weird and unclear note, where they present a bunch of unknown young jazz musicians, that are (save for Joshua Redman and Christian McBride) should not have been in the documentary ahead of many giants that were not included. I still have no idea who half of those people are, even after searching for something of theirs. Very fishy.
Herbie Hancock, who is a pillar of Jazz and probably the most important Jazz-man of the last 30 years, was barely mentioned as a part of Miles Davis' group. Fellow pianist and jazz giant Chick Corea, who created an enormous body of work that influences young players all over the world (there is no pianist in jazz today who was not influenced by Corea, whether they know it or not) was not mentioned at all. Also there was no mention of such important players as Jaco Pastorius, who established the electric bass as a serious instrument and transformed modern jazz forever, Michael Brecker, the biggest influence on saxophonists since Wayne Shorter (me among them), Pat Metheny, the guitar giant who managed to turn creative Jazz into a accessible and popular music but without sacrificing it's intensity or complexity..
And here, in the section about "the revival" of Jazz, they show me a bunch of young faces I haven't even heard of, some of whom are frankly just "purists" who are trying to play like the old jazz giants without a hint of originality or message to their music. This is not the future of Jazz as far as I am concerned, and I was insulted for those greats that were not even mentioned when those unknown kids came on the screen.
Not that I'm in any way trying to belittle the colossal contribution of Louis Armstrong (who, by the way, is the reason I became interested in Jazz in the first place), but some of the screen time they gave him could have been used to at least mention many greats that were omitted. Also, I felt that Ken Burns tried very hard to turn the history of Jazz into a documentary about civil rights of blacks in America, and though it is, of course, very relevant to the issue at hand, it was still dealt way too much screen time until in becomes tiring and you find yourself fast-forwarding through those parts to see what actually happens to the musicians themselves.
As far as I am concerned, this is a very lacking production, that starts off great and then completely misleads the viewers that are uneducated in jazz to believe that jazz between the death of John Coltrane and the emergence of Wynton Marsalis did not exist at all. Too bad. In my opinion, the series is - at best - incomplete. It leaves the impression of a documentary about Jazz made by purists for purists, completely disregarding a huge chunk of very important Jazz, and mockingly downplaying it to boot.
5 out of 10, only by virtue of how well it was technically done.