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Reviews
Winter of the Witch (1969)
I can't believe I found this!
For about the last 10 years I'd been having vague visual recollections of what I thought was a film I must have seen sometime between grades K-2 (circa 1975-1978) at Pinecrest Elementary School in East Lansing, Mich. It involved a kid named Nicholas who had some connection with a witch who made pancakes. I also kept picturing a three-chimneyed haunted house with pink and purple polka dots flying all over the place. Since nobody else who was in grade school at the same time seemed to have a similar recollection, I figured I was either hallucinating or simply a few fries short of a Happy Meal. So I finally googled the keywords "witch" and "pancake" and came across this book, "Old Black Witch," that featured a similar-sounding setting, with a kid named Nicky (and -- according to commentators on Amazon.com -- a racist subtext). So I punch the author's name into IMDb and I'll be damned, the film actually exists! I'm not delusional after all! I don't even remember if the flick was any good (it was certainly no "Paddle to the Sea" -- the other school-library classic from the period), but I'll give it a 10 just for the fact that it's not just a figment of my imagination.
I'd give it a 20 if I could actually get my hands on a VHS or DVD version.
Closer (2004)
Am I missing something?
Yuck. So many people have suggested that I'm unsophisticated for detesting this movie, suggesting that I can't appreciate "an adult movie for adults that uses intelligent dialogue and tries to delve into the nature of sex and love" (and one that also may be "brutal"). But I think Neil LaBute's stuff like "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors" -- which certainly fits all those descriptions -- is tremendous (and which I've seen "Closer" most frequently compared with). When I saw "Company," I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Its characters and settings were so brutally real that you desperately wanted to look away, but so compelling that it would have been impossible.
On the other hand, I thought the dialogue in "Closer" was not particularly intelligent -- it was more pretentious than anything else. It may have ATTEMPTED to delve into sex, but I've honestly seen that done with more wit in gross-out flicks like your average Farrelly Bros opus or "American Pie." And unlike LaBute's films, there was certainly no believable depiction of love -- a lot of talk about different characters "loving" each other but no development that actually demonstrated it. Brutal? It strived to be, but the attempts left me howling. Compelling? No way.
I will say that Clive Owen and Natalie Portman gave tremendous performances with what they had to work with (unfortunately Portman's character was very grating. Not her fault -- it was written that way). For that matter, each character was a caricature, and each attempt to make any of them seem human or real was totally unconvincing). Jude Law played himself. Julia Roberts gave a lot of pensive, sidelong stares.
I'm rarely this compelled to slam a movie. But I honestly wanted my money back, and after reading all the external reviews, I'm just baffled.