Reviews

I couldn't watch the whole thing. These two actors have done some wonderful work but this thing I just do not understand. Maybe it is a veiled metaphor for marriage, which could be funny for a lot of people. But I stopped watching it shortly after they started to try to kill each other. Blah. They are so much better than what this dog required of them. I think it does well because everyone knows this is where they started their offscreen marriage.

This is probably the best film adaptation of Wuthering Heights to date (22 years later). Great photography, not too many words, and tons of emotion. Reviewing a subsequent production, Roger Ebert said something like "Wuthering Heights is every woman's favorite." In this version you don't necessarily see Catherie and Heathcliffe's relationship as a healthy one - at least I didn't. I didn't yearn to see them together. Maybe that's a failure on the part of casting, but although the acting was fine, I did not find their chemistry to be romantic. In this version, the sad failing of each character is at the fore and Heathcliffe's revenge feels eternal. Sure he was abused, but he has not turned out to be a good guy, to the point where someone should make a film describing how Heathcliffe came into his fortune while offscreen.

So why is this the best version? It has the right balance of grit, weather, nature, passion, and human pain. The photography is great and the production values make it on a level with the best current Masterpiece Theatre stuff, even 20 years later. Granted it's painful to watch, and I can't call it completely entertaining. The nurse, Nelly, becomes a kind of touchstone character - the only one anybody is ever glad to see for most of the film, including Heathcliffe. They had to keep him offscreen and just show her face when he approaches her after returning to visit Thrushcross Grange a rich man. You only hear his voice which harbors a touch of delighted love say, "Nelly!" as her face changes from recognition to a kind of dismay.

Before seeing this I heard several descriptions of it, to the effect that it's a movie about a hotel where single people go and if they don't hook up they are turned into animals.

That's the first 40 minutes, but it's not what the movie is "about," It's a love story. And it's full of strange allegories about relationships that - to me - are really little and larger vignettes about relationship status' and existential angst, and a sort of cynical social commentary about anthropology and societal judgement. In some ways you can enter this movie as though you're about to watch a series of skits about "coupling" and it will work pretty fine.

I thought the ending made a lot of sense along the above lines. What connects two people really isn't the point. The point is that they are - and remain - connected.

I enjoyed watching Daniel Craig as James Bond. He has a simian quality the others haven't, except perhaps Connery a bit. When he sat down at the poker table with the other international high-rollers, in comparison to them he just screamed "cop." The short hair, the buff almost military appearance, ape like bearing. This Bond has some privilege but he doesn't have to cover up with the airs of a gentleman. His manners are dictated by common sense more than breeding or a concern for appearances. I also like his almost robotic nature when he's behind the scenes doing his job, crashing the cars, sneaking into the hotel's security office, always 5 steps ahead of us. Sometimes Craig seems a little over-botoxed with the lack of facial expressions, but his fanny did look really cute in those blue linen pants.

It's hard to say why this movie was such a thud compared to the first one. There were some scenes which were improvements on the original, but the original was just a hands-down classic, from Pamela Sue Martin's long skirt converting into a jumpsuit to Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens' painful and tumultuous love scenes to Gene Hackman's classic camp monologue as he hangs from the main hatch over the pit of fire. And the list goes on...

This movie sustains none of the character development like the first one did. The chemistry between characters is totally lacking, and the dialog is uncompelling. The direction and dialog in the first movie were pretty bad, but there was still a depth to the characters' stories.

Where the second movie prevails is in its production values and special effects. The gory deaths are impressive and the ship is more of an inferno than a watery grave. Extending the scene in the ballroom was a good idea - the ocean felt bigger and the hopelessness of the situation and gruesomeness of those character's deaths in the heart of the ship was even sadder. Again though, there's just no substitute for Carol Linley (Nonnie Parry) singing "Morning After." They really should have done a cool reprisal of that song in this movie - more homages to the previous film probably would have garnered a larger audience.

I saw it - I might have liked it if I hadn't seen the original when I was 10. The original had the trappings of a classic, whereas this one will soon be forgotten.

This ***TV movie*** (hello? what are you expecting??) has a lot of good - and some bad - aspects. A hackneyed disaster film beginning leads to a fairly thought-provoking series of suspenseful plot turns, and the acting throughout is quite good. A few plot threads do just get dropped, like the determined naval commander ("This ship is STILL CONSIDERED DERELICT!"), the people locked in the conference room through the whole film, the Japanese guy locked in one of the bathrooms, etc. Charles Dutton and others milk it for what it's worth. Aidan Quinn is entertaining as the "weekend pilot" and the mix of characters and occasional potboiler dialog are good entertainment. This is a good casual watching movie. Good rental.