We are in the fifth year of a bloody war in Iraq with no end in sight.

The wounds are still open. Our nerve-ends are still bleeding.

Watching In The Valley of Elah within such a historic context is not possible without going through a range of burning emotions.

This Paul Haggis (of Crash) written and directed work is a downer for sure. I can't see how one can watch this movie and feel good about ANYTHING. Period. It should've been rated triple-X if the idea is to save our kids from a mental breakdown.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 2% [?]

Just like in Einstein's universe light beams bend while passing around large celestial objects, Marlo Brando was also a giant of American drama, bending all the rules and changing everyone that came into contact with him.

He was a combustible original. He more than anybody else defined what it meant to be an “American male hero” in the post-WW2 era.

Without his volatile acting paradigm and personal example there probably would not be a James Dean, Robert De Niro, or Al Pacino, or perhaps even a Johnny Depp.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 7% [?]

Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975) (Les Innocents aux mains sales) is another Claude Chabrol crime thriller with familiar plot elements: a young and gorgeous woman married to a man much richer than herself; the sea and the confrontation in a boat, etc.

The film features two mega stars: Lovely Romy Schneider as Julie Wormser and volatile Rod Steiger as her impotent but rich husband Louis Wormser.

Add to that the young stud-next-door Jeff Marle (acted by Paolo Giusti), and you've got yourself a classic explosive triangle that does not fail to produce some deadly fireworks.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 2% [?]

I know this is going to be hard for most of you to believe, especially after my confession in the 27 Dresses film review, but I kind of hated Evening.  I know!  It seems ludicrous that I would even think to utter such a statement.  It’s practically the very embodiment of a “chick flick,” but it just wasn’t convincing enough for me.

Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson play sisters who come home to say good bye to their terminally ill mother, played by Vanessa Redgrave, who is actually Richardson’s mother.  Redgrave’s character, Ann, begins talking what Connie (Richardson’s character) thinks is feverish nonsense about “Harris.”  The younger sister, Nina, played by Toni Collette, is intrigued to think that her mother had an alternate life that she never even hinted at with her daughters. Continue Reading

Popularity: 9% [?]

As far as Michael Haneke's Funny Games (2007) is concerned, there is another and third level of analysis the basis of which I tried to establish in the second part of this meditation.

By stripping off the protective layer of redemption within which all crime thrillers and even slasher movies are wrapped, Haneke is actually denying us our human yearning for better tomorrows.

He is declaring that we have no RIGHT to HOPE for anything better in the future.

He assumes the DISCONNECT between his reality and our images is proof enough of our eternal guilt.

The worst point Haneke misses is this – denying us the right to maintain hope through symbols and narration is tantamount to saying that we have no right to ANY art, period.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 4% [?]

Marlon Brando upset a lot of people with his specific interpretation of the Nazi officer Lt. Christian Diestl in Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions (1958).

The politically incorrect Brando tried to infuse the Dieslt character with a heroic sub-text.

He even suggested that at the end of the movie he should come down from the mountain where he was hiding with arms open, like a Christ figure.

Montgomery Clift, who was playing the American infantryman Noah Ackerman, threatened he would walk off the set if Brando did that.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 4% [?]

This Man Must Die (1969) (Que la bête meure) is a Claude Chabrol thriller with some of the same structural elements shared by quite a few of his other films like the sea as an important background element and a nasty antagonist introduced in mid-plot who dominates the rest of the story.

A little child getting murdered is another Chabrol motif that is repeated here. Perhaps Hitchcock was correct when he said all directors mainly shoot the same movie over and over again throughout their careers.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 2% [?]