“A very funny spoof on the recent
spate of cop thrillers who use the mismatched buddy-cop formula.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A very funny spoof on the recent spate of cop thrillers who use the
mismatched buddy-cop formula. It offers a long laundry list of familiar
plot devices including a climactic car chase and numerous running gags
throughout and unbelievable coincidences. It relishes that its storyline
is filled with ridiculous cop movie clichés and the usual jokes
about cops and donuts. This crisply paced screwball comedy action flick
is smartly directed in a tongue-in-cheek manner by Ron Shelton (”Bull
Durham“/”White Men Can’t Jump“/”Dark Blue“), as it pushes
aside the murder story as secondary to the character driven story of the
buddy-cops. It was scripted by former LAPD Det. Robert Souza along with
Shelton. It stars Harrison Ford in a reversal of his more usual dramatic
hero roles, as he plays a cynical cop who is weary from trying to get his
personal life straight while working for the LAPD on the homicide beat
in Hollywood. He’s the honest regular guy who over the years has developed
his own unorthodox style of working the street and using snitches who are
not the best of citizens, like the madam Cleo (Lolita Davidovich, the director’s
wife). Ford’s the savvy, veteran Detective Sergeant Joe Gavilan and his
junior partner K.C. Calden (Josh Hartnett) is the handsome wannabe actor
with questionable police skills. K.C. can’t even hit the target in gun
practice. Joe has nothing in common with him, though the two manage to
get along just fine. We catch K.C. yelling “Stella!” into the morning mist,
as one of his many girlfriends lies in bed watching him rehearse for a
community theater production of A Streetcar Named Desire. He is the son
of a cop who was killed on duty and is bitter with the police department
because of a possible coverup, as no arrest was made to give him closure.
The 60-year-old Joe’s personal life is coming apart mainly due to
alimony payments to his three ex-wives, as his moonlighting real estate
job has him desperately trying to sell his white elephant house or for
that matter any house to get a commission for some needed money so he can
keep up with all his expenses including the mortgage and car payments.
While on the job his cell phone is always ringing to the tune of the Temptations
“My Girl”, because of the real estate gig or from informers or from his
radio psychic girlfriend Ruby (Olin). Ruby just broke up with Internal
Affairs investigator Bennie Macko (Greenwood), who is a long time rival
and is trying to bring Joe down on some bogus criminal charges by having
him under surveillance. Needless to say when he finds Joe with Ruby, he
aims to get further revenge. While the 24-year-old K.C. is seen as a goofy,
free spirit, who teaches yoga to a class of sensual young ladies and leads
a secret spiritual life that is beyond Joe’s comprehension. The running
gag is that K.C. has a long list of lady friends he keeps meeting and though
he bungles their names, they still clamor to go out with him. When Joe
sees him in action, he can only shake his head in amazement and give the
young stud his begrudging props.
The partner team is called in to investigate a bloody quadruple murder
of rap singers in a trendy Hollywood hip-hop club. Its owner (Master P)
just happens to be looking for a fancy house and Joe easily mixes in police
work with trying to get the entrepreneur the six million dollar mansion
he desires and thereby rescue himself from his financial woes. Through
a lead from one of K.C.’s girlfriends Joe finagles his way into an exclusivity
selling deal of the has-been big name producer Jerry Duran’s (Landau) Beverly
Hills mansion and interests the rap club owner in buying it. The running
gag is how difficult it is to make the sale and how it transpires while
Joe’s in the middle of some heavy police action.
The murder investigation leads the duo to a disreputable rap producer
named Sartain (Isaiah Washington), who is lying about what he knows of
the murdered rap group his label backs. A dirty cop, Leroy Wasley (Yoakam),
who coincidentally was partners with K.C.’s father and was with him when
he got shot over a drug bust, now works as security head for Sartain. He
also has connections with Internal Affairs inspector Macko. The psychopathic
Wasley is not only linked to the murders of the rap group and the murder
of the two hired thugs who killed them, but might have been also involved
with the murder of K.C.’s father.
The cop’s biggest lead is when they uncover a rapper-songwriter K-Ro
who witnessed the murders. His protective mom is played by Gladys Knight,
and he flees out the back after she lets the cops in her house. K-Ro is
chased by the cops through the Venice canals as he’s in a pedal-boat and
the younger cop is on foot while the older cop trails him by car over many
tiny bridges, in a scene that was more zany than tense.
There are a few cameos that have no point in helping the storyline,
but the point is that the storyline didn’t matter as much as the parody.
It’s amusing to see Monty Python member Eric Idle arrested for solicitation
and Smokey Robinson as an impatient cabbie and Lou Diamond Phillips ham
it up as an undercover vice squad cop in drag.
The climactic car chase was on foot and also includes Ford on a girl’s
bike, as the cops are racing through Rodeo Drive and past other LA landmarks
such as the Walk of Fame outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater. It was done
in Keystone Kop slapstick style; it also mixed in a healthy dose of thuggery
to bring the film back to its thriller origins. It worked for me as an
offbeat tale that caught the seamy side of Hollywood and the quirkiness
of being a policeman in such a town that prides itself as the glamor capital
of the world. The comedic efforts of Ford and Hartnett worked out well
because of their good timing. In spots this was an hilarious film, whose
comedy unfolded from picking up certain truths about police work and the
seamy side of the rap music scene that went under the radar of how most
films in this genre are handled.
|
“Solid old-fashioned thriller
that is a murder mystery, a love story and a social conscious tale all
rolled into one.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Fernando Meirelles’ (”City of God”) solid old-fashioned thriller
that is a murder mystery, a love story and a social conscious tale all
rolled into one; it’s based on the novel by John Le Carré and the
taut script is by Jeffrey Caine. Ralph Fiennes excels as the middle-aged
mild-mannered low-level British High Commission diplomat to Kenya, Justin
Quayle, who undergoes a personality change to become more assertive when
he discovers his much junior radicalized activist wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz)
has been brutally murdered while making waves against a vast international
Big Pharma conspiracy. She is trying to get proof that British higher-ups
in the government, such as Bernard Pellegrin (Bill Nighy), are in cahoots
with a giant pharmaceutical company (the fictional KDH) to use needy Africans
as unwitting guinea pigs for drug experiments that are known to cause deadly
toxic side effects. The genteel Justin is a complacent but decent man,
who prefers tending his garden than dealing with the ticklish political
issues that show he’s operating for bosses who are asking him to cover
up their questionable policies and if he doesn’t play ball his comfortable
life and career could be derailed. Justin’s physically taken with his opposite
personality wife, but is overwhelmed by her aggressive behavior and her
larger than life appetites. Nevertheless he has fallen madly in love with
her, and throws caution to the wind to keep her love enshrined in his memory
when she’s slain. Living with her ghost, he shuns his career to track down
her killers and travels to London, Amsterdam and Nairobi at his own peril
to follow the political conspiracy trail. Justin ultimately risks his life
to uncover the secrets about his wife’s murder, but is seen not as an action
hero but someone who has matured to become a better person (as if that
is taught in western schools as one of the worthy aims to come out of life!).
Other cast members who excel are Danny Huston as Quayle’s menacing
immediate superior colleague Sandy Woodrow; a third act appearance by Pete
Postlethwaite as a mysterious doctor in East Africa, who reminds us “Big
pharma — they’re as bad as the arms dealers!”; and Hubert Koundé
as Dr. Arnold Bluhm–the friend of Tessa and someone gossips maliciously
say is her lover. Talented cinematographer Cesar Charlone makes both Africa
and the loving couple colorful and intriguing.
Wyvern full movie download bluray
It’s a welcome change that a movie decided to tell it like it is
about the evil pharmaceutical industry—whose enormous profits routinely
leave it in first place among American industries, while its greedy unethical
practices spread suffering throughout both third world countries and the
wealthy ones. They deserve to be damned for all the harm they do to those
who need the most help, and this film is probably only a tame look at the
way they do business but it’s a sharply observed one. It successfully navigates
the waters between investigative journalism, preaching to the choir and
drama, leaving behind much that’s romantically and politically haunting
and well worth being hip about.
|
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Impact Pt II video download bluray
Spider-Crew 2
B+
Whatever a spider can.
Large screen Credits:
Directed by Sam Raimi
Written by Alvin Sargent
from a story by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Michael
Chabon
Cinematography by Bill Pope
Edited by Bob Murawski
Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Alfred Molina
USA, 2004
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (Super 35)
Screened 6/30/04 at National Amusements Greenburgh
Multiplex Cinemas, Elmsford, NY
Inglourious Basterds movie download dvd
Reviewed 7/1/04
Sam Raimi
@Deep Zero in:
It's
de rigeur
anymore for any action movie — no matter
what the story might otherwise dictate — to open with a big action
sequence. The point, I suppose, is to give audiences a taste of the
kind of seat-drenching thrills and mind-bending special effects that
are in store for them later on in the film as an inducement to keep
them from nodding off, chattering among themselves or even, I suppose,
leaving the theater and demanding a refund.
Spider-Man 2
's idea of the big hero-in-peril opening sequence
is a pizza delivery. So low key is Peter Parker's life, so toned down
are his aspirations outside of the spider suit, that the film opens
with his tardy arrival at his place of employ, where his boss promptly
informs him that, if he can't get a stack of eight pizzas 42 blocks
uptown in less than nine-minutes, he’s fired. (Joe’s of
Bleecker has a 29-minute guarantee.) That’s the thing about Spider-Man
— it’s clear that what’s at stake, besides the soul
of the superhero, the continued health and well being of New York City,
and all that, is the lot in life of the little guy. Peter works multiple
part time jobs just to make ends meet and his dear Aunt May faces eviction
from her home, but you sure don’t see The Green Goblin or Doctor
Octopus worrying about where their next meal is coming from.
Anyway, here’s the twist in the opening reel: Peter struggles
with the delivery job, even in Spider-Man garb, a worrisome development
for a superhero and therefore one that sets the tone for the rest of
the movie. Unlike other franchises I could name,
Spider-Man 2
goes somewhere different from its predecessors in terms of tone and
character, if not general design. This is the Spider-Man No More storyline,
where a confluence of circumstances convinces the webslinger to ditch
his red-and-blue street jammies in a back-alley garbage can and seek
love and security in the arms of his secretly beloved Mary-Jane Watson.
Call it the last temptation of Spidey.
The main villain of the story is Doctor Octopus, a mad scientist figure
who, through a poorly controlled experiment with nuclear fusion, winds
up with four serpentine, artificially intelligent mechanical arms grafted
into his flesh. The arms themselves are a triumph of VFX design, imbued
with an obviously malevolent personality and giving Raimi a chance to
display those hard-won horror movie chops. I lost track of how many
times he goes in for the close-up of someone screaming directly into
camera. This helps make the sequel a more personal film than the first
movie without wrecking continuity — the guy with the four robotic,
Anaconda
-size arms is obviously scarier than the merely flamboyant
freak in the Don Post Green Goblin mask. Raimi is a savvy team player,
neglecting his own personal style in the quest to ensure mass appeal,
yet occasionally indulging his urge toward unhinged mayhem.
I'll quibble with some of what's up there on screen. The first half
is really tight, all essential story development and character motivations,
including a simmering subplot that offers more grist for the sequel
mill (Peter's longtime pal, the creepy Harry Osborne, has a score to
settle with Spider-Man.) But toward the end of the film, when it comes
time for Peter to learn more about his freakish powers and the responsibility
they force upon him, the dialogue turns clunky and expository. Yes,
the obvious corn about Aunt May is essential to the mood, and some degree
of speechifying monologue has always been endemic to the superhero genre.
But that doesn’t mean it always works on screen (see Bill's endless
talk talk at the end of
Kill Bill Vol. 2
for another near-disastrous
example). The BS coming out of Doc Ock's mouth toward the end I can
sort of forgive — supervillains are supposed to be full of shit
— but a flashback with Uncle Ben and a long lecture by May are
just about excruciating, coming more than two thirds of the way into
the story and spelling out the themes and ideas that everyone in the
audience already groks from context.
So, too much talking in spots, and the worst thing about that is the
strain it puts on a cast of enormously likable and capable actors. Tobey
Maguire is appealingly thick, figuring out how to deal with his guilt-ridden
conscience, his shiftlessness and his horniness without packing it all
in, and Alfred Molina is appealingly dastardly as the scientist in thrall
to his own artificial appendages. I’ve never seen evidence that
Kirsten Dunst has much range as an actress, but get her dress wet and
hand her a big piece of lumber to wield as a weapon and I'll swear she's
the sexiest woman alive.
Unfortunately, there aren't as many happy surprises in
Spider-Man
2
as in the first film. There are no questions about how the FX
guys will envision his Tarzan-style bounds down Manhattan Avenues, no
gaping disbelief at the antics of Willem Dafoe, chewing his own bad
self out in a mirror six months before Andy Serkis pulled essentially
the same trick in that little Peter Jackson movie, no moment of clarity
like the one at the end of the first movie where Peter Parker made it
clear that he's wiling to repudiate everything in his life, even happiness
itself, in order to do right by Spider-Man and the city he serves. But
this sequel is solid stuff, nonetheless, and what’s most refreshing
is how willing Raimi is to take his time building exactly the story
and characters he wants to portray — and then lettin’ ‘er
rip, comic book style.
“Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliantly
perceptive film is based on a true story, but is done in mock-documentary
style.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliantly perceptive film is based on a true
story, but is done in mock-documentary style. It is about Hossain Sabzian
playing himself. Sabzian’s an impostor of the famous Iranian filmmaker
Mohsen Makhmalbaf (The Cyclist), and has been arrested on
charges of fraud.
Sabzian meets an upper-class woman on a bus and when she inquires
about the book he is reading by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, he impulsively gives
her the book and tells her he is the director. During the course of their
conversation Sabzian gets invited to her home where he meets her husband
(Abolfazl Ahankhah) and a son (Mehrdad), who is an engineer but can’t get
work in his field and is now interested in the arts. Sabzian fills the
family full of ideas about shooting a film in their house, with their son
starring in it.
This is a slow-moving, temperately structured film shot in the cinéma-vérité
style so that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is
real and what is reconstructed. It has a curious fascination about it.
The film opens when a reporter (Farazmand) has been called to the home
of Mr. Ahankhah because he suspects the person in his house is a fraud.
The reporter comes by taxi with two soldiers and has the impostor arrested.
The reporter is gleeful that this could be his godsend story, as it makes
the headlines in his newspaper. He asks the court authorities to speed
up the trial, as the accused has been in prison for three weeks on this
petty charge and he wants to film the trial while the story is still hot
in the news.
The film covers the trial in depth, using the testimony of the son
and the accused to look back at what unfolded in the 40 days since this
deception took place. The accused is charged with fraud and of lending
money under false pretenses and not paying it back. Sabzian is an unemployed
printer who is divorced. One child of his is being raised by his mother,
while his wife has taken the other child. Sabzian claims to be a lover
of films, and in particular, an ardent admirer of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose
films move him the way they portray suffering.
What comes out at the trial is that Sabzian never attempted to rob
the house but loved taking on the identity of the famous director, as it
boosted his morale and gave him the respect he never got before. He also
looks somewhat like the director, but not enough to fool anyone who has
ever seen what the director looks like.
The Prodigy video dvd
The film has a somewhat curious aesthetic feel to it, as the director’s
motivations seem to be largely a test for the audience to see if they really
know what they are getting from their experience in viewing a film. All
those who testify tell the truth from their own viewpoint. Some of the
dialogue is pleasingly witty and some of the observations made are extremely
sharp. Sabzian says when asked to comment on his stay in jail: “Prisons
are good for the good, but bad for the bad.”
At the film’s conclusion Kiarostami wants to make sure that we know
it is only a film. He has the pardoned Sabzian return with flowers to the
home of Mr. Ahankhah. Kiarostami follows him with his cameras, but the
audio equipment malfunctions and the sound becomes partially muted. The
director forces us to be alerted that what we are seeing is not real life,
and that it is made possible only through technology. But what he has done
up until that point, is use his ‘close-up’ lens to focus in on the accused
and see what he is all about. Sabzian comes off as a dreamer, someone who
has not found out who he is and is confused as to who he can be. This compelling
film lets us think of him in whatever way we want to. The marvelous thing,
is how Kiarostami can get superb performances from the non-professional
actors as well as from the professionals. As Sabzian stated during the
trial: “acting is just being yourself, letting it all come out from the
heart.”
This is just a wonderful film, with Kiarostami’s humor prevailing.
It is also an interesting look at modern Iran, its bureaucracy, its class
divisions, its high unemployment, and its seemingly fair-minded court system.
|
When
I last left Ralph Hinkley, his girlfriend (soon-to-be wife) Pam Davidson
and Jaws Maxwell after the at the start ripen, Ralph was still struggling to learn how to use the suit that
the "little green guys" bestowed upon him, while balancing his career
as a high school teacher of assorted riff raff and his side exert oneself as Maxwell's
"assistant".
We open the third season with Ralph fretting over his
high school reunion while helping out an old friend who's a famous quarterback
being forced to throw a game. In "30 Seconds Over Little Tokyo", Ralph
deals with his high school tenure review as he and Bill take on a ninjas[?] in
an effort to keep a powerful weapon (the creation of which is explained in the
set's booklet) out of guest star Mako's hands. During "Divorce Venusian
Style", Ralph is wounded while taking on neo-Nazis[!] forcing the
"little green guys" to reappear, heal Ralph aboard their spaceship and
give him a new instruction book for the suit - which he promptly (and quite ridiculously)
loses at the end of the episode.
In addition to the ninja and neo-Nazi episodes, there's also an episode
called "Wizards And Warlocks" (featuring a cameo by Bob Saget) that
had my head spinning with all the D&D lingo being thrown around (and I used
to play D&D myself!). Andre the Giant makes an appearance in "Heaven In
Your Genes", which sees Bill kidnapped by an evil scientist who wants to
experiment on him and the final episode on disc 4, "Vanity, Says the
Preacher", was written by Robert Clup and is one of four episodes in the
third season that weren't broadcast initially.
The
third time of
the Greatest American Hero
is 13 episodes dream of and Moor
Bay has spread them across 4 celibate-sided discs:
Disc 1
the Worth Is Right
30 Seconds Over Little Tokyo
Divorce Venusian Vein
Live At Eleven
Disc 2
the Resurrection Of Carlini
Wizards And Warlocks
Heaven Is In Your Genes
Disc 3
This Is the Story the Suit Was
Meant For
the Newlywed Game
Desperado
Disc 4
Space Ranger
It's Contrariwise Rock 'N Roll
Emptiness, Says the Cleric
Video:
The Greatest American Hero
is presented in an mien correspondence of
1.33:1. The envision was sharp and clear with a reduce muted color palette.
Ralph's unconventional effects were still cheesy, but they did disclose the slightest of
improvements. Nevertheless, it was a extremely advantageous presentation on account of its period.
Audio:
Love the pre-eminent occasion,
The Greatest American Hero's
third
enliven features a cleaner Dolby Environment 2.0 track. Unlike that customary, the audio
actually had some life to it and didn't sound as flat. I know there were music
rights issues with the first two sets, but I didn't comment any obvious changes
as I did during the first available.
Packaging:
A foil slipcase houses two doppelgaenger disc slimcases. There's also a four page
booklet that contains an essay by Richard Coyle, the intriguer of the fabled
Instruction Enlist amongst other props featured on the show.
Extras
: Umm….spectacularly….pressing a spot
on the DVD suit will let you hear a path from Joey Scarbury's theme song. That's
about it.
Conclusion:
As I stated in my review for the enliven
one
,
I was a junkie of this show from the commencement. To whatever manner, it in fact seemed to
stumble during the third enliven. The chemistry between Connie, Robert and
William is still there and stronger than endlessly, but the writing was uneven. It
was great to keep company with what the inside of the spaceship looked along the same lines as, and it would've
been first-rate if Ralph actually had the instruction ticket for the uniform in the direction of more than
20 minutes, but overall i'd have to say I was dejected by this seasonable. Two
episodes on disc 3, "This Is the One the Suit Was Meant For" and
"the Newlywed Game", were the lone standouts as far as storytelling
was uneasy.
The majority of the time, it seemed as if the writers (two of the thirteen
episodes were written by Stephen J. Cannell) had a
dartboard in their offices which they'd use to regulate the elements of whatever
instalment they were working on at the time. Thanks to this scattered writing, i'd have a hard era
recommending this set if you weren't a nut or a completest who already owned the
first two seasons. I am remarkably grateful to Anchor Bay and Cannell Productions an eye to
putting this show on DVD (and so quickly, too!), but i'd have to recommend that
indifferent viewers unfamiliar with the show
Rent It
.
Agree? Disagree? You can
post your thoughts
about this reconsider on the DVD Talk forums.
In the short obscure "Cours du Soir" (1967), Jacques Tati plays a mime instructor who emphasizes to his students the importance of observing people closely. "Playtime" (1967) is the advanced construction of this lecture put into manners. Tati scrutinizes every member of his sprawling cast with an sidelong glance for delegate that only years of trained observation can produce. The looks, movements and mannerisms of every sole person who passes in advance of his camera are recorded in dramatic cite chapter, and then coordinated into a precise, hardly precise pattern that resembles dance as much as it does a recital blur.
In the hands of a less humanistic big cheese, such an approach might produce a cold or clinical movie, but Tati likes, or at least is interested in, every character (and actor) who appears in his film. An obnoxious businessman could easily be played as the stereotypical "ugly American," but under Tati´s advice, his ostentatiousness plays more derive bonhomie. When he flings on all sides his money, even offering to buy the nightclub he is in, it´s because he wants to clothed a good opportunity and wants other people to use to advantage it along with him. Tati finds the good in all of his characters. There is not a intimate of smugness or condescension to be organize in this movie, only the kind of playfulness that the designate promises.
"Playtime" was Tati´s greatest project or, depending upon your perspective, his greatest folly. He discharge more than three years in manufacture, building an express municipality as his set (built in Joinville, it shortly became known as Tati-ville) and investing much of his physical fortune in the project. Following the momentous and popular success of his two previous Mr. Hulot films, "Mr. Hulot´s Holiday" (1953) and "Mon oncle" (1958), a third Hulot film seemed analogous to a unfaltering risk. Unfortunately, the only mania steady in the blur transaction is that no one knows what choose go on next. "Playtime" was a financial disaster, due in scrap to the interference of American distributors and in requital for other reasons less clear. It may be the relatively subdued presence of the character of Hulot in the film, who takes a backseat to the garments cast, contributed to the failure. Perhaps it was just a case of depraved timing. Whatever the reasons, Tati wound up losing his family home and, last analysis, coequal the rights to his own films.
The slug office failure certainly has nothing to do with the distinction of the take itself. As an audiovisual spectacle, "Playtime" is rivaled only by "2001: A Space Odyssey" (I have always thought of the two films together, and was pleasantly surprised when critic Jonathan Rosenbaum made the in spite of comparison in the liner notes to this DVD.) I first saw "Playtime" on a restored 70mm print, and I count it as the segregate most memorable movie-wealthy experience of my life. The sheer amount of activity in every frame of this pellicle is so unendurable that no single viewing can possibly satiate to absorb it all. Action occurs on multiple planes and in multiple directions, and Tati´s long takes and broad shots allocate them to unfold in real time, inviting the viewer to opt what he or she wants to to.
Spoof the extraordinary scene in which Tati shows the living rooms of four separate apartments (effectively creating a four-way split-screen), all filmed from the maximal. Most viewers will focus on the room which Hulot enters with his old against friend, but guard closely again and you´ll notice how the body language of the cleaning woman who lives next door is oddly coordinated with the "main" skirmish. Or how fro the opening display at Orly airport which first focuses on a seated twosome conversing in mid-ground, but soon expands to follow a parade of different passersby: a confused janitor, a stewardess who walks with robotic precision and turns at sharp ninety degree angles, and so on. Pick a character, any character, and follow him or her; you won´t be making the off target creme de la creme; they´re all important. It was all part of Tati´s design to "democratize" his film, taking the focus away from any unattached rectitude and giving everyone their own degree of sense in the film. He amazingly wanted to take the focus free his signature character, Monsieur Hulot, and divulge some of his other actors down. He even sprinkles a series of fake Hulots throughout the fog to over undermine his character´s central role.
As you superiority guesstimate, the gossamer plot hardly matters. Hulot comes to see a crew about a province but has difficulty meeting with him. He wanders into the diocese where the action switches to follow a group of American women, including Barbara (Barbara Dennek) the closest thing the video has to a protagonist front of Hulot, bring into the world arrived on vacation. Every so often we reflect the women; sometimes Hulot on his misadventures. Most of the while, we´re watching the city itself, presented here as a streamlined, ultra-modern, condensed version of Paris. It´s a city made all of transparent binoculars, and operated by remarkable machinery that is both of its shilly-shally and oddly futuristic. An early scene takes place at a occupation screen where vendors display their wares, including a vacuum cleaner with its own headlights and a door made of material that dampens all sound ("Slam Your Doors in Golden Calmness!") Occasionally, Paris landmarks decorticate through the slick modernity, such as the Eiffel Tower which makes an unfitting demeanour as a consideration in a glass doorway.
The entire videotape is a near-impeccable symphony, but it reaches its tip in the extended Viscount Garden sequence at the end. If you can petition a forty-minute plus sequence a "set-air," it is the greatest set-interest in film history. It´s onset ceaselessly at a ritzy nightclub, but the kinks have yet to be ironed free, and the staff is discomfort-advance to handle the get together. Worthless paint jobs, unfettered perplex tiles, and collapsing be supportive of beams in an interminable series of complications. In this single space, Tati is somehow able to initiate dozens of manifest and historic characters, including the waiters, the manager, the bouncer, the carpenter, the stripe members, particular diners, a local drunk, and Hulot himself.
“The Addams Family” is more laughs than a casketful of whoopee cushions at a morticians’ convention. More than purely a sequel of the TV series, the pic is a compendium of paterfamilias Charles Addams’s macabre drawings, a resurrection of the cartoonist’s body of work. For bloodline friends, it would seem a viewing is de rigueur mortis.
Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia are ideally cast as the glamour ghoul Morticia “Tish” Addams and her doting husband, Gomez. Together they head a mouldering ancestral manse, which is frequently dusted to no avail by the towering butler, Lurch (Carel Struycken). Other residents are a disembodied hand, Thing (Christopher Hart); Morticia’s mother, Granny (Judith Malina); and the Addams children, Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and Wednesday (Christina Ricci).
A precursor of such TV broods as the Bunkers and the Bundys, the Addamses remain a deliciously dysfunctional bunch. Contrarians to the gristle, they delight in their sorrows as surely as they savor thorns over roses and sun by the light of the moon. They would be completely unhappy except for Gomez’s relative despair — his older brother Fester (Christopher Lloyd) has been inexplicably missing for the last 25 years. Complications arise when a con woman (Elizabeth Wilson) produces Uncle Fester (or is he Yul Brynner’s ghost?) with the intent of locating the family fortune.
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Although the plot is flimsier than cobweb it serves well enough, thanks to the production designers’ elaborate contributions and the performers’ formidable panache. Eleven-year-old Ricci is a revelation as the morbidly fascinating Wednesday. The kid was born deadpan. She even resembles Huston, who is terribly funny as the concerned mother of this close-knit if eccentric clan. But mainly, Huston’s a vamp, clinging to her beloved Gomez with the fluidity of smoke. And no wonder, for Julia’s heroic Gomez is not only a devastating romantic but a swashbuckling dreamboat.
The Addamses are inclined to swordplay, though this should in no way dissuade the feint of heart. The only truly scary thing about the movie is Granny’s cooking, which combines recipes from “The Joy of Cooking” with suggestions from “Gray’s Anatomy.” Otherwise it is a gothically convivial, if utterly silly scenario penned by Larry Wilson and Caroline Thompson of “Beetlejuice” and “Edward Scissorhands,” respectively. Since nothing really bothers the Addamses, except normalcy, the writers are at their funniest when pitting the characters against straight society. The opening scene finds them on the roof ready to poor a caldron of boiling wassail on a group of chirpy carolers.
It’s rather hard to dramatically challenge people who love pain, which means the film finally runs down like a toy top. Still, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld has executed his directorial debut with considerable elan. With all those spectral effects, it must have been a nightmarish undertaking. But given the Addams way of looking at things, that makes Sonnenfeld one lucky stiff. An ooky, kooky, spooky oeuvre, “The Addams Family” is decidedly not for the grave.
The Australian Ledger plays Casanova as though he were English, and that’s
just the wrong vibe — the difference between, say, James Bond and Marcello
Mastroianni. The English lover is smirky, witty and reserved. The Italian lover
is driven, besotted, seemingly helpless and then unexpectedly graceful.
Watching Ledger, there’s no doubt that all kinds of women would be attracted to
him. That is not the problem. What’s in doubt is that he could ever be so
consistently love-struck, so infinitely interested in breathing the air women
breathe, as to make the pursuit of them his whole life.
Fortunately for Ledger, the movie, having established Casanova’s rapacious
capacities, gets off that tack. We first meet Casanova as he’s debauching a
nun, and we soon discover that he is quite popular at the convent in general.
But with the dreaded Inquisition on the way to Venice, the doge informs the
insatiable fellow that he must marry or leave town. From that point on, the
movie is about the process by which the ladies’ man discovers his ability to
love one woman. In that role, the down-to-earth Ledger seems more suited.
“Casanova” is a light film, airy, likable and set in Venice. Since Venice
looks essentially the same today as it did in the 1750s, it’s a special
pleasure to see the actors in period costumes walking along its bridges and
canals, as if the city’s ghosts, its truest natives, have come back to life.
The film is easy to watch and easy to enjoy, enough so that I wish it were also
easy to recommend. Alas, the comedy never quite ignites, despite (or perhaps
because of) the strenuous efforts of director Lasse Hallstrom. As a result,
“Casanova” is neither the hilarious delight nor the pointed celebration of
happy libidinousness that it was meant to be.
But settle in. Ledger is no Casanova, and the movie is not what it should
be, but once that is accepted, the movie can be appreciated for the jolly,
lightweight thing it is. Told that he needs to become unobtrusive and to
uncomplicate his existence, Casanova sets himself up for more trouble. He
becomes engaged to the city’s prettiest virgin (Natalie Dormer, a dead ringer
for Gloria Grahame) and falls in love with another woman on the same day. It’s
that kind of Christmas movie.
Sienna Miller, unrecognizable under a dark wig, plays Francesca, a radical
thinker and an early crusader for women’s rights. She hates everything Casanova
stands for, but that’s because she’s never met him, etc., etc. In any case, it
all gets tangled and even dangerous, when the Inquisitor shows up in town, and
he turns out to be played by Jeremy Irons. What’s more, Irons is in a red wig,
so you can imagine the kind of mood he’s in. He wants to kill everybody.
The clunky, strangely off quality of some of the comedy is best
exemplified by Irons, who for several scenes comes across as a character of
genuine menace, appropriate for a serious drama. Then he starts taking
pratfalls. The first time he did, I thought the actor had stumbled and for some
reason they decided to keep it in. But no, that was supposed to be funny.
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More in keeping with an identifiably comic spirit is Oliver Platt, as a
lard magnate from Genoa, who is engaged to Francesca. He is at first defined
only in terms of his rotund appearance and ruddy complexion — he looks like
the unhealthy rich people we find in the paintings of the period. But we come
to recognize his personal authority and understand why this man is a success.
It’s a nice character arc for Platt. Also doing well in comic support is the
vivid-faced Omid Djalili, a British Iranian comedian, who plays Casanova’s
valet.
– Advisory: This film contains sexual situations and violence.
Shamelessly sappy and emotionally manipulative, “Patch Adams” is an aggressively heartwarming comedy-drama that may be roasted by critics but embraced by ticketbuyers. Robin Williams pulls out all the stops in a lead post that gives him carte blanche to careen between extremes of silliness and sentimentality; he tries too unfriendly, too obviously, much like the pic itself. Even so, it’s unwise to underestimate the supplication of a routine illustrious doing crowd-pleasing shtick in slickly packaged Hollywood hokum. Prospects are good for a healthful, if not memorandum-breaking, theatrical run, and an extended shelf-life on video and cable.
Williams is cast — perhaps too perfectly — as Hunter “Patch” Adams, a real-life physician who places great stock in the therapeutic value of laughter in his personalized approach to caregiving. Beginning in the early 1970s, when he entered medical school, and continuing today, as he operates an unorthodox clinic in West Virginia, Adams often has annoyed the medical establishment by minimizing the boundaries between doctor and patient. In Adams’ view, doctors must be empathic, not objective, and deal compassionately with human beings rather than simply diagnose diseases. It also helps if you can bring a little standup comedy to your bedside manner.
Based on “Gesundheit: Good Health is a Laughing Matter,” the 1993 book Adams wrote with Maureen Mylander, “Patch Adams” begins in 1969 as the eponymous protagonist checks himself into a mental hospital after attempting suicide.
The sensitive young Adams — played by a conspicuously middle-aged Williams — is pleasantly surprised to discover he has the ability to heal himself while cheering his fellow patients. More important, he recognizes that he’s better equipped to provide emotional healing than the hospital’s chief psychiatrist.
Flash forward two years: Patch is a first-year student at Virginia Medical College, burning with idealistic desire to “treat the patient as well as the disease.” His beaming cheeriness immediately upsets his stuffy roommate, Mitch (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a physician’s son who’s deadly serious about good grades and family tradition. He’s also the only character in the entire pic who notices that Patch is a little old to be starting medical school. But his lack of humor makes him an easy target for the audience’s scorn.
Even so, Patch faces an even more formidable nemesis in Dean Walcott (Bob Gunton), a sternly authoritarian taskmaster who has little patience for Patch’s touchy-feely sentiments. There is no depth or shading to this overstated and underwritten bad guy. Right from the start, he warns his medical students that he will “rigorously and ruthlessly train the humanity out of you and turn you into something better.” Subtlety is not this pic’s strong point.
Patch is so eager to do good by making merry that he defies the rules that keep first-year students from interacting with patients at the university hospital. With the help of a friendly nurse (Irma P. Hall), he slips into children’s wards to literally clown around for young patients. He also tries to amuse some ailing adults, and even manages to win over a surly cancer patient played by Peter Coyote. In one of many scenes that defy credibility while jerking tears, Coyote’s character banishes his wife and children from his bedside, so he can spend his final moments with Patch.
Despite repeated attempts by Dean Walcott to have Patch expelled, our hero makes great grades and close friends. Better still, Patch wins over an initially frosty fellow student, Carin (Monica Potter), and convinces her to take part in his program to establish a free clinic where they’ll “use humor to cure pain and suffering.” Mind you, it’s a clinic in a wooded area far outside the city limits, raising questions about accessibility that the pic never addresses, but everyone has his or her heart in the right place.
Everyone, that is, except Dean Walcott. And, more important, a troubled patient who triggers a devastating tragedy.
The latter setback brings Patch to the very edge of despair. Fortunately, his faith in himself (and his methods) is restored just in time, thanks to what appears to be nothing less than a sign from God.
It’s hard to believe that this schmaltzy concoction is the joint effort of director Tom Shadyac and screenwriter Steve Oedekerk, who previously teamed for “The Nutty Professor” and “Ace Venture: Pet Detective.” For all its basis in fact, “Patch Adams” seems to exist in a never-never land of movie cliches and simplistic absolutes. Pic makes no effort beyond costuming and production design to root its narrative in the real world of the early 1970s; indeed, there are some glaring anachronisms in the dialogue. (”That’s my job.” “Yeah, but you suck at it.”)
Nobody ever mentions the Vietnam War, much less the anti-war movement, on the medical school campus. More to the point, Patch’s anti-establishment attitudes are never linked — not even by Dean Walcott — to other student-led rebellions of the day. If the era weren’t specifically mentioned in onscreen titles, many moviegoers might mistake this period story for a contemporary yarn.
Although he’s undeniably hilarious in many scenes, Williams broadly overplays the holy foolishness of his saintly Patch Adams. More than once, the audience may agree with a classmate who remarks: “God, you’re being so self-indulgent!”
Among the supporting players, Philip Seymour Hoffman is a standout as he struggles mightily — and, to his credit, successfully — to flesh out a tissue-thin character. Monica Potter makes a strong and sympathetic impression as Carin, but Bob Gunton is lucklessly stuck in a role of one-note villainy.
Composer Marc Shaiman provides a syrupy score that thoughtfully informs the audience exactly what to feel and precisely when to feel it. Other tech credits are adequate.
Dale Delorenzo