Reviews

Almodovar's finest film takes the raw material of melodrama and fashions it into something so fresh and free of contrived histrionics that the end experience feels like a revelation: a window into a rarely glimpsed world of truly adult film-making that is anything but boring or well meaning. This film celebrates various incarnations of womanhood without the slightest patina of political correctness or falsely ingratiating gestures. It is warm, sad, funny and human - expressing true tenderness for it subjects. Yet it is also an intellectual film: a knowing (though never merely clever) homage to some of the great women and feminine rolls of film history - such as those played by Bette Davies (the title recalls that of "All About Eve") and Gena Rowlands. The performances are beautiful and subtle and in the end "Todo sobre mi madre" satisfies in a way that even few great films can.

"Amores Perros" is a raw and visceral experience. Real passion, intelligence and craft has gone into making this wonderful film. By contrast most other films of the last few years seem bland and antiseptic. The film places the viewer right in the heart of urban Mexico, and amidst this teeming environment the characters' lives play out - full of immanent (and often eruptive) violence and feeling. The film has one of those episodic structures familiar from "Traffic", "Short Cuts" and "Magnolia". Yet it is a superior work to all of these films, not only because it feels less contrived, but also because it is blessedly free of the kind of characters who spend far too long hand-wringing and feeling sorry for themselves. Refreshingly, "Amores Perros" is not concerned to dissect "dysfunctional" people or "dysfunctional" social systems. It pulls off that rare trick of seeming to issue from right inside the worlds it portrays, rather than standing apart from them. This may well be an illusion, but that of course is what makes the achievement of "Amores Perros" all the more impressive. (It is also one of the only films I have ever seen that uses animals to signify in a way that is neither sentimental nor monstrous.) 10/10

Rarely have I witnessed such a gratuitous waste of talent. There is almost nothing constructive to be said about this hopeless swamp of a film. What few interesting strands the film seems to promise initially turn out to be little more than red herrings. Actors of stature - Robert Duvall, Robert Downey, Jr. - are deployed in roles which go nowhere; a director of occasional genius produces a film which looks like it is filmed through a coffee-stained camera lens; a writer (John Grisham) who has never produced anything of merit, discovers new depths of under-motivated incoherence. The film has a cheap, lecherous feel about it - but barely at the level of commentary - its really part of the aesthetic. Normally, I come on to the IMDb to write balanced, generally appreciative comments. This egregious disaster of a film just makes me want to produce an endless, bilious rant. I won't, but only because I no longer want to occupy my "mind" with this trash.

There were many things I liked about "Ghost Dog" - its script, performances, atmosphere, camera work and marvelous original music. What I liked most about the film, however, was its determination to avoid mystifying and romanticising mob violence in any way. There is so much hokkum in the movies about mobsters with a "code of honour", but "Ghost Dog" contrasts the behaviour of its mendacious, back-stabbing and ineffectual mob villains with a way of life (the way of the Samurai) that seems infinitely more philosophical and honourable. Obviously the "way of the Samurai" still encompasses a regrettable violence, but it does not appear to do so for reasons quite so reactionary and trivial as those attributed to the gangsters in the film. Having said that, if I had one problem with this film, then it was finding it hard to believe that someone so spiritual and philosophical as "Ghost Dog" could ever work for the mob in the first place. This seemed insufficiently motivated to me - but perhaps that is because I don't properly understand the role that violence, loyalty and service play in the Samurai code.

Along with Scorsese's, The Age of Innocence and Iain Softley's, The Wings of the Dove, Terence Davies' The House of Mirth forms a triumvirate of modern period drama for a discerning audience. Davies is not interested chiefly in either scenery or costume - that is, in history as a heritage theme-park - but in the story, its themes and characters, and in teasing out good performances from his cast. The modest budget of this film works in its favour. Most of the best scenes and shots are framed in intimacy, not lost amidst panoramas of superficial grandeur or the shallow aesthetics of Merchant-Ivory-style film making.

At the heart of Davies' film is Gillian Anderson's brilliant performance as Lilly Bart. Since she is on screen almost all of the time the film really stands or falls by her performance. She sheds her "X-Files" persona in moments and conveys an enormous range of subtle emotions as her character vacillates between an almost involuntary avarice and moral scruples, foolishness, charm, fortune and tragedy. The affect of Anderson's performance is lasting and deep. Indeed, this film lives on long in the memory and continued to trouble me for weeks after I had seen it.

I am a great admirer of David Lynch's films, but what I admire most about TP: FWWM is the central performance by Sheryl Lee. In my opinion, Lee gives one of the most extraordinary, visceral performances of the 1990s in this underrated film. She transforms an iconic but actually fairly notional television character into an unforgettable cinematic presence, with great complexity and depth. It is true that Laura Palmer contains elements of cliche and perhaps even a kind of sentimental misogyny (beautiful but occasionally sluttish high-school prom-queen, whose glamorous facade masks hidden tragedy) but this is more a fault of Lynch's writing than Lee's performance. Rarely has an actor put more into a role only to be met with such hostility or indifference at the hands of critics and the public. I still hold out hopes that Lee's career will one day enjoy greater visibility and lead her to the roles and the praise she undoubtedly is capable of winning.