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Reviews
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Prize-winning performance from Scott L Schwartz
Apart from any other merits that this film may have,the Dick van Dyke award for the worst attempt at a London accent will be undoubtedly be won this year Scott Schwartz. An awful accent combined with mock cockney rhyming slang adds up to an insult. And Mary Poppins was a better film
Magnolia (1999)
Double whammy - mind and bottom numbing.
I thought Mr Ripley and American Beauty were over hyped but this film wins the award by miles (well one hour anyway). The suggestion that this is a great film has little basis. At one hour less than the 185 minutes it runs (strolls) for, it might be considered a good movie.
This film is a cracking example of being less than the sum of its parts, the performances are generally excellent particularly Philip Seymour Hoffman as a wonderfully sympathetic character, the music is haunting and thoroughly appropriate and the claustrophobic camera work is reminiscent of European film making at its best. Tom Cruise as a sex supremicist however is paper thin and totally unconvincing.
Who cares about these people? They are not sympathetic or interesting characters and with the benefit of a week's hindsight very forgettable.
Lacking the grubby edginess of Boogie Nights and the cleverness of Short Cuts, this film is to be avoided unless you have a steel bottom. Don't encourage directors to bring out flatulent films like this by giving them entrance money. Only David Lean manages to make three hours seem like one and this is no Lawrence Of Arabia.
Following (1998)
An intelligent, compact noir.
After all the overblown, overlong films I have seen recently thank goodness to find a real gem. Gritty, twisted and intelligent. Watch Hollywood grab Christopher Nolan and give him large budgets. Lucy Russell looks just as if she could walk into Philip Marlowe's office and kick start Bogart.
You've Got Mail (1998)
When the movie sags the director gets Meg to screw up her cute little face in close up
If you loved Sleepless in Seattle but wanted Meg and Tom on screen at the same time a little bit more, then this is for you. The chemistry is there and it is SO romantic but it overstays its welcome by 20 minutes. You know when you walk in what is likely to happen but it takes so long to get there.
Either Meg Ryan or Tom Hanks are in every scene and the world revolves around them. Other characters are allowed to glimmer for a moment until their two dimensional images are carted off back to the props department. The trouble is the other characters are more interesting and the potential for sub plots involving a dictator's mistress, an amorous future step mother and Meg Ryan's employees is wasted to return to Tom and Meg and their linear travel towards each other.
I love romantic feel-good movies as much as the next red-blooded Englishman but I felt cheated as the formulaic nature of the Nora Ephron plot envelops you like a warm but wet blanket. I would have given it the benefit of the doubt but when the band struck up "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", I realised that I'd been suckered. Meg Ryan's cute, screwed up face, whilst it seemed to make all the men in the cinema sigh almost inaudibly in unison, is not enough to rescue the film. It is however the best thing in it.
La vie rêvée des anges (1998)
Great acting but a plot would help.
I've lived in France too long and get cynical about light weight French films that think that angst, love triangles and sledgehammer social comment are good substitutes for a plot and even a mild level of enjoyment.
In a nutshell this film represents French cinema. Fantastic acting, miserable plotting and under-funded. I hope that Elodie Bouchez gets a chance in something a bit more high profile but probably Hollywood will tempt her with a crock of gold to play in a crock of s***.
Priest (1994)
Tender and well acted - one for the brain cells
I'm neither gay nor Catholic but found this a very personal film. The traumas of living a lie and finding yourself in a the midst of a theological mindfield make for great drama but this film also works as thriller (will he be found out), social commentary (is it patronising to consider poor people are not responsible for their actions?) and moral fable.
Great acting, typical gritty script from Jimmy McGovern and a series of taboo subjects that many would not wish to see dramatised.
One small criticism. Aren't there any other, new Scouse actors out there or at least those that can act it. On a line through the Liver Birds, Boys from the Blackstuff and Bread, all the minor parts are played by very familiar faces. One day it would good to see a Merseyside drama without the Prime Minister's father in law and Jimmy Ellis.
Gli schiavi più forti del mondo (1964)
As an 9 year old, I thought this was the greatest film ever.
Going to Saturday morning pictures in the UK was a great way to spend the weekend . From the age of 7 I went to the Regal in Hammersmith, London and saw series, cartoons and feature films like this. As far as I was concerned, as a 9 year old, this was the ultimate in film entertainment. Exciting, other worldly and exotic , I confidently stated it to be my favourite film at my interview for senior school at age 10.
Of course I realise, nearly 30 years on, it is unlikely to be anything other than undiluted tat of the first order but now I am a mature, urbane, sophisticate and then I was a wide eyed youngster prepared to believe that 7 slaves could take on Rome and heroically put the enemies of Christianity to the sword.
It made me love the cinema and for that I am grateful.
I remember the title as "Seven Slaves Against Rome".