markkp

Great beginning--first twenty minutes. Clever ending--last five minutes. But not worth it unless you want to fast forward and make it a 25 minute mini TV show. Some reviewers must have seen a different movie. Diva is needlessly complex and meandering in a sloppy, undisciplined way. The plot makes no sense whatsoever and you won't be curious enough to sort it out afterwords, only wondering why you wasted the time.

1981. Dynasty was hot. Rubiks Cube hit the market. Juice Newton was cool, so were Kool and the Gang and Eddit Rabbit. But for intellectuals--people who go to films, not movies--it was Diva that had everybody in the chattering classes chattering. While many reviewers talk about the films stylishness, they neglect to add that most of what passes for "stylish" in any particular moment ends up looking silly and dated very quickly. This is proof. Unfortunately, there is a great concept trapped inside--a passionate and quirky young opera lover who lugs along and manages to surreptitiously tape a beautiful opera recital using a semi-portable top-of-the-line old Nagra (the best tech available in its day.) But that's all lost in the mish-mash of global prostitution ring, silly sunglass wearing bad guys with bad bad guy dialog ("I've got a bad feeling about this") and endless shots of a "profound" "wave machine" from Sharper Image or somewhere which is the meditation device for a character who is utterly incomprehensible.

Don't say you weren't warned. This is not a classic...it's a washed up period piece.

I had fairly low expectations going into this one, but the film quickly churns into full noir-ish life as one of the last of what was to be a dying breed of movie--a psychological thriller pulling us close to the world of the always fascinating Alan Ladd as he runs head on into forces beyond his control. (I disagree that Ladd's personal problems detract from his performance at all. In fact to me the intentional darkness of the mood is simply strengthened by Ladd just as he was able to do in a dozen other gripping dramas both large and small. This is a "small" drama, to be sure, but none the less intense and intriguing.

A plot theme emerges here treated the way a great noir director of the 40's might have treated it--pathological youth violence, a real social problem often glossed over {Rebel Without A Cause, for example) or in later 1960's films glamorized and turned into the iconic images for a new generation.

But here it is--stark, vicious, mindless, and cruel just because people can get away with it. This is a brave and unflinching film and a real treat for those who appreciate the genre. Keep your expectations modest and it will surprise you quite happily!

De Palma's typically undisciplined style has boomeranged. In the theater, we heard nervous titters of laughter at the histrionics that passed for acting, the wild twists and turns of a plot which finally just implodes, and the general over-the-topness of it all. A sad waste of money and talent. De Palma is a director who sometimes brings out the worst in actors (Pacino in Carlito's Way and many others.) That's a shame. There is a lot of talent on screen here, but the script was a disaster of truly epic proportions. This is not an homage to noir, but an amateurish 1st year film school parody of noir mixed with a parody of Grand Guignol. The last thirty minutes of the film are literally spoken or read lines where most of the impossible-to-follow plot are "revealed" not through action, but by monologues. What is especially troubling is that the movie's pretense to be being based somehow on the horrific death of a young actress. While De Palma's film claims to be another expose of Hollywood's exploitation of young women which the "Black Dahlia" case represented, in fact it is De Palma himself here who is doing the exploiting. The ridiculous lesbian bar scene replete with what is now referred to as "titty dancing", the "crawling on knees" scene of what is supposed to be the actual "Black Dahlia" woman herself with De Palma himself providing the voice of the director who is exploiting her...none of these things ever happened except in De Palma's twisted imagination. Funny, if it weren't tragic.

I guess this makes me a philistine, but sitting through Pickpocket in its beautifully rendered Criterion DVD edition was simply painful. To those who are not professional film historians, you should be aware that this is not a crime drama in any sense of the genre, and really not a drama. That's because there is no attempt, no attempt to have a plot. Pickpocket is an expression of pure naturalism in film. People simply are. There are no visible emotions, no interaction, no dramatic tension. There is only beautiful camera work--the loving caress of 35mm black and white touching the fascinating surface of Paris in the late 1950's. (There are also endless "lessons" in how professional pickpockets operate...enough to scare you into hiding your traveling money in one of those weird tourist belt things!) The film really belongs in a museum and I know that film lovers much more aesthetically attuned than I appreciate it as though it were a museum masterpiece. That's fine. But if you rent it or buy it in DVD or video thinking you're going to see one of those classic noir-inspired late 50's French crime films, you will be bored out of your mind waiting for the plot to happen. Believe me, it doesn't.

This film belongs in the 'hideously bad cult' category with artless

works of self indulgence without any redeeming social value along

with Caligula and a few others. The cartoonish style never rises

above crude adolescent scribbling with editing that makes it look

as though the director might have mixed methamphetamine in

with his acid tabs. Do we dare to condemn crimes against art?

Yes!

I watched this film again, not having seen it since it first came out

during the heady days of back then. My friend, who had not seen it

before, asked me if it was an 'absurdist comedy' after the first

twenty minutes. Sadly, the old warhorse has no kick left in it. And

the bad filmmaking shows through glaringly--everything is talk talk

talk slapped on top of clumsy cinematography. I can't believe that

those who vote this a 'ten' have actually re-looked at it in the past

decade. This is one of those films that just ends up on classic

lists. Tedious and clumsy to the point of silliness. Not "Z" but "zzzz".

The point of the film is community, black community, something too rarely seen or experienced and not usually open to white people, unless they dare go to black churches. Interwoven morality tales (yes!)and a profound belief in face-to-face community and thus democracy, Barbershop offers a subversive critique of contemporary subversive critiques. What does it mean to strive, to hope, to share, to criticize, to question, to love, to share? Few films even risk asking such direct questions. Barbershop asks...and even struggles to answer.

If you thought Myst was Mysterious, you'll find what you want, and you'll rate this movie a "10." But for everyone else, there's not much here to think about...or watch. I kept waiting for the plot to kick in. It never did. Special effects pretty overrated. Sorry guys.

The subversive postmodernism couldn't be more obvious, no almost no one notices, so corrupted are we by the malaise of pacificist impotence. The whole concept of basing a film against the very flow of D-Day--the "heroes" are not there to win anything, they're there only to drag someone out. While thousands of Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians, Free French and others are dying fighting Hitler's army and Luftwaffe, Spielberg is leading a campaign of mighty forces to pull a lone American out of the combat zone no matter what the cost. To use the world's greatest invasion from the sea as the mere backdrop to a story is, to me, perverse, and trivializes the extraordinary efforts both of the men who fought during the Normandy invasions and the earlier generation of filmmakers who sought to portray that effort on a grand, much nobler canvas.