Surprisingly, Francis Ford Coppola’s direction doesn’t seem especially notable. I far, far prefer the vision he brings to Apocalypse Now and Peggy Sue Got Married.
The drab, washed-out visuals are presumably deliberate, but these are another turn-off.
My loss, I know.
Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are just perfect as the young, ambitious Los Angeles dreamers who fall in love. He’s a jazz pianist who wants to open his own club. She’s an actress who writes a one-woman play and hopes to be a film star.
The singing, dancing and choreography are a joy. I love the long shots that seem not to have any edits. The colours are bright and vivid. And the on/off relationship plot is strong.
It’s not perfect. Arguably the “magic realism” goes too far on a couple of occasions and takes you too far out of the story, such as when they seem to start flying at the Griffith Observatory. And the two songs packed into the first 10 minutes set it up to be more of a musical than it ends up being, which makes it a little uneven.
It’s certainly more emotional than a standard musical. It’s hugely romantic and ultimately a little sad, while also somehow being uplifting. It was incredibly fresh when it came out and it still feels just as fresh five years on.
A shoddy script offers one-dimensional characters that are hardly fleshed out at all. They issue stupid one-liners to accompany scenes of gratuitous violence. You get to see lot of oiled muscles, almost fetishistically presented.
The “rules” about the Predator’s invisibility seem to come and go. It’s difficult to take a monster seriously when it is revealed to have boots and dreadlocks. Likewise, why does its hi-tech heat-sensing equipment fail to “see” Arnie when he’s smeared with mud?
I’d heard this film talked about a fair bit over the years, but didn’t realise how disappointingly mediocre it would turn out to be.
Earth is at war with a devastating species of bugs. A young soldier named Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) enlists to fight, and moves up through the ranks. He’s involved in different ways with two colleagues – “Dizzy” (Dina Meyer), who fights alongside him in the Mobile Infantry, and Carmen (Denise Richards), who is a gifted pilot. Blandly handsome and obedient, they perfectly epitomise the patriotic ideal.
The effects are extraordinary, and they don't seem to have the slick veneer of CGI. It’s extremely violent, with plenty of bloody dismemberment presented in a semi-cartoonish manner, but it’s also a hugely entertaining romp that's both intelligent and memorable. I liked it even more on second and third viewings.
I really liked the love story. Arquette has a goofy, ditzy charm that seems incredibly natural and charming. Barr, meanwhile, has a peaceful, zen-like presence on screen that makes him special and magnetic. The freediving competition stuff is interesting, as are the swimming and communicating with dolphins.
On the down side, the horrible soundtrack of 1980s synth and fretless bass simply doesn’t fit. Also, the film is extremely long and could have been improved by editing.
I found the humour around Enzo awkward and misplaced. There’s a whimsy to it and a peculiar tone that doesn’t always resonate for me. But the film becomes progressively more serious and compelling as it goes on. Ultimately, it’s able to make sophisticated observations about the value of life in ways that will stay with me. The closing moments are touching indeed.
Like their records, it’s brash and loud – full of vitality and not especially subtle. But the storytelling is strong and the characters are convincing. I felt it skipped across events somewhat – you’d never guess from watching this that they recorded four albums – but perhaps that’s inevitable when a band’s career is squeezed down to a time that’s roughly equivalent to one of their gigs.
The only slight criticism is that the seedier 1970s locations don't look dirty or grungy enough. Everything’s a little too clean – even when Joan Jett urinates on a guitar backstage. And the girls look like film stars (because they are) rather than ordinary kids in an extraordinary situation.
It’s a powerful study of wealth and its effects. There are fascinating scenes of excess in which you see Jackie shopping at Walmart or going through the antiques she keeps in a storage facility. It’s impossible to imagine having this kind of wealth. Yet being obscenely rich doesn’t seem like much fun. Their dogs foul the carpets frequently. Their eight children seem to barely know their father. Their pet lizard dies through complete neglect. And the Siegel marriage seems strained.
The documentary shows all of this without making judgement, but the Siegels nevertheless sued to prevent the film’s release. That the filmmakers won the case only confirms how skilfully and impartially they presented the story.
Hiking in Utah, Aron became trapped under a boulder in Bluejohn Canyon and was unable to free his arm. After five days, about to die of dehydration and organ failure, he hacks off his arm to free himself and then walks to safety.
Directed by Danny Boyle, it’s shot in an exciting “pop video” manner. It uses split-screen techniques to juxtapose his thoughts, hopes and memories. This adventurous approach enables Boyle to have fun conjuring the hallucinations and visions that start to plague Ralston as his situation becomes more desperate.
James Franco is engaging as the resourceful but foolishly impulsive Ralston. It’s extremely moving as he gets closer to death and then overcomes it.
Dr. Ben Stone (Michael J. Fox) is driving to Los Angeles for a job interview as a plastic surgeon when he takes the wrong road and crashes his fancy car in the small town of Grady, South Carolina. He’s forced to stay there for a few days, working a punishment of community service in the medical centre, and slowly comes round to the locals’ way of life.
It’s a good idea, but some of the characters fall flat (such as Woody Harrelson as a crazed insurance salesman) or completely fail to convince. Ben starts falling for Vialula (Julie Warner), the town’s ambulance driver, who improbably first greets him by stepping out of a lake naked.
Another flaw is that the comedy isn’t as sharp as you’d hope. Michael J. Fox is excellent, as usual: a very sympathetic hero with some good lines and some amusing moments. He does the “running around” escapades extremely well. Also, I really liked Bridget Fonda as Nancy, the mayor’s daughter. If only she was in the film more.
The small-town atmosphere begins to come together in the later stages, although not nearly as well as it does in films such as Local Hero or Roxanne, and there are a few laughs and a couple of touching scenes. But that’s not enough to make it truly satisfying.
It’s incredibly long (over three hours), but a lot happens. It’s also the sweatiest film I’ve ever seen. Everyone seems to be perspiring all of the time. Steve McQueen is the usual monosyllabic anti-hero. He seems to struggle with what little dialogue he does have, with an oddly wobbly mouth on the sentimental scenes.
I did wonder why The Sand Pebbles ever got made. It’s a strange story and it doesn’t have any obvious hook. Director Robert Wise had just worked on The Sound of Music, and the showdown in the missionary courtyard did partially resemble the abbey crypt scene from that superior film.
The storytelling is superb. It’s funny and poignant. The two leads are perfect in their roles and they have great chemistry together. When they are both on screen, there’s not a single misjudged moment, and every element either contributes to the development of the plot or deepens the extremely well-drawn characters.
The only aspect that seemed a little out of place was Maureen Lipman as Rita's Mahler-loving "bohemian" friend. She's funny, but seems almost a pantomime caricature. A pretentious student mentor would have better served the narrative.
There’s a superb semi-electronic soundtrack by David Hentschel, too.
It was interesting to see how much the respected film critic Robert Ebert got wrong about this film: "The movie stars Michael Caine as a British professor of literature and Julie Walters as the simple Cockney girl who comes to him for night-school lessons. She has problems: She is a working-class punk with an unimaginative husband." She's not a "Cockney" and she's not a "punk".
Maybe it just doesn't translate to American audiences.
My experience of the film was dominated by the fact that this newspaper freebie DVD somehow omitted the subtitles. The extended flashback sequences spoken entirely in German therefore made no sense at all. Given that this dealt with the crux of the film – Sophie’s actual choice – that pretty much ruined it.
That hurdle aside, Meryl Streep is fantastic: you see and feel her pain because she's able to make it seem incredibly real. Kevin Kline is convincingly scary as her paranoid psychotic boyfriend. It was difficult to see Peter MacNicol as "Stingo" because I recognise him as the silly art-gallery villain Janosz Poha from Ghostbusters II, but he did capture the ambiguity of a character we’re unsure whether we’re supposed to like or not.
There’s something a bit lumbering and stilted about the way it’s filmed, and the flashbacks could have been cut altogether. It would have been enough just to watch Sophie telling her story. We certainly didn’t need the washed-out/sepia look applied to the concentration camp sequences. These reservations aside, it's worth seeing for Streep's performance alone.
