A salesman of domestic appliances, down on his luck, is enchanted by a female evangelist: he uses his sales skills to join her religious movement, to promote the Gospel and to get closer to her.
An extraordinary film: it is impossible not to delight in theatrical trickster Gantry, who is played with great suppleness by Burt Lancaster. And each scene is shot through with an ambiguity, wit and irony that allows the film to breathe.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Postcards from the Edge (1990): review - 2/10
A cocaine-snorting actress is given a role on a film on condition that she lives with her alchoholic and domineering mother, who is also given to melodrama and self-pity.
There are far too few good jokes and cameo performances in this film to relieve the irritatingness of the main charaters- who are extremely shallow- and it drags on and on, rudderless, displaying that self-indulgence that often afflicts films about actors or film-making.
There are far too few good jokes and cameo performances in this film to relieve the irritatingness of the main charaters- who are extremely shallow- and it drags on and on, rudderless, displaying that self-indulgence that often afflicts films about actors or film-making.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Eureka (1984): review- 1/10
A prospector strikes it rich in Alaska, then builds a mansion in the Carribean where he lives with his unpleasant family, and is approached by speculators wishing to develop his island.
A dogs' breakfast of a film, boring and absurd (it even has a mystical element!), illustrating in its failure the tenet guiding all good pictures: concision and clarity are virtues in art.
A dogs' breakfast of a film, boring and absurd (it even has a mystical element!), illustrating in its failure the tenet guiding all good pictures: concision and clarity are virtues in art.
Mississippi Burning (1988): review- 8/10
Two FBI cops investigate murders in Mississippi: the superior is ascetic and fully committed to the civil rights project, while his accomplice, played by Hackman, is morally ambiguous and scepetical.
The film works through, with little subtlety, the imposition of Federal Law in a small southern town.
The relationship between Hackman and his accomplice- which could be illuminating about the attitudes of southerners who grudgingly accepted racial segregation- is not as enlightening as it might be. Equally, the black characters operate, as do the KKK policemen who oppress them- as caricatures.
Nonetheless, the film is extremely entertaining.
The film works through, with little subtlety, the imposition of Federal Law in a small southern town.
The relationship between Hackman and his accomplice- which could be illuminating about the attitudes of southerners who grudgingly accepted racial segregation- is not as enlightening as it might be. Equally, the black characters operate, as do the KKK policemen who oppress them- as caricatures.
Nonetheless, the film is extremely entertaining.
The French Connection (1971): review- 9/10
*
"That stuff is in that car"
Two narcotics police pursue a French based drug gang in New York and Washington.
The film provides provides a magnificent tour of the seamier neighbourhoods of New York, in beautiful fleeting images.
There are fine performances from Hackman as the downbeaten cop and from those he encounters: the scenes are often shot through with a certain Chandleresque wit.
Valdez is Coming (1971): review- 6/10
6/10
An aging sherrif, Valdez, has shot a wrong murder suspect: he approaches an unpleasant landowner for compensation for the suspect's widow.
Though solidly made, the film does not touch as it might because the standoff between Valdez and his landowner counterpart is not perfectly realised.
This might be because the landowner lacks the glamour that wicked characters need, or it could be because they do not mirror each other sufficiently, and the film therefore lacks moral complexity.
An aging sherrif, Valdez, has shot a wrong murder suspect: he approaches an unpleasant landowner for compensation for the suspect's widow.
Though solidly made, the film does not touch as it might because the standoff between Valdez and his landowner counterpart is not perfectly realised.
This might be because the landowner lacks the glamour that wicked characters need, or it could be because they do not mirror each other sufficiently, and the film therefore lacks moral complexity.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Great Expectations (1998): review- 2/10
2/10 (one star for Gwyneth's bottom)
A Floridan painter, of low social origins, is romantically fixated by a snooty rich girl he met as a child.
He goes to New York to succeed as an artist, and where he tries to get her to have sex with him. Apart from being snooty she has no personality whatsoever but that doesn't bother him because she is good-looking in that insipid way that seems to entrance some people...
A contemporary US take on Dicken's novel, laboured in all scenes.
WARNING: some scenes in this film feature Francisco Clemente's paintings.
A Floridan painter, of low social origins, is romantically fixated by a snooty rich girl he met as a child.
He goes to New York to succeed as an artist, and where he tries to get her to have sex with him. Apart from being snooty she has no personality whatsoever but that doesn't bother him because she is good-looking in that insipid way that seems to entrance some people...
A contemporary US take on Dicken's novel, laboured in all scenes.
WARNING: some scenes in this film feature Francisco Clemente's paintings.
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