Three young women with very different personalities are forced by circumstances to go on a trip together. One has a serious illness, another has some problems with the law, and the third, while not plagued by anything as menacing as her companions are, has some chronic problems of the social and romantic types.
Semi-romantic, semi-melodramatic and utterly unexciting chick flick. The behavior of the characters is not always understandable and seems on occasion to be motivated more by the need to make the "story" move through its "necessary" steps than by true psychological plausibility. The writer even resorts to introducing a "psychic" character which is rather outrageously out of place. On the other hand, the dialogue at times injects intelligent social commentary to the drama.
Rating: 32
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Blue Velvet (1986)
Second viewing; first viewed on June 14, 1987.
A young man returning to his hometown during his father's illness gets entangled in a criminal case which he decides to investigate on his own, with some help from the police detective's daughter.
A much talked about movie which does not deliver as much as its reputation would make one expect. I saw in it mostly a moderately amusing parody of adolescent films of the late fifties and early sixties. The one I can summon without much mental effort is The Blob, but I am sure there are others. It is uncertain whether a finer analysis of the film as a social critique (or as anything else, for that matter) would be a rewarding enterprise. I confess to not understanding exactly why I felt so averse to it on my first viewing. I could not find my earlier notes about it, but I remember being annoyed by what I considered to be the filmmaker's simple-mindedness. I was in error, perhaps, as now I see this simple-mindedness as rather the object of the filmmaker's critique. My present objection is to the film's inconsequentiality.
Rating: 47 (up from 30)
A young man returning to his hometown during his father's illness gets entangled in a criminal case which he decides to investigate on his own, with some help from the police detective's daughter.
A much talked about movie which does not deliver as much as its reputation would make one expect. I saw in it mostly a moderately amusing parody of adolescent films of the late fifties and early sixties. The one I can summon without much mental effort is The Blob, but I am sure there are others. It is uncertain whether a finer analysis of the film as a social critique (or as anything else, for that matter) would be a rewarding enterprise. I confess to not understanding exactly why I felt so averse to it on my first viewing. I could not find my earlier notes about it, but I remember being annoyed by what I considered to be the filmmaker's simple-mindedness. I was in error, perhaps, as now I see this simple-mindedness as rather the object of the filmmaker's critique. My present objection is to the film's inconsequentiality.
Rating: 47 (up from 30)
Friday, December 02, 2016
The Borgias (2011-2013) (TV series)
Historical drama. The show's last season was cancelled, leaving the story incomplete.
While the production values are first rate, and there is an overall good taste in the mise-en-scène, this series lacks a real punch. The most curious thing about it is that the actors who play Cesare Borgia and his henchman Micheletto physiognomically resemble respectively a wolf and a fox.
While the production values are first rate, and there is an overall good taste in the mise-en-scène, this series lacks a real punch. The most curious thing about it is that the actors who play Cesare Borgia and his henchman Micheletto physiognomically resemble respectively a wolf and a fox.
Le dos au mur (1958)
English title: Back to the Wall
A man finds out that his wife is cheating on him. He keeps this fact hidden from her, and proceeds to blackmail her under a false identity.
Ingenious thriller, with all the right plot twists and turns, and good performances from the cast.
Rating: 59
A man finds out that his wife is cheating on him. He keeps this fact hidden from her, and proceeds to blackmail her under a false identity.
Ingenious thriller, with all the right plot twists and turns, and good performances from the cast.
Rating: 59
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