lklee99 Reviews

Man on the Train (2011)

Spectacular Failure

[1/10 · 17 April 2012]

Is it a quasi morality play? A screen writing exercise in how to mire an audience in empty exposition? A "page 40 problem?" An experiment in shallow focus and shallow characters? Maybe they just couldn't figure out how to end it? Was it a bad investment? A satire of a drama? Wait. It's not worth the time to wonder.

Consider this short opinion a gentle warning. Larry Mullen Jr., Donald Sutherland, and Graham Greene are the only three positives in The Man on the Train--although I can't imagine what they saw in the script, if there was a script. I regret that I'll never have that hour, 40 minutes, and 10 seconds of my life back.

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

A lesbian vampire film, with attendant clichés

[1/10 · 29 April 2007]

I watched this film carefully, and then tossed it. Instead of a tale about manipulation, loneliness, crises, fear, and forgiveness (subjects on which the film is admirably cogent), the screenplay is marred by an insistence on focusing on the subtextual and contextual m.o. of the supreme manipulator, Judy Dench, who strives to achieve a lesbian conquest.

Dame Dench is alternately written as a desperate spinster lesbian (straight out of Well of Loneliness), a vampire preying on young girls, a delusional stalker (who evidently needed a restraining order), and a contrived, "evil" woman motivated by lust. This is nothing but a bad caricature of other bad caricatures: The Children's Hour, Basic Instinct, Maedchen in Uniform, etc. I'm surprised such simplistic, sloppy, phobic writing is still perfectly acceptable across continents. One of the worst films I've seen in at least 2 years, and that's including Smoking Aces.

The Most Terrible Time in My Life (1993)

Deathless style

[10/10 · 29 December 2001]

Please do not mistake this film for pulp. Pulp is by definition tawdry, which this film is not. It isn't greasy. Or slapped together. Or sensational and passing and cheap. This film wasn't made to be read through like a paperback and discarded.

The style, beautiful. The lighting, meticulous. The mood made the hair on my arms stand up. Watch this film.