pf9 Reviews

Night Moves (2013)

Good to know they haven't forgotten how to make a really bad movie

[1/10 · 23 June 2014]

This movie begins with a shot of Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) brooding, and in the following hours (probably fewer than two, but feeling like many more) Josh keeps brooding and brooding and brooding some more. Not even the trace of a smile ever crosses his face. No matter whether he broods outdoors or in a car---he spends half the movie in a car, now as a passenger, now as the driver---his emotional repertoire is extremely limited. To use Dorothy Parker's famous words, he gives "a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B." Come to think of it, maybe he got stuck at A, and never even got to B.

Thematically this movie runs its gamut of ideas from the sophomoric to the inane. In brief then, avoid it if you can. If you choose to waste your money on this movie, don't say you were not warned

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1943)

An interesting and somewhat disturbing movie

[7/10 · 14 April 2013]

I first saw "Münchhausen" in my native Romania as a child during the war (I mean WWII) and the scene of the baron's landing on the moon and having a conversation with the head, lying on the ground, of a woman who left the rest of her body in her lunar home, made such a powerful impression on me that to this day I remember it in all its funny details. It was also the first movie in color I had ever seen; yes, those were the days when movies, as a rule, were in black and white.

Revisiting the movie now, as a euphemistically labeled "senior citizen," I was surprised that it holds up quite well. It amuses, it surprises, it is well acted, the dialog is clever, written after all by the famous novelist Erich Kästner under a pseudonym to cover up the fact that the Nazis saw themselves forced to employ him after burning his books.

There is something quite disturbing in hindsight about this movie. Why was it made? It was released in the year between the Battle of Stalingrad and the Allied Normandy Invasion the two events that were to seal Germany's fate. Was it an attempt to sustain both at home and abroad the far-fetched illusion that the war was going so well that all the German people cared about was laughing at the Baron Münchhausen's lies? Or was it an attempt at showing that Babelsberg could produce a grand spectacle just as well as Hollywood? And if a spectacle was being offered, why, in a country in which mass murder and deception were the order of the day, was even the hero to be a liar?

I am asking these questions because much in this movie is disturbing for reasons related to them. Take the Baron himself, played in this movie by Hans Albers, the greatest star, the Clark Gable of German movies in those years, yet by the time of this movie a man in his fifties pretending to be irresistible to females. It is as if MGM had cast an aging Adolphe Menjou as Rhett Butler in "Gone With the Wind." Now Albers is a fine actor, but to enjoy the movie you definitely have to suspend disbelief and pretend that the aging actor riding the cannonball is not bothered by arthritic pain.

The sets look more like cheap nouveau-riche furnishings and the costumes are cut from wartime stock. Ilse Werner, as Princess Isabella d'Este, is as beautiful as ever, and as Count Cagliostro we get to see Ferdinand Marian, the actor who just a few years earlier had disgraced himself by playing the lead in "Jud Süss," the most disgusting anti-Semitic propaganda film ever made, a fact that ultimately led Marian to alcoholism and a DUI death at war's end, considered a suicide by many.

Now, one can say, let's just watch the film for what it is, and not in its historic context. But then, Marian's acting of Cagliostro, a swindler, is crafted with the same mannerisms he used in creating the Jew Süss. In short, the undeniable artistic qualities of this movie are infected with the severe moral deficiencies of its makers, and this surprisingly renders the movie more interesting than it has any right of being. This is what disturbs me.

Black Swan (2010)

The Meshuge Swan

[4/10 · 4 December 2010]

The old chestnut about having to experience life before being able to be a true artist is rehashed in the case of a psychotic ballerina. Trouble is, beautiful Natalie Portman, the actress portraying this ballerina is no great dancer, and therefore the dance sequences are being filmed either in a now-you-see-her-upper-body closeup, with her arms executing over and over the same ballet-101 gesture, or in a now- you-see someone's feet closeup, or finally now-from a greater distance-you-see-a ballerina in a pas-de-deux. It makes for clumsy filming and we get too much of it. Add to this that her male dancing partner lacks the good looks one expects of the Prince in "Swan Lake," and then, he turns out to be a klutz to boot. All the characters come in two one-dimensional variants, which might as well carry tags of "I am good" and "I am evil." True, this reproach could also be leveled at the scenario of that superb ballet, "Swan Lake," but then most people watch it for story told by Tchaikovsky's music, and not for its silly scenario by Begichev and Geltser (you can look this up in Wikipedia, like I did, for if you are honest, you will have to admit that, like me, you have never heard of either of them). The ballet is rescued by Tchaikovsky, but no, even remotely comparable, genius rescues this silly movie. The horror of the hallucination scenes has been done to much more effect by Roman Polanski in "Repulsion."

To my mind, the only thing that could save this movie would be a remake as a Woody Allen comedy under the title "The Meshuge Swan"

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

Vintage Allen

[8/10 · 4 October 2010]

Woody Allen starts and ends his movie by quoting Macbeth's monologue in Shakespeare's play, in which he sees life as "…This tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing."

This movie seems to be saying that with all the setbacks this idiot mercilessly visits on men and women alike, the only way to cope with the unfolding of his tale is by going charmingly bonkers. The prime example for this is the character of Helena (Gemma Jones in great form), the hard-drinking suicide-manqué, who, under the guidance of a charlatan seer, comes to terms with it all by believing she had had earlier lives in French settings. She succeeds in happily connecting with one of the ugliest and most meshuge men to be found anywhere on the British Isles these days. Everybody else in this movie, has a goal that is frustrated by reality, and the sparks of conflict all this generates ignite the plot.

Particularly, Helena's unhappily married daughter Sally (Naomi Watts), like Flaubert's Emma Bovary before her (and there can be no doubt that Woody Allen deliberately plays on this precedent), goes to a performance of "Lucia di Lammermoor" with Greg, a man who wants to start having an affair with her (Antonio Banderas, better directed, and better made up than in any movie since he left his native Spain). Though strongly attracted to Greg, Sally does not yield to temptation, only to later deeply regret her post-operatic resistance, and head into a messy divorce and a major reversal in her career. No earlier lives for this modern woman!

Amusingly, the scene in which Sally does not respond to Greg's advances takes place in a fancy Audi on a London street, while the corresponding scene in which Madame Bovary does accept Léon Dupuis' advances takes place during a most famous ride in a horse-drawn carriage along the streets of Rouen.

Like in all Allen movies, there is a character clearly designed to be played by the director himself. For reasons hard to understand, Woody Allen has not cast himself in this movie but has opted for Anthony Hopkins to play the part of Alfie, I guess Michael Caine was not available. There is one scene in particular in which this extremely fine British actor executes a series of gestures which are clearly the same Woody Allen would execute at this point. This is funny indeed, but I would have preferred to see Allen himself at this point.

The movie sparkles with Allen's marvelous wit, and one can safely ignore all the nonsense about this movie The New York Times has seen fit to print. To my mind, "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" is vintage Allen.

I Am Love (2009)

A weak Dougls Sirk imitation

[5/10 · 7 July 2010]

More than anything else, this film reminds one of the Douglas Sirk melodramas of the fifties. Like those, it has pretensions at seriousness within the format of what is basically a soap-opera. Here even the music is composed by John Adams, a major opera (NOT soap-opera!) composer, and in all fairness his musical score is by far the best thing about "I Am Love".

Tilda Swinton, the leading lady, has neither the beauty, nor the sensuality, or at least the glamour and ability to hold her own, required by the role of Emma. One has the constant feeling that she is acting, rather than living this part. Her acting seems to tend to a less than successful imitation of the younger Vanessa Redgrave, and this is very annoying, as it keeps conjuring up in one's mind what that great actress could have made of it all. Hand it to Sirk, his casting of Jane Wyman was much wiser.

Avatar (2009)

How to guard against the dinosaur's big teeth in 3-D

[2/10 · 18 December 2009]

Having liked "Titanic," I walked in to an IMAX theater to see "Avatar" hoping James Cameron will show us what a real feature-film director can do with 3-D technology, as opposed to all those documentary film makers having big fish swimming in water or having dinosaurs making little children cry by baring their plentiful sharp teeth at them. When, at show's end I walked out of the IMAX, I had the bad feeling that either 3-D may not be good for anything more than having teethy dinosaurs scare the daylights out of the kiddies, or a more talented director is needed to heed the third dimension's call.

Beyond its dinosaurs and colorful jumbo-birds, this movie has not much more to offer. Some may say that the floating rocks are an imaginative idea, but that idea has already been thought up half a century ago by the great Belgian painter René Magritte in his very famous "Le Château des Pyrénées." There can be no doubt that James Cameron is familiar with this painting, since his floating rocks happen to have the same shape as Magritte's, the only difference being that Magritte's rock is barren and supports a castle, whereas the "Avatar" rocks are covered with vegetation, and the folks living around them have yet to come up with the idea of a building.

There are chase scenes galore in this film, and the kiddies will be frightened, alright. Given all the "Star Wars" paraphernalia on show in "Avatar" a more appropriate title would have been "Tree Wars." But then "Star Wars" had a marvelous sense of humor, which is totally lacking in "Avatar." After a little theological editing, its silly politics could make "Avatar" a hit among believers in a great Satan.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

A Kafka of the Silver Screen

[9/10 · 18 February 2007]

Guided by his unmatched imagination, and masterfully using the German language as his tool, the thirty-two year old Franz Kafka has written "Metamorphosis", one of the deepest and most absorbing tales of world literature, devoted to a description of the artist's position in bourgeois society. Guided by a seemingly no less spectacular imagination, and a thorough mastery of modern cinematographic techniques, the forty-two year old Mexican director Guillermo del Toro has given us a magnificent, rich and multi-layered movie about the horrors of the Spanish Civil war.

Exposed to these horrors without any protection, a young girl tries to cope, by creating a parallel fiction-world of her own, in which she has a degree of control over the magical happenings. Like in all fairy tales, she is subjected to difficult "tests", while during the civil war the Spanish nation as a whole endures difficult "trials". The director cuts back and forth seamlessly between these two worlds, and while the spectator is under the impression of watching two stories unfold, one "real", the other fictional, they are more or less the same story, and in this very original manner, Mr. del Toro, with supreme artistry, paints a picture that, more fully than one would have thought possible, captures the finest nuances of human suffering.

In spite of the horrors they depict, the special effects during the fantasy sequences are of a rare artistry and conjure up images of Francisco de Goya's masterpiece "Saturn Devouring One of His Children", and somewhat surprisingly of the great American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin's "Feast of Fools."

At a deeper level, this movie manages to add a new insight into the fundamental and by now well-explored topic of the relationship between reality and fiction. In "El Laberinto del Fauno" reality and fiction are not each other's reflections, or extensions, but rather together they give an understanding that neither history nor art by itself could come close to conveying.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

everybody is at sea in this movie

[3/10 · 8 July 2006]

In this movie special effects don't only run amok, they even swim amok, but they are unimaginative, copied from other movies, and frankly …. boring. Boring is also Johnny Depp's performance. He obviously has been instructed to cut out the sexual ambiguity he overdid in the first installment of the Pirates series, and beyond that his acting ability seems to be on the limited side.

For a Caribbean movie it is .maybe appropriate if the actors seem to be at sea. Orlando Bloom certainly does. One has the feeling that they forgot to tell him who his love interest was supposed to be, and in his confusion he shared what little erotic interest he could muster for someone other than himself, between Keira Knightley, and Johnny Depp.

The story is of the type where every scene is lifted from some work old enough for its copyright to have expired: "The Flying Dutchman," "Captain Cook," the Road movies of Crosby and Hope, etc..

The only good thing about this movie is the performance of Naomie Harris in the small but important role of the seer Tia Dalma. It is intense, refreshingly alive amidst the general boredom, and yes, spellbinding, a clear Oscar candidate.

Friends with Money (2006)

All the faults of Woody Allen, but none of the genius

[4/10 · 9 April 2006]

A comedy without laughs! Not a single good line! Three women in their mid-to-late-forties (Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand and Catherine Keener) prance around with children between four and six years of age, and they all want you to believe they are bound to an unmarried, childless common friend from their youth, played by the thirty-something Jenifer Aniston. To their credit, the three elderly ladies emote and are quite believable, if not particularly interesting, human beings, whereas Ms. Aniston seems to still be vying for the Dorothy Parker award with that gamut of emotions "all the way from A to B."

Maybe the only slightly original touch is that instead of using a Deus Ex Machina the movie manages to resolve itself with the aid of a Slob Ex Machina played by Bob Stephenson.

Masquerade in Vienna (1934)

A Disappointing Relic

[4/10 · 2 October 2005]

Not quite what the legend surrounding it would lead you to believe, "Maskerade" is a quite predictable movie in a Schnitzlerian mode, stylistically akin to any of a number of better Max Ophuls movies of its time (e.g. "Liebelei", "La Signora di Tutti"), not to speak of such later Ophuls masterpieces as "La Ronde" or "Madame de". Willi Forst quite engagingly presents the social life of turn-of-the-century Viennese high society, much as quite a number of the characters he brings into play are stereotypes and character development seems to be outside his range.

The great Paula Wessely, an actress with few peers on the stage --- Edwige Feuillère and Laurette Taylor come to mind --- does what is a routine job as a predictable goodie-two-shoes character. On stage her voice was unforgettable (I saw her live once at the Burgtheater and once at the Akademietheater), the kind of voice you would love to listen to even in a reading of the Vienna phonebook. In this movie her splendid voice is not yet fully developed, but admittedly "Maskerade" was made when Wessely was still in her twenties. Moreover, though touched with a considerable amount of Viennese charm, Wessely was never quite a classic beauty like Isa Miranda, Ophuls' Signora, or Audrey Hepburn who would have made an excellent Leopoldine Dur.

Hans Moser does his shtick here like in any other Hans Moser movie, but without anything specific to set this supposed masterpiece above routine.

In retrospect, the funniest thing maybe is, that Olga Tschechowa, an undistinguished actress with good, though hardly very good, looks, afflicted by an unmistakable frigidity, was revered in the German-speaking world of her time (the Thirties) as some exotic femme fatale.

In the role of the dowager, the respectable Julia Serda pales in comparison with say Dame Edith Evans, the doyenne of moviedom dowagers. The Serda character's "In my days things were more exciting" gimmick goes well once, or even twice, but by the time it is getting to be repeated over and over, one feels that Forst is catering to the taste of some Viennese grannies and not to the needs of a movie of genuine integrity.

On the whole, the rather far-fetched story still manages to flow quite well. "Maskerade" entertains, but it also disappoints.

In the Cut (2003)

A movie about female sexuality served up as a film noir

[7/10 · 26 November 2003]

Two movies are being screened here, a run of the mill slasher with all the usual predictable trappings, filmed in gorgeous dark shades as a somewhat botched film noir, and a much more interesting movie about the sexual needs of a mature woman.

The sex scenes between Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo have something very unusual about them. The format we are used to in the movies is: man pursues woman, seduces her, and ends up getting his way with her and meeting his needs. Here everything is viewed from the woman's point of view and the sex act is not a "conquest" by a man, but a woman's conscious and deliberate pursuit of her own sexual needs. She is in control at all times.

In a voyeuristic encounter early in the movie the man literally becomes the woman's sex object in precisely the politically incorrect way that we have been taught to condemn as exploitation of women, when the tables are turned. For a male viewer it takes some time getting used to --- I would say it is even somewhat disconcerting, if not outright disturbing in the beginning --- but once you realize and accept what is going on, it fascinates in an entirely novel manner. This topic certainly deserves further exploration and Jane Campion deserves full credit for having raised it.

Saturday's Children (1940)

Birth of a Salesman

[7/10 · 25 February 2003]

This wartime movie about the struggle of a family in a still economically depressed New York environment, tries hard to entertain with its Neil Simonesque dialogue. Then comes the bombshell. When father Halevy (Claude Rains), a failure by anyone's, including his own, standards, realizes that his adored daughter Bobby (Anne Shirley) is headed for an unrealized life of failure not unlike his own for want of a mere one thousand dollars, he decides to give her this money the only way he still can, by staging a potentially suicidal elevator crash. The scene of Halevy's leaving home before going through with this scheme is very close to Willy Loman's corresponding scene in "Death of a Salesman." According to the credits, "Saturday's Children" is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play by Maxwell Anderson, which a young Arthur Miller surely must have seen. If it suggested the end of his major masterpiece "Death of a Salesman" to Miller, that alone would redeem this otherwise schmaltzy play/movie.

The Hours (2002)

Intelligent movie which finds relations between deep questions

[7/10 · 11 January 2003]

This movie is not driven by chase scenes, by actors smashing furniture or by cutesy stylistic frills. No, this movie is driven by ideas, it has something to say, and attempts to say it with great urgency. The three ideas at its center are

--- in the face of adversity what should determine the choice of life or death?

--- what is happiness?

--- how do the answers to the preceding two questions migrate from life to art and back?

These are supremely important questions and it is this movie's merit that it tries to come to terms with them. Does it? To a certain extent it does, but not altogether to the point of true illumination on any one of these questions. The dice are loaded. Both `successful' suicides (the Nicole Kidman and Ed Harris characters) are afflicted by severe incurable illnesses, so you'd say the choice for them is much easier and much more justified than it is for the third --- everything comes in threes in this movie --- `unsuccessful' suicide attempt (that of the Julianne Moore character). Yet by being made easier, the choice also looses some of its existential grandeur. On the other hand, both successful suicides, by their own admission, have known happiness and have nothing but agony to look forward to in their lives, whereas the Julianne Moore character has not known happiness. So we may not learn as much as we wish about life and death decisions or about what happiness is, but we do get to see the deep interrelation of these two questions. The movie's strength resides in the relative, not in the absolute. Life/death and happiness these are daunting absolutes, but their interdependence, by definition relative, is more accessible and defines the very structure of this movie: three stories simultaneously emphasizing the universality of the problems explored and their relative interdependence. Kidman plays the great novelist Virginia Woolf whose life and art both revolve around these questions. Ed Harris plays a poet only too familiar with `Mrs. Dalloway' Woolf's breakthrough novel, whereas much earlier his mother (Julianne Moore) reads that novel at the very time when her own unhappiness seems to drive her to suicide. In each case the issue of duty to the living, the ones left over, arises and is artistically distilled by Woolf into the beautiful sentence "Someone has to die that the rest of us should value life more." This insight directly connects life, death, valuing life, as good a definition of happiness as any, and ultimately by generalizing to `the rest of us,' translates it all into the timeless, the universal, the artistic.

It is also interesting how many other parallels are established between the three stories, the sexual ambivalence, the cooking, …

This movie could have easily transgressed into the didactic, yet with David Hare's superb screenplay we see full-blooded human characters act out their individual stories so that the bigger truths emerge naturally, but only upon further thought. Not even the slightest attempt is made at spoon-feeding them to the audience. The acting is awe-inspiring. Not only the principals, but even the small roles, for instance Kitty played so memorably by Toni Collette. The only weaker point is Meryl Streep's performance, which, while doing justice to the excitability, chronic depression and emotional exhaustion of the Clarissa Vaughan character, is built out of Ms. Streep's by now familiar mannerisms. One cannot help recognizing other past Streep characters in Clarissa's various crises and this interferes with one's --- in any case with my --- ability to take Clarissa seriously.

All in all this is an intelligent and intriguing movie, which while not breaking new cinematic ground, asks deep questions and discovers remarkable relations between them.

The Good Girl (2002)

Unfortunately a miss

[5/10 · 25 August 2002]

This could have been a gripping movie about a human tragedy induced by alienation in modern life. Unfortunately it misses due to some careless editing and bad casting. Justine's highfaluting philosophically inclined narration is totally out of character for that bored high school graduate salesgirl. Jennifer Aniston who plays Justine can convey frustration and pleasure and little else. One is reminded of Dorothy Parker's barb "She ran the whole gamut of the emotions from A to B." One cannot help but wonder what an actress like the wonderful Renee Zellweger might have done with this rich part. The only thing pathetic about the tragic central Holden character (a plum part) is Jake Gyllenhaal's performance. By contrast John C. Reilly gives a moving, carefully shaded performance as the husband, as do Mike White and Tim Blake Nelson in supporting roles. It is a pity because this movie had the makings of greatness.

Lantana (2001)

A "Short Cuts Down Under"

[7/10 · 19 January 2002]

This `Short Cuts Down Under' pays valid homage to Robert Altman, both technically and through the emergence of an interesting main theme: relationships originally based on a foundation of love are robust; they can withstand the tests they face after the passion is gone, when the ravages of time mar the once beloved faces, and the ravages of fate cut deep into the loving hearts. This endurance is hammered in at the end, in a manner reminiscent of Apotheosis scenes in nineteenth century opera, though admittedly no angels are seen flying about, not for want of the requisite special effects. This final Apotheosis flies in the face of the rather bleak picture painted through most of this movie.

The issue explored at a deeper level is that of the manifold ways betrayal can poison a relationship. This issue arises in three of the four central (and in one of the two `secondary') relationships, but with the exception of the Zats (Leon and Sonja), we only get to see the deteriorated state of the marriage after the crucial betrayal has taken place, and we are shown the strategies followed by the partners to paper over the ensuing damage. That these relationships endure is the point of the movie. The fascinating question as to how these strategies have evolved is left unaddressed. The other fascinating question is why the precarious equilibrium these strategies seem to maintain, is worth maintaining in the first place. The interesting answer provided to this question is that the two partners have an inexhaustible need for each other, probably to keep alive their belief in the love that started it all, and to keep alive the possibility of an absolution for the betrayal that ruined it. The Altmanesque structure of every character interacting with almost every other character in this movie (no six degrees of separation for any two of them!), seems to convey the message that in the presence of an outside world, the temptations which lead to betrayals are unavoidable The movie is well made and raises important issues. The acting is first rate throughout.

Episode (1935)

Wessely ....

[8/10 · 6 March 2001]

In the wake of "Maskerade", Wessely is typecast as the decent girl challenged by events. Although in her twenties, she already looks a bit matronly, but her energy and verve backed by acting nothing short of the superb and a unique screen presence make this a memorable though not a great movie. It's the kind of movie in which everyone, the rich art collector, his two Chopin playing brats, their supposedly dashing tutor --- an ex imperial officer, no less, played by the fortyish Diehl --- even the flaky dumb blonde, all manage to keep their charming naughtiness from degenerating into genuine meanness. Thank Goodness, Hollywood passed on the remake, for without a doubt they would have type-miscast Katharine Hepburn in the Wessely role.

Tempête (1940)

An acting tour de force.

[9/10 · 15 June 1999]

One of the best of von Stroheim's French films this side of "La Grande Illusion". He portrays a world-class charlatan who, freshly back from a 1938 one million dollar New York scam, (straightening, in blackface under the name of Carter, the hair of Harlem residents), resurfaces in Paris under the name of Korlick to sell shares in a development of the seaside of a yet to be created sea in the Sahara. French police are after him and the inspector in charge of his case (Andre Luguet) is married, you guessed it, to Stroheim's beloved daughter (Annie Ducaux). The police get their evidence against Korlick from a blackmailer (Marcel Dalio) with unsuspecting help from his singer mistress (the incomparable Arletty). This whole improbable story ends in a truly remarkable scene. Very much in the spirit of the "cinema de qualite", this movie is an acting tour de force. The story, in spite of its outrageousness, works at some operatic level. The father-daughter relation is reminiscent of and no less moving than that of Rigoletto and Gilda. Again, "La Grande Illusion" it is not, but then Bernard Deschamps, its "auteur", was certainly no Jean Renoir.

Affliction (1997)

a masterpiece, true art

[9/10 · 6 February 1999]

This is a movie which rewards at many levels. Its characters are fleshed out human beings capable of good and evil and in the grips of intense suffering, not the formulaic cardboard creations which populate so many recent Hollywood productions. The movie's atmosphere and mood are thick and the bleakness of the New Hampshire winter comes alongside its beauty and majesty. Paul Schrader achieves here what has eluded the Coen brothers in Fargo. The photography of Paul Sarossy is of a rare beauty and his compositions are breathtaking. Think of the scene of the two brothers in the barn lit by light sneaking in through the slits in the wood exterior, the beauty of the snow covered New Hampshire chalets, the camera receding from the barn fire until we get to watch it through a slightly off-center picture-window from the main house, and finally think of the snow in its serenity, its menace, its domination. The two stories are so naturally intertwined that one can spend most of the time convinced one is watching a thriller, until in the end this thriller dissolves into the main story which explores the violent undercurrents of human love and bonding. This whole is as thick and rich as cream.

I am in awe of Nick Nolte's spectacular performance. It is honest, complex and totally convincing. Nolte is ably supported by James Coburn and others. This is moviemaking at its best.

Requiem (1998)

Very possibly THE masterpiece of Nineties' cinema

[10/10 · 19 October 1998]

A Dumasian twenty years later the director of "La Salamandre" and of "Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000" has done it again, he has given us another major masterpiece, this time based on a remarkable novel by Antonio Tabucchi.

An attempt to account for and cope with the unpredictable, irrational and painful twists and turns of life, leads this film unambiguously to the doors of poetry, ultimately "personified" in it by the ghost of Fernando Pessoa. Never before has a film so remarkably embodied the very essence of the poetic art. Tanner has found its exact cinematic counterpart. This film does not lecture or philosophise, it engages the viewer head on in a both deep and deeply moving fashion.