Hello Down There

The only reason to indulge in this bit of pointless nostalgia is to see Richard Dreyfuss as a punk teen. I'm almost convinced.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jane Eyre

Image
 I'm afraid that Franco Zeffirelli isn't quite the "faithful custodian of the classics" the sleeve claimed. The liberties he took with the plot appalled me, not because they altered in any significant way the flow of the story, but because condensing the love story into a couple of hours merely cheapens the experience. Jane's tormented youth becomes a few moments of discomfort, and her helpless wandering transforms into a short carriage ride after which she faints for no apparent reason. I must say that the acting in the film is very fine. The spoken french rolled glibly from Charlotte Gainsbourg's tongue, and the passions evoked by the director in all the main characters fit the story very well. I have been used to seeing the housekeeper as a brusque and enigmatic arbiter, but she became a caring and somewhat lonely older woman in the honed talents of Joan Plowright. Only a brief camera moment saved her from accusations of coldness, though. This version o...
Read more

The Fountain

Image
This film should only be watched once. As a second-time viewer, I knew approximately how it ended, and how the three epic stories tied together, but it wasn't pleasant to watch. It wasn't pleasant the first time, but at least the images were striking, and felt like some kind of voyage of discovery. Watching this again was a bit like watching The Sixth Sense for the fourth time. The impact had disappeared. For most of the film, the camera moved toward those truly frustrating close-up, poser shots that so irritated me about Master and Commander . I understand that these are pretty people, and they earn the money, and so they get close-ups, but when it doesn't enhance the plot or the artistic composition as a whole - when it doesn't create unity, then it has no place. Actors should understand that, and have a serious heart-to-heart with their directors about it. I usually enjoy watching Rachel Weisz, but in this film she seemed flat, passive, and enervated. To be fa...
Read more

Paper Moon

Image
 Peter Bogdanovich does the retro thing again in this film, although where What's Up Doc ? hearkened back to the mere screwball, Paper Moon more fully embraced a slightly different thirties style, more like Clark Gable than Cary Grant. Those of you who enjoyed O Brother Where Art Thou  will recognize many of the elements of this film, although the comedic elements aren't quite the same. Although the scripts had the same, long lines and monologues that older films seem known for, in Paper Moon  the actors more fully embraced them, delivering them like they would Shakespeare, instead of George Clooney's rattled-off, barely intelligible, and over-written one-liners from O Brother. Although Tatum O'Neal won an Oscar for her performance here, I truly think both Peter Bogdanovich and Ryan O'Neal deserve some significant credit (though I think I'm going to have to disapprove of any father who would allow his nine-year-old to smoke at all, let alone on camera) (and...
Read more