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Reviews
Cimarron (1960)
Mann's most under-rated Western!
Martin Scorcese has called Anthony Mann Hollywood's most underrated director. He's right of course. Mann is a God. It's a shame some of his Westerns have never been released on DVD or that some of his widescreen Westerns such as The Far Country and Bend in the River have only been released on pan and scan full frame videos and DVDs. At least Cimarron is available on video in widescreen. Perhaps you need to have seen a number of Mann's films in order to appreciate Cimarron, Mann's last Western, and how moving it is at certain points. There's an amazing shot of Glenn Ford leaning against a post in his home as he waits for his wife to see that he has finally returned home after being gone for five years. Glenn Ford plays a typical Mannian hero who is on the side of the law but not a lawman himself and who is unable to settle down in a home with a family. The only other Western Mann made with a happy ending is The Tin Star. There Henry Fonda (the hero) rides off with his wife after putting on a sheriff's star to help out the local sheriff. But even this happy ending falls short. Fonda takes no action, and the young lawman (Anthony Perkins) does the job just fine all by himself. Cimarron is kind of a sequel to The Tin Star. It begins with Ford playing a family man going out West with his new wife. But things quickly get rough. The Oklahoma stampede looks like the chariot race in Wiliam Wyler's Ben-Hur. Ford upholds morality and civil rights, but not as a lawman. After killing the bad guy, he becomes a crusading, liberal newspaper man. He's Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne in Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence rolled into one. But unlike Stewart, who goes on to be a politician, he turns down a job as governor. (Ford won't accept the reward money for killing outlaws either.) His long suffering wife finally leaves him, and he never reappears as a character in the film except in a voice-over. What is most haunting about the film is Ford's disappearance form it for long stretches. He basically abandons his family, fighting first as a rough rider in the Spanish- American War and then again in WWI. Mann goes into the melodramatic territory of Douglas Sirk, with Mann as a failed authority figure and patriarch. He fails to save the son of an old friend from becoming an outlaw. Ford loves his one child, a son, very deeply, but he nevertheless is not exactly an ideal father given his absences. Anthony Mann was an orphan who went to the school of hard knocks in New York. It's hard not to see Cimarron as his own love letter to the father who abandoned him as a child. In any case, Cimarron is a haunting film, well worth seeing, just like Mann's other films.
Molière (1978)
Ariane Mnouchkine made for TV film Moliere (1978) came out on DVD in 2004.
Ariane Mnouchkine's made for TV film Moliere (1978) came out on DVD in 2004. It is available on amazon.fr for around 38.00 U.S. dollars (including shipping). The DVD contain two discs and the made for TV film is in French and has an English subtitles option. The image transfer is excellent. There is a small booklet (in French only) about the made for TV film as well as a 46 minute interview with Ariane Mnouchkine. Ariane Mnouchkine's made for TV film Moliere (1978) came out on DVD in 2004. It is available on amazon.fr for around 38.00 U.S. dollars (including shipping). The DVD contain two discs and the made for TV film is in French and has an English subtitles option. The image transfer is excellent. There is a small booklet (in French only) about the made for TV film as well as a 46 minute interview with Ariane Mnouchkine.
Apocalypto (2006)
Predator versus the Mayan! This is a DUMB film. Apcadopeto
The scenes in the forest with the Mayans hunting the hero Jaguar Paw seemed right out of Predator every scene was derived from a film in a different genre. Like the sick girl who gives the prophecy--Damien Omen 3? And then the Children of the Corn part. And those subtitles. I loved the "he's f--ked" after the hokey snake bite (Anaconda?). The bad guy characters all sounded like they had been dropped out Saving Private Ryan.
People whoo like this movie mustbe completely ignorant of great cinema. How many people who lokke this filmhave seen Aguirre, Wrath of God? ANything by Eisnetseiin, tarkovsky,Pabst, Bunuel, Fellini? It's like they think the velvet Elvis painting they saw at a lfea market is a great work of art, having never been to a museum to see the work of the masters.
The real problem with Apcadopeto is not the gore (compared to Saw or Hostel, there is relatively little, and little that is very graphic). the problem is that the film is BOOOORRRRING! It is so predictable. I actually said "now he is Jaguar Paw" when he got all black from the goo in the swamp, and then he actually said "Now I'm Jaguar Paw." I knew the Spanish ships were there at the beach before the film cut to them. It's all like "duh!"
The "accuracy" of the language was made even more ridiculous by the fact that the film conflates the Mayans who vanished before the Spanish arrived) and the Aztecs. And then there was the teeth whitening of Jaguar Paw and his wife that begins at the near sacrifice of Jaguar Paw. By the end of the film, their teeth are totally white, and her hair looks much nicer. I loved the baby floating device! Of course, she is not at all angry for leaving her and making her eat dead monkey for all those weeks (or how long was he gone, anyway?).
I thought the moral supplied by the Will Durant quotation at the beginning of the film---how can we go to the forest for a new beginning when it is being despoiled?-- was also off because the new beginning is what the fearful tribe was seeking (and look where that got them) and because the sacrifices were totally modernized mass executions, one after the other, rather than ritual sacrifices--hence all that Holocaust imagery. The view of Mayans as decadent was totally ahistorical. Gibson seems more into the Mayan spectacle of violence than he is into forest hunting (except when the game is a human and the hunted becomes the hunter).
I don't know if Gibson is just a lot dumber than I thought he was or if he is now going after the video game teen boy market that films like The 300 and Pathfinder are going after. Hence, he feels he has to spell everything out for the audience and make everything completely intelligible. In any case, Mel Gibon has dubbed himself Smell Gibson. This film stinks!
Love Actually (2003)
Crass, Vulgar Film, Actually
This is one of the worst romantic comedies I have ever seen, actually. The characters are completely undeveloped ciphers,and the narrative focus on Christmas just gives away how crassly commercial this film actually is. the film grossly panders to its target market, which it seems to think are single working class women or divorcees hoping to marry their well paid, powerful bosses or middle class divorcees looking for widowers and divorcees. The film has absolutely no emotional depth and the writing is horrible. The "jokes" consistently misfire. The film IS well cast, but all of the actors, now looking well past their romantic comedy film sell-by-date, seem sadly down on their luck to have been acting in this horrible, vulgar film trying to cash in on the success of Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Love Actually and Wimbledon tie for worst English film of the past two years.
Gamlet (1964)
A great film now on DVD
I share the previous reviewer's high estimation of this wonderful film. It is a highly political and imaginative interpretation of Hamlet, making Hamlet a man of action who is nevertheless alienated at court. The opening sequence is a stunning interpretation of Hamlet's view that the time is out of joint--Hamlet rushes back to court on horseback even as the flags of mourning are being unfurled. Claudius's speech is delivered by a herald and then translated by ambassadors. When we get to Claudius giving the rest of it to his court, it's not clear how much time, if any, has passed. nor is it clear who is in command (who is giving the orders that the flags be unfurled, cannons fired, the proclamation read, and so on). When Claudius finally addresses Hamlet aft the camera tracks him moving right down the table of courtiers, Hamlet's chair is empty. the opening sequence also moves from open external spaces ( a shot of the sea, a long shot of the land, and moves to increasingly shut in , interior spaces (the castle gates drop as the music gets ominous) to suggest that Denmark is indeed a prison. Visually and musically the film is very rich. I would rank this as the best of the filmed Hamlets.