Reviews

The acting is good, the story is compelling but it's a patchwork that could have been more convincing. Some of the events like the explosion of fireworks and the sex scene in the park are contrived. There are loose ends like does Deshaun get back his scholarship?

With a partner I once visited all the castles cited in the credits, and it was an unforgettable experience. The king's palace was shot at the grand Hautefort, the others in less renowned sites, the market scene in Sarlat. At one of the castles we simply knocked on the door and the caretaker showed us around. It's a sensationally beautiful area of France.

The plot is contrived and of course not accurate, but what the heck? It's a fairy tale, for pete's sake. The acting is excellent, the pacing fine, and the outcome predictable. If you love the Dordogne you will adore this film.

I can believe this low-budget thriller was shot in 6 days, as is stated in the trivia. The slight interest is from the scenes of frantic search and discovery for the allegedly missing child, but too many leaps of faith are required. We are expected to believe in the protagonist's insight since we follow him the whole time, knowing he will succeed in his quest. There are too many implausibilities and loose ends in the chance discoveries. Just as an example, how come this abandoned resort is still lighted and well-maintained if it's only a place for crooks to keep their kidnapped children? How come the authorities haven't monitored such an institution? Why was the protagonist not prosecuted for assaulting an innocent man, the former wife's present boyfriend? The questions the gendarme puts to the protagonist would never pass legal muster. I could go on. It's fun to watch if you know it's going to have a happy ending, even if those final scenes are pretty sappy.

This feel-good, come-from-behind movie is refreshing and the two protagonists are attractive and appealing, while their antagonist is a jerk. If you presume the outcome will be positive the twists in the story are predictable but not shocking. The retrieval of the beloved violin at the very end evokes the memory of Johnnie's deceased father, about whom nothing is ever told. Since Galitzine is from a family of Russian aristocrats who fled to England after the Russian Revolution maybe the father could be famous, but who knows? The roommate Jasmine seems to be an afterthought, and why bother to have her involved with a druggie? Likewise the scam-lawyer immigration scam seems contrived, but it moves the story along.

It's a pity the film chose to perpetuate the '80s image of the New York City subway system, with graffiti-covered cars. New York MTA does not allow movies shot in the city to be depicted that way, and the subway scenes are patently not there. The illusion of New York is done pretty well, though, although the Inwood loft is not convincing because first of all those lofts do not exist in Inwood and second of all where they do exist the rents are beyond what an undocumented alien could afford. The Manhattan School of Music doubles pretty well as the Manhattan Conservatory of the Arts. Shooting the music and dance scenes in Bucharest must have saved a bundle, but it should have been done with New York studio performers. Johnnie does appear actually to be playing the violin himself, without simulation.

And rightly so. Mental illness plagues society as well as families, and in any national context it's a stigma. The film's message is compelling although the story told in flashbacks as it is confuses the layman movie goer. I found the counterpoint between the protagonist and the little boy living in the building to be particularly poignant, since the child's innocence is violated by his mother's paranoia. His simple question "Why have all our plants died?" is haunting. The film illustrates that great cinema can be created on tiny budgets.

A lovely and touching film with some frustrations. The script is echt New York, right down to the reference to the Department of the Aging, the disdain for Poughkeepsie and the invocation of rent control. Never mind that the latter is regulated by the state not the city as the script states, or that you can't pass on a controlled apartment willy-nilly to a guy you met at a party. It's still pretty authentic, including the ugly interiors of the Brooklyn apartment and the stunning final scene in the West Village. True New Yorkers discern from the script that the elderly couple bought as renters when it converted to co-op 5 years earlier, presumably at an insider's price, so their net from the recent sale in 2013 is bound to be much greater than the 17,000-odd the script gives them. The longueurs on themes of Chopin add to the atmosphere. The acting is good if somewhat forced because this little film was probably shot over 2 weeks when Lithgow and Molina had the time. The political statement comes early, that a religious institution is exempt from civil-rights laws and can discriminate against someone based on their sexual orientation, which is otherwise forbidden in New York city and state; and that's why the church can fire George because the archbishop doesn't like him being gay. It seems gratuitous that George out of the blue writes to the parents of the school to affirm his faith despite having been wronged: that seems like an afterthought inserted to make the movie extend to 94 minutes. The black screen between Ben and George's discussion of Ben's art and the scene of Joey visiting George sans Ben in his new apartment is jarring, and the viewer is obliged to fill in the missing pieces unaided. Uncle Ben is not a particularly likable character, mostly insensitive to the dynamics of the relatives who have taken him in. Is his asking Joey late at night whether he's ever been in love another filler? Why in 2013 would a couple of high-school kids steal books from the library and what is the point in the story? Why George's reference to Ben's "pension" but none to Social Security, which he would have at age 71? Am I the only one who wondered if Joey's emotional reaction in the stairwell in the penultimate scene is regret at having given George the painting of Vlad, the guy he really loved? That would give the film more poignancy and impact. The film is well worth watching, with a solid message of devotion.

Whatever others think of the superficiality of the story, I can't think of another movie that explores so provocatively the interaction of sexuality and politics/ideology. We have had stories that show characters blackmailed or led by passion to deny their beliefs, but here we have a character whose alienation from classist, homophobic, hypocritical upper-class English society in a boarding school that can't but be Eton proceeds to betray his country. Those who criticize the script seem not to appreciate the sharp critique of English society in comments like "They are not empire builders, the are empire rulers." Yes, there is snarkiness and bitchiness, but that goes with the territory, underground public-school gay underculture of the period. The film is a landmark in frankness and insight into the psychology of treason. Burgess, McLean and eventually Blount carried out the most destructive spying of the period, and they were inspired not by greed (they were after all insiders) but by principle, however mistaken that was, and as the movie shows, by social and sexual ostracism.

I wanted to like this, I really did, but it has the faults of theater/film that are inspired by their author's obsession with intellectual trivia. Anyone who does not know Beethoven's last string quartet does not have a clue what the fuss is about and will focus on the implausible personal dramas playing out in this group of 5 (4 + 1) musicians. Anyone who does know Beethoven's last string quartet will find the effort to piggyback on it pathetic and tedious. It is after all arguably the greatest composition in the genre, hardly a rarity, so using it is just too obvious. The personal drama is too complex and contrived to believe. Rare is the case in the first place where 2 members of a quartet are married to each other, rarer still where the offspring of the marriage is being "tutored" by a third member who is attractive, unmarried and horny. Any second violinist knows 25 years out that he/she is not going to be "first violin" in the particular group, and choosing to bring it up at this point is disruptive to the point of not being believable. There are too many twists of fate and surprises for the story to be credible. The author is no doubt a dévoté of this genre and probably of this piece but most other people are not. This having been said, the performances are good enough. Christopher Walken does not make me feel sorry for him, and the other actors are simply going through their paces. Given the contrived story this is just about as good as you are going to get. The New York scenes are characteristically cold and forbidding, probably because it was made at that time of year, not necessarily because the writer insisted it was winter.

This is not just your typical a-a movie. Beyond the delectable Cajun flavor and the larger-than- life characters, the story is intriguing and probably too complex for the younger shoot-em-up crowd. The mixture of violence with misbehavior by the protagonist/hero makes you think about the moral question of ends justifying the means. The casting is good, the acting fine and on target, the scenery is accurate and the cinematography good enough but not sensational. I saw this in English before a French audience who clearly loved it, probably not even knowing the director is Bertrand Tavernier, a skilled French craftsman who knows how to pace the action and modulate the tension.

The producers and supporters are well-intentioned but this documentary needed to fit in a half- hour instead of a full-length movie. It would then be more compelling and effective instead of the rambling, unfocused narrative we have. The story it tells of bigotry and murder in a backward southern town is ambiguous because the "balance" shows most of the locals pay at least lip service to tolerance, which is rather heartening in a place hardly known for it. The only difference is some unsavory characters act on their worst instincts, and that happens in "civilized" places, too. I felt terribly sorry for everybody shown, gay and straight, educated and ignorant, even for Fred Phelps who is clearly a troubled, insecure man, and by implication his small group of fanatical followers. It's a pity this haven for people who don't fit the mold is sold but that itself says something about the commitment of the local gay community, doesn't it? The real culprit is blind adherence to misguided anti-gay Christian doctrine.

First you wonder how could a couple as attractive as Newman and Andrews consider betraying the West? Not to worry, we find out they are as red-blooded-patriotic as they look like they should by all rights be, and then the silliness accelerates. But wait, anyone in their right mind would have discerned from the beginning this was a setup, so the second thing you wonder is how East German authorities could be such dopes when this guy is giving signals all the way he is not sincere. No adequate explanation.

Later you get to wonder how a state with as many secret police as East Germany could miss the fact that the good scientist who has just defected finds his way to a farm in the middle of the country, or that there are bus loads of disaffected citizens riding around between Leipzig and Berlin in fake buses. Finally, how could a director as talented as Hitchcock and actors as good as Newman and Andrews end up carryout out such a travesty of cold-war thrillers?

It appears Hitchcock assumed the passion of anti-communist sentiment would overcome dramatic and logical inconsistencies. Wrong. You have to conclude it was just not his métier and they were seduced by the chance to work with an otherwise brilliant director. In short, could have been so much better with a better story, better script ... and better score.

This film is not about autism, it is about selfish self-absorption of adults. The very idea that a mentally retarded child can be brought out of his delirium by a bunch of witch doctors with no scientific training and no verifiable results is ridiculous. One commentator states clearly it that these selfish parents fit a pattern of despair that leads those in this situation to resort to any extreme, and taking a helpless child to Mongolia to "cure" him instead of to a farm in upstate New York to meet animals is shameful and unforgivable. Why did they make this movie at all? Simply to conclude the exploitation of this helpless child. Forgive them.

It may not be true as Bertrand Tavernier asserts in the add-on DVD special that "Second Wind" (the correct idiomatic translation) made further crime movies superfluous, but this is a brilliant example of the genre. The subtitles do not do justice to the dialog that is typically French- wordy but still clever and provocative. Inspector Blot, the Joe Friday/Jack Web emulator, has the most good lines, but they are throughout. The casting is as good as you could get. Shooting in black and white was essential to focus viewers on the story, the characters and the script. Even the Arch of Triumph looks appropriately raw and menacing: at no point do you think how pretty France is, only how dreary and monotonous are the streets, and how rugged the rocks, the perfect backdrop to this depiction of remorseless selfishness and cruelty that illustrates that stories do not have to be compact and tidy to be compelling.

Darned if I can figure it out. The perpetual flashbacks bear no reasonable relationship to the story proceeding in the foreground. The elderly-dad-turned-gay character and his life are unconvincing, unrealistic and shallow, if well acted. The younger boyfriend is a goof-ball you can't relate to or sympathize with, explained as a giraffe when you really wanted a lion. His 2-sentence description at the beginning explaining for the uninformed or uninitiated viewer why he likes "older men" is is either unnecessary or shallow, but certainly trite.

What character development there is is shallow and driven more by events that dialog, and the script laid on the story is amateurish. I got so tired of the expiring dad with his oxygen who all the while looks like he could place well in a senior marathon; not even the makeup is good. Altogether an almost complete disappointment. It's not elevating, heart-warming or insightful. I can't imagine gay people relating to this mess, and I can't imagine straight people relating to it either. Maybe it's secretly just for dog lovers.

This is the sort of conceit the Brits do well, with lots of wit to overcome a contrived story and implausible sequences of events. I don't know how many of the cynical comments in the script originate in the book and how many are from the screenwriter, but they are smart even if a caricature of what one press head could come up with. The plot is impossibly contrived, with unbelievable twists and turns. The schlocky ending is even more so, as the protagonist and his comrade in arms devote themselves to this hopeless cause.

The silly terrorist involvement notwithstanding, it is pleasing to see a reasonably sympathetic depiction of a Middle Eastern sheik. Never mind the movie was shot in Morocco, not Yemen, the comparison to highland Scotland is convincing. The acting is fine fare, not spectacular. The oblique, mispronounced reference to Asperger's must be a nod to a friend of the screenwriter since Jones shows only remote resemblance to a true Asperger; or maybe it's to be trendy. Alfred Jones sounds like a Welsh name to me so the Scots accent is not suitable, but the Brits know better than I, so I may be mistaken. Nobody would think of seeing this sitcom pilot gone berserk a second time, but it's a good show for diversion.

Admirable as a young director's effort is, this movie doesn't quite make sense. First, the teenagers' dialogue is adult, using words, structures and concepts even the smartest teen would never even know, much less have in their active vocabulary. Furthermore, if they are that smart, why does George utterly lack introspection? The story does not convince me George would have been able to "get by" in a competitive Manhattan prep school for most of the year (or previous years, for that matter) on his cute smile, and had I not presumed the movie would have happy ending I would have expected him to kill himself at the next turn because he is so completely clueless and confused.

Second, the continuity is flawed, such as when a coffee cup appears in George's hands halfway through a scene in Riverside Park with Dustin, or George is wearing a different shirt as he and Sally run down the spiral stairs on their day of hooky from what he was wearing earlier in the same day. The director comments in the voice-over of the DVD how it is impossible to be consistent in locales in a low-budget film shot in a short time, so having scenes all over New York in the same series is forgivable, particularly since only New Yorkers would recognize that.

Third, it would be utterly impossible for even the smartest kid to make up in 3 weeks all the homework he had not done in a semester in high school. Write this off to poetic license, but I was not convinced by the story that George had somehow turned around as a result of his infatuation with Sally since he had not yet even admitted it to himself or to her; or was it because his mother had had to sell the apartment and pretty soon he wouldn't have anywhere else to crash? Once again, adult emotions are inconsistent with the adolescent mentality the writer/director is trying to convey.

That having been stated, what can you say about an adorable boy with cute dimples and his equally attractive girlfriend who are a delight to behold and whose acting ability is sensational? In fact the whole cast is beautifully consistent, probably the film's strongest feature. Only the story and the overdone script are weak. Freddie's grasp of the American accent is extraordinary, Emma's emotional grasp of her part is fine; but it's not fair to have the viewer presume they will live happily ever after in New York City having a high-school diploma even from a private school in their hands but no adult support system. I mean, gimme a break, arready.

To jump to the ending: what else occurs to you as our protagonist and his buddy-in-arms stride from the Roman Senate and they discuss what they will do with the rest of their life (together)? It's pretty corny but about as explicit as you can get and keep a PG-13 rating. It worked for Hadrian who built that wall, after all.

I never got past Tatum's southern twang, not exactly what you expect from a Roman officer unless maybe he's from Sicily or at least Catania. Don't they bother to use dialect coaches in action/adventure thrillers? The action scenes are shot from so close as not show any true gore, fair enough. I don't relish seeing anybody's head chopped off, which is not really necessary. Others have commented on the inauthenticity of the language that was not spoken in the British isles at the time, but it might as well have been Zoroastrian so long as it's unintelligible to 99.9% of the audience. The fort is apparently pretty authentic, and the battle tactics, too. As for the medical practices and lifestyle, you have to remember it was originally a romance novel.

The scenery in Scotland is breathtaking, but it stretches credulity to believe that this slightly effete, cultured young slave could have started out among the barbaric Seal People, and his initial hatred for our Roman hero is not very convincing. On the other hand, he has to be a good sexual fantasy for viewers who imagine what he and his hunky Roman master are doing off-screen. The sight of a lean, defined, blue-eyed young man almost having his throat slit by a rough Roman gladiator really turns them on. The deus-ex-machina of the former Roman deserters is pretty far-fetched, since even the legend was that the 9th Legion was exterminated.

Finally, since Budapest is said to be the European porn capital, you have to wonder how may of the extras and bit players are superannuated porn stars. They probably have pretty good production facilities there, from what I can tell from their output.

It's not a fair excuse to say that "You had to be there" to appreciate fully the impact of this film, but in fact you had to be there, or more grammatically "you have to have been there" to get it right. The atmosphere of fatalism and gloom in the '50s and '60s permeated life. You can't appreciate it until you see a "fallout shelter" or this film.

I remember how utterly shattering it was to see the outcome of the discovery in San Diego that had given so much false hope, and I still say "There's still time, Brother" when I see a lost cause. Never mind all the goofs in plot and continuity, the arc of the film is simple: you develop sympathy for the main characters as they come to a realization that they are doomed, you watch their coming to terms (or not) with the inevitable, you feel for them in their end. Simple, really. All this is done through drama, without special effects that will age gracelessly.

The "end-of-life-as-we-know-it" scenes are chilling. Gregory Peck is flawless, Ava Gardner is convincing, Fred Astaire is creditable except for the absurd scene on the racetrack that strains suspension of disbelief beyond breaking. Do I need to explain to other reviewers why Anthony Perkins does not play a convincing heterosexual lover?

Did anybody else notice that "Lewis" has a distinctly German twang in his accent? Unless that is supposed to add to the mystery it makes the character even more implausible, since according to the script he grew up in the house where he is the landlord (the old creepy landlord shtick). The acting throughout is stilted and mannered, not foreboding or menacing as the director probably thought he was achieving, so the viewer eventually wants to say "Pleeze, get on with it, alright?"

The plot is creative enough but the twists and turns make you dizzy. Because of the weak script and story line the police have to be inept beyond imagining, which they obligingly are, relieving the viewer of any concern that they might catch up with the killer before he carries out his final act, so we are just along for the ride. The skin was probably a come-on in the '60s but in the second decade of the 21st century it is simply quaint, fair enough. But overall it means this second-rate thriller does not really measure up, and no. 78 on the list of greatest British films is more than generous.

The old Bell & Howell 16mm camera is really cool. It would have been great if it had been anywhere near that easy to feed the film through a projector, though. Nobody ever had the equipment to process even B&W movie film at home the way Lewis does, either, but the plot requires it, since he would hardly have been able to take it to the drugstore, considering the subject matter. Not to beat a dead horse too much, even if he had been able to process reversal/transparency film at home it would have had to be in total darkness, not under the spooky safelights. Pretty contrived, huh? It's all about willing suspension of disbelief, don't you know.

This film would have been controversial in 1972, but for 2002 it is pretty bland. Contributing to the unconvincing plot is that it is unrealistic for both the gardener / would-be black lover and the black housekeeper to sound like they graduated summa cum laude from an Ivy League college, even in New England in 1958. The fine acting notwithstanding, the story is pretty contrived and the sappy, melodramatic ending is too much. The editing is poor, probably because they shot too much in the first place and thought they'd leave it to the film cutter to make sense of it. All the "deep" symbolism of the N.A.A.C.P or not-N.A.A.C.P. is silly. The '50s feel is over the top, with the garish cars all polished up and preening themselves, and the decorator recommending the aquamarine color scheme. That some parts of the film were shot not in the autumn but in summer is highlighted by the occasional bough of red leaves obtrusively flashed in front of the camera in an absurd effort to simulate fall color, when the actual trees in the landscape are all green, with a few red stage leaves tossed about. The moviegoer feels like he is in a nostalgia museum instead of the real thing. I doubt the event of the daughter's getting her skull cracked would have happened in Hartford, CT in 1958. Finally, in 2002 it may be acceptable to portray repressed gay men trapped in marriage as frustrated, but must they necessarily be chain smokers, have a drinking problem and take up with blond hustlers when they betray their wives?

Much as I would like to be able to endorse this earnest effort, it really is a messy hodge-podge of implausible, unconvincing plot, twisted logic, mediocre cinematography, poor editing, bad hair color and unsatisfying conclusion. The shower scenes of the swim team are enticing if you're into men's bodies (it's hard not to be, after all), but they make their point too obviously and for too long.

The blond has a bad bleach job and the stock, naïve redhead has another bad dye job. The guys in bed together are so obviously not into it that it's laughable. You come away wondering if the point is one of those inscrutable, pseudo-intellectual French lessons that the world is a confusing enough place, and if you through sex into the mix it's even muddier. The flat-footed provocation of naming one of the leads "Arnault" (for the uninitiated, the richest man in France is Bernard Arnault, an unusual spelling that cannot be a coincidence) is silly, and the ending isn't mysterious, just dopey.

The reference at the beginning to being from "Lot-et-Garonne" is like saying he's from Appalachia, terribly arch. The subtitles are poor, including even such mistakes as "Give us free reign /s.b. 'rein'/ and "it's" for 'its.'" This is a library item, not a keeper.

PS: having viewed the "making of" and "deleted scenes" add-ins I feel more positive about the director's efforts. He at least acknowledged the miserable dye job on the redhead, and his heart is in the right place as to his motivation in making the movie.