miclarke

Some nice performances here and the set-up for a great narrative about archaeology in pre-war Britain and the role that regular citizens played in scientific exploration, but something goes awry along the way. The second half of the film focuses on several plotlines that simply did not even exist in the first half of the movie. Something was clearly done here after the first draft of the screenplay. Were sections cut? Were characters added to "spice it up"? We may never know, but the final product feels awkward though it's no fault of the cast here.

As I've grown older and have watched thousands of films, I find the need...no, the desire to give some films a break. Not everything is Bergman or Kubrick. So, while Love Actually and Jerry Maguire don't reach the depths of smart cinema, I've come to enjoy them for what they are, movies that can make you feel. Then there are films like 5 to 7 which are such an affront to the taste and craft of making a "feel something" movie that it's hard to navigate around a violent reaction to them.

What kind of rubbish is this? As the characters move into the story, I find myself actually becoming less interested in them as we go along. Dialogue that would be, at best, stilted coming out of the most accomplished Shakespearean actors sounds like my child's second grade performance of Hansel and Gretel coming out of these performers. Another reviewer complained about an over abundance of cliché. But that is wrong....the dialogue and set-ups here aspire to cliché, without ever actually achieving anything that might be so boring, but well understood. Yes, we get it, the male lead is young....24. So, can't he at least speak like a 24 year old instead of a pubescent teen? I could go on and on and on, but I've already wasted enough of my lifetime with this. Has Nighthawks ever even been at the Guggenheim?

This film is in a similar vein to the work of John Sayles and for that reason alone it is worth viewing. Add an amazing musical score by Moriccone and it is a truly underappreciated gem of a movie.

This film definitely has a different feel compared to Renoir's _La Chienne_. It's less of a melodrama and more of a psychological noir-ish thriller. Nicely composed by Lang- particularly the closing scenes. Rent this version of _La Chienne_ and save your Renoir viewing for _Grand Illusion_.