tomm-25

A terrific film from Italy; thoroly true to Italian (mostly Roman Catholic) family values. (I was born and raised in one such Italian family, but here in the land of "Merda de cane," (Americano(s), as some Italians call us.)

The music is quite interesting, too. The unmistakable music and voice of Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard forms a great part of the atmosphere of the funeral scene. She even appears (singing) on camera for a bit. Why she is not acknowledged, I cannot imagine. No entry in the credits roll. And none in the IMDb profiles - personal or film, either.

Might the have been some unpleasantry among producers, director, cast, crew, etc? She's credited appropriately in Hans Zimmer's part in the music of Gladiator, The Insider, Man On Fire, and Heat, for instance.

Any ideas, folx?

This is NOT the usual "the historical Shakespeare did not write the plays and poetry" claptrap. It is an imaginative, playful, experimental re-imagining of history such as Shakespeare himself might have done. The concept and writing alone are equal to Tom Stoppard's excellent "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." Given the terrific cast and performances, the sets and costumes, the feel of this film makes it likely that all but the most hard-nosed film AND Shakespeare buffs will gleefully allow the suspension of their disbelief. I know I did, and I'm as hard-nosed as they come.

See it more than once if the temporal displacements (genuinely well-used) confuse you. The writer (Orloff) has hit all the marks deliciously (Elizabeth as a slut!), and the production values are all top-notch.

10/10

This film was made by artless people - artless writer(s), artless actors, artless cinematographer(s), artless sound, costumes, editor(s), and everything else and all other film folx who should know better.

The only attraction was Sheila McCarthy's hair. I watched it to the end, ever hopeful that this piece if incompetent film-making would have some redeeming feature(s). NONE found. It's simply an amateurish PoS.

I do not understand the positive reviews that others have given, nor the overall high score.

Perhaps the offbeat, somewhat mystical/fanciful nature displayed from the outset held up for those who liked this film. It certainly did not for me.

Factual errors abound in this sea tale about which the English should know better.

A southbound ship "canting to the right" in a westerly? That is the windward side (the ship would "cant" to the lee). This exemplifies the lack of detail attended-to by the producers and director. Narrowly escaping a lee shore in the nick of time? Not with the visuals with which we were provided. The "false keel" coming away from the ship?

Navigation so poor that the ship is so far south that it entirely evades the notoriously dangerous South American cape? A singer asking for and receiving a musical cue of a fifth instead of a tonic?

There is plenty more in this "romantic" bildungsroman to yank the nautically and musically astute out of their suspension of disbelief.

Moreover, the entire second episode or "nite" (out of three) is a goofy soap opera. The last five minutes make me wish that they had all found their end on the lee shore ice. Yecchhh! I wonder how closely it followed the Golding novel upon which it is supposedly based? C.S. Forrester and Patrick O'Brian are U.K. writers who DID get the nauticals right to the nth detail.

However, it wasn't a total loss. Victoria Hamilton's tears are just as effective here as they were in Ian Holm's King Lear in which she was a formidable and heart-rending Cordelia. Hers is one of the strongest characterisations in this film. Jared Harris was a splendid Captain Anderson, and Benedict Cumberbatch acquitted himself well in the role of the "main character."

Half-heartedly recommended.

There will be many ways to interpret this tale. I'll not synopsize this nearly mute (plenty of sounds - just minimal sub-titled language - and song lyrics, at that!) film gem for you. Plenty of that has already been done by others and in other places.

It is a splendidly crafted film - outstanding storyboarding, cinematography, and "casting." Just see it! Make up your own "gist," if you must. But, whether or not you come up with an underlying theme or specific story, you must "enjoy the ride." See some of the other reviews for the ideas of others as to how to make it more than "beautiful cinematography, sound, and editing" for their own sakes.

(Personally, I think it has subtle hints that make of it a sociological gender study that is not necessarily limited to rural Hungarians, and a murder mystery and subsequent quandary.)

This film is for your "right" brain. If you have the patience to be attentive throughout this extraordinarily long film (the nearly 4-hr version), you will absorb a glimpse into the "creative process." Not to be "hoity-toity" about this matter, but this is truly a masterpiece of a glimpse into the creative process of a great artist, his relationship with his subject, and the final disposition of the result of their collaboration.

And he could have no better subject for his study of the human form than the ethereal physical perfection of Emmanuelle Béart - not to take anything away from her expertise as an actor.

This is a contest - one to which both Piccoli and Béart are more than equal.

Find the time. Sit back and relax. Get a drink or two, if you must. but PAY ATTENTION! Opportunities like this don't come along very often.

Ostensibly a sequel to the 1997 semi-serious black comedy "Henry Fool" (a "10" in my book), the first twenty minutes had me thinking it was just a horrible screen writing, bad-acting and terrible cinematography job. For one thing, the frame in every scene - and I mean EVERY scene - is "Dutch- (Deutsch)-tilted". There isn't a level shot in the entire movie.

When I involuntarily started to guffaw, I realized that this was the intent. I restarted the DVD, and viewed it with entirely different eyes, ears and attitude. This film is a laugh-a-minute farce. Jeff Goldblum (not a player in the original Henry Fool cast) is a fabulous deadpan farceur contributing mightily to the general insouciance.

Parker Posey displays a delightful and heretofore unknown penchant for comedy - comic timing, facial expression, and body-language - closely akin to Sandra Bullock's.

Highly recommended!

Visually stunning aerial photography of the Earth in a two-hour film with an ecological education agenda. Visually, this film is on a par with Baraka, Blue Planet, and Planet Earth, and seems to have been filmed largely with the same type of aerial video apparatus (Cineflex V14 HD Gyro-stabilized Aerial Camera System). Interestingly (and sadly), the film appears to have been adulterated by increasing the color saturation in many scenes.

Watch out for factual errors in the narration ("600 years of human habitation in cities and towns" should be "6000" years) and mispronunciations in the narration ("climactic" vs. the correct "climatic," occurs TWICE!) Also, the Grand Canyon is in Arizona -- NOT in Colorado, as stated, 'tho it is the Colorado River that created and flows thru it.

The narration seems to have been done over-hastily. Glenn Close obviously was not well-coached nor was her narration work reviewed or edited properly. Perhaps - like March of the Penguins - this film would be better viewed and appreciated sans sound.

Jarman's filmic imagery is beautiful, VERY Caravaggiesque. And - like good jazz, where a soloist improvisor may play snippets of other, well-known tunes in his/her improvisation - contains scene quotations from great works of art by others NOT Caravaggio. No one has yet mentioned the obvious take on Jacques Louis David's "Death of Marat," nor Jan Vermeer's "Girl with a pearl earring," which are the most obvious to me. There may be others. I'll have to watch it again more closely to see.

This is a strange and wonderful film with many anachronistic jolts and some marvelous acting. When Tilda Swinton looks directly into the camera (making me swoon), she presages her doing so many times three years later in "Orlando."

If this film is to your taste, then see Julie Taymor's "Titus" - her take on The Bard's Titus Andronicus.

While I hesitate to be a party-pooper, I must call a spade a spade and say that (IMHO) this film would probably NOT have gained general release had it not been for the tragic circumstances of the writer/director's demise.

The acting is fine, 'tho a bit amateurish, the editing is crisp, and the cinematography is acceptable. The major faults lie in the story and direction. There's hardly any substance here. It's doesn't work as comedy - not even light-grey (certainly not "dark") comedy... characters are poorly developed (except for what other chrs have to say about them -- sure, Earl is a jerk, but not all that bad a jerk, and - for that matter, so is the sexually exploitative and wholly unethical Dr. P, and Becky and Dawn tell us that Joe is insufferable and Cal a mean-spirited slave-driver). The only chr I could see with any clarity was Ogie (sp?), and that's because there wasn't much there to begin with. No one's motives were any more than hearsay by other chrs.

Was this a morality tale? A comedy? A spoof? (Of what?) A love story? (certainly not! How could one see the frantic necking and sex between Dr. P and Jenna as being in any way serious?) It could be called a "chick flick," but only if the definition of chick-flick insists that every male chr be a self-interested, sex-seeking arschloch. Were the chrs stereotypes? Clichés? WHAT WAS THE POINT?

To be sure, this was an earnest effort at film-making/storytelling, but it falls far short of just about everything except "cute."

The two major attractions of this marvelous film are:

1.) the editing... the folding of time into an elaborate "Memento"-like structure is deliciously mystifying, and yet - it all hangs together quite well from the outset, and

2.) the characterizations... and I DO mean "caracters." This is a feast of actors making the most and best of some VERY juicy roles.

The direction and camera-work are all top-notch, too. No passive entertainment, this... it takes a bit of patience and a positive expectation that is well-rewarded to get through the first twenty minutes. I was interested to see that John Malkovich was one of the producers. This film is so HIM!

No hoary special effects here. This is a fine science-fiction story told by a master. The science is plausible; at least believable in terms of how the characters come to their "discovery;" and the script, acting, and editing (even the scoring) are masterfully spare. I had the feeling all through this film that I was a voyeur, trying to piece together the events and facts of the narrative with sparse and disparate clues overheard as if I was an invisible eavesdropper. No character in the film does an "exposition" (story-line for dummies), and I was very pleasantly off-balance for the entire film, keeping me fully engaged in attempting to piece together in my mind what I was seeing and hearing.

No fan of passive entertainment, I have rated the film as being among the very best hundred-or-so that I have ever seen. http://www.1000plus.com/bestflix.htm

Be prepared to be pleasantly puzzled...

And, done on a shoestring budget, too! Elegant! MASTERFUL! Like a Steve Reich opus.

The panoply of human belief systems is infinitely greater than this film - or any film can present, but the sample provided herein is executed with great sensitivity and peerless cinematographic art. The comedy evident in some of the scenes develops from the activities themselves - and isn't forced by the producers. The 92 minutes seems to fly, and you may find yourself - as I did - slack-jawed by the time the credits roll.

We saw this film in a college art center seminar room with one of the producers (Manley) in attendance, and he stated that "...while this is a documentary, not everything in it is 'true.'" You don't really want to know anything about this film before seeing it. Just let it wash over you and let it speak for itself, as it does so eloquently.

Highy recommended...