Change Your Image
JLRoberson
Reviews
The Human Stain (2003)
Self-Important, Badly Plotted Oscar Bait
I very much like Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins, and Gary Sinise for that matter. And all do a great job as they always do, though Kidman, thanks to Robert Benton not knowing when to cut when she's on camera, crosses the line for the first time from "tragic" to "self-pitying"(I'm thinking of the heavy-handedly symbolic scene with the "crow that doesn't know how to be a crow", where she goes on WAY too long after the point has been beaten to death). So why did I get so mad when watching this? Let's just leave aside the Roth book, which I've not read, and look at this movie as a MOVIE, period.
I suppose, firstly, because so few films deal with the subject of PC madness(OLEANNA dealt with it far better), the fact this film starts off running with it--and quite well--and then mostly just drops the thread after that, I was offended at the cheap use of the subject to give a boost to what ultimately is just a rather bland, barely tragic doomed-love story.
Second, it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be--except that you can tell it wants to be an Oscar-winning one. This is exactly the kind of film one expects between November and February, after all. It jumps around with no rhyme or reason, not concluding scenes so much as losing interest in them. The film has a kind of deadly slow ADD. The attempt might be a fractured chronology, but Robert Benton really doesn't have the chops to hold such a thing together. It seems just poorly edited and structured. One loses the threads(there are two or three major ones) of the plot very, very quickly--I stopped caring about this movie about 35 minutes in.
Thirdly, I never cared for any of its characters at all. That's not necessary in all films but it is in this case--if we don't care about Coleman Silk, why then should we care if his life was destroyed? Young or old, he simply comes across as a selfish jerk regardless of his rightness, and we're supposed to sympathize with him solely because he was dealt two horrible injustices.
The ending has a very bitter, "stuck for an ending" quality that reminded me of the hideous, pointless ending of Breillat's FAT GIRL, and angered me--for the wrong reasons, and at the filmmakers, not Kidman's crazed ex-hubby--greatly.
A very dumb movie done by very talented people. Not enjoyable, not profound, not tragic--barely even really there. Disappointed!
The Shining (1997)
Boring, Redundant, and Long
Proof once again that Stephen King has a tin eye for film and has no idea how to effectively adapt his own work. This version has no mystery, no scares, and explains far, far too much at every twist and turn for fear even one person in the TV audience might be confused. This Danny is butt-faced and far too precocious, in fact making you wonder--given this Wendy(who, unlike the underrated Shelley Duvall version, one cannot see staying with Jack even a moment after he broke their child's arm) believes in Danny's powers--why they ended up going to the Overlook in the first place. The digital effects are laughably cheesy: a fire-hose with fangs that looks like something out of a razor commercial, and the hedge animals; speaking of which, how hard can it be to get the effect of beasts that only move when you're not looking? These look terrible, like blobs of green mercury sliding across the landscape. The ghosts all have blue skin and terrified me about as much as a cloudless sky. And Tony is shown here, and looks like John Denver. OOO, CREEPY! Add to this a diabetes-inducing ending that isn't in the book even, and you have a waste of 6 hrs. you could be doing something more useful, like drinking yourself to death.
It's accurate to the book--except the tunnel scene--but now we see that an accurate adaptation simply doesn't work in this case as a movie. Kubrick's is a masterpiece. This is prosaic, shallow and dumb. Don't see it.
Jabberwocky (1977)
Underappreciated and Astounding Film
This is in retrospect a far more substantial work than HOLY GRAIL, the film it most closely(superficially) resembles(because both films show the ugly, muddy, crap-filled medieval world one sees in Pasolini's CANTERBURY TALES, which heavily influenced the look of both films). I feel it gets short shrift because it's subtler and quieter. Don't watch this film if you're looking for quick, easy laughs.
The film is about the way capitalism profits from panic. A monster who savagely devours people is terrifying the countryside; everybody wants to get into the city--the effect this has on things like agriculture & so forth is obvious. Prices go up, famine reigns, & the merchants & church couldn't be happier at having a captive market--so much so that when the king decides to find a champion to kill the monster the merchants hire an assassin to kill him. Does this sound at all like the world we live in now?
Plus which it's a good insight into the medieval mind; substitute the Black Death for the monster and you have the situation in England throughout the 14th century. The presence of Palin is misleading. This is not a Python film and should not be seen as such. It's an original vision of Alverson & Gilliam's and well worth watching, several times.