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Reviews
Dick (1999)
Good Idea / Good Cast / Lousy Script.
What a waste of a great idea and great cast - all the leads give cracking performances and the concept of two ditzy teens getting muddled up with Tricky Dicky's Watergate Scandal is a novel one. However, in order to keep the movie mainstream and dumb enough the poor players are put through a load of lame gags and uninspired set pieces - the level of the humour is way below the 12 certificate the film carries.
It's unlikely that the audience this movie is suited to would know the name of current US president, nevermind the complexities of the bungled Watergate break-in!
Butterfly Kiss (1995)
Dreadful...
I am surprised to see how highly this film had been rated. It was very close to being the worst cinema experience in my life.
What could have been a good antidote to typical British fare very quickly turned into a tasteless, slasher story. Nothing wrong in that, it still could have redeemed itself had either of the two protagonists been interesting.
Amanda Plummer's hateful performance is almost too realistic. Poor Saskia Reeve's [whose been excellent in everything else she's done] really didn't stand a chance with such a lame script, playing a half-wit, beguiled by Plummer's loud, grungy, man-hating, killer.
Whoever thought that simply laying a Cranberries soundtrack over the death-by-baptism end sequence would make it gracefully moving deserves to be shot. I really felt emotionally empty when it finally crawled to its predictable and pointless end.
I don't know what amazes me more, the fact I didn't walk out, or the fact that the writer and director of this drivel has gone on to work again.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
A good book, finely filmed...
Far from being too long, this movie could go on forever, as far as I'm concerned. It has the depth and space required by any film trying to do justice to good novel.
A fantastic ensemble cast and solid, unshowy direction from Eastwood, make this, for me, possibly his finest yet. I loved the use of voice-over to do justice to the book's fine passages. Also, the temptation to over-sensationalise the gay affair at the heart of the plot was resisted, making Spacey's character believable. From scene to scene your take on him changes, at first sympathising and believing him and ultimately, like Cusack, discovering the truth.
I am looking forward to seeing this film a second time, as I think it has much to offer. It's typical that a film that deals with unsual themes, in a an unconventional, sprawling narrative, is going to be labelled dull and over-long. The fact is, if more films like this had a chance to be made, perhaps the 30-second-attention-span generation's pallete would mature and crave far chunkier food fit for the adult dinner table.
Eraserhead (1977)
An invitation to David Lynch's World...
As an admirer of David Lynch's work I think that Eraserhead is the most fitting introduction to this man's World as you are likely to get.
It was on the strength of this film that Mel Brooks chose David to direct Elephant Man. Having said that can't you see the similarities in style and content?
Saying Lynch is weird is like saying the Beatles wrote good pop music. Lynch's weirdness can effect one on a very profound, almost spiritual level, eg Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks.
Eraserhead is a hard film to enjoy but it's well worth the effort, if only for Jack Nance's superb visual performance, and a deeper appreciation of Lynch's mis-en-scene.