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ChrisTheBard
Reviews
The Rainmaker (1956)
Deceptively brilliant
Not knowing anything about this movie, I happened to pick it up on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). What a pleasing, warm and emotional experience have I just had!
The definition of a great movie is one that "talks" to you, and this one, with its universal themes of dreams and self belief, did just that.
Folk who complain about the cheesy sets and so on have missed the point. This is a film about the human condition. Each character has a place, and is well crafted. Each character is properly formed. Loved that the Rainmaker developed as a character too.
The ending was the best part.
Full credit to the screen writer. In creating this piece, fittingly to the themes he created, did something worthwhile with his life.
Man of Steel (2013)
They tried too hard, and forgot the basics.
The more I think about it the angrier get with myself to have been made a fool out of for my money. I was fooled by the hype. I tried really hard to enjoy this movie... but never did. And now, some 3 months later, I wish I had never seen, because it has contaminated the Superman that has been in my mind ever since I was sixteen when I watched Superman the Movie.
I never really felt that I was "in" the movie... I was always aware of what they were "trying to do".
The story was slow, confusing and disjointed. For example, early on we see a bearded man half-saving an oil rig then figure that must be "Superman". For me I want to see Clark Kent finding out that an oil rig is burning, turning into Superman, then flying in to save the day. Right???
How did Clark shave? If we see him with a beard we need to know which Super-razor can cut his beard. If he stays clean shaven we can at least always imagine that for some reason Superman's beard does not grow. In the fight scenes, they missed a trick: Superman is always smarter than his supervillains. That's how one can beat three. I also think that Clark must always keep his "secret" - that only he and his mom and dad know of. Lois Lane is not supposed to be included, unless he confesses to her who he really is.
In fairness, they were up against the incredible 1978 Superman - The Movie, with that insane John William score, and the perfect Superman and the perfect Clark Kent - Christopher Reeve. Not forgetting those flying credits. We need to remember that Superman the Movie was written by the same bloke who wrote the Godfather trilogy. Masterwriter Mario Puzo. I think that forever all Superman movies will be in the shadow of that masterpiece, which defined the superhero movie. Some things just can't be beat.
But this movie was downright Pathetic. Shameful. Thesaurus for all bad things.
Django Unchained (2012)
What was this movie about?
If you have nothing better to do with two and a half hours of your time, and ten dollars to blow, then watching this movie might suit your purposes.
Witty dialog doth not a movie make. The piece just seemed to drag on and on an on. At the end, I walked out of the cinema not really knowing what the movie had been about. It was like being at a fairground and drinking a huge raspberry milkshake that was very tasty, and then discarding the container and moving on to the next thing.
Anyways, the dialog was amusing, which is probably where the good ratings come from. But I can hardly remember having watched it.
Coco avant Chanel (2009)
Well Worth Watching
Beautifully made, Coco Avant Chanel is a lovely, moving, film.
I do feel, though, that if Coco had gotten hold of it, she would have given it a good few snips with that pair of scissors of hers that we see so much of! Could the movie not have echoed Coco's penchant for simplicity?
The writers did not, I feel, solely concentrate on telling the story that they were really trying to: Of a rags-to-riches (no pun intended) orphan who, for her rebellious and determined nature, revolutionized the fashion industry for all time. Then, the film would have had a number of clear turning points, instead of being mostly a Jane-Austeny kind of character study, however involving that character study may have been. For me, the film feels more like a cinematic novel than a movie. We should thus not have had the need for the little flashback of her remembering Boy, nor the effete, tacked on, "belts and braces" text epilogue. An epilogue is there to provide fascinating post-story data, not reinforce what the movie was about. It's not as though the Coco Chanel brand disappeared in the 1950s, in which case an epilogue informing us that Coco Chanel had become a fashion icon, would have been relevant.
Othello (1995)
Is it my imagination....
... or was Honest Iago actually smirking at the end, as he died?
Loved how the Bard's iambic pentameter just rolled of Fishburne's tongue, with excellent clarity and emotion.
And how Branagh made Honest Iago seem to celebrate his own evilness...
This is a wonderful film.
I have often thought that Shakespeare is inherently not film-friendly: He uses words to create pictures in our minds, which creates a perennial battle with the camera, which only knows to show us what we need to think and feel. Every effort to film Shakespeare ought really to be celebrated. It is not an easy thing to do.
Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Bravo!
Nowadays there is much criticism of lemming movie makers that follow the herd.
Well, here is an example of fresh, original movie-making that takes perhaps the most famous love story of all and gives it a unique treatment. Good on you, Mr. Luhrmann!
I'd like to take issue with those that excoriated this film - did you not know before you bought your ticket you were going to watch Romeo and Juliet set in a modern-day California with guns and stuff? If you didn't, that's too bad. It's like going on a roller-coaster and then complaining you got the heevy-jeevys. What did you expect, I ask you with tears in my cotton pickin' eyes? And it's not as though the brave, original Mr. Lurhmann butchered Shakespeare's text - he didn't. Sure, he edited it where he felt he needed to, and changed the ending (which I disagreed with) but every word you hear was written by the Bard himself - hence the title W.S.'s R&J.
Enough people enjoyed this movie to warrant its worthy place in the canon of Shakespeare on Film - and those (purists) that didn't should have know beforehand that it would not be their cup of tea. That's why we have the wonderful, definitive Zefferelli R&J - which this movie sure didn't attempt to compete with.
Personally, I thought this movie was a blast. That newscast opening scene (prologue) was wonderful. I rubbed my hands in imaginary glee when I saw it, because I knew I was in for a treat - and sure was. Let's not all take Shakespeare so seriously, just because he has this lofty place in our culture.
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Thanks for the warnings... I'm not gonna watch this movie
Dear fellow Spidey-lovers
After having carefully read dozens of your "avoid at all costs!" comments, my bro and I, who are Spidey fans and even have collections of Spidey-stuff, are not gonna watch this movie - not even on DVD.
I for one am not gonna be knowingly ripped off. Just because a movie is called "Spiderman" doesn't give its makers license to indulge themselves at my - and it seems thousands of other - Spidey fans' expense. It seems that Raimi & Co (couldn't he afford a professional screenwriter?) should be charged with Culture Treason - for taking a treasured national icon and destroying it for personal gain.
This picture reminds me of Titanic. There, the makers also knew that no matter how badly they wrote the story, people would pay money just to watch the spectacle of that great ship going down.
Raimi & Sony are, of course, cackling with laughter all the way to the bank, while our beloved Spiderman lies dying in the gutter, coughing Spidey-blood. If they happened to see him there as they walked past, they might even kick him in the mouth and larf, just for fun.
What a travesty.
Fracture (2007)
Hopkins-aided TV schlock
With a title like "Fracture" and a star like Anthony Hopkins, I expected a taut, high-end classic thriller.
Instead, I rather got the feeling that the movie was put together by talented but lazy people who treated their audience with the same disdain that the Ryan Gosling character (Beechum) had for his final prosecuting case.
It's simply not good enough to have gaping plot-holes at this level of feature movie-making. We can all forgive weak writing, or less than brilliant directing and acting from time to time, but it's not nice feeling taken advantage of just because the movie makers knew they had Hopkins on board playing his stock-in-trade psychopathic killer, and could then get away with any old TV-derived schlock.
SPOILERS:
If nothing else, the movie should have set up how the Hopkins character (Crawford) would know for sure that the officer who was screwing his wife would be the same one to investigate the shooting at his home. Also, how could she not die when shot in the head at point-blank range with a Glock .45 by a man as cool and competent as the Crawford? Fracture's various plot-problems have been well documented by other reviewers on this site, so I won't draw attention to them, other than to inquire as to the relevance of the girl - at all - and the rolling-ball contraption? I find it ironic that a complex metaphor like "fracture" is used alongside a gaping plot. (I still don't really understand its relevance in the movie, but maybe I'm a bit dumb.)
I'd also like to make a confession:
I was rather sorry that the Hopkins character got nailed at the end. I had gotten to like him and, to compound my disappointment, I didn't really believe the (predictable) ending. Crawford was far too clever to be caught out like that. It would have solved a whole bunch of plot problems had he got off. It would also have introduced a theme into a theme-less movie: That you can't always make up for lost time if you didn't do your job with heart and soul when you had the chance. This, ironically, is the theme that the movie-makers of Fracture will take with them as their picture disappears into the morass of unremarkable celluloid.
Vacancy (2007)
Wasted opportunity
What a pity the director didn't get his writer/s to do another draft or two. We needed to have a background reason for this couple to have been smarter or more capable than those that perished before them. They were just so bland and generic.
Also: Who were the killer thugs and what motivated them? How could that murderous operation have existed without suspicion? Why put cassette tapes in the rooms for the couple to see, or, if so, where was the payback? The sheriff would have called for backup immediately he discovered something was very wrong. The general "tunnel mechanics" of the plot could have been better worked - at times they seemed quite contrived. Etcetera. Worst mistake - for me - was that the husband was still alive the next morning. Impossible - I just don't believe that the thugs wouldn't have finished him off once they had gotten hold of him. (It also robbed us of a wonderful irony - had he died: that their marriage had just been saved - and potentially have turned schlock into cinema.) Mistakes like these reduce the intensity of our hypnosis, and weaken our emotional experience.
I feel they started shooting the movie too soon - they had an excellent premise ("Psycho" template - "If you're gonna rip something off, rip off a winner!") and it seems they had some money, and thus the potential to create a really useful piece of cinema. But I suppose that's why great thrillers are so few and far between, and why movies like this one make us appreciate them all the more.
Redline (2007)
This is the real Grindhouse
This is the movie Grindhouse could never even try to be Redline's schlock is just too sincere, and just too bad to copy... and I loved it from beginning to end.
It doesn't pretend to be anything other than car porn and a female flesh-fest. And the villain (Angus Macfayden as Michael) was wonderful a parody on the delusional psychopath. More of him please in Redline II! I need to see this picture again, if only to watch him sucking the straw of his cocktail, or saying to the girl "I love you" after threatening her life (this is not really a spoiler
there is no plot to spoil). And where else you gonna see a Ferrari Enzo doing it's thing?
And the girls!!! Applause to the director for having some blood in his veins. And there was nothing prurient about them not even a hint of it. This is not the Godfather or Citizen Kane - it's a throw-away comic-book brought to life in glorious Technicolor. See it for what it is, and love it! Cheekiest moment (if you'll excuse the pun) was when the flag-girl starting the race turns round and winks at the camera. How cool was that!
I've just watched Vacancy (unremarkable remake of Psycho) and the utterly forgettable Disturbia (unremarkable remake of Rear Window). Gimme Redline any time. "Above all else, to thyne own self be true", says William Shakespeare." Right on. Now where's my strawberry milkshake? And my car keys...? I need to go watch Redline.