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Reviews
Prêt-à-porter (1994)
What do the critics know?
I am completely baffled at the bad reviews this movie received. Robert Altman apparently shot first and came up with a story board later, and we are the richer for it. Just as the finale of this romp is definitive statement on the putative subject of the ready to wear fashion week,so this movie is a statement on movie making, and the conclusions would appear to be the same. Altman's confidence in dispensing with the conventions of plot, character development, the classic forms of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy jumps off the Eiffel Tower, girl moves in with Godzilla, is as stunning as the final scene. The sheer pleasure of watching Altman's usual suspects perform at the top of their game is enough reason to watch the movie. I will never look at Forest Whitaker and Rupert Everett in the same way. As for Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, blame it all on pasta. And as for the clothes and the people and the sad old boobs of publishers, frosting on the cake. What a complete visual joy!
Lord of War (2005)
It had all the ingredients
I agree with the person who called this storytelling perfection with one reservation: the pace was a little too stately. I would have cut it a little tighter, but it's hard to decide where to cut. The moral points were a little heavy handed _- of COURSE the life of the bullet ended in the forehead of that young African, where was it going to end? Put it in a window and let the kid duck, that's perfection. One could see most things coming, and most things made perfect sense, but this was a story about a world we know all too well. I would have liked to be surprised a little more, that's all. That said, I did like the flick, I really did.
The Commitments (1991)
Contains the inexpressibly perfect line of any movie
As we know there are only three basic kinds of songs: I love you why don't you love me? I love you and I want to do you Let's party!
The Commitments is the perfect extended video of the third type of song. A bunch of foul mouthed layabouts follow the guidance of Jimmy Rabbitte and form a loud rocking band. Which eventually follows under the curse of all loud rocking pub bands: comes to ignominious end. It's a good thing I haven't seen the flick for years because I can only remember one detail: the band are going to one of their apartments in a huge, gritty Dublin public housing development. They all squeeze into the failing elevator. At one stop on the way to the top of the building, a kid and a horse get on. When asked what the hell? the kid replies, "AAH, the stairs'll kill 'um." It's as good a line as any I know.
Great flick, please see it and anything else you can get your hands on that has Roddy Doyle's name on it.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Rabid fan wants Oscar for Mos Def
I admit it, I am a rabid fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide. I even have a nephew with a website that refers to Arthur's experience of tea aboard the Heart of Gold. I had read reviews of this movie from the uninitiated and had moderate hopes of the flick. Did I like it? Was it true to my vision of the end of world as we know it and the hyperspace bypass as we know it? I'll tell you how much I liked th movie. I was meditating at the end of yoga class this morning, sealing my practice with a few minutes in sivasana, the corpse pose, and my serene brain kept revisiting the scenes of the film, esp Zooey Deschanel being lowered into the pit of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast and the rather handsome afternoon tea put on for the returning travelers. I also envisioned the image of the white rose and the British robin as the backup earth is being fitted for deployment. That's serene.
A modest, unassuming, incredibly funny and VERY satisfying treatment of the four part trilogy. Must admit, the non-initiated would probably regard the thing with bafflement, but hand them a towel and tell them to breathe deeply from the diaphragm.