My first movie of the year (the next three posts will be left-overs from the end of December).

This film is, at times, painfully funny. There are bits that inspire some of the hardest laughing I've ever done at a film. Yet I still feel that, as a whole, it's one of the Python gang's weaker efforts. Don't misunderstand me: this is a very, very light criticism, since even weak Monty Python is still strong comedy.

My problem is that there are some scenes in which the Pythons seem to be pandering, going for a much more obvious type of subversion than what they're known for. The clearest example is the prolonged vomitting scene. While it may be one of the greatest scenes of gross-out humor (of which I'm not normally a fan) ever put on film, it feels less like Monty Python and more like the Farrelly brothers. I guess maybe I'm being sort of elitist, but I can't help that I don't find it as funny as MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL

My two very favorite sequences are both Gilliam's. The first is his fantastic short film, THE CRIMSON PERMANENT ASSURANCE, which opens the affair. The second is the animated bit with the leaves committing suicide, which makes me laugh more than almost anything else I've ever seen in movies and in life. There are also other great moments, like Eric Idle's universe song and the great sketch with Michael Palin as the drill sargeant, or the one that follows it where Eric Idle plays the officer who thinks his leg has been bitten off by a mosquito.

I've also never been quite sure if I'm satisfied with Terry Jones' direction. It's rather flat and doesn't have much to distinguish it from TV. Gilliam is by far the better director and it's interesting that he let Jones step up to the plate by himself after HOLY GRAIL. As much as I love Gilliam (he's my all-time favorite director), I wonder whether his fantastic vision would help the film or overpower it. Either way, Jones lets the sketches exude their own power without the benefit of imaginative direction, and perhaps that was the best decision.

John Du Prez's score is fantastic. What's he up to these days?

I used the cash I got for Christmas to buy a box set of Hitchcock DVDs from Criterion that includes this film, THE LADY VANISHES, REBECCA, SPELLBOUND, and NOTORIOUS. I've actually only seen THE 39 STEPS and SPELLBOUND from this lot, but with Criterion I know that even if the movies don't turn out to be favorites, the DVDs are worth having around.

39 STEPS is a tight, charming little thriller from Hitchcock's British days that remains one of the most enjoyable films he ever made. It has a sharp wit and brisk pace, and Robert Donat is just a very entertaining actor to watch.

It's really little lines and scenes that stick in your mind the most rather than the film as a whole. For instance, there's the scene where Donat, on the run, stumbles into a political rally and delivers an off-the-cuff speech the gets the crowd cheering. There's the moment when he and Madeleine Carroll are being kidnapped and Hitchcock starts with a heated conversation in the car using rear projection and seemingly in one shot pulls out to an external view of the car driving away. It's just done with a well-hidden cut, of course, but it's so seamless it still makes you do a double take 70 years later. And then there's the films romantic center, the sequence where Donat and Carroll check into a little inn, still handcuffed to each other. It culminates with Donat going on about the criminals in his family and how he got started in crime...all bull, but Carroll still thinks he's a murderer.

And then there's also one of my favorite lines from a Hitchcock film (maybe any film)...as the kidnappers' car stops for a herd of sheep blocking the road, Donat says, "What are we stopping for? Oh look, it's a whole flock of detectives!" It's just a great little Hitchcock gem. Everyone should check it out if they haven't.

I plan to watch the rest of the set in the order the were made, so look for the other four in the coming weeks.

Kirk
NP - 8 1/2 (Rota)

With Soderbergh writing, shooting, directing and starring in this film, it seems like it should be self-indulgent, pretentious, and masturbatory. Well, it probably is self-indulgent, and it may be pretentious in that Soderbergh doesn't try to help the audience out at all, and, well, there is masturbation in it (done by Soderbergh's character, no less). But ultimately, none of it matters...this is one of the most hilarious movies I have ever seen. It's obviously just a collection of random stuff that Soderbergh himself thinks is really funny, and the only people in its audience will be those who share his sense of humor, but if you're one of them then you're in for a great time.

Explaining the plot is useful only in describing how odd and outlandish this movie is. I've referred to it as "Monty Python's Mulholland Drive" a few times in describing it to other people, though probably a better description is one that comes from the review at DVDFile.com: "If Jean Luc Godard, William Burroughs and the Monty Python gang got together and decided to make an adaptation of the Dilbert comic strip, it would probably turn out something like this."

Here's the plot, explained in the most linear fashion I can devise. Soderbergh plays Fletcher Munson, a man who works for a company founded by T. Azimuth Schwitters, creator of "Eventualism," a Scientology-like movement. When another person at the company dies, it's left up to Munson to write Schwitters' next big speech. Munson is also dealing with a strained relationship with his wife (played by Brantley, Soderbergh's real-life ex-wife), with whom he only communicates in broad generalizations. There are also suspicions of a mole at the company, which fall most gravely on the co-worker Munson is closest to, Nameless Numberhead Man (yes, that's his name - his wife is Mrs. Numberhead Man). About half-way through the film, Munson comes across a dentist (Jeffrey Korcheck) who looks exactly like him (also played by Soderbergh). He swithces identities with Korcheck and finds out he's having an affair with his wife. After he breaks that off, he pursues a relationship with one of Korcheck's patients who looks exactly like his wife (and is also played by Brantley).

This is all intercut with scenes involving a character called Elmo Oxygen, an exterminator who sleeps with every housewife in town. All of Oxygen's scenes in the first half of the film have dialogue that is completely unintelligible. ("Fragment chief butter. Kind surgery mind?" "Precision galley sponge.") Later he is recruited by two agents, storms off the film and starts using his screen time to beat people up. There are also random, completely extraneous scenes involving fake news reports, an escaped mental patient, and a man being interviewed whose name is Man Being Interviewed.

If you're the type of person who is turned off by this sort of dreamy surrealism, don't fret. It's all incredibly hysterical. It's zany and silly to the extreme. Soderbergh has made in Schizopolis a kind of film I've been keen to make ever since I've been keen to make films: a nonsense film. This movie is the cinematic equivalent of a poem by Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear. And since Lear and (especially) Carroll are two of my favorite authors, that comment is high praise coming from me.

Big Fish is a very deeply moving film. I laughed very hard at some points and cried just as hard at others. It's fantastic, larger-than-life, beautiful to look at, the score is wonderful, and all of the performances are spot-on and utterly perfect. But even so, there were still some things I was rather disappointed with. But here's the important part: the ONLY disappointments I have stem entirely from the fact that I had read the book. If I had not read the book first, I guarantee you my reaction would have been stupefying.

And even then, I have to applaud screenwriter John August for the way he changed some things. I was curious as to whether they could really adapt this book into a film because it reads more like a collection of short stories than a novel. But August did a great job taking ideas from completely unrelated stories in the book and weaving them together so that they form a wonderfully cohesive narrative. I'm really quite impressed with it. And there was also one scene in the book that I absolutely loathed, even though I thought the rest of the book was great, and lo and behold this scene is not in the movie. So that's a plus.

There's an underwater scene which was, as I had feared, scaled down dramatically. But ironically, it didn't bother me. I did like the book's ending a little better as well. It's kept intact in the film, but has had some tweaks to it that I would not have made. Please don't misunderstand me: the film's ending is quite beautiful, and it indeed made me cry...it's just that the book's ending made me cry harder.

The long and short of it is that most people who have not read the book should love every ounce of this movie. It's a beautiful, wonderful, very moving film and it's sure to be in my top ten at the end of the year (that is, once I'm done seeing movies from 2003), despite my disappointments in its translation to film. As Chicago critic Nick Digilio said, Big Fish "is the tearjerker of the year, but it earns every tear."

Elfman's score is his best in quite some time, though it's criminally undersold on the CD. There's a lot of Sommersby in here, as well as a lot of music you could describe as "Dolores Claiborne light," music in a similar style but without so much darkness and anguish as that score. There's also some wonderful carnival music that's nowehere to be found on the album. What a shame...perhaps an expanded Oscar promo will pop up, considering how much Sony seems to be pushing this film for nominations.

Kirk
NP - Flowers in the Attic (Young)

Cold Mountain. Lovely cinematography and some stunning shots new to film
making. Kidman does her usual good job, but Jude Law seems miscast. Renee
Zellwegger steals the show as Ruby. Watch her carefully. Large epic themes as well as
intimate, thematic explorations of the human heart. And I’m grateful Hollywood didn’t
change the book’s ending in order to please an audience. Yared’s score failed to impress
me.

All amazing, all will be watched again soon.

To be watched:
Chinatown
The 'Burbs
The Manchurian Canidate

This movie has a lot going for it. A lot of it may be cliched, but if it is I felt it was cliched in a way that was more nostalgic than repetitive. It's biggest problem is that the ending gets too nostalgic, in that it gets to feel like someone has resurrected the Hayes Production Code. I half-expected Claude Rains to run in and start babbling about how he and Edward Arnold had set the whole thing up. The ending feels unnatural, an unfortunate Hollywood cop-out that betrays the emotions the film has built up.

But still, there is plenty here to recommend. It's two strongest points are some great cinematography by the always reliable John Toll and a truly stunning performance by Ken Watanabe. This guy's presence and depth of character is astonishing, and he steals the show.

Cruise does as good a job as he possibly could in a role so clearly unsuited for him. It's tough to talk about his performance, because he clearly poured his heart into it and, I suppose, did a really good job. But he just couldn't get to a level where he was able to overcome his misplacement. On the STAR TREK 2 DVD, Nicholas Meyer (quoting someone I can't remember) talks about the difference between an actor and a movie star. An actor is a person who pretends that he is other people, while a movie star is someone who pretends that other people are him. Tom Cruise is a movie star, and while I like him and I think he's put in some very, very good performances over the course of his career, there are some characters that simply can't be transformed into him. This, sadly, is one of those characters.

Battle scenes are all extremely well-done. Hans Zimmer's score is quite good (that's a sentence I did not expect to hear myself say again), probably his best since BEYOND RANGOON, my favorite of his works. Is it just something about the Far East that inspires him to write good music?

Here's hoping Watanabe gets an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor.

I enjoyed this well enough. The best thing about it was the storybook look of it all, like you were really leafing through a beautifully illustrated edition of the book except all the pictures were alive.

Many critics have said the acting was inconsistent, and I guess it was. The odd thing is that much of the inconsistent acting belonged entirely to Jeremy Sumpter, who plays Peter Pan. There are some scenes he just shines in, and others where he doesn't seem to really have a handle on what he was doing, as if it took him a while to really get into it and all his better scenes come from later in the shoot. Jason Isaacs is, as you would expect, a perfect Captain Hook, though there are a few scenes where a cockney accent suddenly appears out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly.

I wouldn't make this movie a priority, but it's worth not turning off if it ever shows up on TV.

This was a very fun ride of a film. It’s a heist film, a comedy, and a romantic drama. The basic plot involves two young men, Franz and Anthony, who are planning to rob a local house where a great fortune is tucked away. To crack into the house as easy as possible, they wish to recruit the help of Odile (played by Anna Karina, the wife of Godard at the time), a beautiful student who is in their English class, but most importantly, a ward to the wealthy couple that lives in the house. She has only mild objections to their plan, but those disappear because she is easy to manipulate.

This was my sixth Godard film, and it’s my second-favorite. I’m surprised that “Band of Outsiders” isn’t more popular, because there are some truly classic scenes here. One of the most memorable scenes in the film is a wonderful dance number that‘s almost magic to watch. There’s also a scene when the three run through the Louvre museum, and an unexpected delight I‘ll just dub as ‘a minute of silence.’

Michael Legrand’s score was (like most of the original scores for Godard’s films) incredibly versatile. It ranges from obnoxious jazz to a very beautiful, slow waltz. The music is used in a very unique way, sometimes blaring out or reaching a crescendo in the most simple scenes or places. The waltz, I believe, represents these three characters in an almost uncannily perfect way. Playing as they’re having a conversation in the car, planning the heist, or having a tender moment between the three of them, the music really makes me feel for the three.

Godard is known to use music in a most unique and sometimes extraordinary way. From “Breathless,“ a beautiful combination of beatnik jazz and classical, to “Contempt,” Georges Delerue’s dreamy classical score for the immeasurably absorbing 1963 Godard effort about a declining marriage and the film industry, to “Alphaville,” Paul Misraki’s combination of the lush (including a waltz) and the experimental. Two of his other films I’ve seen, “Two or Three Things I Know About Her” and “In Praise of Love,” were his most ‘random’ or ‘avant garde’ films, and appropriately, each had a strange, random selection of music, from Bach to Beethoven, to a single solo cello.

My favorite Godard film is “Breathless,” one of my favorite films of all time, and one of the few films I’ve ever seen that just screams the word “cool” at the audience. “Band of Outsiders” is a close second, and is recommended for anybody who is looking for a good story, told in a very unconventional way that only a master like Godard (or Truffaut) could achieve.

Dylan
NP: The 400 Blows (Jean Constantine)

It’s a rare occurrence when a film meets my expectations, and even rarer when a film exceeds them. “Big Fish” did just that. It was such a wonderful experiance, it seemed to combine everything I love about film and life into one movie. It also combined my life fantasies.

It’s such a personal film for me, somebody who romanticizes constantly. I’m somebody under the spell of the great filmmaker Federico Fellini, and spending parts of my day getting lost in Nino Rota’s music in my own Felliniesque fantasies. Dancing with girls in white dresses in bright carnivals and strange circuses. Going on big, strange, unpredictable romantic adventures. I’ve also always had a tremendous devotion to tender, soft, sad, touching stories. I’ve always dreamed of a film that would combine both sensibilities, a film that would be sort of a cross between “8 1/2,” “Juliet of the Spirits,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and that’s exactly what “Big Fish” is: a film so perfect I thought it could only exist in my dreams, a film I thought that only I could make. I’m really in awe of it.

Elfman’s score isn’t just his best in two or three years, it’s one of the best in his entire career. It couldn’t have been scored better. I feel the world got coldly and bitterly cheated by Sony Classical for leaving out so much (lots of wonderful circus music, the witch music, the wonderful variations of Jenny’s Theme...and so much more). It turns out that everything left off of the album appeals to my musical taste so immensely, and I’m very disappointed...there’s so much there that isn‘t on the album. The songs arn’t intrusive, but they seem very obvious and kind of forced. They did, however, succeed in bringing a smile to my face, and in that way, they did, very oddly, work.

There’s so much for me to love in “Big Fish.” The circus, the romance, the beautifully bizzare situations. Ultimately, it’s an expressionistic, carnivalesque, and tender view of the world...I think this is Burton’s best film. I imagine that it will always be in my heart.

I'd like to know who Roger Ebert's dealer is, because whatever he's smoking must be pretty good. Either that, or he had a bad case of hemorrhoids and happened to be on heavy painkillers when he saw this, because that's the only way I can imagine anyone calling this sordid mess the best film of the year. What makes it all the more puzzling is that I really respect Roger Ebert, even though I don't really agree with him any more or less than I do with any other critic (or any other person).

All the more puzzling is that although she hasn't made any movies I'm crazy about, I generally like Charlize Theron. Here I really despised her, and I'm still wondering what sort of an accomplishment that is. People are talking all over the place about how great her performance is and how she's thrown herself into this role, but I found her completely obvious, over-the-top, and painfully forced. She takes this complex, potentially interesting character and reduces her to bug eyes and twitches, almost like she saw Johnny Depp at work and said "Oh, I can do that" but forgot to put a person underneath it all. In a performance by Johnny Depp or, say, Jeffrey Combs, such quirks and nuances are merely icing, but for Theron in this film it's all she has. Have you ever seen someone cover a piece of pie in so much whipped cream that it eventually consumes the entire pie? Imagine getting a plate like that and then digging through all the whipped cream to find that there was no pie underneath.

But Theron can't be entirely to blame. Although a better actress might have helped, Patty Jenkins' screenplay and direction are still flat and uninspired. This is really little more than a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV-movie with violence and cussing thrown in, and like many of those Hall-of-Fame movies, this was a waste of many of the actors' time. Christina Ricci is quite good here and I wish this performance could have been part of a better film. And the most criminally wasted actor is the wonderful Pruitt Taylor Vince, who only shows up for two lines and a hand job before Theron whacks him.

I guess the main point is that when you make a movie about a murderer from the murderer's perspective, the audience should want to see how the crimes unfold and what drives a person to do such horrible things, but it was only five minutes into this slop before I was praying for the cops to catch her and let the whole thing be done with.

There's also a larger issue here that takes the film's status from moderately bad to unforgivable, which is the fact that Theron is getting so much praise and acclaim because she gained 40 pounds, shaved her eyebrows, and let the make-up artists uglify her for this part. Anybody can gain 40 pounds, shave their eyebrows, and let some make-up artists give them an uglier face. It's really quite disgusting that there are potentially so many good actresses who don't look like supermodels that can't get parts in Hollywood because even the parts that are written for their type are going to supermodels who only have to spend a few hours in a make-up chair and a few months eating chips and donuts to secure their nod from the Academy. Now that is truly monstrous.

Charlize Theron should take a look at this one. It's not a great movie, but it is a film that you can look at and, at the end, applaud simply for the spectacular work that the actors do. And that's really the best reason to see this film. The three lead performances here by Penn, Watts, and Del Toro are three of the most powerful, most finely tuned efforts I've ever seen.

I'm uncertain how I feel about Inarritu's decision to mess with the film's chronology. Except in a few instances, I can't discern what dramatic purpose it serves, but at the same time it's hard to say whether the film would be as powerful if it were told in straight, chronological order. Maybe the answer lies somewhere in between and it would have been better off with a little less time-juggling.

At any rate, this is a pretty good movie that deals with some very interesting and complex themes, and it's well worth seeing for the acting alone. Naomi Watts is especially surprising here. I thought she was quite good in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, but I had no idea she was capable of something like this. I won't get my hopes up about anyone else beating Theron for that Oscar, but if Naomi Watts isn't at least nominated for her phenomenal work here, it's all over for the Academy.

The movie:

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Really enjoyed this movie. Don't know why just yet, but there was something so engaging about it. Gene Hackman stole the show IMO, as Little Bill. He has the innate ability (did it in Crimson Tide too) to make you like him no matter what. Even when he is beating up Richard Harris' character, you can't help but feel charmed when he's telling his stories to Beauchamp. There are no definitive good or bad people here. This was a nice contrast to the older westerns that have nothing but the bandits and lone heroes. I haven't seen many westerns, but this was a great movie in and of itself. Cinematography was spectacular as well.

Soon:
North by Northwest
L.A. Confidential
The Conversation
Once Upon a Time in The West
...some others I'm sure

Regardless of anything else (good or bad) this movie has to offer, there is one reason to see it that towers above it all: Ben Kingsley. Not that you would expect anything less, but Kingsley's performance in this film is truly amazing, especially in the last act when things get really intense.

The other aspects of the movie are admirable. This is a dark, bleak film in which your emotions are always at odds with each other. You will sympathize and pity a character in one scene and then despise them in the next. It reminds me of CHANGING LANES in content and IN THE BEDROOM in tone. My only problem is that in the last five minutes I think the film goes a little too far...the very last piece of plot just felt a little forced, though this may very well have been an subconscious defense against the film's bleakness on my brain's part. Maybe the ending works better in the novel (which I haven't read).

Horner's score is subtle and absolutely perfect until the last 15 minutes when it suddenly turns into DEEP IMPACT and starts to get a little annoying, but it never caused too much harm. Photography by the invaluable Roger Deakins is, of course, fantastic.

I recommend this to everyone solely on the strength of Kinglsey's acting, though I should warn you that you're going to walk out of the theater wanting to punish yourself simply for being human.

It's nice to see how Katie Holmes has emerged from Dawson's Creek. She's been in some quality films, most notably (for me) THE GIFT and WONDER BOYS, and although she's never been spectacular I've always liked her. Truth be told, she's not spectacular here either, but I still like her and I think this is definitely her best performance so far.

This is a sweet movie that gets saved from being too sweet by its biting sense of humor. With the outsider daughter trying to survive, the sweet apartment tenants that help her, the bickering family, the mother dying of cancer and the holiday (Thanksgiving) setting, this is a story that could easily be a made-for-TV affair you might find on Lifetime or PAX, and I suppose you've probably seen a lot of this before, but this is a very warm, intimate movie that's also very funny (often subversively) and I think it'd be hard not to have a soft spot for it.

Patricia Clarkson is getting a lot of attention for her performance here, and she deserves every bit of it. Here's hoping the Academy notices her when the time comes to cast their ballots.

Directed by Lewis Milestone
Screenplay by Robert Rossen, from a story by Jack Patrick
Photography by Victor Milner
Music by Miklos Rozsa

Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Judith Anderson

A woman with a murderous childhood secret is caught up in a web of guilt, fear and blackmail when an old flame reappears in her life.

This is a pretty good example of its kind, I thought, a sort of film noir against a romantic melodrama background. I did find some of the casting resistible however, especially turtle-eyed, teapot spout-mouthed, washboard-haired wee nyaff Van Heflin as the decent-hearted hardman. Did women really ever find this kind of character attractive? His way of smoking is very annoying too, the way he lights up (about a hundred times during the course of the film), gets angry, and throws the match away ("Hey, just a MINUTE!"). And, as a man, I wasn't attracted at all to bleary-eyed, nose-blocked, artificial, lithping Lithbeth Thcott. Stanwyck though is excellent, and it was fascinating to see Kirk Douglas, in his film debut, playing her wimpishly wet weak-willed wally of a weasel husband, a very different role from his later virile ones.

Interestingly, Heflin and Scott are the drifters, whilst Stanwyck and Douglas are rich and successful, but guess which couple has no morals. The complexities bubble away under the surface, because it's all quite plainly filmed actually, but solidly entertaining.

Directed by Don Siegel
Screenplay by Collier Young and Ida Lupino
Photography by Burnett Guffey
Music by Leith Stevens

Main Cast: Howard Duff, Steve Cochran, Ida Lupino, Dean Jagger, Dorothy Malone

Two cops keep part of some stolen loot, thus creating their own "private hell."

Unfortunately, this fundamental turning point occurs fifty minutes into the eighty minute film, far too late, so the balance seems all wrong. The bulk of it has its share of low-budget 50s cop clichés (perhaps knowingly - Ida Lupino says "Y'know, I saw all this on Dragnet."), but by the end it is quite impressive, especially the way things begin to snowball and get out of control. "Crime sure doesn't pay", intones the Twilight Zone-type voice-over.

Fairly good characterisations too - smarmy Steve Cochran as the corrupt cop with no scruples is far more personable than permanently pensive and petulant "good" cop Howard Duff. Balloon-headed, egg-eyed Ida Lupino seems just out of place, however.

So, fairly routine, and it simmers too long before boiling over, but it's given added interest by being an early Siegel ("David Peckinpah" is credited as dialogue director).

Directed by Frank Capra
Screenplay by Robert Riskin, from a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell
Photography by George Barnes
Music by Dimitri Tiomkin

Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, James Gleason

All Capra ingredients are in place here. This is the one with Stanwyck enlisting the aid of down-and-out Cooper as the mouthpiece for an invented story of hers about Mr Everyman threatening to kill himself in protest at the state of the world. Cue sentimentality, goodwill to all men, Xmas, near-suicide and rallying-round, all wrapped up in a heartwarming package.

Sometimes Capra's idealism seems as soft in the head as it is soft-hearted, but I thoroughly enjoyed MEET JOHN DOE. No denying it's beautifully made, a lovely, witty film, and Gary Cooper is just splendid in the central role.

I'm in two minds about Danny Elfman's score. There are well-scored sequences, but much of his frenetically fragmented action music drives me up the wall - really ugly and stressful.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (USA 1996)

Directed by Brian De Palma
Screenplay by David Koepp and Robert Towne
Photography by Stephen H Burum
Music by Danny Elfman

Directed by Anthony Mann no less, this must have been a real quickie. From Republic, with a low-voltage cast, and clocking in at under an hour, the movie can't really avoid the problems of an uncharismatic lead and some apparently rushed handling ("Phew, that was a nasty train crash. Just put a plaster on. Hey, there's a strange house on a hill!").

On the plus side is some nicely shadowy camera-work, and the brooding atmosphere of the story itself (the film seems to be pitching for that LAURA/ REBECCA mood), whilst the brief running-time ensures that there's no time to get bored. An intriguing curiosity, and by the end quite accomplished, even poignant.

No composer credit. I imagine the very typical score was from Republic's library.

STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT USA (1944)

Directed by Anthony Mann
Screenplay by Bryant Ford and Paul Gangelin, from a story by Philip MacDonald
Photography by Reggie Lanning
Musical Direction: Morton Scott

This is a brilliant movie that I recently watched for the second time, and it's definately one of those rare movies that are great the first time you see it, but get even better after repeat viewings.

Sam Lowry, Brazil’s protagonist, is a harmless desk clerk stuck in the Ministry of Records and later the Ministry of Information Retrieval. This imaginative, unique world is an environment of useless technology. Consumerism has gone out of control in the form of ducts, sprawling pipes that bust through walls and destroy aesthetics for no purpose. Duct selling and repair is a big business, co-opted by the equally sprawling government, and the sheer illogical nature of the ducts becomes a focus point throughout Brazil. He befriends a rogue duct repairman who is wanted by the government for repairing without the government’s permission (a terrorist offense!). He has wonderful dreams of soaring through beautifully hued skies in a shining silver suit, saving a breathless blonde in distress from "The System." After several nights of this, Sam really does meet his dream girl: a truck driver named Jill, who looks like the girl in his dreams and is wanted for terrorism.

This is a very busy film, with always a lot going on. The cinematography by Roger Pratt is beautiful, echoing "Citizen Kane" a bit...though the look of this film is really it's own, there's really nothing else like it.

Gilliam's world is accompanied by a gorgeous, incredible, instantly memorable score by the sadly late Michael Kamen. The old Brazil song Kamen intergrates in his score is as catchy and potentially beautiful as any of Nino Rota's fun-spirited compositions for Federico Fellini's films. I'd love to know more about how Gilliam thought of using this song, it fits the film unbelievably well. It's sung and whistled, it's adapted into an immensely sweeping love theme as well as a busy theme for the Central Services office, and as a waltz on an elevator. The music is the heart and soul of the movie, and I'm guessing Gilliam built this entire film out of listening to the song and putting it to images from his dreams. Nicely done by Kamen, certainly one of the best scores a film has ever had.

Directed by Stanley Donen
Screenplay by Norman Krasna, from his play
Photography by Freddie Young
Music by Richard Rodney Bennett and Ken Jones

Main Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Phyllis Calvert, Cecil Parker

American diplomat in London keeps woman at arm's length by pretending he's married (or single, or separated, depending on the moment).

The plush Mayfair hotels are quite attractive and the stars charming enough, but I found Donen's handling surprisingly leaden. There's not really enough material for a plot in any case. An amusing final reel in which Bergman turns the tables on Grant by pretending she has a lover compensates to a degree, but it's too little too late. Innocuous and insubstantial.

The movie was top notch, but just lacked too much for me.
Fight scenes that looked like pasted together bits that were shot at various times. Sometimes never panning back so you could see where everyone was standing.

The "unbelievable" friendship formed between the main character and the other guy. What's his name? Anyway, there was semingly no reason for such a devoted friendship to have started and flurish.

The rediculous use of the women. Which at times seemed like they were just thrown in there to make the movie more chick friendly.

Times that felt like there was more but it had been edited out so you felt a little empty.

Bruce Broughton's score was excellant. In the movie, that's another story. His score only fit the scenes 50/50. At times I felt it didn't quite underline the drama appearing on scene, or fit it at all.

Even times when the score seemed annoying to listen to. It left me wondering what J.N.H. or Goldsmith would have done

Over all I give the movie 4 out of 5 stars. with reserve.

And yes, those moda ****in' bad guys got exactly what they deserved :-)

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Casino
Starring: Robert Dinero and Joe Pesci.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Excellent. Hackman's performance was a total 180 from what I'm used to. Cool little twist at the end, and just a surprisingly enveloping plot. Harrison Ford was pretty sublime as the assistant to the director and the director (won't spoil the surprise for those who haven't seen it) was a neat cameo regardless of its brevity.

Ikiru

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

See it.

Throne of Blood

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Interesting film. I like the Macbeth story (and love Japanese history) so to see it in this light was a VERY welcome change. Mifune conveys the confusion of the character well, and the "arrow" scene is amazing. I wasn't surprised to hear Mifune had not been told they would be firing the arrows that close as his eyes look ready to pop out. The Shakespeare adaptation was better handled in 'Ran' though.

Sneakers

Directed by Phil Alden Robensen

Oh you know you love it. Good fun, and excellent cast makes it a neat little ride. Horner's score wasn't bad either, but Marsalis did better in The Russia House. Story was very ahead of its time.

Saw this on DVD the other night. Quite enjoyed it, and the slight twist ending was satisfying enough. I like endings which make you replay scenes in your mind to see it it could be true - just like 6th Sense.

The tension manages to hold throughout the film, and the acting is quite good too.

Oh, and the first 15 minutes are very good - the film starts at a frantic pace, and before you know it half an hour has passed and you're interested.

Open Range
I thought this was a superb western, beautifully shot, well researched, with well-developed characters. Hey, I'm old-fashioned, what can I say? wonderful. Kamen's music is also generally excellent.