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Reviews
Raging Bull (1980)
A complete waste of time
I am beginning to think that Martin Scorsese is the most overrated movie director of all times. Re-watching his oeuvre is a painful experience for me - discovering how pretentious and shallow his movies all are. Take Raging Bull.
De Niro won an Academy Award for gaining 60 pounds for a role in the name of method acting - so what? Does it change this utterly futile waste of celluloid?
I can't see a point watching this way too long story of a boxer, who - at the beginning of the film - is psychopathic, arrogant, sexist and primitive, turns into an unsuccessful boxer, then turns into a nightclub owner, then turns into a prisoner, and gee-whiz! he is still a psychopathic, arrogant, sexist and primitive man.
The moral is? Or is it an allegory? Nope. If anybody says it is, punch them in the face. Is it symbolic? Nope again. Does it reveal anything about anything? Sure, that De Niro is a great actor. And this, my friends, is way to little - we all know that, don't we?
I wish the scriptwriters had had anything to tell. Sometimes there are stories which are worth telling with no hidden agenda, or moral, or any of this stuff. This story isn't one of them. This is the biography of a moron who had no life. Why watch it?
I'm a BA, and still say go watch Rocky (!) instead. Even that's better.
Libiomfi (2003)
The best Hungarian motion picture ever made... bar none...
I demand this film on DVD at once!!!
By the way, this is the best ever Hungarian motion picture, although one must admit that it is not to everybody's appeal, but if you are familiar with theatrical lingo and methods, nothing can beat this picture, for it is hilarious and deeply philosophical at the same time, poking fun at too many things to count.
The story is basically a satirical tale of the adaptation, casting and rehearsal of a theatrical version of Winnie-the-Pooh, an adaptation set apart from all others by the fact that this is a naturalistic version (with "believable" animals), not the Disneyfied version we all loathe. In order to create the show, "Libi bácsi", the producer/director utilizes the famous Stanislavsky-method, forcing his bunch of actors (more like meter-readers, sociopaths and grandmothers) to "live" their parts. All this leads to disaster...
Special kudos go to the creators for casting Diósi Gábor as the wife (?) of Libi bácsi, who performs excellently without any mannerisms usually seen when a man performs the role of a woman, so none of the usual man-in-drag jokes this time...
For Hungarian viewers the casting scenes are maybe the best, because they show how Libi bácsi selects his actors, turning down the most famous Hungarian actors (who do unbelievably funny cameos) - of course international viewers won't see the point, though they may laugh at the routines Libi bácsi prescribes for the wannabe actors.
I hope one day it will be released on DVD, together with the short films the directors had created before Libiomfi, which are also modern classics in their own right.