Reviews

Is what this film needed. There were aspects that were vintage Spielberg, but there was a tightening that was needed. The film has no business being 2:20 long. But that said, there were some wonderful aspects about it.

First, Christopher Walken gives a brilliant performance of a man who silently encourages his son to continue defying authority. The lines in his face outline the path his Willy Loman life has taken; and like every great actor's trick, there is something mysterious behind his eyes, someone he won't even confide into his own son about; it's like he has one last ace up his sleeve. It is the aspect of him that his son worships, that elevates his father into God-like status for him. He is suspended in animation they way young Frank, Jr. has suspended the family he left when he began his caper.

Leonardo DiCaprio shines in total believability as the young Frank, Jr. He totally immerses himself into this role and produces such a fresh-faced kid who skirts just his side of rogue-ishness. Because DiCaprio can bring more of his own life and experiences into this role, it is his best yet. Notice the subtleties of maturation from the beginning to the flashbacks. This film is a calling card for DiCaprio and we sit in anticipation as to what his next roles will be. He just might be the new original star we have been craving - not a carve-out of the past. Maybe America has finally produced its own "Olivier," but an actor of the cinema (America's acting pedigree), not of the theatre. And DiCaprio's magic will finally legitimize cinema's form of acting as an art.

While some have call this Spielberg's imitation of Soderbergh, I think it's the director still trying to find his Howard Hawks voice. Now that he has become an icon, he will try to be a dilletante in many genres. His second act bump recalls the suspense he built in "Jaws," envoking applause at the ingenuity of the script/direction. He needs to try another "Sugarland Express," see if he can get past substance and tell a small simple story without epic treatment. A bold experiment for Spielberg would to now MAKE a made-for-tv movie, maybe try a Soderbergh pretention and create a road-show film. While "Full Frontal" was an exercise in "cinemart", for Spielberg it might have actually created some interesting results. What if this very film would have been made for less than $5 million with the same exact people. I bet the results would have been more exciting than the finished product.

And so I come to this conclusion: it was entertaining and enjoyable, just overproduced. Mr. Spielberg, please try something like this again, only put some restrictions on yourself. Don't build everything, shoot something on the fly - challenge yourself by restricting yourself. I'd love to see the results.

...for Best Actress, Jodie Foster, and actually deserves to win Dwight Yoakam a Best Supporting Actor nomination. He terrifyingly conveys menace and pure creepiness while wearing! a! ski-mask! That's acting. He steals the show from Forest Whitaker and proves to be a formidable foil to Foster's character.

Jodie Foster will be nominated because we are truly terrified as she is about to pass out, as she is about to get her face smashed in. It's just a small moment, but it is her best work since "The Silence of the Lambs."

If only there were a Oscar nomination for Best Titles.

The reason this film works (arguably the greatest bio-pic ever produced) is that it is ABOUT Loretta Lynn's life, not about country music. From the opening shots of a young Loretta riding a mule to the mines with her brother, you know this will be a film about extraordinary characters. It is over an hour before we hear one song from Loretta Lynn; director Michael Apted and writer Thom Rickman spend time to develop Loretta, Doolittle and her family. When her father dies, the audience cries with Loretta because we know her family, her father, we understand where this girl came from and why it is such a unique transition from backwoods girl to international star.

It's been said that Ms. Lynn was named after movie star Loretta Young. When approached by executives to make a movie about her life (based on her best-selling autobiography), she was savvy enough to realize that a film would end up on television anyway, and opted to have film made. I can imagine (most likely to the chagrin of studio execs) that Apted fought to develop a script that showcased the characters over the music. The result is a film that EVERYONE enjoys. When the film was released in 1980, I remember people going who were definitely not country music fans, and I remember their raves after the movie.

America is about the Horatio Alger storyline: everyone can achieve greatness. This film highlights that dream. While it does fall into some cliche trappings once Loretta Lynn is a huge success (the on-the-road montage, the drugs, the nervous breakdown), there are such cliches because the pressure performers feel is one in the same. Overall, it ages beautifully because it captures a time when the American hills spawned such unique talent (Lynn's contemporaries are either showcased or mentioned to great effect).

Of special note: If Oscars could be given for past work, Beverly D'Angelo should be voted the "Best Supporting Actress" of 1980 for this film. Unfortunately, she was not even nominated. You will be hard-pressed to find such a complete performance in film. Similar in screen time and impact as Dame Judi Dench's performance in "Shakespeare In Love", D'Angelo gives a Master Class in screen acting for her portrayal of the late Patsy Cline. Most likely, this flash of brilliance is what inspired the film "Sweet Dreams", the bio-pic of Cline, a film that pales in comparison to "Coal Miner's Daughter."

This is Spacek's only Oscar win thus far out of six nominations. She's a national treasure and this performance is outstanding. However, you should see this film for all its elements, working to create an outstanding picture. Highly recommended.

That's the answer this film provides when you hear people say that cliche statement: "They don't make 'em like that anymore." "Legally Blonde" may proudly stand next to the most delightful screwball comedies, and it is all because of its star: Reese Witherspoon.

Ms. Witherspoon is poised to be mentioned as one of the great screen comediennes. Her performance is vintage Judy Holliday, yet remains intensely her own. She is an actress extremely gifted at caricature; she breathes depth into her roles and does best when she can make us laugh at ourselves, as her characterizations indict OUR perceptions of where her characters go and who they should be. In "Born Yesterday", Judy Holliday left an intimidating wake very few actresses attempt to surf in: the dumb blonde. Witherspoon takes that character and armed with the feminism of her day, slashes at the notion that blondes are dumb and simply put on this earth for sex. Her enthusiasm to show us up is infectious and right away we are laughing and rooting for her success. Name another actress who could have both cringing and guffawing at her application video along with hoping she gets that damn 174 (sic) on her LSAT.

The screwball comedies of yester-year were escapism for a depressed nation. Gable said it best in "It Happened One Night" when he called there's "a simple story for simple folk." Comedies were for the lowest common denominator, and it is by that standard we should judge other comedies. Their plots are tried and true, a standard formula. To mess with that plot is heresy, as well as their characters. These filmmakers may sometimes cross the line, as in their homage to "The Graduate," but they can be forgiven because they were showing us that they were in on the joke. This IS a simple story, they have an actress who will wrap us around her finger.

Witherspoon's career has some interesting choices: Freeway, Cruel Intentions, Election, and the upcoming Sweet Home, Alabama. It is her risky performances that stand out and make us pay attention. Freeway is "Little Red Riding Hood", with her literally stealing the picture from a game Kiefer Sutherland. She's P-U-R-E white trash, but doesn't let that character element sway us from being on her side: she's been wronged, and this wolf is big and bad. You laugh at first because you don't know if she's really that awful or that brilliant. Election should have sent her into the stratosphere, but American audiences are stupid (hence the success of "Legally Blonde": simple story, simple folks), and her mental tete-a-tete with Broderick will be studied in film history classes. In cinema, audiences can SEE you thinking, and this film is a brilliant mental case. Only in Cruel Intentions does she seem ill at ease with a more morose character.

Oscars being the popular standard by which most audiences rate success and artistic achievement, it is a shame that Reese was not even nominated for this role. (If Julia can get a nom for "Pretty Woman," then it shows you how arbitrary the Academy really is.) She will most likely NEVER get rewarded for what is her gift: selling a SMART blonde, unapologetic and sweetly defiant. Oh, she will win someday, maybe win 2 or 3, but expect it for a "Virginia Woolf" type role years... from now. Which is too bad. She's the best actress of her ilk since national treasure Judy Holliday and she deserves more credit that she gets.

So, watch this "dumb" movie again, and see just how believable she is in it. You'll agree that she wuz robbed of something. You'll wonder if she'll ever be that great again, and that, my folks, is great acting.

This film used to be classified as "Much Ado About Nothing," with the nothing being the character of Pu Yi, but the question after years of viewing and thought becomes, "What's it all about?" Bertolucci spends tons of money and showcases opulence on a epic scale to tell the story of a man who descended into anonymity, who journeyed from greatness into cypher-dom, who make terrible decisions and was guided by selfish desires. The greatness of "The Last Emperor" is in that question; Bertolucci taunts and challenges his audience to digest the once-lived visuals, the pomposity of the circumstance and realize life's absurdity and folly. "The Last Emperor" is a religious allegory, but instead of raising religion on a pedastal, Bertolucci mocks God and religion, ultimately praising humanism, as portrayed in the final shots, as an older, "educated" Pu Yi shares the only lasting joy and wonderful memory of his childhood, the grasshopper.

Vittorio Storaro brings as much to the design of this film as Ferdinando Scarfiotti, masterfully working bold strokes of color to emphasis the film's emotion. The contrast of Italian imagery with Eastern subject is a fantastic dissonance few filmmakers can successfully achieve. The modern air these characters breathe lends credibility to Peploe's screenplay: human characters caught in the turmoil of intrigue and impending death always react in an amoral way, justifying their brutality as survival. Many of the supporting characters, while never gaining audience empathy, defend the argument of their actions of drug-abuse, treachery, and psychological cannibalism.

Sexual frankness is always a element to Bertolucci's films and his restraint here is both sensual and offensive. Brando sodomizes with butter, but the three-way here is performed under opaque silk, lending it a more sensual air, but shields us from forbidden, exotic sex. Is the Orient still taboo? Must we only be privy to the hairy, primal animalistic behavior of European sexuality, and not voyeurs into the smooth, delicate moves of another region's sexual play? It is a surprising move from such an erotically provocative director, and while one may actually blame Puttnam's regime (the releasing studio was Columbia Pictures) for the censorship, Bertolucci's artistic power should have won the argument.

As a stand-alone work of art, discounting the crass nine Oscars and its piddling box office stature, this film is harmed by its use of flashback, a contrived device to show off symbolism and color, more than an indictment of the infant regime "educating" war criminals. It doesn't know where to take this guilty verdict, as the film ends during the "cultural" revolution, depicting the never-ending flip-flopping of political ideologies. Would it have been more powerful to unravel the linear story line from epic to personal? It will forever remain unanswered.

Joan Chen is an exciting presence, and with this film, proves herself one of the most beautiful woman in the world. John Lone is adequate in the title role, but is intimdated by Bertolucci's direction. While passionate as a child, the character's battles become more internal and do not register. As a device, it supports the thesis of the character, but as a performance it loses the audience's interest. We become more fascinated with the cruelty of the household than the political intrigues that forced Pu Yi's hand to the Russians. A more defiant Lone may have struggled with Bertolucci, but the result would have been a more fascinating portrayal.

Despite criticism, this remains a film that must be viewed in letterbox and in surround sound (if possible). Its title sequence alone is worth the price of admission and is a hell of a precursor to the experience one has watching this film. The score (credited to three composers), is melodramatic and luscious, working our emotions and exhilirating the piece. It is gorgeous and enhances our experience. It is recommended to cinema lovers everyone and the challenge remains to answer the question: "What's it all about?"