fce2 Reviews

Charade (1963)

Dated and bland

[4/10 · 28 May 2017]

With a whopping 8.0 rating, I expected it to be a fun 60's ride similar perhaps to "Penelope" or "Pink Panther". Turns out to be nothing like these. It's slow and talky. The mystery is barely there, the romance is unbelievable and the comedy and thriller bits get tired quickly because of poor script and heavy-handed direction. Rather than charming and feminine female character I always turn to older movies for, Hepburn is cold and hysterical. No help comes from unmotivated Grant, and Matthau, Coburn and Kennedy are all underused. The most dumbfounding disappointment though is the location: despite being shot in Paris, the movie stays mostly inside seedy hotel rooms and offices, and even when the action takes us outside, we're treated to process shots and fake backgrounds. This gives the film the hopeless, depressing feel of a Disney sitcom, where you know nothing exciting is going to happen as the plot won't escape the constrains of the 5 rooms it's trapped within.

Pros: Henry Mancini score, some witty dialogue in the first act

Cons: Boring, contrived, claustrophobic

He Was a Quiet Man (2007)

It Was A Quiet Nap

[2/10 · 5 August 2009]

I'm only writing this review to warn those who think a movie with William H. Macy and Christian Slater can't be all bad. It is.

The only reason I'm not giving this garbage 1 star is because I've fallen asleep around an hour into it. So while the film experience itself was a torture, it did lead to a peaceful state of my mind in the end. It must have been a defensive reaction of my brain, as I wasn't even tired. The most interesting part of that evening was the plot summary, and ever since I had read it and decided to watch this particular movie, things were going steadily and continuously downhill. And I don't mean just boring; think incoherent, intelligence-insulting, frustrating, annoying to the point you're getting aggressive. Seriously, the DVD of this movie would be a riot if it included a video game allowing you to smash the characters across the face with a baseball bat or packing Elisha Cuthbert's constantly whining mouth with hot lead. All this to the incredibly lame movie soundtrack that stops suddenly once you finish off the main boss - the composer - in a long, exhausting beatdown. Now that's entertainment.

Unfortunately when I'm writing this, the interaction with this movie is limited to turning the volume down or removing the DVD out of the drive. While the former helps through the soundtrack and Elisha's bitching, the movie still inflicts torment on so many levels you'll be wishing you had slept through it too...

The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

And..?

[5/10 · 27 November 2008]

This movie isn't boring, but it's nowhere near exciting or suspenseful either. It's biggest problem is, what's the point? Steve McQueen waits for the game, he plays the game, he loses the game. The end. 2 hours after I started watching the film, my life ain't changed a bit. I wasn't even particularly moved by the Kid losing everything, as his opponent's character was classy and sympathetic and Lancey's win also meant Slade's betting money going down the drain. I don't find poker exciting at all, so the game itself didn't deliver any suspense, and to top it off its outcome was as predictable as they come. The Kid losing all the money in one hand kind of symbolizes the film's failure, as nearly all of the drama is supposed to be in the poker game.

The film has some more problems. As other reviewers point out, the anachronisms are insulting to the viewers intelligence - unless, like myself, one didn't read that the movie was supposed to take place in the 20's or 30's beforehand. The movie was released in 1965 and most of the settings, costumes, hairstyles etc. look pretty much like the 60's. The only things hinting at the 30's are black people exclusively staffing all the low-wage jobs (bellboy, waiter, shoe polisher) and Kid taking a bus to visit his girl (a successful American gambler in the 60's would fly+taxi or drive instead). In fact I had found these things as anachronistic, before I educated myself reading the forums after the movie ended.

"Cincinnati Kid" concentrates so much on the poker game, that a whole bunch of interesting possibilities are ignored and left unresolved. What's "Cincinnati" about the Kid? What's the meaning of Lancey's presumed illness? What's the card trick about? What experience causes The Man to recommend to a fellow player not to bond with a woman? More issues while I'm on it: the movie treats us to a bloody, graphic cock-fight that serves no purpose at all (talk about pointless violence, Pulp Fiction-bashers). The Shooter character is supposed to be noble and respectable while coming across as weak, neurotic and eventually succumbing to a blackmail (what Slade had on him anyway???). Additionally, we're supposed to believe that a fun-loving hottie in Melba would fall for and marry this strawberry-nosed, boring old guy. The movie generally drags and the characters don't develop enough to really empathize with them, although you can feel the potential is there.

A strong redeeming quality of the movie is the acting. Ed Robinson is perfect as always, Steve McQueen does his usual blueyed subtleness and both Tuesday Weld and Ann-Margret deliver good performances as well as extremely good looks (plus a sweet voice on part of Tuesday). Rip Torn does the best one can do with an one-dimensional villain role and similarly Karl Malden with his annoying, incoherent character.

Generally, good actors turn this movie from a waste of time into a fairly engaging experience. Watch for Steve McQueen or sexy Ann-Margret but don't look for the advertised drama here..

Mystery, Alaska (1999)

Only In America

[3/10 · 17 April 2006]

Caught this late night on TV and got interested by the presence of several well known actors in something that obviously looked like some made-for-TV soap. Checked the IMDb and it turned out to be actually a big theatrical movie, but this was the last surprise that happened to me that evening.

Not sure with whom the NHL teams use to spar, but the movie makes quite a big deal of one friendly between NY Rangers and a team from a small town in Alaska. So big it's what actually the whole movie is about! Being a fan of a 1st division football club that plays multiple test-games against some 5th or 6th division amateurs every season, usually away from home and often televised, I find the whole fuss difficult to understand. But it does provide a mildly amusing atmosphere that I suppose counts for the "Comedy" tag the movie got, as there's barely anything else funny there. Certainly not the premature-ejaculation type of jokes or the played-out one-liners.

Elaborathing further is not worthy of my time. The story is clichéd beyond belief, predictable and boring. The jokes are corny. The music sounds like produced by some one-click-soap-track-generator. The acting is way over the top. The whole movie is a sappy piece of cheese.

Interesting only for die-hard Hollywood soap "connoisseurs" or for ones who might dig Russel Crowe sporting some strange mullet and a fur hat.

Szansa (1979)

Well acted story of compensation syndrome

[9/10 · 24 September 2005]

Caught this one late night on TV yesterday, would have skipped it quick as I've already seen my share of clichéd, depressing dramas my country used to flood the market with during 70's and 80's - but the acting looked decent and tempted me to watch the whole thing. It was a good decision - the movie is typical for its times with it's bad lightning, unnormalized sound, ugly chain-smoking people and grim settings - but these factors turn out to be advantages as they combine with good script and remarkable acting to form a honest and realistic picture. Jerzy Stuhr never fails to deliver and is as usual a pleasure to watch as he strives to defend the values of culture and education while the school is being dominated by the sports coach, whose ambitions create a chance for a success in a tournament - but who seems to be using the team to win what he had lost. The movie well depicts the ways of gaining power in communist Poland and the struggle of people like Stuhr's character to do the right thing in such an environment.

Although overshadowed by many good polish movies from late 70's, it definitely stands out above the rest. Recommended for lovers of east-European cinema and locals alike.

Wise Guys (1986)

One of the best mob comedies ever

[9/10 · 21 July 2005]

I've just caught it on TCM and can't wait the 5 weeks till it comes out on DVD. This is a gangster spoof at its best, full of lovable characters well played by top actors of the mob genre. Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo make a great loser couple, Dan Hedaya stars as the dreary mob boss, whose henchmen include Frank Vincent and hilarious Lou Albano that steals every scene he's in. We even get to see Harvey Keitel in a classy supporting role! The plot is simple and has been done before and after, but rarely with such charm and lightness. With a current rating of 5.2, it's a severely underrated gangster comedy able to deliver entertaining evening for every fan of the genre.

Closer (I) (2004)

A Movie To Dump Your Partner To

[3/10 · 23 May 2005]

From the very first notes of the horrible opening music, I knew I was up for a pretentious pile of garbage. By the time it ends with the same crap song you'll wish it'd been just an annoying dream you had while napping to that track, but the sad news is these 2 hours will really have passed and you gained nothing out of it. Unless you got there just to see the Natalie Portman's campy strip-dance that makes Elizabeth Berkley in "Showgirls" look like Rita Moreno.

I can imagine Hollywood suits brainstorming about an original romance to make - original ideas still get audience, so there's a market demand for them - but as everyone knows, they're not really good at it, so they just take an average romcom and reverse everything. Instead of sympathetic characters we get a bunch of shallow creeps. Feelings are replaced by instincts, morality by lack of it, and relationships are formed in sole purpose of breaking them later on. The ending is of course, sad, as opposed to sugary epilogues of formulatic romances, and the cars drive on left, because most of the action takes place in England. Long story short, it's just as worthless, clichéd, stupid and tasteless as most of Hollywood romances, the only difference being it's depressive. I figure it's because it's not aimed at teens-who-believe-in-the-love-for-life, but at their cretinous parents-divorced-multiple-times who believe that having 3 broken marriages makes them emotionally mature and experienced in the subject of love. No wonder it gets Hollywood critics off - finally a movie with characters they can identify with.

I'd recommend about a random french romance to see theme of unfaithfulness tackled in a way that won't insult your intelligence. "Closer" is to be avoided unless you're looking for a movie to take your partner to and dump him/her afterwards.