brunodutch Reviews

Man of Steel (2013)

Putrid

[1/10 · 24 June 2013]

Deafening, chaotic, and boring beyond belief this ridiculous mess has cured me of ever attempting to watch a so-called blockbuster action movie again. Everything is terrible. I supposed the effects are OK if you can see them through the distracting 3D. I have no clue what the plot is supposed to be about or who anybody is. I thought that Superman's Krypton mom would be the unintentionally funniest performance but that turned out to be Diane Lane. I can only imagine how boring it must have been to make, God knows it's boring to watch. Ugh.

Plus it cost $22.50.

Mermaid (2007)

Less to this than meets the eye

[10 January 2010]

Perhaps 'twee' is to Russian films what 'quirky' is to American. Either way it's a sickly confection that demands nothing from its audience other than it checks its brain at the door. One of the most narcissistically irritating heroines since the repulsive Amelie is able to do stuff for some reason. That the role is played by such an unappealing actress doesn't much help but it could have been Hepburn and it wouldn't have survived the director's insistent 'look at me' style and the archness that sucks out whatever life there might have been in the story leaving behind nothing but pretty-pretty photography.

This story was much better done in the 50s in Giraudoux's play Undine which, in fact, introduced Audrey Hepburn in the West End.

300 (2006)

Vile

[2/10 · 7 September 2009]

You all know the story: Hunks v Fags. Oh no sorry: Whites v Blacks. Oh no sorry Good v Muslims. This film could well come to define Bush 2. Its preposterous bloviating; its incompetent story-telling; and its lying about the past. Were the 300 a band of lovers? Men who fought beside their beloved so they would be more likely not to run? Many historians think so. And to see their story reduced to this jock-boy hard-on blood fantasy is truly repulsive. Hideous designs based on some comic book trash. The movie looks like a Colt porn flick minus the cum shots. It will come to be reviled in time as an exemplar of the terrible times in which we live when America has become the global villain, run by idiots for the profit of fools.

Big Fish (2003)

Tripe

[4/10 · 13 April 2009]

A bunch of talented people get together and make a putrid film and they title it Big Fish. Everything about the script is ghastly and it is put on the screen with great skill and professionalism. Full of thudding metaphors and, heaven help us, symbols, that might seem profound to high-schoolers but are simply cloying if one is over the age of consent. Very poor casting of Finney (who looks pretty well-fed for a man dying of cancer) and McGregor who tries way too hard to be charming. To say nothing of the extreme inauthenticity of both as southerners. Over-designed and under-written it ends with an image straight out of Kinkade. Emblematic of the film's aesthetic is the transformation of Jenny's house from a ruin into something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. The movie mistakes prettiness for something more. And its 'exploration' of the relationship of an estranged father and son is simply laughable. Kitsch masquerading as art. Ugh.

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)

Stupid designs hide performances

[3/10 · 11 October 2007]

Leaving aside the fact that the leads can hardly act they sure can dance. When the awful designs allow. Eleanor Powell wears some of the worst and most garish clothes I remember from a movie of this period. Even poor Fred Astaire is dressed in spangles for the start of the dreadful Begin the Beguine. That is the supposed highlight of the movie but is so overproduced and designed that the viewer gets worn out before the leads appear in simpler clothes and actually manage to dance with each other. Much more interesting is the opening Don't Monkey with Broadway, wittily danced by Astaire and George Murphy, the juke box number for Astaire and Powell, Astaire's charming solo, and the brief but amusing trio for the three leads right at the end. Oh, and lets not forget the dreadful Harlequin number which makes Powell look extraordinarily clumsy and which seems to exist to show off some fancy lighting cues.

The plot is not worth bothering about beyond noting that it's even more preposterous than usual for this kind of movie. The whole endeavor has a witless, leaden feel. I'm not surprised that Astaire didn't make another movie with Powell. She can't act a lick and has no sex-appeal. When they do get a chance to dance together they are both magic, but she challenges him as an equal, athletic and dynamic, an equal, not a decorative partner there to set off his easy elegance.

Match Point (2005)

Nonsensical Thriller

[2/10 · 2 May 2006]

Ridiculous thriller with an entirely unconvincing feel. I haven't lived in London for some time but it's nothing like the city in this movie. It reminds me of Hitchcock's late film Frenzy, also set in London, but a London that hadn't existed since the 30s. And the plot! None of it holds together for a moment. Who are these rich people? They don't behave like aristos. They don't talk like them. Are they nouveau riche? But they have the habits of old money. Or at least the pretensions. And how can an American actress be working in the UK? The union wouldn't let her. She seems to support herself effortlessly on one commercial? Do you know what that would pay? And JRD is just not up to it. Perhaps not his fault. The acting is never anything but functional. And all the opera malarkey is only there to add a specious gloss of culture and scale.

A dismal little film. I was only thankful he wasn't in it.

Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005)

Dreadful, inept musical

[1/10 · 23 April 2006]

One of the worst movies of this or any year. Stephen Frears proves yet again that he can make any actor or script look like garbage. Bob Hoskins is miscast; Judi Dench is always distinctive but wasted here. This is a movie that MGM wouldn't have shot to support their latest Grable release. I remember the Windmill. They don't even make the set look like the real thing. And it was a tit show for God's sake! What is the big deal? It was a sordid little girly show. Spare me the uplift unless it's in a bra. This movie makes less sense than the version shot in the 40s with, I think, B Stanwyck.

Dreadful script. Worse direction. Poor performances. And camp design. Ugh.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

Pathetic

[2/10 · 1 April 2006]

Dreadful 'sex' comedy that only the most repressed among us could find shocking. It's like being stuck on a bus with a bunch of fourteen year-olds. The plot makes no sense (they come after hours to play cards at the Best Buy-like electronics store where they work? And there are no security guards?) and the tone is set right at the top by a simple-minded sight-gag having to do with a morning erection. This is followed by Steve Carrel having trouble peeing, which is an OK idea till one remembers that you can't pee with an erection. That's the reason we have them in the morning. And so on. I only lasted about 20 minutes before the witlessness got too much for me. To judge from this, Steve Carrel doesn't have a funny bone in his body.

Compare this amateurish bilge with a real sex comedy like The Closet and you'll see what's missing. Talent.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Unbearably pretentious

[2/10 · 24 March 2006]

Although it's supposed to be a remake of 'Fingers', a movie I haven't seen, it's much more like a slick retread of Clifford Odets's 'Golden Boy'. Which could well be the source of 'Fingers'. Nothing about the film makes sense and the juxtaposition of music and violence is the kind of thuddingly literal symbolism that gives French movies a bad name. Interesting how the director strives to capture an entirely derivative 'authenticity' by trying to make Paris look like New York. The image of thug developers and victimized squatters is the sort of social commentary one saw in London in the 70s and as a plot engine in this work is laughable. The erotic complications of the characters are preposterous and seem completely arbitrary. The music is almost interesting. But the symbolism of the teacher who speaks no French and the student who speaks no Mandarin so that they can only communicate via the piano is right out of Lerner and Lowe.

Leaving aside all the other improbabilities, we are supposed to believe that a man who aspires to play the piano would ever risk his hands by beating people up. The only reason I can see for this is to make the hero some kind of tough guy, he-man instead of the kind of wimp who might actually care about music. And the whole plot seems to hinge on a chance encounter between the hero and his dead mother's agent. Or he planned to meet the agent. But if he did he wold have no way of knowing that the agent would invite him to audition so we're back to chance.

The incomprehensible title gives a perfect clue to the tone of the film. Tripe.

Family Fundamentals (2002)

wolves in fool's clothing

[6/10 · 10 March 2006]

The real problem with this film is that the so-called Christians are all so self-obsessed and vain, so full of the cruelty born of ignorance that it's very difficult not to hurl bricks at the screen. The Mormon has it worst. But in my experience Mormons persecute their gay children more venomously than any other denomination. In the case of the 'support group' run by the 'Spatula Ministries' (I'm not making that up) that the children of these half-wits talk to them at all displays a level of tolerance wholly undeserved. As for Brian and his mentor Bob Dornen... I can't for the life of me think why he would have wasted five minutes of his life on such a pig. His speech on the floor of the house is one of the more repulsive displays I've ever witnessed. Though he manages to be quite oblivious of his racism he revels in his homophobia. That the men and women persecuted by these fools have raised themselves to live useful lives and to find some measure of personal happiness in the face of such oppression speaks volumes. This is the real value of the film. I lost most of my family when I came out and have had no contact with my father for years. If I had to do it over I might well get this film and let them see it in the hopes that they would see their own behavior in the actions of these self-righteous bigots. In time let's hope young men and women won't have to go through such torture.

Making Love (1982)

Out on DVD

[8/10 · 8 March 2006]

I saw this movie for the first time last night and have been reading the comments here with some interest. Having read in the past that it was nothing more than a soap opera, to my great surprise I found the movie to be subtle and very stylish with fine performances and production values. It seems to me that the recent movie it is most like is Far From Heaven in that the writer and director of Making Love uses the same narrative strategy - recreating the Hollywood romance - but adds twists that illuminate what was not spoken of in the genre before. In Making Love (the title speaking to the difference between sex and love) we see the characters watch An Affair to Remember and there are other movie quotes of that genre. Claire and Zack share a somewhat improbable passion for Gilbert and Sullivan and have been befriended by an elderly woman (the great Wendy Hiller) who had loved a poet killed in WW1 who was a friend of Rupert Brooks, another poet killed in that war. So the theme of physical love being separate from emotional love and devotion is set up. This is the life that Zack refuses to accept either for Claire or himself in the scene in which he renounces their marriage, declaring that she must have a marriage in all senses of the word just as he must. Although they break up, in the final scene we see that Claire has settled for a good marriage, but one which lacks the heady excitement of her time with Zack. By naming her child 'Rupert' she, in effect, makes him be Zack's, the child they always wanted together. And Zack, too, has to settle for a good man, although not the man he first loved.

So it's an elegant and nuanced structure, given the sleek gloss that declares it to be quite frankly 'a movie'. It's an intelligent strategy in that it shields what might be a less than sympathetic audience from having to deal with anything too threatening. We've all read comments by those self-consciously straight posters who must insist on sharing how 'grossed out' they were. Stories of soldiers all but rioting at screenings of the movie. Such babyish acting out is still sadly very much with us. Indeed, it almost seems to be a sport for straight men - competing to see who can be most grossed out.

Other points of interest seeing this movie now: The gay bar. The men are quite ordinary looking. Compare this to the relentless 'hotness' of all the men seen in movie representations of gay bars now.

Of course the big difference is that AIDS is nowhere in sight. Though the epidemic may have been under way it's nowhere visible in the movie.

Michael Ontkean is very believable and his dilemma is treated seriously. And more sympathetically than the same dilemma in Far From Heaven.

Of course, having straight men play the parts distances the actors from the sex but again, the director deals with this by abstracting the sex into movie terms. It's no more or less real than watching Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.

How grown-up it seems. In some respects it is a more adult take than the current movie romance, Brokeback Mountain. It may be less frank about the mechanics of sex but it allows the characters to grow and achieve a realistic, adult life. Not perhaps having it all (though they do get have great apartments and clothes. but that's part of the style) but having something worthwhile and treating their regrets as an inevitable part of life. The final shot - very Douglas Sirk - of Claire returning to her domestic life while Zack takes a different fork in the road, sums up the movie's point of view with great elegance and wit.

So watch it. It's fascinating to see how far we've come and how much we've retreated. Compared to the dishonest posturings of Philadelphia this movie really has something to say and says it very well. Directed with enormous skill the performances are first-rate and Kate Jackson is more than that. It's a performance that should have led to a big movie career.

Oliver Twist (2005)

Beautiful, lyrical, moving

[10/10 · 27 January 2006]

A wonderful re-imagining of the story with a first-rate script and cast. I didn't see it in the movies - few people did - but it looks handsome enough on DVD. In an interview Polanski said that his aim was to make a story that his children could enjoy. After some looking around he settled on 'Oliver Twist'. What he and the writer Ronald Harwood have done is to conjure a world of cruelty in which the children suffer most. But that world can be changed by those who try to do good, who have compassion for others. The seemingly random acts of kindness committed by strangers are what rescue Oliver. His essential goodness and nobility are recognized instinctively by others. He reminds them of those they have perhaps lost. The final act of compassion is Oliver's visit to Fagin in prison where he is waiting to be hanged.

The vision of a society with no social conscience is harrowing. Industrialized capitalism in its first flush created what were perhaps the worst slums in Europe. Dickens's style and its excesses (he was writing to entertain a weekly magazine audience, after all) can sometimes get in the way of the story he tells, in this version of the novel the squalor of London's East End is wonderfully re-created.

It's interesting, I think, that this novel has been filmed by three great directors; David Lean, Carol Reed and now Polanski. Each of them brings something different to the story. Working under the greatest handicap in terms of script, Sir Carol Reed's great ability with actors makes even the musical poetic. But I think this new version is my favorite. The acting here is superb with wonderful performances throughout. This is the only version that understands Fagin's erotic obsession with money and jewels he hoards in his treasure box. He's a different take on everyone's favorite miser, Scrooge.

Based as it is on the Dore engravings it has an elegantly stylized look with seamless CGI shots like those in 'The Pianist'. Indeed, the story begins and ends in engravings which come charmingly to life as if some storyteller is saying "Once upon a time..." and at the end "They all lived happily ever after..."

A haunting, gripping film that has been completely undervalued here in the States. I am reminded of the recent version of 'Les Miserables' directed by Lelouch, another lyrical evocation of suffering, coincidence and triumph that sank like a stone in the murk of the U.S. box-office.

Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

One of the great achievements of American movie musicals

[10/10 · 19 January 2006]

My personal favorite and not just for the great selection of Berlin songs but because of its extraordinary storytelling. For some reason Henry King's work is often undervalued. At his best, as he is here, he has a marvelous way of staging big spectacles combined with an uncommon ability to focus the story. The scene of all the men marching off to war is worth the price of the DVD. Indeed the whole first 30 mins are perhaps the summit of the classic movie musical. The director embraces all the clichés and turns them inside out to make something shiny and new. The movie is packed full of people working at the very top of their talent. Don't miss it.

Time of the Wolf (2003)

Vile piece of work

[1/10 · 27 March 2005]

For this movie they killed a horse. On screen. Let me put that another way. A bunch of people making a sci-fi flick sat around drinking coffee and worked out how to kill a horse. That the horse died seems to have made them feel in some sense authentic. To me it's the action of a moral imbecile. It's fiction. A movie. Nothing needs to die to make a movie.

I've admired this director's films in the past - particularly 'Funny Games' - but this piece is badly thought out and incomprehensibly acted. It's really just 'Stagecoach' without a coherent narrative. Its vision of some kind of disaster is only credible if you don't think about it.

I should add that I saw no more of it after the death of the horse. But by that time the script, when it could be understood, had already veered off into some kind of parable. Which tends to be what people write when they're reaching for Big Thoughts but don't have anything to say. Plus, it's all so dark it's extremely difficult to tell what's going on. Perhaps it's easier on the eye in a movie house. But then they kill the horse.

This is the kind of nonsense that gets art films a bad name. It's also a retread of the much better Bergman film 'Shame'.

You'll have guessed by now that I did not have a good time watching this tripe.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

extraordinary dreamlike fable

[10/10 · 19 March 2005]

Though I'd heard of this film for years I'd never seen it till last night. After its disorienting opening (purposefully so) it settles into a strange dream state that suggests the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. I can't think of any other American film quite like it. Perhaps Citizen Kane. I thought most of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. I certainly would not call it an example of noir thriller or horror. It's that rare thing: a movie without genre. Laughton was a very great actor and, judging by this film, quite a director, too. The cinematography and design are extraordinary throughout. Some of the most remarkable images I can remember in a film of its time. It almost suggests the current fashion for graphical novels in its stylized, subjective angles and set ups. The acting, too, is strange and unlike most other movies. It's very theatrical and very effective. Some people have complained about what is seen as a corny, tacked-on ending. But I don't think it's that at all. Gish is a kind of Old Lady Who Lived In a Shoe. She collects stray children at risk in the world (though her love was unable to save her own son from some unexplained misfortune) and defends them against the evil that stirs at night. As in a fairy story, when the danger is past, the good characters are allowed to celebrate. Though in the final image the black smoke pouring from the chimney is ominous. Strange too is the erotic atmosphere that surrounds death. His knife that opens like an erection. Then there is the drowned woman. And how handsome and sexy and scary Mitchum is. I can't think of a better performance by him in any movie. And the children are superb. Altogether a unique and haunting film, beautifully realized. And looking gorgeous on DVD. I recommend it highly.

Bolero (1981)

Masterpiece

[10/10 · 23 February 2004]

Magnificent movie. Overwhelming. I was interested to read that it had been drastically shortened. In places it's not easy to keep the story straight. The only aspect I thought not good was the American story. James Caan is not good and Geraldine Chaplin is bizarrely cast. But. Having said that, I can't think of many other movies with a similar sweep and ambition. Personally I still prefer Les Miserables; but that, I think, is one of the best movies of the last ten years.