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City of Angels (1998)
Until "Van Helsing," the most unnecessary movie ever made.
This review contains spoilers, but you don't care, because the movie blows.
The remake of Casablanca starring Pamela Anderson in the Bogart role ("Barb Wire") was a far superior bad film. Some rainy evening, check it out! This remake (of "Wings of Desire" -- great film!) is actually a complete rewrite. It omits everything that made the original worthwhile (its exploration of human consciousness, history, life & death, and so on), and replaces it with a gooky love story between an angel that needs prozac (Cage) and Meg Ryan. He gives up being an angel for her, and then she dies. Boo hoo.
This is not in itself a horrible film. A very bad film, yes. The perverse audacity, however, of this bad film trying to pass itself off as being in some way related to the original-- wow! The film ends up being the worst of both worlds. On some level, it's trying to justify its relationship to Wings of Desire, so it lathers on an extra layer of seriousness (but not artistry or understanding). In this way, it fails to be a good cheesy romance.
Could it have been worse? Sure! Mentally recast it starring Robin Williams and that woman from "Alias". Or, Ashton Kutcher and the sock puppet from Pets.com. Whatever.
I'll admit to a peculiar loathing for Nichalas Cage for his ponderous "acting" in movies like Leaving Las Vegas, and for his "fun" films like Alcatraz. This is more of the same: he may have talent, but by God he has no taste.
If you do a shot every time there's a long, portentous moment of silent emotion, you'll be drunk off your ass after 10 minutes.
This might not be the worst outcome, if turning off the film is not an option. Enjoy.
La ragazza con la valigia (1961)
Very nice film, two great performances
I have news for you. Claudia, as beautiful as she is, is not the most beautiful person in this film. That would be Jacque Perrin. He was 19 when the film was made (his character is 16), and the camera lingers on him in scene after scene.
The story is simple: Perrin's character falls for Claudia. She's an adult, he's not. She's poor, he's nobility.
Perrin's understated performance is a dead-on portrait of adolescent longing. His eyes tell the whole story. It's difficult to imagine that any man could watch him without experiencing flashbacks to his own adolescence. He doesn't know whether to hope, or not, but he can't help hoping anyway. He doesn't know anything about adult courtship, so he improvises as he goes along. He's unfailingly, achingly, kind and polite (see first clause, previous sentence). He's brave, as he pushes against, and sometimes breaks, the rules that bind a young man not yet old enough to make his own rules.
Claudia, meanwhile, also provides a deeply thought performance, as a young woman whose poverty constrains her every move. She wants some tiny measure of security-- her fear of of the very real possibility of being out on the streets in palpable. She has no way to reach safety without depending on a man, but men have been awful to her. And, she wants desperately not to cross the final line of degradation and become a whore. She'll take money, but only if she can satisfy herself that it is a gift-- that is, only if she can feel that she still has some measure of choice in what happens next. Several men, including Perrin, are trying to "help" her. We see her hesitate, and calculate, in almost every conversation: trying to decide if the safety offered is real, calculating what she will have to give up if she accepts. Claudia is not in glamor mode here: she is beautiful, and the men are swarming around her, but her clothes are cheap, and she's living out of her suitcase.
This is a fine film, but it's not likely to be in anyone's top ten. I think most people will find it moving and well worth watching.
Why not a GREAT film? I think this is not so much because of particular flaws of the film, as because of its modest dimensions. The film is not trying to make a grand statement. It delivers deeply felt and moving drama, and two completely believable and interesting characters. Enough for me. P.S.: On the dubbed version, the voicing is surprisingly good.