How a scintillating trilogy like this could be transformed into a lifeless parody of itself by filmmakers is a complete mystery. It is lugubrious, slow and mistakes slapstick for wit. Waugh would have been appalled by this work. He was a nasty man in private life--a friend of Randolph Churchill whose boorish behavior was legendary--but he had high literary standards. Daniel Craig, incidentally, does not do humor well. The first review on this site must have been written by the movie publicist. The actress who plays his first wife is as wooden as Craig himself -- zero chemistry there -- and there is a supporting cast who clearly didn't have their heart in any of this. A total waste of time, so don't bother. I hope I have made myself clear in padding this out to the full 10 lines required. Left to me, I would have kissed it off with a simple, "No, don't think so. Take your dog for a walk instead."
Reviews
3 Reviews
Glass
(2007)
Simply fabulous
16 May 2009
I became more aware of Glass's music one Halloween afternoon as I was driving north in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. Up to then, I knew him as a minimalist favored by certain intellectual circles. The college station played the music written for the original Dracula movie for a reissue that I don't think ever came off; at least I haven't seen it. I was astonished by its gorgeous emotional power. It was as great in its own way as was the movie starring Bela Lugosi. The score told you how even evil can long. The documentary unfolds like a well written novel and you see the 60s hippie who knowingly or unknowingly kept company with the loathsome Alan Ginsberg, beatnik poet and founder of the pedophile NAMBLA, mature from a young composer who tortured his early audiences with six-hour performances of sterile music to an artist who discovered melody and the need to write music that spoke to the soul. A driven workaholic consumed by his work, he is shown in charming family scenes making meals and playing with his children. But the documentary is honest and we see all is not well. The final scenes include his stunning opera based on a novel by Coetzee about the dangers of becoming the very barbarians who threaten our world. One of the best documentaries I've ever seen.
Caché
(2005)
Give this one a miss
12 May 2009
This was the most pretentious and boring film I have seen in many a year. By the time the politically correct message is delivered, you are seething with resentment at the director's time-wasting and obscurantist approach to movie making. It's enough to make you swear off French films for good. Among its other defects, there are no major characters for whom you care the slightest. The television talking head is cold and self-immersed, his wife isn't much better and the kid is a sullen brat. Well, why wouldn't he be in such a household? In keeping with what required in film today, the only likable sorts are victimized minorities. I have never seen scenes -- uninteresting scenes at that -- dragged out to such interminable and infuriating lengths.
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