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Reviews
Gangs of New York (2002)
Very different, yet very good Scorsese
Personally I found this movie to be extraordinary. This movie may not be the best of Martin Scorsese's work, but it ranks among his best in my opinion. I read in a Roger Ebert review that this movie resembles a Dicken's novel. I think that is a very accurate description, as Leonardo Dicaprio (Amsterdam) serves as the eyes and ears of the potential viewer to this colorful, vibrant, run-down, and dirty world that has now since passed into both history and legend. Throughout the movie, doors are constantly kicked and yanked open, thrusting us headfirst into the events that unfurl jarringly before the viewer who is powerless to stop what happens.
This movie also seems to recall a epic filmmaking quality that has either disappeared, or has only existed in a sort of transparent, watered-down form. I was reminded of the sprawling, beguiling, beautiful, flawed, and passionate silent epics that all seemed to have an inherent great message in them. This is a very different and very good Scorsese film that I feel is one of the best films of the year.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Great movie
I gave it a high rating. This movie made me start thinking about something though. I wonder if someone can take the parts of this movie that just really took off, and combine it with the parts that really worked in the movies, Wild at Heart, and Chungking Express. I wonder what that combination would look like. Thinking this thought, has convinced me that there is still so much more that film can offer.
L'Atalante (1934)
Hauntingly beautiful
Before I first saw this film, I read somerwhere that the director died just before it was released. Whenever I explain this movie to someone that's exactly what I tell them. I tell them that it is a film made in 1930, about a newlywed couple starting to live their married life on a boat in France.
I also say that it is probably the most beautiful movie I can think of, and that the director was a young, dying, artist who was in a fever during most of the filming...and it SHOWS in every frame of the movie.
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
Amazing power to entertain
All I have to say is that I first saw this movie in an auditorium with about 150+ other first-year film students. It was required viewing for a class. I, as well as many other students I talked to then, were none too anxious to watch a 3 1/2 hour, foreign, nearly 50-year-old movie. I had only vaguely heard of Akira Kurosawa before.
After the showing, I walked outside and it was like I was stuck in a daze. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't believe what I had just seen. This movie would eventually lead me to change the way I saw movies, and what constituted a great one. Now, about two years later I have seen nearly every single Kurosawa film (everyone I talked to that first saw this with me, have ALL done so, it will happen to you if you watch and enjoy this film). I have also seen this movie about ten more times, each time introducing it to someone who has never seen a Kurosawa film before. Everyone I showed it to, regardless of their movie taste, has at the least been entertained by it.
What amazes me though is how the 10th viewing of this film was just as powerful and exciting as my very first. I know no other movie I can say that of.