jromanbaker

I certainly do not agree that this is in any way a minor Merchant-Ivory film. It can only be considered that if we over value his films that are based on authors such as Henry James or E. M. Forster. With ' Jane Austen in Manhattan ' he clearly realised that there was little substance in a 12 year olds play, however famous the author was. He cleverly puts the spotlight on Manhattan in the last year of the 1970's and the experimental theatre that was taking place at the time. In doing this he shows us a very different Manhattan than today when Lofts were used for artistic purposes and not chic over priced places to live in. He shows us the streets of Manhattan, and there is very little glamour in what he shows. Cleverly he depicts two rivals played by Anne Baxter ( in one of her finest roles, and sadly her last ) and Robert Powell. They both want to put on this trivial play in very different ways and the film becomes an elegy for a lost New York when people could be playful with themselves, unaware of the cold wind of the future when a lot of the fun of living there would succumb to a terrible epidemic which would wipe out so many people; people who loved creativity for itself and not just in monetary terms. Watching it in 2024 is like seeing another world, another way of existing. Visually it is less polished perhaps than films like ' A Room With A view ' but in many subtle ways it is more profound. The acting is excellent and fresh, and the characters fully rounded with their schemes and their light hearted change of partners. Baxter has two scenes when she reflects on theatre and life, and recalling her performance in ' All About Eve ' and bearing it in mind a perceptive viewer can see and hear that very same Eve Harrington, willing to fight for what she wants. To sum up this film is a great film and its time capsule is brilliantly conveyed.

Some may question the ending of this art house Western ( set in the wrong country, and it shows ) but I do not. The repressed homosexual who was once in a possible sexual relationship with a man who has died must be killed off. It happens so often in mainstream or high profiled art house films this death of the homosexual that some brave critic of note should write about it, but they don't. But back to the film in question; it is a bleak tale of mother love worthy of Norman Bates in ' Psycho ' and the whole cast acts equally bleakly, and in my opinion pretentiously. Cumberbatch is an anguished man who takes it out on everyone, and no doubt in grief for his dead could have been lover. Dunst plays a widow who falls in love with his spruced up brother and somehow she descends into alcoholism, and she does it very well being the best actor in the dreary scenario. She has a son who is truly nasty, but no one seems to notice his methodical cruelty. He cuts up animals and hugs a rabbit before killing it. Quite a boy!! But as he loves his mother he will do anything to save her. From himself ? Cumberbatch tries to get his act together, and has male physique magazines stashed away ,and we certainly cannot tolerate that, and inevitably there is an exit door for him. The scenery which acts better than the humans is a Montana set in 1925 and we all know it is filmed in New Zealand. To sum up I felt numb with depression watching it and longed for Rory Calhoun to rush in and yell at them all for faking Western mythology. But sadly he is dead. To sum up I think most of the actors were miscast ( except Dunst ) and I did not like the tease of male nudity in such a basically heteronormative film. Naked cowboys splashing in water did not make up for the inevitable killing off and a return to so-called normality. The film has been acclaimed heavily as a masterpiece. Perhaps I have looked at it through the wrong end of the telescope.

I liked this film for its positive intentions, but I disliked the direction of the film and in my opinion Anthony J Caruso should have left it to someone else. And to be absolutely honest I found a lot to be desired in the acting in general. The Catholic ' brothers ' got on my nerves, and especially the stereotyped banter that seemed to go on forever. It did not come from an elderly generation alone, but among the young characters. One ridiculous scene was when one young man did not know of a reference to Bette Davis, and was gently taunted at for not doing so. Why should he have ? In my opinion ( as the film came out in 2017 ) the director should have known that a young generation of viewers had moved away from the ( to me ) internalised homophobia of the past. On the positive side I also felt the film meant well, and I have to say that I speeded up the duration of its relatively long running time towards the end. No spoilers but I glimpsed a gay marriage and despite my former reservations I felt the good intentions of making this rather badly made film.

I could not find one flaw in this film. How is it that the French have made so many masterly films revolving around homosexuality ? And in a way that is truly adult and involving ? ' Theo and Hugo ' ' Sauvage ' ' Presque Rien ' and believe me the list could go on. I just hope in our troubled times films of such quality will not dry up. But to return to ' Arrete Toi Avec Tes Mensonges ' ( why didn't they just call it ' Stop Your Lies ? ) I have admired Philippe Bresson's books for a long time, and it has taken me a while to dare approach this film based on his book. I feared disappointment. Autobiographical it tells the truth, and it is basically about an elderly man's return to a provincial French town that he came from. And here the present and the past faultlessly interweave. At the age of 17 he fell in love with a youth of his age group who could not truly admit to his sexual orientation. Life parts them, and society and its prejudices and internalised homophobia has a large responsibility for that, and in the 1980's there was a lot of homophobia around. No spoilers except to say the elderly man finds out what has truly happened to the youth he loved, and still does. The film itself is finely directed and I cannot single out one of the cast above another. In my opinion a faultless cast in a faultless film. I cried. I cried seeing how much people have to lie to themselves, and are they cowards to do so ? The end of the film gives an answer to this and I wholly endorsed the ending. A film everyone should see.

I have seen this film several times. And each time I wonder why this is arguably Marlon Brando's performance. I would rate his greatest to be the lesser known ' The Men ' and ' A Streetcar Named Desire. ' As for the film itself it is basically about a young man who is brave enough to question the violence and murder of a young man thrown to his death off a rooftop. No spoilers except that it is also about giving a testimony against others. Elia Kazan directed, and the film has its sanctimonious moments about goodness. That I do not buy this approach is perhaps my fault. Eva Marie Saint ( whom I normally admire ) gives a dull rendering of the murdered man's sister. Visually it is drab and no better than a hundred other ' thrillers ' for that is what it is. There are also subtexts in the script that I also find debatable. Finally I feel that it is Marlon Brando playing Marlon Brando.

I am not a thick skinned Western Film lover ( I like more softer edges ) and because of this - dare I say? - sensitivity I deplore the consistent man on man violence in this short and bitter tale of returning Confederates to Texas. It starts off gently enough with three men considering what ' defeat ' means to them, and two are brothers played well by Robert Ryan and Rock Hudson. Hudson wants to return to being a Rancher and Ryan, who basically hates himself and others, wants to be rich and literally stinking rich and pay back at life for making him bitter. Violent scene after violent scene shows how he goes about it, combating equally violent men as himself. No spoilers but the film falls into concentrating on him and his attempt to ' get there. ' Julia Adams is his love interest and she is also as money seeking as him. A fine actor she has few scenes and Rock Hudson falls into the side lines. A brutal film for those who like brutality, and my only recommendation is that it is all well directed, has fine Technicolour and there is not one bad frame in the film. But is this enough ? For some it will be.

Way back in the dark ages of ' Gay ' cinema there was a film called ' The Gay Deceivers ' about guys pretending to be gay so that they would not be drafted into the army. In 2004 the dark shadow of that film looms over this one, except in the most crass way it tries to show that Gay men and Lesbians are really just like everyone else, except that they are not. Boy kisses girl at the end and that is not a spoiler it is an indictment of this film trying to have it all and hoping an LGBT audience would respond to such patronage. Hard to say no spoilers but I will try not to give away the plot. In simple, and I do mean simple terms a young man pretends to be gay as the desired girl will only go out with him if he is!!! And eventually the heterosexual couple see that cupid sends the right arrow into the right heterosexual place. Along with this a few predatory bisexual Lesbians have fun, and one nice young man eventually does find out he is gay, but the ending says it all. Exploitation of so-called gay politics with an elderly gay man getting sentimental about Stonewall, and how he was there. As for the film itself it wallows in crudity and the acting leaves a lot to be desired. I am happy that LGBT cinema has moved forward into its deserved maturity, and hoping that it will look back in bewilderment at films like this.

One good thing is the few scenes that Ruth Roman is in ( a great underestimated actor in my opinion; ) two the use of colour which is excellent down to every detail and three the debatable way guns dominate so much of the fiction and non-fiction of the history of America. As for the story the Colt.45 gun falls out of the ' good ' hands of Randolph Scott into the over the top acting hands of Zachary Scott. Native Americans quite rightly get tired of being shot at and at least in one scene Randolph Scott is nice enough to save one. Fast paced it is directed at full force and I must confess I am fascinated by the Western genre. This may have been an A feature in 1950 but it is not in the same league of Westerns like ' Shane, ' ' Tension at Table Rock ' or the almost unknown ' Fury at Showdown. ' And all made by Anthony Mann. But this is a film worth watching despite the far too many ' easy ' deaths by gunshot and the saddening normality of it.

My only criticism of this fine film is that I would have liked it to be longer. And to my knowledge it has not been seen in the UK. If that is true I apologise for the country I live in. First the acting. Faultless, and sometimes blisteringly moving. I thought of ' Rebel Without A Cause ' and the conflicts between families and their children in that film. ' Aus der Haut ' holds the same balance of generational difference and hazardous reconciliations. Merlin Rose plays the troubled son, both ferocious and gentle as a 17 year old who realises he is gay. Expressing his desire for a school companion played beautifully by Leonard Proxouf,( the young actor who was so good in Michael Haneke's ' The White Ribbon ' ) he misjudges his timing to show his sexual need and his world becomes literally askew. He nearly loses his life in a suicidal accident and after that loses his respect for his emotional and sexual needs by going with an older man. The sexual scene between them is clearly more abusive than emotional, and is saddening to watch. Counterbalancing this aspect of the film is the relationship between his mother again excellently played by Claudia Michelsen and his father played by Johann von Bulow, and there is a scene where the father cries that somehow echoes his son's sensitivity. This emotional outcry of pain need not have been there, and was there due to perfect acting and perfect direction and scenario writing. No more spoilers but I would like to point out that this is not your usual coming out film, but an exploration of mainly four people torturing themselves and each other by misunderstandings, homophobia and their needs for a sexual and emotional life that can work in a semi-broken world around them. I had no idea that this was a television film, and I hope it was well received. For me it was a perfect film that deserved an award for its complexity, and the inner truths that are so hard to express whatever age you are.

Rarely have I seen a film so well acted, and it would be unfair to single out one of the actors. Having said that Laetitia Casta excels and I can think of none of her contemporaries who could have carried the full and long length of this saga which crosses over the last third of the 20thc into the first disillusioning first years of the 21st. The scenario depicting the social and political upheavals of France during this period of time is conveyed well, if sometimes formulaic. The events of ' 68 were too self-conscious for my liking, but then the directors of the film were not there to see it. I was, and it was confused, unglamorous and to many people in Paris itself it was just a brutal inconvenience. This part of the film, in my opinion needed a bit more roughening up and perhaps shot in black and white. The hippie period that follows was overcooked literally by too many flowers and nudity and what was called at the time polymorphous perversity ( quaint that as in the film it is totally heterosexual and brief moments of Lesbianism as long as one man or two were there. ) As for the second half the homosexual perspective comes into gruelling perspective with HIV and full blown AIDS. There is a death scene that I had to leave the room it was so graphic and no doubt necessary but for those who are traumatised by the reality of dying could be a nightmare to watch. No more spoilers, but to say that this is arguably a near masterpiece and despite certain contrivances it in the main works. A final encounter at the end of the film rang very true, and an ending becomes an uncertain beginning into the future that is already upon us. To sum up a film that should be seen and without prejudice of any kind.

For the second time in my life I have watched this supposed Noir/horror/ standard Western. I have given it 4 for the Film Noir scenes and the excellent colour. I do not see the Oregon scenery to be that outstanding, and the acting I find mediocre. Susan Hayward who is engaged to a gambler is not at her best, and most of the time I barely noticed her. Dana Andrews is Dana Andrews and clearly a crowd puller, but his acting is in my opinion plain boring. Patricia Roc is not often seen although billed highly and frankly she was better on home ground in the UK. I am not American so I probably miss out on the details that viewers seem to urge other viewers to see again. The film has a plot, but no spoilers as I got lost in it except for the fact that a nasty man has assaulted a Native American woman, and that in response to that there is a massacre of a homestead family. The horror scene is the dragging a woman screaming into the bushes where the Native Americans kill her. It is a nasty scene and sticks in the mind. Lovers change lovers and there are the usual fist fights. Technically the film is perfect, but the content borders on the dull with a number of scenes that seemed to me to be just killing time. Jacques Tourneur was an excellent director, but this is not his finest hour. I understand that others will disagree and I respect that.

Looking at this film closely I guessed the film was set in the town of Brighton on the South Coast of England. The seediness of the housing in the 1950's reminded me of ' Brighton Rock ' made a few years earlier. Different plot, but a similar hardness in the atmosphere caused by Post War austerity. A woman of shall we say doubtful ' morals ' is murdered, and the main thrust of the film is the viewpoints of the various people in her life. Jean Kent plays the part of the woman in question to the limit, but sometimes in her hard acting she borders on melodrama. Dirk Bogarde is an American who is more interested in the woman's sister played excellently by Susan Shaw, an actor who far surpasses the others in acting ability. Bogarde is hopeless as an American, and he could have tried harder or been left as English. No spoilers as to who killed the woman and her most tender scene is when she worries about her pet budgerigar, but even that has a dark edge. I give it a 3 for Susan Shaw and the depiction of a town still suffering from WW2 blues.

This is an uneven film, but worth seeing with all its faults. Filmed partly on location the mountain itself is Mont Blanc, and in a village near to Chamonix. Two brothers live there and one is an elderly looking Spencer Tracy and the other played by Robert Wagner. Based on a French novel everyone speaks English, and Wagner's surly, thick American accent jars. Only Claire Trevor looks and sounds as if she lives there, but her part is so small ( she is in love with Tracy ) that I commend her for taking the role. Most of the action takes place to reach the plane that has crashed there, apparently killing all of the passengers. No spoilers but the film really comes alive during the last half hour of the film, and a lot of the time is spent bickering between the two brothers who go on a search party of their own to reach the crash. The message and I think there is one is that even if one brother behaves abominably badly the other brother will not betray him. This message must have been apparent during the troubled Hollywood years of the 1950's. Beautifully filmed and well directed, the mountain is the star along with the performance of Spencer Tracy.

I watched this film and began to wonder why it was not working for me. I found it depressing and the more the film entered into the domain of hanging and murder, and the dark side of Fernando Lamas's relationship with a Native American woman and its terrible consequences I sort of turned off. I liked the film years ago and I am still enchanted by Ann Blyth's performance. Howard Keel less so and comparing his performance in ' Calamity Jane, ' which is a masterpiece of film making, I found him too overbearing and heavy. Fernando Lamas I liked, but even he had lost something of his blatant charm. I finally decided it was Mervyn LeRoy ( fine for his gangster films like ' Little Caesar ' ) but not for musicals. As the first Cinemascope film musical and despite its success I found it lacking in that light touch that the genre needs. One example and no spoilers the Busby Berkeley seemed loaded with threat towards the woman involved, and for me it left a nasty taste in the mouth of female exploitation and a sort of prelude to the violence to come. I am fully aware it must have been thrilling to watch in 1954 as many in the audience would have been old enough to see it in two previous versions. That said it is worth seeing, but in my opinion the dark taste remains.

Despite the fact that the tracking shots are superbly done and that the camera work excellent, if dizzying to watch this film seemed to me a patchwork quilt of other films. The opening long scene is set in a casino/brothel and the women on sale are lined up as if for a fashion show. It reminded me a lot of ' La Dolce Vita ' and the extravagant and stereotyped behaviour of the characters, dancing hysterically around bamboo canes and a stone figure was in my opinion way over the top. The whole film is and just about halfway through a demonstration starts on a tall climb of University steps and the descent of the rebel students, fired on by water hoses reminded me of ' Battleship Potemkin. ' Again from my point of view I found the set pieces ( there are mainly four ) to be high melodrama and in the right mood very enjoyable. Apart from the slums which reminded me of Bunuel's ' Las Hurdes ' where the people looked obviously in a bad way the rest of the cast were either well heeled ' Americans,' fat and ugly soldiers and stunningly handsome revolutionaries. These and the women in the brothel gave off a cold eroticism which quite definitely made me think reality is certainly not reality.

It has taken me years to watch again ' Andrey Rublyov ' and in the running time of 186 mins that Tarkovsky preferred. I came to the conclusion that the religious art work was superbly filmed in colour against the grim black and white of his depiction of 15c Russia. Rublyov watches and sees the life around him and in various episodes of his existence are depicted. He never really challenges the evil that surrounds him, but in my opinion puts ' art ' above the cruelty that surrounds him. He watches as one fellow monk betrays a buffoon to the police, realising that he will be tortured. He acts once and kills a man who is about to assault a woman, and vows to be silent because he has taken a life. He is told by a priest that only God forgives and that he must never forgive himself for what he has done. Years later he witnesses the casting of a bell by a youth and speaks to the youth asking him to join him while he paints churches and the youth called Boris casts bells. I wondered a lot about this crucial scene as the youth had tortured a man and had heard his screams while he was being flogged, probably to death. No way was Boris innocent, but complicit in the evil around him. Would Rublyov remain complicit as well putting ' art ' over the cruelty of his country ? A disturbing masterpiece made during a disturbing time, and in my opinion it disturbs today. Inaction is an evil in itself, and ' art ' however fine and ' good ' can never be above the world that surrounds it.

Both Mescal and Corio are excellent, but I found the direction pretentious and irritating. I feel the director was over indulgent about the flashing scenes of partial memory, and there were in my opinion far too many flashbacks taken from holiday videos. The memories are from twenty years ago when Corio as the daughter remembers a holiday with her father in some seaside resort. Turkey to be exact. Bland though the holiday looked I saw ( I think ) a Mosque and I definitely saw Turkish Carpets especially one at 850 pounds. And Mescal bought it. Why I do not know. I do know he is depressed and hiding it except for a crying bout in his room. No more spoilers only to say that this would have worked better in a novel than a film, and that arguably the memory factor in the film was confused. The quiet parts that are memory are too clear and frankly I do not believe people recall with such clarity. As for the fluid memories they are as fluid and slightly unfocused as memory is. I just did not believe what I was seeing as I jumped from one method of recall to another. I read Proust backwards from the last book to the first. I shall return to him immediately.

James Craig gives over a ranch for boys ( although some look well over eighteen, and most are near to sixteen or over, so I think in today's terms this title is misleading, ) who are close to the wire of becoming criminals, or simply unwanted in ' society. ' The UK was clearly wary of the film as they gave it an ' A ' certificate aiming the film at adults and children under sixteen only seeing it with an adult. The craziness of this needs I think to be pointed out. Butch Jenkins is one of them, but he is not quite given enough to warrant the lead part on posters. It should have been given to Skip Homeier and Darryl Hickman as their close relationship is at the heart of the film. There is a strong platonic love between them, and Hickman spends a lot of his screen time on getting his friend Homeier out of trouble, and the chemistry between them is electric. James Craig has a wife in the film, but she has few scenes and this is almost entirely a male film. Without giving away spoilers Hickman gets very near to death due to his friend Skippy ( Homeier ) and it is Skippy who wakes up to the fact that he has to rescue his friend. How this happens is deeply moving and shows a great deal of love, and perhaps viewers could be uncomfortable at naming it as love. Directed by the talented Roy Rowland all the emotional stops are pulled out to make this a very fine film on male love and deep friendship. Beautifully filmed it deserves a ten.

Set in an ' Africa ' of so-called ' evil ' I find this film highly dubious, and in my opinion offensive. As a background for a lot of very bad acting and an ' H ' certificate for Adults Only in the UK it no doubt drew in a certain public expecting to be shocked. As usual women are the usual victims of ' undead ' desire and one woman, at least, succumbs to the vampire's jaded desires ( he has lived for many centuries and is bored with life ) and this no doubt pleased the men in the audience. The film is tedious to watch and the ending inevitable, but its 58 duration seemed much longer. The sets tawdry and the monotony of ' African ' drums and voodoo and other nonsense is not in my opinion to be recommended. In my opinion most of these supposedly horrific films of the 1940's must have inspired Hammer films to take up the equally sexist content, but at least with a sense of straight camp.

Boys on Film are good value as you get a lot of short films that otherwise would be lost, shown probably at Gay Film Festivals wherever they crop up. That I think this short ' Blinders ' is pointless is neither here nor there. It is on Boys on Film X which carries an 18 certificate. The why of that has many reasons, but certainly this film goes nowhere near an adult rating. Young man has a woman lover, and there is a quick flash of him nude on the bed with her. They see a beautiful young man while out dancing, and hey presto beautiful young man is sort of near nude on a rooftop sun spot in I presume an afterglow of something. Mumbled words with no subs despite they are American did not help. Tedious trip back to girlfriend. No spoilers as to what happens with her when he gets back. That is all folks and the ten minutes of running time gone. Why was this sort of bisexual getting nowhere film made ? Why was it selected to be in a compilation of films that are short, and to be frank where was the meat on the bone of any real substance ? It is kind of cute, but then I can see a lot of cute flicking through a magazine supplement. I want my ten minutes back.

I feel sorry for Henry King as he is in so many ways a good director, and yet not given enough praise for it. He knew how to get performances out of the actors he worked with, and to mention only two; Jeanne Crain never better than in ' Margie ' and David Wayne superbly moving in ' Wait till the Sun Shines Nellie. ' In ' Tender is the Night ' he gets a hardened, bitter performance out of Joan Fontaine, the soft edges gone from many previous films, and her role in ' Rebecca ' comes instantly to mind. As for the film itself it is a fairly faithful adaptation from the Scott Fitzgerald masterpiece of a novel. I think he bit off more than he could chew with the subject matter of the weak overwhelming the strong, and Jennifer Jones does not quite match up to the neurosis of the character, and as for Jason Robards I found him miscast. A bit like Fitzgerald's ' The Great Gatsby ' it is perhaps impossible to get ' right ' castings as we all have a Gatsby of our own in mind, and the same applies to Dick Diver in ' Tender is the Night. ' Only one scene comes vividly alive and that is when Jennifer Jones has a breakdown that she cannot understand, and Robards as her husband cannot help much either. The failure of his help, and her feeding off his so-called strength eventually takes its toll, and no spoilers the ending just fizzled out. In my opinion the film could have been better in black and white so the hard edges showed more, and more attention should have been payed in conveying the 1920's. Widescreen again in my opinion not needed, and just dancing the ' Charleston ' is not enough. Tom Ewell as a hanger on also not at his best. And yet despite these criticisms the film is well worth seeing. King does manage to convey overwhelming failure and sorrow and as a director he was good at that. A brave film at the end of his career.

I have seen this film once, and I will see it many more times. It is a work of art in itself; not a scene is wasted and although some may find repetition after repetition of physical training to perfect a male human body boring there are nuances in them that add layers to the process. The injections, the pill taking and the gruelling daily process to attain this is as moving as it is horrific. The film is drained of excessive colour, and the human contacts the youth endures to please his mother are cold, ruthless and even among his peers at school perverse. The youth played superbly by Mauricio Di Yorio tries to form attachments, fails in his attempt to get an erection with a female student and only achieves sexual satisfaction by watching pornography. His mother treats him like a distant lover moulding his flesh to her own use, but no spoilers as to why. Without giving away the ending I want to add that is played to choral music by Franz Schubert and is heart breaking to watch and to hear. A masterpiece that I can see has not been seen as such, and I hope that one day it will be acknowledged as such.

Forget about John Wayne for a moment and in my opinion viewers should applaud the magnificent performance of Rita Hayworth and despite health problems holding the audience in the palm of her hand. She returns a disgraced woman to John Wayne's circus to reconcile herself with her daughter, played excellently by Claudia Cardinale. No more spoilers except to say that the scenes Hayworth have with Wayne, just after her return are gut wrenchingly moving. She shows her age proudly and seemingly without makeup, or the minimum, her beauty coming from within and without. Every second of her on the screen are moments of joyful appreciation that she took on the role. The scenes with her and Cardinale are also some of the best in cinema. This is a film worth buying even if like me circus films, and animals in cages are not appreciated in any sense. Of course there is a lot of excitement with a ship sinking, tent on fire etc and inevitably Wayne playing cowboy and killing off the indigenous population with fake gunfire in the circus ring. A very low point this but thankfully it is not in a real Western. His acting is also at a low point, but he too had health problems. To sum up it is for the two great women actors and it is their stories that count, and again in my view not the formula acts of the circus.

I did not see ' Goodfellas ' back in the 1990's and a day after seeing the great ' The Departed ' I was to be honest bored by it. I felt I had seen it all before in other films, and its being based on a true story and having actors to play real people did not give me a bonus interest. Why ? For me I think it depends on the acting, and the pace of the film. ' Goodfellas ' has a similar opening as ' The Departed ' with a kid on the block being introduced to mob crime, and pursuing that way of life. Similar too that at the opening we witness a brutal killing, this time of a brutalised man in the boot of a car. Maybe I should have watched ' Goodfellas ' first, but I feel that I would have considered ' The Departed ' the better film. For a start I feel a film is as good as its actors and their energy, and other than the late Ray Liotta I was not charged up by the other performances. The off the cuff dialogue seemed tedious, and the four letter words seemed frankly lazy. I read that Scorsese let the cast use ' natural ' dialogue and edited the best, and I found most of it just covering empty time. But Liotta shines as the kid grown up, and it is from his perspective and that of his wife who are in the forefront and narrate the film. Robert de Niro was a disappointment, but at least he bothered to have ageing makeup. The film covers from the 1950's to a couple of decades later. Maybe trivial, but laziness in filming important detail can lead to disbelief, and Liotta remained as young as when he started. I could also have done with less songs of the times on the soundtrack. And unlike ' The Departed ' I did not find outstanding set pieces. I am willing to believe it is one of the greatest films but not for me. I longed for DiCaprio and Damon to explode on the screen and to be completely honest I was bored by most of the acting. One last dislikeable detail was the killing of a black man for no apparent reason that I could account for. A very ugly short scene committed while the killers made a cup of coffee. It left a sour taste in the mouth and maybe then I switched off interest in the characters.

It has taken me years to see this masterpiece of cinema again. I saw it in the Netherlands in the afterglow of both DiCaprio and Matt Damon being idolised by gay men. Even the poster showed them in a sort of twilight state with Jack Nicholson lurking in the shadows behind them. Seeing it again and unravelling who is the ' mole ' in the Boston police force still remains fascinating to watch, as if deliberately forgetting the end of ' Hamlet. ' I am half in love with Scorsese's work because of its blatant violence, its homosocial world and in ' The Departed ' I actually laughed out loud at the Grand Guignol camp of it all. Straight camp is very elusive in film, but when DiCaprio has a show off scene goading Jack Nicholson into a dizzying excess of words, and best of all DiCaprio's one longish scene with Damon I felt that this was the real thing. Changing sexes I imagined Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford ready to verbally and literally get out their guns. And also for some inexplicable reason the sextet from Donizetti's ' Lucia di Lammermoor ' recurring several times, and even on Nicholson's phone. No spoilers but he is really a villain soaked in other's blood and it is delirious seeing him watch the Opera with two bored women beside him. This should not work but it does, and initially I was offended by the homophobic language coming out of Damon's mouth, and quite a barrage of it before the opening credit simply saying ' The Departed. ' I firmly believe this film will last until the end of cinema as we know it, and even then it could resurrect itself. It is quite simply a great exercise in bad language, astonishing set pieces, Catholicism and all sorts of ways that people can be killed. It gets you in the gut, and for as long as humanity is what it is there will always be an audience for it.