Change Your Image
Gustave
Reviews
Les invasions barbares (2003)
Tedious and Self-absorbed
You know those movies or TV shows where they show old people
swearing or speaking graphically about sex and you are supposed
to find it all so radical, bawdy and saucy? This is one of those
films. From start to finish, Director Denys Arcand wrings "warmth"
and "wisdom" from each scene like he's strangling a cat. Not a
single cliché is left out. A dying history professor is an astute
philosopher on his deathbed and his wicked life of womanizing
and familial neglect are but symptoms of his "love for life." Why,
even a long-time junkie learns to embrace her own life and go on
methadone after spending time with him and benefiting from his
pearls of wisdom. (And you can just tell that she's a junkie
because -- even though she has perfect luminous skin -- she
wears lots of scarves and occasionally scratches at her face.) She
in turn teaches his son about the importance of life by throwing his
cell phone (the international symbol of greed) into the fire. It's
one of those movies that expects you to ignore its empty, clichéd
plotline by sprinkling each scene with lots of "educated" characters
who spout lots of "intellectual" sayings. And when that doesn't
work, he literally has the camera focus on the erudite books that
they own. One saving grace of the film is that it made a pretty bold
statement about the failures of the Canadian healthcare system.
Unfortunately, it also inadvertently made a pretty bold statement
about the failures of Canada's film industry too.
Caroline in the City (1995)
Worst thing on TV right now (cept for "Suddenly Susan")
Due to a recent wave of nostalgia for the seventies, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" has become recognized by many critics, historians and viewers of Nick at Nite as a landmark TV series that captured perhaps better than anything else on TV at the time the social changes that took place in the US following the turbulent sixties and women's liberation. The series focused on a single woman (Mary Tyler Moore previously known to America as the perfect embodiment of domestic femininity playing Dick Van Dyke's wife) whose job and friendships gave her life meaning at a time when most women
were only beginning to realize that there was more to life than being a wife and mother. Mary Richards was the perfect seventies heroine in that she was a woman nearing middle age stylishly with the domestic social values of fifties/sixties behind her and the sexual liberation of the seventies in front of her. A woman who has been trained her whole life to be subservient to men is now working amongst them, standing up to them and gaining their professional and social respect.
Lately there have been a plethora of shows that attempt to do what MTM did in the seventies. "Caroline in the City" is one of them, "Suddenly Susan" is another. Unfortunately these shows are taking place in the wrong time period because neither "Caroline" or "Susan," female characters who grew up during the sexual revolution and the AIDS crisis, have any adequate justification to feel overwhelmed by the prospect of being a working woman without a husband. A woman who choses work over marriage is no longer an edgy premise for a sit-com.
Caroline (Leah Thompson) is a cartoon artist who has recently moved to New York having grown up in the midwest. She struggles to preserve her small town values in the fast paced world of the big city. In order to give Caroline's character the innocence that MTM had, the writers keep drawing on her midwestern upbringing as a contrast to her cynical sarcastic native New Yorker friends. I don't know where this woman supposedly grew up but I don't know how she could have been living in NYC for as long as she has and still hasn't gotten over it. While MTM often seemed overwhelmed by the crassness of her female friends and her male colleagues because she was brought up in an era where she just may have been innocent of such behavior, Caroline remains overwhelmed by her New York friends for no other reason than she looks cute when she's overwhelmed.
A typical show goes something like this: Caroline gets really excited about something old fashioned. Her friends "wise cracking" Annie and "cynical-black-wearing" Richard (who is such a closet case and for some reason we are supposed to believe he's in love with her) get annoyed by her pollyanna attitude and make fun of her. She gets upset and gets even and the cynical New York gang sees the importance of Caroline's small town values. The End. There is no character development. There is no plot line that doesn't resolve itself within an episode or two (cept for her on-again-off-again romance with the closet homo Richard). There is no chemistry between her and her friends and Leah Thompson is simply too old to be acting cutsey.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
get rid of the first act....
I was about to shut off the VCR because I was watching for what seemed like hours and Laura Palmer hadn't even appeared on screen yet. I love Chris Isaak and yet I didn't have a clue as to what that whole part about the first murder of that girl Theresa had anything to do with anything. I mean, the first murder was important to the plot but they didn't need to go on for so long about it.
As soon as Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer appears on screen, the movie became hypnotic. It connected with me in a terrifying way that I felt was even more effective that Blue Velvet or Eraserhead.
I was a little disappointed with a couple of things though. Moira Kelly as Donna: what happened to Lara Flynn Boyle? Why didn't she sign on? Also the drug use. There are lots of scenes with people doing coke and no one seems to really know how someone on coke acts. Everyone just acts drunk.
I bet that if they just eliminated the first act and started the movie when Laura first appears on screen, the movie would totally work as a whole. I recommend everyone who watches this movie to hit the fast forward button on their VCR until they see a blond high school student walking to school.
Stepmom (1998)
Hire a babysitter!
I was really looking forward to watching Stepmom which was being billed as a movie which takes a hard hitting look at divorce and re-marriage -- I was in the mood for a good cry. Almost everyone I know, including myself, has been divorced or had divorced parents. Going through a divorce (especially when you have kids) or watching your parents divorce can be a horrifying experience even in the most amicable cases.
Stepmom turned out to be as insightful about the American divorce as Hogan's Heroes was about life in a German POW Camp in WWII. All the characters, who in real life would be at each other's throats, speak to each other with so much maturity and sensitivity you have to wonder who their psycho-pharmacologist is. Every conversation sounds like one of those role playing games you do in group therapy. We are supposed to feel that Susan Sarandon coming to forgive Julia Roberts and accepting her as a member of the family is such a great miracle of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness but they didn't seem to get along that badly to begin with CONSIDERING that one of them is marrying the other's ex-husband. The ugliest scene between them is when Susan Sarandon is horrified to discover that Julia Roberts has (gasp!) let her daughter wear lipstick. And the tension between Julia Roberts and the kids: if I had gotten along with each of my stepparents as "badly" I would have been dating them.
About 90% of the tension is caused by various communication problems involving who is taking care of the kids or who is picking them up from school. Well, since Susan Sarandon's home includes a stable with three horses and Ed Harris and Julia Roberts' Tribeca loft looks like something priced at $3 million at least, I don't see why someone couldn't have hired a baby sitter and chilled out already.
Showgirls (1995)
No! Me!
You know how there are all those films out there (I can't think of an example of one at the moment) where our idealistic heroine moves to the big city to become a ballerina and instead has to earn a living as a stripper until she finds the fighter within and realizes her dream as a ballet star but finds it's lonely at the top so she leaves the city and goes back to her roots?
Well "Showgirls" is different. It's about a girl, Nome (get it, "No Me" or "Know Me"?)Malone (Elizabeth Berkely) who's already found the fighter within. She dreams of becoming a dancer in Las Vegas but instead she has to earn a living as a topless dancer in Las Vegas (but in a club that's kinda tacky!) but then due to intervention by another topless dancer ( a lesbian who does coke a la Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct,"), Nome realizes her dream as a topless dancer star but finds its lonely at the top. So she beats the crap out of the Michael Bolton clone who rapes her best friend and leaves Las Vegas to go back to her roots: topless dancing in some small town and doing crack cocaine.
The makers of this film swear that this was not supposed to be parody but rather an unflinchingly honest look at the underbelly of the entertainment industry.