David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr,
Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper, Rod Taylor
Niven played a pompous ex-army major whom none of the other characters liked very much, but who acted so British-properly that no one would think of challenging his pomposity (which served to keep people at a distance when ostensibly its purpose was the opposite; in other words, he didn't really "fit in" despite the appearance he cultivated that convinced everyone including himself that he did. This, we will see, is the whole point of the film, even as it appeared nearly the entire way through that it was only a minor side issue and that the personal problems of Burt Lancaster (the obvious star) were the central theme.
But, we learn in the end, Lancaster's character doesn't change much. Essentially, though he hides it well early on, he has the same problem at the end as he has at the beginning: He loves his wife, whom he can't stand being around for more than a few minutes (and vice versa). Niven's character, on the other hand, who up until the very end remains stoically determined to stay the course, to remain in "character" as far as is possible by running away from his current troubles in order to re-establishing his fictive self elsewhere, succumbs to the social "pressure" of good-willed people and, despite himself, changes, thereby becoming the protagonist of the story (when all along we thought, being the "star", it was Lancaster). This is Niven's character's story.
If that were all there was to it, it would be enough to qualify the film as good art; but there's a whole other level that elevates it further: Niven and the filmmakers play upon Niven's history of playing this type of character to deceive the audience into believing he is at the beginning what he says he is; but he is not. He (i.e., his character) is acting a role, pretending to be an ex-major with a distinguished war record when he is an ex-lieutenant with a non-eventful one. So Niven is an actor who, at the beginning, is playing a man who is acting a role himself. It's a meta-level conceit. So, when we [i.e., I; I don't want to assume that you felt the same way toward Niven as I did before I saw this film], along with the other characters, don't like the major, the "person" we are not liking is a fiction, twice removed.
We might think we don't like Niven because he's a bad actor, but what we really don't like is the major Niven is playing, because he is the bad actor here; which makes Niven, by definition, a good actor: He's rendering his character perfectly. And when at the end we see the major drop his role and play his real self, the man we didn't like becomes a man we admire for the honesty he has despite himself revealed, we see his hard shell crack and his vulnerability come spilling out all over the place; and we love him for it, the real man beneath the facade, and the real actor beneath the character as well, if we will only look that deeply to see him shining through. I'm going to have to go back and reevaluate Niven's work in light of this film. Maybe he was a far better actor than I ever gave him credit for.
Jon Voight, Ellen Burstyn, Jeff Daniels
The tearjerk reaction is prevalent throughout and made me feel a bit manipulated. And why five people? Why not six, or seven? Seven would have been good: "Seven People You Meet in Heaven." Or Eleven. As it is, the concept is a bit arbitrary. It offends my spiritual sensibilities. Life is not that simple. Different individuals should meet different numbers of people, depending on their psychologies and the circumstances of their lives. The title should have been "The People You Meet in Heaven." Five is just too pat and clever.
And if you think about it long enough, you might conclude that the guy's heavenly reward is dubious: How do we know for sure that all of his dedicated attention to safety actually saved anyone; that is, how can you prove a negative? You can't prevent something that hasn't happened. It's only in retrospect, looking back at an accident, that you can say that it was preventable. If an accident doesn't happen, how can you ever know that it would have?
Kim Dickens, Gabriel Mann, Don Cheadle, Eric Stoltz,
Elizabeth Pena, Rosanna Arquette, Alison Folland,
Patsy Kensit, CCH Pounder
The film starts out in a typical way and very slowly transitions into a profoundly moving story with one of the best payoffs I've ever seen. Mann, the male lead, seems to grow with the role, beginning with an awkwardness that I mistook for bad acting until I later realized that it was his character who, for reasons of the story, acted the way he did.
If this film doesn't affect you in the same way that it has affected me, then you should begin to wonder if the problem it documents isn't something that you secretly harbor within the depths of your own psyche.
Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm,
Milla Jovovich, Chris Tucker, Luke Perry
It's sad to think that we will have progressed so little in 250 years. I mean, according to this film, we'll have flying cars and fancy labs, but we'll know practically nothing about aliens, who apparently will be otherwise fairly cozy with us. The movie lacks a certain realism--or credibility. It's second rate, despite Willis.
I saw it a second time, for no other reason than to make sure that I didn't miss something the first time around--because everyone said it was so good. But I don't get what's so good about it. The plot is worn, Willis is just okay, and Oldman, who is usually great, is stupid. And as for Jovovich, well, lots of people have nice bodies and are willing to take off a lot of clothes for the camera.
Zach Galligan, Teri Hatcher
They could have entitled this movie "Nine To Five Lite." It fails to create the serious atmosphere that it tries so hard to portray. I mean, the girl is such a pushover that her roommates have to intervene; and the guy, although genuinely reformed, is a jerk. And the situations are absurdly inane:
She visits him a day earlier than she's supposed to and catches him with a girl in his bed that he didn't really sleep with and, even though she awoke him on the sofa after having obviously spent the night there, she's totally unreasonable and refuses to listen to him when he tries to explain. Hmm. Now that I think of it, it does seem kind of realistic.
She won't listen to "reason" and every time he's about to convince her of his fidelity, something else happens to conveniently divert her attention and convince her that he's not treating her fairly, when he's trying his best to be so good. His best course of action, it seems to me, would have been to forget her, especially given the playboy past that he was quite adept at.
But he's "in love" (but not so realistically, since at the beginning of the movie he was so unsure about it; but to be fair, maybe he's had a change of heart; but to be objective, the writers should have made a point of that in the script) and love, of course, triumphs, despite the girl's ditsy attention span. The way I'm writing about this movie, you'd think I liked it. I didn't. It's the subject matter that interests me, which the movie didn't handle very well at all. Both thumbs down.
Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacoby, Richard Harris, Connie Nielsen, David Hemmings
I didn't want to watch this movie, because I don't much like action flicks, and I feel like films about the Roman Empire are too archaic. But I felt compelled to see what all the fuss was about. And it turns out that I liked it a lot. I was especially entranced with the performances of Harris and Reed--oh, and Derek Jacoby, of course. I think that ever since his role in I, Claudius, he has a contract with all the major studios in the U.S. and England that makes it mandatory that he appear in every film about ancient Rome.
Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt
I've seen this plot before, several times. But never have I seen it rendered this well. Clever dialogue, especially early on. Excellent scenes between Tom and Helen. Outstanding set-up and ending. A little bit over the top with Hanks on the island talking to the soccer ball he named Wilson, and especially when he loses it at sea. I can't imagine someone suffering from the loss of an inanimate friend.
But then, I am not so sociable a person as Hanks' character is. In fact, I am quite a recluse these days. I don't suffer from lack of social interaction; I thrive on it. But others, I guess, are different than I am. If you are well integrated into society, then the lack of it may cause you to experience more mental difficulties. And it could also be agued that I already am suffering mental difficulties. I don't think so, but...
Best motivating quote: "I gotta keep breathing. Who knows what the tide will bring?" My life is still up in the air like that. Waiting is.
George Kennedy, Linda Blair, Adam Baldwin, Larry Manetti
This is a clever and cute little tongue-in-cheek movie that capitalizes on the all of the standard Hollywood monster movie cliches. The characters are surprisingly appealing and mesh together well. Kennedy is particularly notable for his role as the aged and somewhat hypochondriac director of the fifties monster film. He sleeps throughout most of the action, but he talks in his sleep.
Some funny scenes, especially the ones involving Ver-Man, an itinerant who wandered into a toxic waste dump and developed the "ability" to turn into a rat-man when he smells garbage. (Ver-Man. Vermin. Get it?)
Helen Hayes, John Mills, Leo McKern, Tim Roth, Bette Davis
This movie has several glaring flaws, like why does the relative send Miss Marple to the estate when he says that he is going there himself the following evening and she says she'll leave the next morning and be there by afternoon?
Too damned convenient an excuse to get her there, if you ask me; and then, why does he not show up the next evening, or in fact for the rest of the movie? Maybe the book reveals more details that the movie omits that clear up these discrepancies.
Otherwise, it's a typical murder mystery that I had pretty much figured out (except for a few minor details) near to the beginning. The actors, however, were great. Helen Hayes was perfect as Miss Marple, of course. John Mills was flawless, if boring in his usual character. Leo McKern is a personal favorite of mine. And Tim Roth was his usual caustically entertaining self.
Jon Voight, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Esther Rolle,
Elise Neal, Catherine Kellner, Michael Rooker, Akosua Busia
Why did the protagonist get off that train at the end? It didn't make any sense. I thought it was to go back and fight the good fight--and maybe it was; but if so, the film version I saw (a tv broadcast) didn't depict it. The plot had him and Sylvester heading out to catch the train again. I guess I should rent an unedited version and find out if this is a valid criticism, but I'm too lazy.
Roxanne Hart, Alexa Vega, Eric Close,
Campbell Scott, Blair Brown
But she has the baby anyway, and her husband leaves her, disagreeing with her decision. A slice-of-life movie that doesn't have much of a plot and not much else to recommend it either, except one small line of poetry penned by the young character played by Vega:
I didn't catch the next two lines,
so I made up some of my own:
I feel so fortunate that I learned it.
Sometimes I almost think I earned it.
Christopher Shyer, Jill Clayburgh, Peter Coyote, Ken Pogue
Still, I felt kind of cheated, especially when the filmmakers resorted to cheap tricks like introducing a child character purported to be autistic, whom the protagonist sets about to "cure." The tactic plays on the incredulity of the knowledgeable viewer--until it is revealed late in the movie that the kid is not actually autistic at all, but suffering from psychological trauma.
I wasn't going to reveal this fact, lest I "ruin" the film for those who might want to see it, but I figured, what the hell; if the filmmakers can play with viewers, I can play with the product.
Alex D. Linz, Shirley Maclaine, Gary Sinise, Kathy Bates,
Joey Lauren Adams, Jennifer Tilly, Brett Butler
Okay so far. But Bruno's penchant for wearing dresses as a means of developing the "power" he lacks in his life (the psychology is not developed, which is too bad; it would have made for a far better film) causes him even further social problems. His parents, as well as most of the other people in his life, disapprove of his choice of wardrobe, of course. But he wins them over and goes on to win the national Catholic spelling bee.
This is basically a superficial comedy, but entertaining--especially re the characterizations of the nuns, who piss you off as an audience every bit as much as they pissed you off as a student.
Ray Milland, Mary Murphy, Ward Bond
Raymond Burr, Lee Van Cleef, Alan Hale
While the rest of the townsfolk look for Steele, he serendipitously uncovers the identity of the kingpin of the murder conspiracy (Burr), who kills one of his partners and blames it on the outlaw. During an ensuing dust storm, the outlaw hides in the basement of a house that turns out to be that of the sheriff (Bond), who is suffering from yellow fever, and his daughter (Murphy).
Well, of course, the daughter and the outlaw have to fall in love, much to the chagrin of the sheriff when he finally recovers. The sheriff, against his better judgment, helps the outlaw get away, and for his trouble the townspeople are about to hang him. But the outlaw returns and saves him and they all live happily ever after.
Typical western story/plot, but good, clean, clear, crisp, terse dialogue. Well-written story, despite it's conventional take. Interesting for the opportunity to see the actors in their prime, especially Milland, who went on to master the art of secondary characters in ridiculous movies. And there's something very sad about seeing Ward Bond as a helpless yellow fever victim deliriously crawling out of bed mumbling "water." He does, however redeem himself later in the picture by abusively slapping his daughter's face.
Tom Cruise, Rene Zellweger, Cuba Gooding Jr., Bonnie Hunt
Excellent production values and script and top-notch acting; but when you come right down to it, it's not much more than a simplistic love story that I don't think established very well the protagonist's "non-intimate" relationship with his new wife (thus making it seem like her problem, when the obvious intent of the film was to make it his).
Nor did the film establish very well the basis for Jerry's conversion at the end into a loving, caring, and attentive husband. It seems like all along he was, although perhaps often distracted, all of these things already, so that at the end of the film, he had not gone through a conversion so much as he had a temporary insight that he was acting on.
In other words, no real character change--all of which speaks to the problem of his wife, who could have (in a different film) been having unrealistic expectations re what she wants/needs from a man. She didn't feel the love. Well, la de da. Just because a woman doesn't feel the love doesn't mean it isn't necessarily there, even if the man doesn't so often feel it too because he is overworked and distracted.
But back to the movie, since this is not the theme it deals with. In this film, it's assumed that the deficiency in him is real; but it doesn't document this aspect of his personality so well. In fact, there's enough evidence to make the opposite claim, that he is quite a loving person, in his own way. So the content does establish a conflict in this regard. It's all there; but it's weak. The point, and thus the argument, could have been made more strongly and effectively.
Kellie Martin, Amy Locane, Robert Wagner, J.E.Freeman
I don't agree, however with TV Guide's assessment of Kellie Martin's performance, which implied that she was lightweight, saying she "lacks the oomph to be a sexy, credible heroine"; and then they go on to compare her negatively to Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar. I mean, c'mon. I guess you have to be immersed in the mindless pop culture to think that skinny Gellar is sexier than bodacious Martin. And if sexual "oomph" is what you're looking for in a mystery principal, then I guess we can rule out Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot.
I think that Martin was perfect in the role; it was the role itself, or rather the scripting of it, that sucked. In fact, the entire script was cliched, the dialogue was too obviously plot-serving, the situations were boring, and the characterizations were shallow. In other words, it was typical mystery.
Roy Scheider, Adam Baldwin, Harley Cross
Scheider's characterization of the older hit man as a guy who is by the end of the film almost able to care about the boy is almost touching--again perfectly reflective of how the real-life situation might be. And his muted final admiration for the boy is well-concealed.
Very subtle performances, even Baldwin's loony one, make this less than complex film a little bit more interesting. Best line (Baldwin): "What's the last thing that goes through a bug's mind as he hits the windshield? His ass."
Ray Milland, Donald Pleasance, Eddie Albert, Denver Pyle
For some reason I thought this was a different kind of movie; and it should have been a good one, especially for the times. The plot device, as simple as it is, is unrecognizable at the start of the movie. A good director would have capitalized on this to load the film down with foreshadowing content, gradually revealing the unusual cause of the kids' parentless situation.
But the revelation instead is all at once and anti(or pre)-climatic, and the effect that it has on the kids and their mentor (Albert) is not so affective as it should be, neither plot-wise, nor on the part of the characters, who accept their condition without much doubt or amazement.
All in all, this is an ordinary movie, when it could have been a great one. It could have been as good as the remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Michael Caine, Pierce Brosnan, Ned Beatty, Joanna Cassidy
Brosnan did a great job of rendering the character of a cold and calculating fledgling Russian agent who excelled in his training and was thus given a top-level assignment. By portraying the operative, not as a hardcase psychopath without conscience, but as a perfectly strong-willed man who could summon the conscious resolve to suppress his more human feelings and instincts, he brought a depth to the character that other spy film villains lack.
There were a number of good scenes depicting the duplicitous and pathological nature of the spy game where the interplay between agents and the Kremlin revealed the intrigue and double-crossing that is so typical of these kinds of situations.
But the best scene was of Joanna Cassidy's nicely formed nipple with surrounding large round areola as she lay in the bathtub. But I got the distinct impression that it was a prosthetic. It looked too good to be true. But I hope it was. I like the idea of having seen the real thing. It's one of the small rewards we get from modern filmmaking.
Tim Daly, Debra Fiorentino, Casey Siemaszko
After five hours (it's a tv mini-series) of dismal (and fairly boring) set-up, where most of the decor is darkness, blowing, blinding snow and bleak interiors (which must have kept production costs way down), Liloge (or King) finally gets to the point in the sixth hour: he wants one of the island's kids as a protégé.
Okay. It works. But not for six hours! A two-hour movie would have worked just as well. But then, it wouldn't have been television, would it? I didn't think much of this kinescopic endeavor until the end. The plot, when they finally get to it, is quite good, especially as it's characterized by the actors, who did a magnificent job with the material, unlike some of King's previous tv stuff.
Daly was quite effective as the local constable, the stand-alone holdout arguing for a morally correct decision to their dilemma, which was quite well drawn. And Fiorentino did a subtle job of portraying Daly's wife. She made you love to end up hating her, which went the rest of the way toward establishing Daly as the one with the correct point of view, in case you missed it earlier on.
The actual ending, though, could have come earlier, as Daly leaves the island maybe. The voice-over addendum only served to muddy up the waters a bit. I got the point quite vividly without it. All in all, I would have been well entertained and satisfied if someone had read me a brief synopsis of the film and then showed me that last hour.
James Caan, Brian Dennehy, David Carradine, Rachel Ticotin
The "plot" thickens when the warden's former buddy escapes and goes on a killing spree, and the warden leads a posse to recapture him. This action sequence serves to unfreeze the warden and motivate his resolve toward the woman. This is one of those movies where not much seems to happen and the significance lies in the subtext and the personality of the characters. Caan does a nice job portraying the caring, but crusty and reticent warden. Carradine plays the role he usually plays when he is not kung-fu-ing it.
Katherine Heigl, Corbin Bernsen, Theresa Russell
It's a little bit hokey (production company: The Faith and Value Media) with lots of pathetic crying, and all of the standard plot situations and plot points. But it works okay, I guess. The problem with it is that there isn't all that much guessing about the plot. You pretty much know what's going to happen from beginning to end.
A final complication occurs as the result of the fact that the new wife (Heigl) has to write her husband a letter instead of confronting him directly. She asks him in the letter that he should ask her to stay, instead of heading back east as she originally planned to do. In fact, if she had been paying attention, she would have noticed that he'd been asking her in his own way the whole winter. But she feels she must be formally asked. Women aren't direct in that way; it's an instinct.
But the letter gets lost and he never sees it. Isn't that the way it always goes because women will play games instead of being honest and direct? If she asks him to ask her, then she might as well ask him directly. One saving grace in the film is the occasional presence of Theresa Russell. She has more character in her face than the whole movie had in actors.
Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench, Julianne Moore,
Scott Glenn, Pete Postlethwait, Kate Blanchett
Enter a long lost aunt (Dench), who just stops by to pay her respects for the death of her brother, and to steal his ashes from the cremation urn. Being on her way back to Newfoundland, the original home of the estranged family, she has no intention of staying, but when she sees the daughter and the trouble she and her nephew are having, she decides to stick around for a few days.
Devastated, the guy decides to accompany his aunt back to Newfoundland. He gets a job at the small local paper and finds his niche in the world as a reporter, and ends up solving the mystery of his family's past.
An excellent film with excellent acting. But it fell just a bit flat re the sub-theme of "sensitive" people who "sense" "strange" "phenomena." [One of the best parts was what the aunt did with her brother's ashes.]
Monique Mercure, Marcel Sabourin
Excellently filmed and acted, but with an ending that tends to trivialize the film by seeming to distill it down to one theme, the difficulties re sexual attraction between husband and wife. It's true that this is the ostensible story, but the film is so much more than that, and a different ending might have emphasized the complexity better, with the sex scene included earlier, at perhaps a plot point late in the film, after the wedding scene, for example. That would have been a nice touch.
And one other nice touch that affects me personally: J.A.'s name is the same as mine: Joseph Albert [pronounced Jo-sef' Al-bear'].
Edward James Olmos
This is what it was like working for my last employer. Well, okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a little. But I always had to be on guard. I could never show a moment of weakness, otherwise I would be pounced upon, usually indirectly, i.e., behind my back. I was always being stabbed in the back, a practice condoned by the guards--oops, I mean management.
I had to be so strong, I had to set an example, for myself, if for no one else. Of course, I wasn't appreciated for my strength. Others, those who would prey upon the weak, saw it as a reason to look for chinks in my armor. And eventually, they found them, as I weakened, like Olmos, as I realized what it was I had been up to. Like criminals, many businessmen should be imprisoned.
James Carvel, on Tim Russert, once said that the greatest problem re work/politics is stress, overwork, and lack of sleep which makes you say and do stupid things. How true. When the censors are down, you will blurt out anything, often with consequences you will later come to regret.
This was/is my weakness: under stress, when I have been so strong for so very long, and so depleted of cortisol reserves, never sleeping well, always unable to turn off the manic meanderings of my over-working brain, I say and do things I would never otherwise say and do. I don't even mean them. They just come out wrong. I am normally a sedate, self-effacing person, happy to sit back and wait. It's an effort, to have to go to work and make things happen when they do not want to happen of their own accord.
Olmos could have saved himself, except that he came to feel so badly about what he had done and how he had been that he let events unfold, he couldn't go on, being like he had been, being too caught up in his own misery and self-recrimination. Ditto me.
And now, I'm so afraid of getting myself back into that former situation and literally endangering my life (overwork > stress > back problems > heart problems) that I take every precaution and hedge every bet, so that the resulting way that I live now seems like I'm almost ashamed to reveal it to others, except that I know I'm right, that my logic is, if not so socially acceptable, still, it is impeccable.
This is the one of the main values of films: they can verify your life when they seem to correspond, even when the subject matter is so far different from your own.
Joan Crawford, Ty Hardin, Diana Dors, Robert Hardy, Judy Geeson
And I like her even less in this movie, which has a lot of bad scenes. The spike through the head scene was rather conveniently coincidental. In fact, all of the murders were just too damn convenient, especially the last one where the murderess is struck by lightning. Definitely a must miss movie, unless you are totally into campy productions, in which case this may be the very film for you.
Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea, Jean Smart,
Paul Dooley, Jasmine Guy, Gedde Wantanbee
I responded to this fantasy. It's kind of like what I used to do myself, although the women I hooked up with didn't so much want to be students as they wanted to be the masters. I can understand how, early on, not understanding, the girl would get pissed when she discovers that her new lover has had similar lovers in the past. But young women can be so naive. What did she expect? That he was a virgin before she met him?
She objected, probably, not so much to the existence of actual former lovers, but to the fact that they had been students and he'd used the very same lines on them that he used on her. But, again, what did she expect? We all have our own patterns and psychology. He had a need to act the way he did, and she had a need that he fulfilled.
I want to be brave enough to do this sort of thing myself. But I can't. Sad. When I did it early in my life, it was mostly unconscious. This film deals with the phenomenon as a conscious ploy that, even so, is not so multidimensional as it could have been, dealing with money and jealousy, but ignoring practical aspects of relational life, like the danger of pregnancy, venereal disease, wayward psychological games that don't fit into the artistic, cavalier, student-teacher one, etc. Ah, if only.
Polley is cute, though, and talented, and perfect in the role. And so is Rea [talented and perfect, but not so cute any more; it's been a long time since The Crying Game]. And, for that matter, Smart is perfect too, as the mother who's a complete bitch, but highly effective in her maternal role. And I was just getting to like her too, in other films, like in Disney's 'The Kid' for example. But I have to admire her. She's a great actor. She could end up being America's answer to Judi Dench if she manages her remaining career well.
At the beginning of the film, you think, based upon a superficial judgment (and because you are led by the imagery to believe it), that the relationship problems are the mother's fault. But later you realize, seeing the same problems unfolding in the daughter's life, that it was the father who drove the mother to do what she did, just as the daughter's badly-chosen husband does.
In the end, she is left with the choice of either permanently falling into the same pattern or living alone, as an employed, independent woman, which in the western world is perhaps seen as a positive development. But this film suggests that maybe that latter choice is not so correct, when even becoming involved with a man, even outside the bonds of marriage, is a restrictive situation, when the man acts as a domineering overlord.
This story wouldn't ring as true in, for example, America, where women are more "free," but in India, where old world chauvinistic attitudes still prevail, the distinction is more obvious: it's not much of a choice for the protagonist in this film, but in order to be her own woman, she must eschew close relationships with men. This situation sounds familiar, and I am not even a woman (I think).
Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith. John Gielgud, Liam Neeson
This film seems to have triteness shot into every frame, and yet it works. Griffith is fantastic as the half-Jewish libertee. And Douglas is not so bad himself. And the story has a lot of understated layers to it. For example:
Look for the filmic innuendo that reveals Geilgud's character's sexuality, as well as that of his young aristocratic cohort. This is one of those films that proves that you do not have to be overt in order to be understood and appreciated.
Another example of this kind of subtlety can be seen in the way that Griffith's character influences situations in ways opposite to the way she intends for them to go, especially in the fact that her Nazi employer is probably a spy himself, and it is through her that suspicion falls on him. But it never dawns on her that his fate might be her fault, and it is never pointed out to the audience either. It may or may not be true.
This kind of thing goes on and on throughout the film.
I could have done without the flashback frame, however. It seems to get in the way more than it provides essential information. And it takes away an aspect of the mystery that might have been better left unknown: will she die, or will she survive? You'd think that with such a sophisticated subtext, they could have figured out how to show instead of tell the story.
Great make-up job on Melanie's character in her old age. And on Michael's too, for that matter.
Mia Farrow, Scott Glenn, Mary Louise Parker, Eileen Brennan, Giancarlo Esposito, Steven Dorff, Tony Goldwyn
All of that said, this is nevertheless an interesting film. Absolutely crazy. Even the overly coincidental ending didn't throw me, because by that time, the film, very cleverly done in this respect, had set me up for anything. By the time the final frame reintroduced that of the beginning, I thought, "Yeah, that seems about right." It doesn't make sense, really. But who cares? It's a pure flight of fantasy. It wouldn't happen in this world, but then, films are not really of this world, are they?
Claire Danes, Jeanne Moreau, Jude Law, Anna Thompson
A terrible script or bad editing overshadows the acting in this film. I can see what is intended, but the filmmakers don't pull it off. For example, the holocaust experiences, some of which are direct memories of the grandmother, are experienced by the girl also, via of a mechanism that is completely unexplained. Maybe the explanation is on the cutting room floor. This technique alone, successfully done, could have made the film worthwhile.
These characters should have been profound and lovable, but instead, they were vapid and boring--even Moreau. I almost stopped watching during the first act, I was so bored. Then, later, I kept wanting to wince and turn away, not because the material was so personally painful and too intimate, but because it was so inanely and tritely portrayed. All of the elements of a deep story seemed to be available, but they just weren't put together correctly.
Pruitt Taylor Vince, Liv Tyler, Shelly Winter,
Debbie Harry, Joe Grifasi, 'Sully' from Commando
Once in a while you come across a film that serves as a textbook, or as a refresher course, for how you want to or are supposed to behave. This is one of those films. If all men acted like this, no woman would ever have cause to complain. They still would, of course, but they'd never have a legitimate cause.
Vince plays Winter's son, a fat cook in a small rural tavern owned by Winter. He has problems of social adaptation, being the reclusive son of a trucker who was just passing through. Enter Tyler, a newly hired waitress, who, amid her own problems of adaptation, changes his life through simple kindness and under- standing.
Powerfully photographed settings dominate the film. The psychology of the characters is examined in depth. When you see this kind of first-effort independent film making, it makes you realize how lame Hollywood really is.