Reviews

... so I was not at all surprised when I didn't. Nothing justifies the making of this movie: it is not romantic, it is not funny, it is not charming. The characters are not interesting, the dialogues are not interesting, the plot is not interesting, Julia Roberts is too old to keep on making characters of this kind, Richard Gere is his usual inexpressive self. Hector Elizondo is completely wasted. The scene where she is rebuffed by the saleswoman at the bridal dress store is identical to another scene in Pretty Woman.

Many people have noticed how this movie is mostly a big shiny ad for USA Today (well, you have to, unless you are brain dead), but I think nobody remarked on the Fed Ex ad, when she flees the church in a truck with a big FED EX lettering and when Rita Wilson asks "where is she going?", Elizondo answers, "I don't know, but she'll surely be delivered by tomorrow at 10:30 am." How blatant can you get, I wonder.

The best thing you can say about this is that at least it is not an ode to prostitution like Pretty Woman. You know, like in spend a few years on your back and then you'll meet a millionaire who will keep you in style for the rest of your life. Whatever.

... because so many other movies have the same problem. Problems, rather. It goes like this:

a) The movie starts out OK, but... I mean, how many movies have we seen these years, that in the beginning look great but then they fail to deliver? It is as if people in the movie business think that a good idea is enough, and they forget there are such things as suitable developments and suitable endings. So the idea about a girl who enters a religious sect and leaves her intensely bourgeois and ignorant family desperate to pull her out is good, but from the moment Harvey Keitel appears as a sect expert who will rescue the girl from the evil clutches of the religious phonies, things start going downhill with increasing velocity. The rest of the movie is spent in a very odd series of exchanges between Keitel and Winslet; again I'm sure that the idea of the master-slave relationship looked great on paper, and it would have been very interesting to look at if only it had been convincingly presented. If only...

b)The movie is gorgeous to look at, but... It seems also, that the movie people of these days think that if the visuals are beautiful the audience will be so awed that they will never question the weaknesses of the plot. And the visuals of this movie are very beautiful indeed: most of the movie is set in the Australian outback and in India, and this allows for such an ensemble of oranges, maroons, golds, scarlets and bronzes the like of which you'd never seen. But, so what. Eventually the only way to enjoy the movie was to pretend you were looking at a very lovely painting, and disregard the action.

If anything saves this movie is Kate Winslet, who is not only very beautiful and sensual, but also extremely talented. One wishes she did not appear so often in bad movies, though. Keitel is almost embarrassing to see, especially during the last part of the movie, which he spends mostly wearing a dress (don't ask).

The awe the subject of this movie inspired on audiences must be the proof that nobody reads serious science-fiction anymore. If they did, they would already be very familiar with the subject of virtual reality, including virtual reality used to mask an unbearable truth. Also, they would have seen it presented in a definitely more profound manner. If you think about it the holes of the concept become evident, and the fact that our heroes are able to manipulate the Matrix to a point does take a lot of bite from it. However, I can't say I didn't enjoy this movie. Even if it isn't as highly metaphysical as some people seem to believe, it is still a good action movie, and, considering what passes for sci-fi in movies these days, it is rather nice to see a movie that, even if it is not serious science-fiction, at least more or less tries to resemble it.

Some movies are bad because in their making there is no talent involved, and there are others that are bad because they are dishonest and manipulative; movies of the first kind are often fun to watch, but those within the second are too annoying and insulting to be actually enjoyed. This one falls definitely in the second category. It begins interestingly enough, with a situation most of us know: a man, his children, his young new wife, his embittered ex-wife. But director Chris Columbus's only interest is to pump the saccharine in until the audience gags. So, the conflict is not solved in any ordinary fashion, but by the middle of the movie they get Jackie, the ex-wife, with cancer. Just asking, do you think the authors of this would have had a brain hemorrhage if they tried to find a solution that did not involve cancer? The way these Hollywood people hurl cancer about makes you think that they never had to see a loved person die of this horrible disease, otherwise they would show some respect. The makers of this movie also have a curious concept about cancer. They apparently believe that it is like hemorrhoids: if you don't tell people you have it, they will never notice. I don't just mean that cancer only makes Jackie look a trifle paler. I don't guess people would enjoy to see someone who really looks as if they had cancer in a Hollywood movie, but also, Jackie hides her disease from everyone in the family, apparently with success. We are even told that she had had a tumor operated a year ago, and nobody noticed! I mean, this is not the kind of operation you can walk home immediately afterwards. She had had to stay in the hospital for at least a couple of days, and, even after she was home, certainly she must have had to recover for several days. How did she explain that? That she was getting herself a complete liposuction job done? This kept me worried during the rest of the movie.

They have also some curious concepts about women, too. They apparently believe that a professional woman who is good at her job just has to be hopelessly incompetent in most other areas. Also, we are to believe that Jackie is the perfect mom, just because she owns a Singer machine and because she can always remember her children's schedule, but she is also teaching her children to be rude and bitter, and she also keeps on pulling stunts like the one with the Pearl Jam tickets... now is that supposed to be adult behavior? Also, which is Jackie's source of income? Because she does not work, despises women who do and nevertheless she has a huge house with park and horses. Is she an heiress? Did she win the Lotto? Her husband pays her such an enormous alimony? Is she a closet drug-baroness? Another mystery to keep me worried for the rest of the movie.

Another mystery is, of course, what were Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris thinking? From Julia Roberts I don't expect much, and in fact in this movie she comes across as a fantastically bad actress. On second thoughts, however, maybe this happens because she is saddled with some of the worst lines in movie history. My favorite has to be, when Jackie eventually confesses to Isabel that she has cancer, Isabel asks on the spot, very tactfully: "Are you going to die?" Anyway, this is not the kind of movie that I find moving. It is like watching a very clumsy magician who lets you see all his tricks. This movie manipulative mechanisms are far too obvious, like the scene in which the children open their Christmas gifts from Jackie, which has the children coming not together, but one after the other, in order to stretch out the scene for maximum tearjerking effect. Please...

Mr. De Palma throws all the movie technique book at you in this movie: the opening scene is shot in virtually one take (as his admired Hitchcock did in "Rope," only in Rope's case it was the whole movie), subjective camera, the same story told from different points of view, etc. But all these cinematic fireworks and the manic pace can barely hide the thinness of the story, a very much business-as-usual thriller, put together with even less competence than usual. It is a pity: the visual part is really beautiful and Cage and Sinise are as good as the script allows them to be, but after the movie ends you feel you've been conned.

I say hear-hear to the questions posed by a previous reviewer, and I add one of my own: how did the police arrive so timely at the right place? Who called them? If you know, feel free to send me a message. Probably this is something I missed, but I don't feel like seeing the whole movie again to see what it was.

I suppose that the point of this movie is that love, and people in love, are not necessarily very "proper" and jasmine-smelling. Fine, I agree, but by the time the movie ended I was not sure it was love this movie was about. Quinn and Mrs. Quinn amply deserve each other that there was hardly any point in making a long movie to demonstrate that. The pity is, that the movie was well done, well directed, with some nice touches; the actors were also good, but the script, or rather, the characters are a mess. In any case you might even tolerate the failures of script and characters but it is impossible to get past the inanity of the protagonist Mrs. Quinn: she just doesn't make sense. In the second part of the movie Mrs. Quinn is as messed-up as in the first part, only ten years, a new marriage, three children and a change in her social standing are supposed to have happened in between; nevertheless, only her clothes and her makeup have changed. How can that be? I am not the same as ten years ago, and not so many things have happened to me. Also, she's supposed to be the pivot of the whole conflict, but she's not solid enough to justify that.

When I was in high school I had a classmate whose boyfriend made amateur horror movies. I never got to see them, but those who did said they were awful. When I first heard of The Blair Witch Project and the way it had been made, I expected something like that; so, since I did not expect much, the fact that I liked it probably doesn't mean much anyway. I didn't think it was brilliant, but I did like it. I found it well done: the pseudo-documentary feel does not slip up in any glaring way, and I can see why some of the people who saw it first could not believe it was fake. The off-kilter camera and the unpolished look only adds to its plausibility. Also, the dialogue probably will not enter any intelligence contest, but you have to agree that if people in that situation started reciting sage lines, that would not be very believable. Anyway it is no worse than some lines I've heard in movies supposed to be "high art." And, although I cannot say I felt very scared (except by the ending, maybe), the movie does have an eerie atmosphere that is very unsettling.

The format of the movie itself does have a problem: it does seem odd that they should keep on shooting images, even after things are beginning to unravel. Heather's explanation about this being the only thing left to them sounds silly, simply because we know the real explanation, that is, that if they did not keep the camera going, there would not be any movie anyway. The explanation about how the map gets lost is completely ridiculous: if they had said that the Blair Witch had grabbed it in person it would have been more believable. But taking it as a whole my opinion is positive. I think that the best thing to do about this movie is forget the hype, remember that this is NOT a Hollywood megabudget production and that there are NO special effects, and try to judge the movie on its merits. It is neither a complete disaster nor the best thing invented after pizza. It is just a clever little movie.

I rented this movie with high hopes: I like Steve Martin and also Eddie Murphy, when he's funny (which doesn't happen always). Also, when I read the reviews, I expected plenty of laughs and biting satire. However, the laughs were scarce and the satire turned out to be rather toothless (in spite of such easy targets as Hollywood and New-Age cults). In spite of some good gags, like the dog with the high-heel pumps for the fake footsteps, and the Mexican illegal aliens who in the beginning know nothing about cinema and end up reading Cahiers du Cinéma, it isn't really funny, or at least not as funny as I expected. And as I said, the story is good, but by the middle of it I realized that I had already seen this idea (people without money or talent driven by their obvious love of the movies) in a better movie, that is, Tim Burton's "Ed Wood." The performances are not to blame: in general they are very good (although the great Terence Stamp as the Pseudo-Scientologist guru is completely wasted). That does not save the movie, though. I cannot honestly say it is terrible, but it falls very short of what might have been.

I suppose any comment from me will be suspect, because I usually like Tim Burton's movies (even Mars Attacks!, 'nuff said!). I went to see this movie because it was by Burton: I like Washington Irving's stories in general, but I always considered Sleepy Hollow as a rather stupid story. Just in case you loved the movie and wish to check out the book, I say, well, don't. If I remember correctly in the story Ichabod Crane is a highly irritating schoolmaster, Katrina is a stolid but good-looking future Hausfrau, and Brom is just like in the movie, only it's he who gets the girl in the end. The screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker (he of Se7en), very intelligently turns the story into a fairy-talish comic-horror whodunit, Ichabod into an all-questioning detective whose superiors can't wait to get rid of, and Katrina into a smart witch apprentice. Johnny Depp plays his Ichabod with comic zest, Christina Ricci proves once again to be a quite talented young lady, and the rest of the cast is also excellent, including a stunning Christopher Walken as the Hessian Horseman (in an uncredited appearance, I believe), and Christopher Lee and Martin Landau also shine in small parts. The Gothic-Old Flemish atmosphere is superb. This is quite the movie for you if you like your movies to be unusual and unpredictable.

I find it disturbing that so many people seem to think that this is a great movie, as this is the most shamelessly immoral movie I have ever seen. This movie celebrates murder and perjury as being great, the right thing to do, the example we must cheer. It is: so they were criminals, then it is okay if we are even worse criminals. And to the intrinsic immorality of the story, there is the added immorality of attempting to pass off this story as true.

I feel sorry for those who swallowed this absurd plot hook and sinker, but what about those who admit that the story is a fake, but then, so what? What, do you just love to be lied at? To be fooled by those who invent facts because truth is not sexy enough? It is obvious what they did here: as fiction this is a pretty pedestrian thriller, but disguised as reality it becomes much more compelling. Now, even if I bought the story, the vengeance plot would still be unacceptable. In fact, I would say: these people, the alleged abuse victims, are obviously thugs, liars and murderers. Why on earth should I believe their abuse tales are true?

But then, of course, nothing of this can be true. It is true that more preposterous things have actually happened in real life, but in this case some corroboration of the story should exist. To begin with, because of the way case law functions there are records of every trial that ever took place at a court of law. Even if the names were all changed there should still be records of the trial, and there aren't.

I suppose that the movie is all wrong because the book is not right, but nobody forced them to make a movie out of such preposterous book. Everything about this movie ranges from indifferent to downright bad, with the exception of the kids, who are quite good and deserved otherwise. The adult cast, on the other hand, is a disaster zone. What were De Niro and Hoffman thinking?! De Niro looks plainly embarrassed and Hoffman looks drunk... OK, so he played a drunk, but he looks as if he wasn't acting, see? Brad Pitt is as bad actor as usual, but Jason Patric manages to be even worse, and that is no mean feat.

This is one of these movies that are apparently flawless but nevertheless come across as oddly indifferent. The performances are good (Julianne Moore is in fact more than good, she's exquisite), Neil Jordan's direction is competent as usual, the period atmosphere is okay, but the movie falls short somehow. I didn't find it boring, but I found it difficult to take seriously what was going on. I have not read the book, so I cannot criticize the screen adaptation, but I find it hard to believe that Graham Greene would have told his story so shallowly, especially where Sarah's spiritual development is concerned. A previous comment has compared Sarah's story to La Traviata: I think this is quite accurate, but I should add that this is La Traviata without the benefit of the lovely music, since the music is actually one of the things that is definitely off-kilter in this movie. I usually love Michael Nyman's music, but this time I found it strident and jarring. The sex scenes look as if they've been tossed in to update a story that otherwise sounds hopelessly dated, and in fact they get on the way: since we hardly see Sarah and Maurice out of bed, it looks as if their relationship was only about sex, and I don't think this was intended.

This movie must have something I'm illiterate about, because I cannot see the reason for all the fuss. When the movie ended I realized I hadn't laughed a single time, and since this is labeled as a comedy, this is bad, right? Before you start wondering if I am the kind of person who only gets laughs out of Woody Allen, let me tell you that I did laugh with, say, Beavis and Butthead Do America, so gross comedy is not a problem with me. The problem isn't the movie's very low-brow, or its highly-touted political incorrectness (which after all is pretty harmless), the problem is the jokes' timing. Even if you hadn't been told the jokes already, you could see them coming from a mile away, and then they are stretched out beyond breaking point. The best thing about this movie is Cameron Diaz, who proves to be an able and charismatic comedian, and not simply a "bombshell." She manages to convince us that there is indeed "something" about a Mary who otherwise is not very remarkable.

This movie is certainly not big in originality: most of its components are filched from different other sources, most notably the alien life force that probes the minds of humans and uses their guilty feelings against them, featured in Stanislav Lem's book Solaris (or maybe the movie based in it). This doesn't prevent it from being quite entertaining and indeed very scary, until more or less the middle, when suddenly the movie is plunged into sloppiness. It is as if they reached a certain point and didn't know very well how to go on from there. It is a pity, because this much inferior second part completely spoils the movie's effectiveness.

"American Beauty" is the name of a kind of rose that doesn't have either thorns or scent. As such, it stands as a symbol of Lester's life, a life without peril (other than being threatened by the possibility of being laid off by a kid half his age), but also without charm or passion. The ways in which Lester seeks to escape such a life may strike us as puerile, but the fact is they are not important. The important thing is the call for personal freedom, and the refusal to live according to unacceptable standards simply in exchange of pretty things, like a big house, a neat garden and an Italian silk sofa.

The characters are all certainly clichés, but nevertheless they come through as real people: the fact that we have seen the man suffering a middle-age crisis, the unsatisfied wife, the beautiful but empty headed beauty queen, the disciplinarian marine, etc. in a hundred movies doesn't mean that such people doesn't exist in real life, and unlike other such movies, they are not presented to us here as beasts with curious habits to be shocked about, or as caricatures to be laughed at, but essentially as human beings that deserve our compassion. They are not heroes: like the flying plastic bag, they are ugly and cheap, but they are ultimately moving and poetic.

The performances are all brilliant, especially Kevin Spacey's: he wins all our sympathy, something that is not as easy as you may suppose, since his character's embarrassing and cheap side is shown to us in all its ridiculous glory. I don't know if he'll win the Oscar (which after all is mostly about studio politics), but his is one of the best performances I have seen in the last years. A few small sillinesses of the movie (such as Lester spitting his beer when he hears that Angela is going to spend the night in his house, or the Marine watching old Reagan movies) are not bad enough to spoil the general effect. I must say it is nice to see a movie that tells us how precious and unique life is, and does that without pouring the saccharine in. Hope it starts a trend.