Change Your Image
davebennett88
Reviews
Endless Love (2014)
Endless Predictability
The girl is really pretty, the boy looks much older than 18, and the plot is mushy, unrealistic, confusing and yet predictable.
Not a single one of the actors playing the top 5 characters in this movie was even born in America (they come from England, Australia, and Canada), yet they play Americans. Lowly mechanic and valet "David's" accent betrays him at times. He's supposed to be 18, she's 17, and elder brother Keith around 19, yet the actors' ages at the time of shooting were closer to 24, 25, and 26, respectively...and it showed.
I kept wondering when I would see the signs that the girl was a brilliant honors student bound for an ivy league pre-med program, but instead saw a wide-eyed child more at home drawing unicorns, shopping or making goo- goo eyes. I kept wondering what the father's motivation was for his visceral hatred of David. Did the writers really think people these days still act so class-conscious? Pretty in Pink is 30 years old, and even back then, the "rich tread on the poor" class-warfare theme was a stretch. For a kid (David) who apparently aced his SATs, chose to remain loyal to his jilted dad and his business, and who treated the girl (Jade) with a good deal of respect, the rich girl's dad could have done a lot worse. Yet he remained relentlessly hostile and even evil to David.
Spoiler alert: The viewer has a feeling something's going to happen to change the dad's mind, and, courtesy of a neatly timed, drama-laden car wreck, house fire and clumsy rescue scene, his heart finally softens. "I tried to save him," he suddenly admits to David in a strange, non-sequitur moment, referring to his teenage son who had died from cancer, "but I couldn't." Wait...what? You're a cardiologist, not an oncologist, and what does your son's tragic death have to do with the unfaithful, jerk-like way you've been behaving?
I lost track of the series of plans the kids make: first they're okay with the impending separation, then she's going to cancel a summer internship, then he's going to try to get into college too, then, then that goes awry, the dad files a restraining order to keep David away, and they're going to drop everything and run away together. By the end I don't know who was going where, or what ever happened to the dad's restraining order. Did he lose interest in what his daughter's education plans would be?
I got confused, but that may have been my mind's predictable drifting, kind of like the plot. Rather than hurt your head, try this: if you have an ear for beauty, listen to the original theme song, and if you have an eye for beauty, watch a couple clips of the frolicking Gabriella Wilde. You'll get the same amount of pleasure but save 2 hours of your life.
Havana (1990)
Casablanca for Commies
This film only has 4 problems with it, that I can see. 1. Its raison d'être. 2. The screenplay. 3. The acting. 4. The directing. The actors, devoid of any visible passion, sleepwalk through their lines. The attempted "style" Pollack seems to be shooting for rings as tinny and artificial as Hollywood. The Left-loving and sun-damaged Redford does his best to act debonair, but maybe a bit too much. Lena is stunning as always, but her Prozac-induced acting serves only to make the film mildly amusing...and very mildly at that. The movie was doomed before Pollack ever yelled "action." It's as if a film school teacher hastily threw together a bunch of ingredients straight out of Casablanca, then instructed "only make it set in Havana...go!" and expected a masterpiece. Asking a viewer who's not a socialist himself to care about a cause as nefarious as Castro's Communist Cuba is a stretch for anyone with a modicum of patriotism and knowledge of history, no matter how beautiful the leading couple may try to be or how many gratuitous flesh scenes are thrown in. The parallels to the classic "Casablanca" are numerous and haranguing; from the film's city name to the suave man-about-town leading character who wonders if he should sacrifice his personal desires for a(n allegedly) greater cause, to his illicit love interest's being a married Swedish woman loyal to her husband's political passion. Besides being a shameless rip-off of an actually good motion picture, this film flops because it fails to make us care about anyone in it. Other than left-wing ideologues, who would ever feel moved to care about an adulterous gambler and a couple of communist revolutionaries? Victor Laszlo was on a valid mission--to combat the radical politics of worldwide domination, tyranny and murder. Rick and Ilsa fell in love before he ever found out about her marriage, and we cared because we felt they belonged together, yet understood the more compelling cause that forced them to remain apart. This film tried to copy a similar formula with the cause of Communist revolution, but we all know the results: a dictator far more murderous than Batista, who has kept his country mired in misery and mediocrity ever since.
Nine (2009)
"Nine" is a self-indulgent sack of camel vomit
For a moment I thought the movie might be a gimmick to cast as many of Tom Cruise's ex-wives as possible. Then I went into a vegetative state and zoned through the next hour, before reading the back of the DVD box and fast-forwarding to the final scene. Finally I decided it was the unholy love child of "An American President" and "Mama Mia."
The box read, "a man is faced with crises of creative writer's block on the eve of shooting of his 9th movie, and of relationships, as he tries to juggle several women" (most of whom are not his wife), or words to that effect. Yet at the end of the evening, that was ALL this movie was about. Oh, and casting as many big names as possible so that afterwards, folks could say, "did you see how good Sophia Lauren looked? Did you see Penelope Cruz sing? Was that Kate Hudson?"
This movie is self indulgent on so many levels. For example, how arrogant is it for a writer-director who can't think of a point for a script to make a movie about a writer-director who can't think of a point for a script? Why cast all those big stars to perform out of their comfort zones? Could he really not find any new, young talented singer-dancers to introduce? Or was it just easier to go for the big name box office draws? In other words, the concept was flawed from the beginning, and the execution of casting was questionable at best, cowardly at worst.
The only almost good thing about the movie was that there were many hot dancers in the background of various cabaret numbers. Well, excluding Judi Dench pretending to be French, yet refusing to even try to speak with a French accent. Then she sings with a French accent. Huh? Come to think of it, there were a lot of actors and actresses struggling to speak with foreign accents or mask their own. Daniel Day Lewis does his best to play an Italian. Which is just one example of how all over the map this film was.
Then suddenly appears Kate Hudson, whom I didn't even recognize at first. The actress I used to think of as "that skinny, ugly, breast-less daughter of Goldie Hawn" becomes, in this movie, "that pudgy, ugly, breast-less daughter of Goldie Hawn...with a smoker's voice and too much make-up." So why was she cast? She wasn't pleasing to look at. Was it for her singing? No. It was more like braying. Kate, take some vibrato lessons.
The viewer is hit over the head with all the subtlety of sledge hammer: "Oh, how intriguing...this poor artist still can't think of what to make his next movie about, yet as he stresses and daydreams, he envisions stunning hit after stunning hit; smash numbers, every one! I know! Why doesn't he just make the movie about all those breath-taking singing and dancing performances he's just composed in his mind??" Because (1) disjointed singing numbers don't tell a story. You can't have random, stream-of-thought numbers, one after the other, converge into a coherent story, no matter how badly you want to. Also, (2) as good as each song is, none is THAT good or interesting, especially when you realize what the indulgent, narcissistic premise is.
How can a movie be good when you don't care about anyone in it? This film has all the soul of a movie star. It somehow manages to glorify adultery, yet be a prudish tease, by suggesting promises of coming nudity, yet never delivering. If you buy into the notion that it's fun to watch a big-shot movie writer-director be fawned over in hero worship, that it's cool to see someone so famous going through stress at work as his unending fan base kisses his butt, then you're in that shallow demographic that also liked watching "An American President," despite the fact it was by, for, and about America-hating liberal policies. Or you liked watching a 59-year-old actress karaoke her way through her favorite Abba songs in comfortable overalls for 108 minutes. (Wretch!)
And the big spoiler...the final scene, where the cast of characters is finally in place, and the director orders "Action: The end." Really? I'd have given the movie a 1 out of 10, but "Mama Mia" has yet to be outdone. This film has mediocre (at best) musical numbers, keeps the audience thinking that something interesting is about to happen, but it never does, and completely lacks any point. If you are that superficial, and that shallow, and if such things intrigue you, then you will just love "Nine."