I have not posted any movie reviews in almost a month - looks like August 28 - great scott. I have, in that time, seen exactly 4 movies - I have been moving, that has taken all my disposable time....
All right then! here we go!
The Brothers Grimm - ** - 2 whole stars? I suppose it's watchable. In short, a really mediocre film. A disappointment from Terry Gilliam.
If Lucy Fell - ** - Okay. I know a lot of people hate Eric Schaeffer films - I understand that, especially hating Eric Schaeffer himself. He has as annoying a screen presence as you can get. Even when I figured out that he was trying to do Mickey Rooney (the hair, the mannerisms - he's doing Mickey Rooney!) - it didn't help. He was still annoying.... But the rest of it - the film - is not all that bad, not really. Not really worth seeing (except maybe to test your ability to take Eric Schaeffer himself), but hardly the atrocity it's sometimes billed as.
The Baxter **1/2 - it occurs to me that this film is giving a name to a genre of films - "Baxter" films. About more or less nice guys, passed over by life and love, who find life and love. The 40 Year Old Virgin, maybe even the Wedding Crashers, definitely Sideways (all the films I mentioned last time)... Anyway - this is from Michael Showalter, one of the guys who makes Stella, the TV show (that I don't watch, since I don't watch TV) - he's an accountant, engaged to a yuppy princess, but her old boyfriend comes back, in the form of Justin Theroux (who is very funny)... But Showalter meets another girl, Michelle Williams, playing a mousy temp who sings, and is dating Paul Rudd... Some hilarity, some absurdity, some pointlessly convoluted story-telling follows, with amusing results. But no better than that. It's just okay.
The Conformist **** - Bernardo Bertolucci is probably the world's most overrated director - perpetrator of endless, dragging, extravaganzas.... yuck... But this one probably deserves the praise. Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as the title character - an Italian intellectual, trying to join the fascist party to fit in - who is sent to kill an exiled professor... it's a gorgeous film, the sets and cinematography used to great effect - isolating Trintignant in vast, empty, soulless spaces, or making him fight against waves of people - he constantly tries to go along, to disappear into society, but constantly finds himself fighting against people. The symbolism is a bit heavy handed at times, but it works anyway.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment