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Mazzanti
Reviews
Meet Joe Black (1998)
A good film -which is much these days
Not a wonderful film obviously. But it has many merits -ie, the editing is perfectly suited for the story. When 3 hrs go by and you didn't notice, there must undoubtedly be something good there. It would have been better if it spared its last 5 minutes, but that's all too common and shouldn't bother much.
Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh (1996)
A showy but overall very good adventure game
Much better than the original Phantasmagoria (though I see from other comments this may be highly debatable), for me it was like a coming of age of the -now defunct- series. It has some good acting, some puzzle-solving, some good graphics, etc., but, most important, it has a plot, a story that actually manages to interest by itself and not as something put there to glue the puzzles together. True, it becomes kind of messy in the end, and many things are there obviously only for shock effect, but, at least for me, it works. And very well.
Phantasmagoria (1995)
Scary indeed
Sold as proof of Roberta Williams' abilities as an horror writer (when she's best known for her fairy-tale King's Quest series), in fact it proves just the opposite. Much as I admire the lady, my downstairs neighbor could have devised a better plot. Technically it's poor, even when the technology wasn't still outdated. I don't comment on the puzzle-solving because there is none. What I find really scary is the tons of copies it sold, when even the just-for-effect Phantasmagoria 2 was much better. And this from someone who doesn't consider particularly picky as far as computer adventure games come.
Goodbye Lover (1998)
Nobody's so bad at being so bad
I went to see this film because of a good review I read in a magazine, and because there's Mary-Louise Parker on it. I doubt I'll ever buy that mag again. And indeed I found MLP the only redeeming factor of this fiasco of a movie. Its twisty plot twists in all the wrong, utterly unbelievable directions, Roland Joffé manages to show what a great director he is (in the same wrong way as Gus Van Sant in To Die For, ie, not letting us forget for a minute he's there), the humor lacks a certain, ahem, sense of humor, the thriller aspect doesn't thrill in the least bit, the social comment on Americana is way too obvious, and the acting is terrible even coming from some otherwise good actors (plus Don Johnson). This kind of movies have to be very smart to put you in the necessary suspension of disbelief, and this is absolutely not the case here. Luckily, I got over it and still think the world of Mary-Louise Parker -and I think this must have been like the ultimate test. All in all, an experience best avoided.