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Reviews
The House of Mirth (2000)
Almost Perfect
The only thing preventing me from giving this film a '10' was Gillian Anderson's uneven performance. At times, especially at the beginning of her character's journey, she seemed uncomfortable in her body, in her clothes, with her words. Unless the film was shot in sequence (which I highly doubt), it's just a coincidence that, as the film progresses (and her character becomes less comfortable), Anderson appears more to relax into her environment and performance. The other borderline performance belongs to Dan Aykroyd, who always seems to play the same womanizing buffoon, regardless of era. Stoltz and Linney are both brilliant (and if I'm not mistaken, they have considerably more experience with period pieces), as is LaPaglia.
Beautiful costumes, locations, cinematography, music -- all come together perfectly. A caveat if you're not familiar with Wharton's story: despite the title, this is a bleak and depressing film. But a wonderful one.
Urbania (2000)
Stunning -- literally
Within the first 30 seconds, I knew what had happened and was happening, plot-wise, but that didn't stop Urbania from riveting me to my seat as it played out. Anchored by Dan Futterman's outstanding performance, the 1500+ edits spin us between backstory, present story, reality and fantasy, confusing the audience only as much as Charlie (Futterman) himself is confused. When I left the theatre, I needed an hour to absorb what I'd just watched. I think people who have dealt with violence close to them will have the strongest reactions to Urbania.
In some ways, this is a very New York film -- I saw it with a bunch of Toronto-based critics, and many of the lighter moments completely went over their heads. And there are light moments, which makes the next emotional wist of the knife even sharper.
My only complaint -- and I guess this is a slight spoiler -- is that for a mid-size budget, I would have expected higher quality blood. 16mm captures colour and contrast incredibly well, and the blood just looked like red paint.
Anything else I could say would be a spoiler. If you like getting inside the brains of characters, go see this.
Innocence (2000)
Refreshing and stunning
Exceptional story, script and performances all around. Beautiful cinematography (and colour-editing in the flashback sequences). Julia Blake is making my early list as a 2001 Oscar nominee (even if she is 30 years older than I am and looks 10 years younger). It's about time a feature film showed mature people as something other than asexual, jolly old grandparents. Criticized by some for being too 'sentimental,' I found the story fairly realistic -- it doesn't take the easy way out, even if the ending is predictable. Still, I cried all the way through, not out of sorrow, but out of feeling for the characters.