Reviews

I watched Us only knowing the very basic outline of the story. After the first 10 minutes or so I expected another mildly entertaining but not too absorbing slot filler but gradually it got a lot deeper, darker and better than expected. At the beginning, we learn about a marriage on the rocks (though not necessarily beyond repair), but gradually the even worse relationship issues between father and son move to the foreground. The characters were finely drawn and strong and charismatic performances make you care deeply about the protagonists, despite their flaws (okay to be honest only Tom Hollander's Douglas is flawed, the other two are rather angelic, a bit more balance could have helped but this is only a minor quibble). I was also unable to guess the ending, reconciliation always looks as likely as break-up.

Unfortunately the last episode is a bit of a letdown, quite a bit actually. The climax (supposed to be a sort of painful but cathartic reunion between father and son) is dealt with far too quickly. For example, there is a lot of dramatic potential in the fact that Douglas apologises but for everything he says he puts in some relativation like "you have not always been easy too" or "I still think I had a point" . But this element is sadly not really explored at all. And after a few minutes all the justified anger, frustration and confusion Albie's side has suddenly disappeared for no obvious reason, never to surface again and father and son are the best chums again. Rather than tacking on that silly and useless heart attack plot line that comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere, a lot more time could have spent on father and son coming to terms with each other. Given the three excellent episodes that precede the last one, this is still very much worth watching though.

One thing deserves particular mention: I don't think I have ever seen a movie or TV series in my life that features older and younger versions of the same characters that are so incredibly well matched to each other. Not just looks but also accent, mannerisms, behaviour - just everything is absolutely pitch perfect. I don't know in which order the scenes were shot or how much effort which actor deliberately spent on mirroring the other one but there really are some Bafta-worthy performances here.

Looking at the reviews on this site, it is clear that "you either love it or hate" is more true for Apocalypse Now than for almost any other movie. I beg to differ from both camps. It is a film that contains some greatness but is too long and overblown and ultimately lets itself down badly towards the end.

The story is quickly told - special forces officer Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) has apparently gone insane and set himself up in Cambodia as independent warlord and Captain WiIllard (Martin Sheen) has been sent on a special mission by the US high command to kill him. The movie consists mainly of his journey up the Nung river in a small patrol boat. Willard is clearly already mentally damaged by the war by earlier events, but as he now travels up the river, he descends mentally more and more into hell. At the same time, as he studies Kurtz' dossier, he gradually feels drawn closer to him as he understands his mindset better and better. Apocalypse Now is as much a psychological study as a movie about the war, but for me the build up (Willard's journey up the Nung) is way too long. Most of the scenes do not propel the plot forward, but serve to portray the horrors of the war and what it does to its participants and there is nothing wrong with that, but the result does feel a bit like some incoherent mess that could have done with a lot tighter editing. Yes, you do get a real sense of the horrors and dehumanisation of the war, but there is a lot in there that adds nothing to either plot, characterisation or setup. I have only seen the redux version and actually found especially the French plantation version, that is only included here, remarkably pointless but I have the feeling that I would even find the original version way too long. Still up to then, it is an extraordinary film that contains a lot once you get past the pomp and over-indulgence, but the ending really lets it down. After all this build-up, you get an incoherent Marlon Brando mumbling pseudo-meaningful lines and what's left of the plot simply disintegrates. If feels as if spending 150 minutes drawing up a larger than life character and preparing us for something special, Coppola had no idea what actually to do with him once he came on screen and was glad that Marlon Brando proved difficult and strange on set and more or less ad-libbed enigmatic lines that he came up with himself. For me, this turned a nearly great (though by no means "best ever") into a merely good movie that thinks too much of itself and finally succumbs to its own pomp.

A story of love and humanity against a fascist backdrop tends to have viewers falling over themselves with their praise and this is also true for "A Special Day" with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. There is indeed a lot to like about this movie, not least two incredibly strong and charismatic performances by the actors playng the two lead characters - a housewife and a sacked radio presenter who get close to each other despite (at least initially) politically opposing views. However, for me, there were also some major flaws to that movie. I am not aware of it being adopted from a stage play, but it would not surprise me at all if it was. The characters are overdrawn and the dialog is often stilted - something that I can quite happily accept on stage but I don't like in cinema (as an aside, I watched the English dubbed version - I was surprised that this movie even has been dubbed, and also a bit disappointed as I don't mind subtitles and find dubbing usually unreal and jarring, but have to say that in this case, the dubbing was technically excellent and hardly noticeable) . One example is Gabriele's behaviour when they first meet which is eccentric, if not rude and overbearing; I don't think that Antonietta would have put up with him for very long. The love making scenes (if you can call them that) are hard to watch because of their awkwardness, but the worst is that the creators thought that having the characters embark on a sexual affair in the first place was a good idea, this also does not feel real for the characters and I believe that the story would have been much stronger had the feelings of the characters for each other remained on a platonic level. I want to emphasise that many of the good things said by other reviewers about this movie are true and I don't need to repeat them here, but this is not the unflawed masterpiece that it thinks it is.