Cecil-B Reviews

Red Dragon (2002)

''If they liked it once they'll LOVE it twice."-Old studio exec's cynical view of repeating a successful story.

[5/10 · 17 October 2022]

Anthony Hopkins reprises his role as Hannibal-the-Cannibal, Edward Norton replaces Jody Foster as the plucky young FBI agent assigned to milk the Cannibal for insights into another psychotic serial killer, Harvey Keitel puts on a business suit and eases off on the strangeness to play Norton's supervisor, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman joins in as a pusillanimous tabloid reporter. Lastly, blending pathos and horror, the officially certified top-cinema-villain (American Film Institute) Ralph Fiennes brings us the tortured torturer whose capture drives the plot. So much talent-talent that couldn't overcome the implied director's instruction "make it just like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS".

By the midway point of the film, the pace had picked up considerably as had the threat level to the good guys and the edge of the seat races between gothic murders and heroic rescues. But to both my wife and me the whole enterprise seemed stale. The performances of the great actors lacked energy. The term "phoned-in" comes to mind.

We watched this movie with our 13 year old granddaughter, who is a very savvy film-goer, for her age, and she liked it. She is in fact a real connoisseur of the horror genre, and she had no complaints about this venture. We should also mention that we saw this film on an up-to-date 85" Sony 4k model attached to a fairly high-end LG Atmos sound bar with powered sub. I feel that we gave the movie a fair shot at showing its "stuff", but it just isn't there. If you are not as jaded as a pair of old movie buffs you may enjoy this mediocre performance by a team of gifted actors and production pros.

While the City Sleeps (1956)

If You Watch Only One Film By Fritz Lang, Don't Make It This One.

[4/10 · 22 June 2018]

De gustibus non est disputandum...Taste is not a matter for argument. The great director's next-to-last American-made movie is either a fine example of the man's social criticism or a tedious melodrama. Review "numbers" that we amateur critics have given the film range from a barely watchable 4 to an enthusiastic 10. Talk about a lack of consensus.

The twin plot lines concern a fight over management of a news media empire and the hunt for a young male serial murderer of attractive women. The element connecting the two is the contest among executives set up by the callow new owner of the company, the ne'er do well son of the hard-working founder. The "contest" offers the position of second-in-command to the newsman who solves the mystery of the murderer.

The newsmen are a mixture of high-mindedness and venality, genuine romance and shabby use of women. I don't have a clue as to the background of my fellow reviewers, so I can't say why some found insightfulness in Lang's portrayal of a modern news media company while others, such as this reviewer, saw nothing beyond the obvious. It was the longer scenes between male and female that proved hardest for me to watch, and not because Lang was making an unpleasant point. To be blunt, the scenes seemed ridiculous. We've all seen films with lots of snappy dialogue between men and women, in which realism takes a back seat to cleverness. There's nothing snappy in these scenes.

If one is curious, one might want to watch this movie to see how unfamiliarity with the everyday behavior of people from a different culture than a director's own distorts the director's attempt to produce realistic scenes.

Reprise (2006)

It May Be Necessary To Get Out Of "Oslo"

[7/10 · 13 September 2009]

Like the slim volume published by one of the two young authors who are the central figures in this coming of age tale, Reprise is thoughtful, experimental, engaging, and intellectually ambitious. It's a difficult film to watch, not only because the disjunctive editing requires the viewer to keep his mind focused, but because the depictions of personal distress are painful to see. The auteur is right to leaven the scenes with (downright funny) humor, but nobody should sit down in front of this one expecting to see a "comedy".

I'd like to make a special comment about the nice distinction made between the struggles of the two protagonists, one of whom suffers from a serious mental disorder (what looks like a severe depression with manic features). While both young men are heavily affected by the prevailing Western patterns of early masculine adulthood (meaning that they can act like mean-spirited 7 year old boys toward one another and toward the young women that their big-boy hormones drive them toward), one of the fellows, Phillip, does not seem to grow from his experiences.

It's not that Phillip is "crazy" all the time, but when he's apparently in a well-compensated (stable) state, his actions revolve around self-involved attempts to recreate (reprise?) and re-do past episodes that felt mortifying. When he asks his would-be girlfriend to go to Paris with him AGAIN, it's not to have a good time. Paris-with-girlfriend was the precipitating event for his first mental breakdown, which culminated in a horrific suicide attempt followed by a stay in a psychiatric hospital, and a continuing regimen of pills that certify that he's "sick". This second trip becomes an obsessive re-creation and "improvement" upon all the things that Phillip blames for his collapse into the madness of misery. Need I tell you that the City-of-Lights becomes a very dark place once again, and it isn't long before Erik has to see his friend clad in pajamas and sitting in the sad corridor of a hospital.

Phillip is trapped. Erik and the other "buddies" are not, and that that gives them a chance to take another step on their own paths of development. The city of Oslo is used as a metaphor for any particular place in which we are accustomed to spending our lives. It can be that some places are more confining than others, which may be true of Oslo, but regardless of that, the path ahead for a given individual may lead right out of whatever "town" he lives in.

Lust, Caution (2007)

Fascinating and heartfelt, a very "foreign" film for Westerners.

[8/10 · 12 September 2009]

The capsule version of this films story--Chinese "resisters" attempt to assassinate a high-ranking collaborator who works for Japanese occupiers in 1930's China--tells us only that most of us are going to be watching a bit of history about which we know nothing. While reasonably educated Westerners don't need to be told much about the "good" guys and the "bad" guys in stories about collaborators in Nazi-occupied Europe, we don't come to a tale about Japanese occupiers in Asia during the period of Japanese imperial aggression in the 20th century armed with much information. In fact, without doing further research on this subject I don't even know that I am referring to the period correctly.

So let's start with the assumption that we are ignorant outsiders trying to grasp the historical underpinnings of the story we're watching. Add to that difficulty the fact that hardly any of us in the U.S. know much about Asian cultures. I could see that the film is rich in period detail and cultural nuance, but that doesn't mean that I "got" what I was seeing.

Just take the issue of "Mah Jongg". While my late mother-in-law played the game, and she was a second-generation European-American, not a "Shanghaiese", I imagine that if she had seen the movie she would have picked up the mechanical significance of the game play that was shown on screen, but she would NOT have gotten the cultural meanings of the plays and misplays that seemed to cause raised eyebrows and post-game sniping among the players. Consider how well we in the States understand the implications of the game of Poker, and further, we even make adjustments for the context or setting of the game. My mother-in-law could have told us that a certain lady was about to win the game, but that would have been just a small piece of a full interpretation of the game's events.

And so it goes... Here we are in the West just beginning to understand that Koreans don't appreciate being called Chinese, and the movie requires us to understand that people from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Canton regard one another as members of very different cultures. Apparently there are many languages that are lumped together under the rubric "Chinese", but even the most similar among them may be as different as the Romance languages are from one another.

In watching this movie we are strangers in a "strange" (to us) land. Yet I found the foreground story concerning a young Chinese woman's efforts to seduce a Chinese collaborator (so that she could get him killed) remarkably affecting. Ang Lee explores the difficult questions that occur when someone pretends to love someone and in the course of that pretense suffers pain and humiliation. And are the unintended effects of engaging in this complicated "relationship" made even less predictable if the target of the duplicity is sufficiently disarmed to show some trust, some caring, some vulnerability. What happens to the potential assassin when the "monster" turns out to have human qualities?

Finally, something needs to be said about the frank depiction of sex in this film--NEEDS to be because so much has already been made of it. People who are serious students of film really consider only the cinematic issues and not those that might interest members of a general audience some of whom take automatic offense at displays of skin and simulations of sexual intercourse. If you're looking for a review or comment that deals with the "propriety" of such material or its "suitability" for Old Aunt Bessie or Little Billy, there are whole websites that can offer you their insights. My analysis asks only whether the heaving intertwined naked bodies added anything to the story.

My answer is equivocal, or uncertain. We are shown long sequences of very intense sexual activities which generate in the participants not only the physical reaction of orgasm but also the feelings that accompany what we're seeing. While the sex is harsh, and fairly gymnastic, it is not preposterous or false-looking in the manner of pornography. One gets the impression that the highly contained "official" is actually able to unwrap his restraints in these almost tortured sessions, and that he is immensely grateful for the moment of freedom. I do not think that the intensity of the sex or even her orgasms have the same kind of meaning for the young woman. Her reaction is more complicated than that.

...Which is my answer to the question about the cinematic value of all that skin and boning. It's a tough area of life to explore on screen, isn't it. I'm going to give the auteur his props for trying.

As with other worthwhile films that I've seen, Lust Caution serves as impetus for further exploration of historical and psychological questions.

All in all, Lust Caution delivers a lot, especially when one considers that we in the West were not considered as the primary audience for whom it was made. Let me also add that even when I didn't understand its words or the story I loved the pictures. There must be a million frames in that movie that could be made into wonderful photographs. Sit back, relax, watch, listen, and THINK.

Brüno (2009)

Be Warned!

[4/10 · 11 July 2009]

It's hard to imagine "spoiling" a film like Bruno: there's really no story, and the jokes are all about how they're executed, so whatever you've heard in advance surely won't ruin your fun. I mean, telling you that in one scene Bruno is undergoing "anal bleaching" while talking to his agent in Hollywood will subtract nothing from the shock and possible hilarity of what you're going to see on screen.

No, there's no way anything outside of the film can ruin it. The problem lies entirely within its frames. Think of Limburger Cheese. That pungent flavor and stunning odor are its normal properties. And few people choose to eat it.

When my wife and I saw it yesterday our reaction was "mixed" to say the least. I found myself alternately cringing and laughing; my wife alternately cringed and asked me if I was ready to leave yet. For me, the film's flaws were not so serious that I felt that if I ate one more piece of it I'd refund my popcorn, but my wife's gag reflex was stronger, and so we left the theater before the film ended.

For us the most offensive aspects of Bruno did not involve the over-generous displays of backsides and genitalia. Even when Bruno's sizable penis got blown up to an on-screen size of about 3 to 4 feet, our only comment was that we were glad that the movie was not photographed in 3D.

But the conceit of the film is that our society's hypocritical preoccupations with celebrity and other-people's sexuality make many of us fair game for gotcha exposure. "Look at these fools who'll do anything to get themselves or their kids on camera!" "And look at these benighted dolts--both the bible-thumping red-necks from the rural South and the pseudo-sophisticates in the coastal big cities; don't they deserve to have a big man-butt wagged in their faces so we can laugh at them when they get mad?" Those are the questions Bruno poses. His lack of cleverness actually made me feel sympathy for people who usually burn me up. I'm no Ron Paul fan. I find his brand of Libertarian-Republicanism to be far too conservative, frankly. But Bruno's vulgar mock interview with him seemed undeserved. Dr. Paul is a decent, pretty broad-minded fellow. Bruno came off looking like an ignorant fool.

Similarly, his excruciating farcical peace-making session with an Israeli hard-liner and a representative of Hamas did nothing to point out the shortcomings of the two intransigent enemies. If it did anything it made me feel sorry for two aging politicians whose jobs require spending endless hours in boring, frustrating, fruitless meetings. Mr. Baron-Cohen seems to believe that by adding a few hours of mortification to their lives he is somehow adding something to someone's understanding of the slaughter-factory known as the Middle East.

The people responsible for this film are very talented. I have enjoyed some of their other efforts. In spite of the amount of derrière shown in this movie it struck me as half-assed. You can do better, guys. Use some of that other big organ you've got, Sascha, your BRAIN!

Empathy (2003)

Where is the EMPATHY

[5/10 · 8 July 2004]

As a member of the Psychoanalytic community, but not a Psychoanalyst, I feel qualified to opine that this film has nothing informative to say about this difficult subject. A few years ago, the writer Janet Malcolm dubbed it "The Impossible Profession", which nicely sums up the arduous training requirements and the hardships of putting the technique into practice.

Siegel approaches her subject from the above-it-all position of the skeptical reporter, whose rude and disingenuous questions put the subject in a bad light no matter what answers are offered. "Do you ever lie to your patients?" she asks. The question may tell us more about the "auteur's" problems than could possibly be revealed by the discomfited analysts. When I heard this tacit accusation I wanted to snap "What are you--two years old?"

If anyone is telling fibs, it is Ms Siegel herself, though she believes she escapes that accusation by tipping us off to deliberate torture of the truth. Her documentary mixes straightforward interviews with concocted sessions with a pretend patient. She brings all the players together at the end in a cast party, which has the effect of levelling the high and mighty one more time. The person with the camera is the one in control, the puppeteer. Everyone else is just "the talent".

Who can forget the late Anna Russel's contemptuous dismissal of the very kings and queens of Opera on whose glorious talents she made herself rich and famous. "Great singers have resonance where their brains ought to be." Of course Ms Russell's whole shtick was burlesquing opera, and she never called any of her comic routines an examination of serious vocal music.

Others may have found the conceits of the current film to be clever ways of getting a fresh look at a much-discussed subject, I had trouble keeping up : oh I see, this looks real, but it's actually constructed; and the previous scene contained the phony patient talking to real analysts. We should also get to hear an academic in the field of architectural design discuss the main piece of furniture in the analyst's office, the Eames Chair. By its very nature, says the expert in furniture, the chair suggests certain things about who has the power in the analytic consulting room. Again we're confronted with the "dishonesty" of analysis, where even the furniture is intended to reinforce a relationship of dominance and submission.

The professor was occupied throughout her discursive tour of the psychology of space and shape by the breast-feeding of her baby. Whether our society is rather backward in accepting this as a public activity is a question in its own right, but at this juncture such behavior still is freighted with meaning. I felt more buffeted by this piece of theater than I ever have by the analyst's choice of chair.

If any phenomenon is held up for examination by this film, it is the power we give to people who have the motive and the means to put our pusses in front of the public. I saw analysts dropping their pants to please this director. Far from taking what they said as the truth, I'd say that I've been witness to coerced confessions.

I saw this movie as a guest at its pre-release showing in Philadelphia, and I'd imagine that with a full house instead of a half dozen media commentators the funny parts would have seemed a whole lot more hilarious. It's possible not only to confess against one's will but to laugh in spite of being appalled.

The current flap over Michael Moore's docu-torial alerts us to the weaknesses of taking big liberties with the facts. Even a work of declared fiction loses its punch when the audience finds out that key elements of the story are just wrong. That's why good authors and screenwriters really research their subject matter, and often collaborate with a consultant from the field undergoing study.

Cecil-B Philadelphia, PA

The Devil's Playground (1976)

A Timeless Classic Becomes Especially Relevant Today

[10/10 · 7 November 2003]

Fred Schepisi's semi-autobiographical "memoir" of life in an Australian Catholic seminary for boys and young men supposedly takes place in the 50's but was shot in the 70's and looks it. The stylistic tropes of the film are as distinctive as Disco, but the portrayal of all of the people who inhabit the pastel tableaux is lifelike and sympathetic. Anyone who has listened to old 78's of the great voices of long ago has undergone a similar process of adjusting one's senses to the medium and finding the performer very much alive under the "static".

This movie was shown to a group of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists who are also serious students of film. Their reaction was unanimously favorable. There's no difficult symbolism here. It's all right there for us to see, enjoy, and understand.

I think that Schepisi has tried to present life in such an institution as it really is. Not being Catholic myself, I suppose it's easy for me to agree with the author's obvious criticism of the astonishingly prudish standards set for both students and faculty. Maybe I'm a little dim, but I'm still trying to figure out how these fellows could get their "bottoms" clean when they have to wear bathing trunks in the shower!!

I may also be showing my ignorance when I say that the emphasis on sex seems realistic. Maybe men and boys who have to refrain from every expression of sexuality don't find themselves just as focused on sex as people who can do as they please. Maybe. On the other hand, my experience with the male species is that we're a horny lot who are NOT the "masters of their domains".

As the old humorist Alexander King observed when he was asked what he thought of a new organization that wanted to put an end to the nudity of domestic pets (by dressing them in specially designed pants), "There are people who are so repressed that they see something obscene in the crotch of every tree."

In spite of the seemingly serious subject matter in the film, with much moral gnashing of teeth evident, there are many funny moments, which come across as gentle and true to life. Anyone hoping to see "Seminarians Gone Wild" is in for a disappointment. There's not a hint of burlesque to be found, and when one of the guys is doing something a little naughty we feel like saying "Hey Buddy, don't sweat it." One of the old brothers or priests takes that view, and his way of talking about it is delightful.

But if the movie showed only the hairy-palm issue it wouldn't be the ageless classic that it really is. This is a typically "British" (in this case Australian) movie about civilized men living in a closed society. The boys boarding school, the regiment housed in its Scottish garrison, the sailing ship on a long and terrible voyage, the class of schoolboys marooned on an uninhabited island--all have become settings for intense dramas that emphasize both the beauty and the pressures of highly developed codes of conduct. Take a look at TUNES OF GLORY, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, LORD OF THE FLIES, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.

Lastly, the great thing about films with really long "legs" is that everyday life keeps recycling issues, so when it comes time to study the "latest" disaster, we can look backward into the vaults to see what has already been created that might pertinent. The Church sex-scandals have definitely made this movie required viewing. The fact that it doesn't touch directly on the subject of pedophilic practices among some clergy will spur some discussion, as it did with the group to whom I showed it.

Hope and Glory (1987)

A Funny, poignant, truthful, and enjoyable child's-eye view of London during The Blitz.

[9/10 · 4 July 2002]

Since I first saw it, 15 years ago, a little film in a little theater, I have regarded John Boorman's recollections of life as a grade-schooler during "The Blitz" as astonishing. Over the years I've used the movie to bring to life the very points that Anna Freud makes in her diaries of the "War Nurseries" she ran in Hampstead. While the movie is always entertaining, it nevertheless shows the effects on kids and families of life at home during a war: the separations, the losses, the physical damage, the inflammation of aggressive impulses in normal kids, the loosening of parental control over adolescents, the dropping of the curtains we use to keep kids from seeing more than they ought to. The film is wonderfully English, with customary attention to period detail, and a great collection of eccentric and memorable secondary characters. You've just got to see the geography lesson, featuring a middle-aged martinet school-marm who whacks away at a world map, using her pointer to punctuate her lesson on the vastness of England's pre-war empire. I have seen this movie on video, and can say that it translates well to the small screen. In fact it was created for British TV. See it. You'll laugh. You'll cry. And don't tell anyone--You'll learn something, too.