It's all sfx but designed to distract you from a pretty critical fact: the film makes zero sense. It's circuitous and that feels like formulae and there are scenes that resemble ones you have seen before in very, very clever and well-crafted sting movies, but this one is pure bs. Also, it's a rather poor effort. I get that the director really wanted to focus on action scenes that feature slight of hand. Fine. But you can string these scenes together with something, surely. The motivations for all of the action is pretty weak. Some of the tricks are impossible rather than amazing, such as when Lula, who is in the middle of her act disappears by falling into and through the street like a superhero. Just: why?
Reviews
9 Reviews
Michael Clayton
(2007)
Stone cold
22 June 2022
This film is a grim look at the power of the 1%. The theme is illustrated in many repetitions throughout. It is a painful and undeniable examination of the fact that there is a machine in place protecting only some of us from hurting the rest of us.
Sundown
(I) (2021)
Watched last evening. Haunting me today.
8 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Spoilers.
The content of my remarks was primed by reading reviews only after going into the film blind. I was shocked to see how superficial some of the reads (by prominent names) were-as though I had seen a different film entirely. So much dwelling on the main character's wealth and how that wealth has made him into a dick. It's confusing. In the film I watched, one finds out what's going on bit by bit. And it is not a movie about a spoiled callous guy even though it starts out with the man's family incredulous at the disregard he displays by staying in Mexico on vacation and dodging his mother's funeral.
Why would anyone who knows somebody well be so upset and unsettled and confused by a normal pattern of jerk-like behavior? That is a clue that what we are watching is something other than it appears on the very surface.
At the start of this vacation, he is "known" by only one other man: his family lawyer. The vacation is his last hurrah, communing with his nephew, niece and sister who are unaware that he has metastatic cancer. He himself is unaware of the new tumor growing in his frontal lobe and accounting for behavior that may diverge from his norm and eventually, full-on hallucinations related to the family business which is large scale slaughtering of swine.
One reporter mentioned the film became surreal at the end. It was not surreal. It showed the I'll man we've been watching the whole time see things that are not there. Literally. Sundown even refers, in some places, to late/end stage brain cancer. Also used to describe other dementias from other diseases.
What is clear is only that the core of the man is private and wants to die independently. Not unlike how a pet wanders off at the end. He avoids situations like: chemo. And funerals. And talking about it. He wants to drink, make love with a girl, sit in the sun, swim in the ocean. It's only his reduced capacity that leaves him vulnerable to people who are desperate for money.
I have never, ever seen Tim Roth better than in this film. He hardly speaks. I don't really have the skill to comment on how nuanced these performances were...again-it's haunting me today. A slow burn. And devastating.
The content of my remarks was primed by reading reviews only after going into the film blind. I was shocked to see how superficial some of the reads (by prominent names) were-as though I had seen a different film entirely. So much dwelling on the main character's wealth and how that wealth has made him into a dick. It's confusing. In the film I watched, one finds out what's going on bit by bit. And it is not a movie about a spoiled callous guy even though it starts out with the man's family incredulous at the disregard he displays by staying in Mexico on vacation and dodging his mother's funeral.
Why would anyone who knows somebody well be so upset and unsettled and confused by a normal pattern of jerk-like behavior? That is a clue that what we are watching is something other than it appears on the very surface.
At the start of this vacation, he is "known" by only one other man: his family lawyer. The vacation is his last hurrah, communing with his nephew, niece and sister who are unaware that he has metastatic cancer. He himself is unaware of the new tumor growing in his frontal lobe and accounting for behavior that may diverge from his norm and eventually, full-on hallucinations related to the family business which is large scale slaughtering of swine.
One reporter mentioned the film became surreal at the end. It was not surreal. It showed the I'll man we've been watching the whole time see things that are not there. Literally. Sundown even refers, in some places, to late/end stage brain cancer. Also used to describe other dementias from other diseases.
What is clear is only that the core of the man is private and wants to die independently. Not unlike how a pet wanders off at the end. He avoids situations like: chemo. And funerals. And talking about it. He wants to drink, make love with a girl, sit in the sun, swim in the ocean. It's only his reduced capacity that leaves him vulnerable to people who are desperate for money.
I have never, ever seen Tim Roth better than in this film. He hardly speaks. I don't really have the skill to comment on how nuanced these performances were...again-it's haunting me today. A slow burn. And devastating.
Into the Labyrinth
(2019)
A meditation on Dante's 'Inferno'
5 April 2021
But with puzzling bits and pieces as though sections have been edited-for example: the origin of the relationship between a prostitute and a criminal tracker, with references to a girl, known to both, who he couldn't save. Later, the killer being tracked deduces both the man who is hunting him and also his relationship with the prostitute...to lure him off of the trail, in an elaborate and improbable ruse that the killer appears to survive only by luck and the tracker's grace.
Dustin Hoffman, despite reports that he is losing his memory, manages to turn in a typically gifted performance. Not the man's first day on the job, even if he is making Russian-produced movies now. He doesn't disappoint. There are several other interesting performances as well as some that are pure schlock.
The design is also uneven, with an inspired division of cold case child abductions, aptly named "Limbo" and some sets that are practically out of an amusement park's haunted house. The style of story-telling itself, switches genre several times; a rocky journey between dream-like, heightened sequences that were not literal and those which appeared intended to be.
As a result, the general feeling is one of a pastiche of tropes used in other, better, movies.
Despite all of my criticism, the film was engaging and clever when it wasn't lost and ham-fisted. I liked that it was told simply, with mostly interior shots...landscape was saved for moments of impact, instead of thrown away in the type of lazy spoon-fed narrative this movie shares nothing in common with.
A scholar of Dante's work will surely draw more parallels than I did-this was written by an Italian author and set in Italy. I caught only very obvious references, such as a map of the maze comprising (I am pretty sure) the right number of levels to make the dungeon Hell.
Worth a look. Better than a lot out there.
Dustin Hoffman, despite reports that he is losing his memory, manages to turn in a typically gifted performance. Not the man's first day on the job, even if he is making Russian-produced movies now. He doesn't disappoint. There are several other interesting performances as well as some that are pure schlock.
The design is also uneven, with an inspired division of cold case child abductions, aptly named "Limbo" and some sets that are practically out of an amusement park's haunted house. The style of story-telling itself, switches genre several times; a rocky journey between dream-like, heightened sequences that were not literal and those which appeared intended to be.
As a result, the general feeling is one of a pastiche of tropes used in other, better, movies.
Despite all of my criticism, the film was engaging and clever when it wasn't lost and ham-fisted. I liked that it was told simply, with mostly interior shots...landscape was saved for moments of impact, instead of thrown away in the type of lazy spoon-fed narrative this movie shares nothing in common with.
A scholar of Dante's work will surely draw more parallels than I did-this was written by an Italian author and set in Italy. I caught only very obvious references, such as a map of the maze comprising (I am pretty sure) the right number of levels to make the dungeon Hell.
Worth a look. Better than a lot out there.
I don't love to pan an indie, but
20 October 2019
Warning: Spoilers
In the interest of a reliable rating system , I feel compelled to call BS on *at least* most (almost all) of the stars on this this movie I found on Prime. My God: it would be a bad B movie, except those usually know what they are and have a sense of kitch. This would be a C- movie. Underneath the after school specials. The script. The two leads: sugar baby and sugar daddy...I kind of can't say more. See for yourself.
Annoyingly, the film gets a couple of things right: the girl is extremely boring, very young-looking, with naturally beautiful and healthy skin, a terrific bikini figure, with no extra fat anywhere and an especially beautiful mouth and teeth. It is believable that she knows she's tall, fit and lovely and came to "make it" with the support of upper middle class parents who "believe in her".
What's maddening are the glaring inconsistencies: she lives alone in a perfect apartment, has no side job...but she takes the bus. Girls that look like that don't take the bus. If they have to, they aren't in their underwear. With that apartment, no roommates and no job, those parents would be renting a car or she'd be taking taxis. She's clearly not a trained artist-one gets the idea that she may have been a student athlete and skipped college to model. Yet: she's extremely shy, stiff and hung up about modeling work. Which is weird.
She accepts the vague invitation to become a mistress wholeheartedly-going to a "date" in a bikini and giving him the full-on boyfriend experience without even discussing figures. Little miss prim. Then we learn it's $10,000 a month. "No way" to that. Then we learn she finds it sexually gratifying and she had feelings for him and wants to go bring her parents on vacation with them. And she stops auditioning and starts doing coke with her younger friends. So: yeah...this does speak to a certain youthful directionless. That part does seem legit.
So: we're halfway through the movie now, and there hasn't been a good scene yet. She comes home and finds the old guy in the hot tub with the most randomly downmarket hooker with whom he decides to spring a left field threesome. Our heroine is appalled. The hooker leaves. Then they squabble, and so the guy leaves the her alone in his mansion?
This is where I had to hit pause and rate. Really. I need to prevent others from wasting their time. I am going to finish it, just so I can be sure I didn't make some massive error and every bit of this thing turns around. I do not think it's possible, but I'll take on for the team, here.
I honestly wish the best for everyone involved...I am sorry that I criticized an indie, but the rating is so extremely misleading that I feel compelled to help bring a little integrity back to the forum.
Annoyingly, the film gets a couple of things right: the girl is extremely boring, very young-looking, with naturally beautiful and healthy skin, a terrific bikini figure, with no extra fat anywhere and an especially beautiful mouth and teeth. It is believable that she knows she's tall, fit and lovely and came to "make it" with the support of upper middle class parents who "believe in her".
What's maddening are the glaring inconsistencies: she lives alone in a perfect apartment, has no side job...but she takes the bus. Girls that look like that don't take the bus. If they have to, they aren't in their underwear. With that apartment, no roommates and no job, those parents would be renting a car or she'd be taking taxis. She's clearly not a trained artist-one gets the idea that she may have been a student athlete and skipped college to model. Yet: she's extremely shy, stiff and hung up about modeling work. Which is weird.
She accepts the vague invitation to become a mistress wholeheartedly-going to a "date" in a bikini and giving him the full-on boyfriend experience without even discussing figures. Little miss prim. Then we learn it's $10,000 a month. "No way" to that. Then we learn she finds it sexually gratifying and she had feelings for him and wants to go bring her parents on vacation with them. And she stops auditioning and starts doing coke with her younger friends. So: yeah...this does speak to a certain youthful directionless. That part does seem legit.
So: we're halfway through the movie now, and there hasn't been a good scene yet. She comes home and finds the old guy in the hot tub with the most randomly downmarket hooker with whom he decides to spring a left field threesome. Our heroine is appalled. The hooker leaves. Then they squabble, and so the guy leaves the her alone in his mansion?
This is where I had to hit pause and rate. Really. I need to prevent others from wasting their time. I am going to finish it, just so I can be sure I didn't make some massive error and every bit of this thing turns around. I do not think it's possible, but I'll take on for the team, here.
I honestly wish the best for everyone involved...I am sorry that I criticized an indie, but the rating is so extremely misleading that I feel compelled to help bring a little integrity back to the forum.
Marjorie Prime
(2017)
an elegant meditation
20 October 2019
On an awful lot: memory, family dynamic and dysfunction, loss, creation, technology and it's fair use, iteration, musical refrain, story-telling, development and erosion.
Stick with it, if it seems slow. It was based on a play-a form where the convention is more of being trapped in your seat; your attention is expected for longer. Plays warm up, as does this movie.
Stick with it, if it seems slow. It was based on a play-a form where the convention is more of being trapped in your seat; your attention is expected for longer. Plays warm up, as does this movie.
Cabaret
(1972)
oh, mr. york!
21 July 2004
am so excited to have seen this on the big screen for the first time last night at the brattle. I was just swept away by the energy that the medium-magnification added. the sweltering sexuality of and gentle chemistry between minnelli and york is practically shocking against the standard of modern screen pairings, which often seem cold, commercial and clumsy. so many recent romances skip right over the obvious (when people go through the hassle of being in love with one another, it's usually because they are desperately drawn to each other as individuals)and cut right to the same boring generic sex scene. in cabaret: we have a pg-rated movie with enough passion and electricity generated by the characters'*close proximity* to make one blush in the dark.
the writing is brilliant, but it's the actors' complex performances that just launch sally and brian into the realm of epic lovers: many of the best moments in the film happen without dialogue. the depiction of intimacy is so well done that, when this couple (who seemingly had it all over fritz and natalia) cannot find the courage to stick, the frustration and pain of the split is visceral. major non-pms-induced tears streaming and a big lump in the throat not experienced since seeing the restored print of Nights of Caberia on a big screen.
the writing is brilliant, but it's the actors' complex performances that just launch sally and brian into the realm of epic lovers: many of the best moments in the film happen without dialogue. the depiction of intimacy is so well done that, when this couple (who seemingly had it all over fritz and natalia) cannot find the courage to stick, the frustration and pain of the split is visceral. major non-pms-induced tears streaming and a big lump in the throat not experienced since seeing the restored print of Nights of Caberia on a big screen.
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