richteral

Perekryostok? Carrefour! A very amusing tale, humanly decent story-telling, and colourfully musical to boot. Late nineties Moscow, not yet brimming and clogged with brand new limousines of the nouveaux riches. A Zhiguli will do for the slightly obsolescent and down-at-the-heel band leader whose music used to be fab 15 years prior. Now busking with his foursome in the metro subway, an American dream sends a beautiful teacher his way. Looks like love at first sight ... then not ... and then yet again. Delightful throughout, and the leading lady would beat any Hollywood star of the day. I mean, any.

So when you miscast the leading couple, the rest is a foregone conclusion. Mr. Cranston seems to suffer through the proceedings, and as he leads, the others follow. It is as if he were pushed from start to finish, without being able to develop any pull at all. There is no scintillating chemistry between him and the young would-be flame, and their scenes carry the malodorous scent of Hollywood kabuki. A movie for movie´s sake? Just about so.

Since there seems to be a requirement that the review be at least ten lines long, and since there is absolutely nothing anyone ought to write or say about this film, before I come to the single-word conclusion, which is more than is needed to assess the result of some awful waste of money, time, and even possibly talent in places, although it would be very difficult to ascertain where exactly that talent were to be found if one discounted the obvious life-time merits of M. Belmondo and how great he used to be in earlier times, despite his starring in some fairly mediocre fare as well as in evergreens that shall never perish, I am pressed to exercise some verbosity before coming with the inevitable: Unbearable. And there you have it.

There is little in this film that is watchable, unless one would entertain the idea of seeing a pseudo-nostalgic travelogue, pellmell concoction laid on as a haphazard tapestry of lifeless blasts from the past. It is not that those splendid greats are of no import nowadays; it is the author who makes them seem so.

The script should never have been approved, since it ought to have failed the crucial question of, Does it have legs? It has none, squatting flat on its belly, with no lift-off in sight. The writing is so bad it could have come from a teenager eager to emulate his living hero, the Great Woody. But that is the problem with heroes: as long as they are alive, they can fail. In this instance, badly indeed.

Anyone aspiring to be a film director should disqualify himself just by casting, or accepting the casting of, Wilson. The sudden flight of bullets is less deadly than this made-for-TV actor. However, in this instance and fluffily coiffed, he is not as deadly as the script, and obviously follows the guidance of his puppet master. He plays Woody capably enough, which makes the experience even more nauseating. If such alter ego business was revolting with Branagh in yesteryear, here we hit the bottom all right.

Yet it is not an unmitigated disaster, and there are some bright spots. Like the legs of Rachel McAdams; or, the bum of Rachel McAdams; or, the tits of Rachel McAdams, I would be delighted to say - but I cannot. As it happens, they are not much in sight. Still, McAdams shines through, and if we went for a targeted edit of shots showing her, there would suddenly be full five minutes of eminently watchable production. Instead, the author gives us another ninety, of no interest at all.

It would be too harsh to claim that He lost the plot, though; in this particular case, there simply was no plot to start with. Rest in peace, Mr Konigsberg!

This is so trite in its pandering to bad taste that surely it will have some success with the masses. I once heard it said that Nora Ephron would make a script out of a trip to the supermarket, but I suspect she would not be capable of going this low. The thing cannot be designated as kitsch, though, for kitsch has some underlying qualities. The attempted cuteness may be nauseating in places. I find a couple of incompetents mishandling a canine if not their careers just contemptuous, and certainly not worth writing about, let alone watch them in action. Mentioning Thurber here might be akin to desecration, but that is the yardstick, OK? Aniston is as anodyne as ever, and a couple of famous cameos help little (Kathleen Turner degrading herself) or just a little (Alan Arkin doing his best). Come to think of it, without the latter this junk would not even deserve 2 out of 10. Sore bum test? Yes, fails alright within minutes.

I happen to see I Vitelloni on average perhaps once every decade, and while I get older, it doesn't. Sometimes I even struggle with my memory, not being sure, and have to ask myself, Is this Fellini or perhaps ...? There were so many great directors at the time. But I never mistake the film for anything else. It has an aura that stamps it as instantly recognisable. This is what makes a great film truly great, the seal of unmistakable authorship, a definite point of view that presents a brilliant facet of the universal. There are sequences that are sheer magic, so surreal and yet so true of life. This is about life, and nothing less. That is why it never ages and never will, as long as we cling onto what makes our life what it essentially is, and what makes it worth living. Fantastic.

This is a film providing extraordinary insight into the jungle lurking behind the (still peeling & crumbling, as those houses in Cracow) façade of seemingly EU-standardised life in Poland. The scenario is totally believable, and the story may look like fiction only to outsiders. It is a very good piece of writing to start with, and the characters are well drawn. Come to think of it, it should be compulsory viewing for students of political history, especially in the countries that never experienced communism. This is a true artistic expression of reality; one only wonders how much of it is still as palpable now as it was 12 years ago. I suspect, a lot. This is not shallow entertainment but a deep, disquieting probe. One suspects the fairly low rating on this site may reflect the number of former SB officers (the Polish variety of KGB - if you know what that was; if not, try Gestapo for size) finding themselves in the movie & being sick at what they could see. Themselves, that is.

I saw "Viva Italia" not long after its release, and still remember it. It felt, then, as a revival of the wonderful short-story format used by the French and the Italians to provide concentrated value at smaller expense than a full feature, thus raising the chances of the film being made. They were wonderful showcases, too, for the immense talent resident in those countries. Ugo Tognazzi's brilliant performance as impulsive chef of a small restaurant will stick in my memory forever; the whole movie is well worth watching if it were only for this particular episode. Pity it was not a revival, but a farewell to a fantastic era of wit, skill, hearty performance, and sophisticated direction.