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Nadja (1994)
Gives "art film" a bad name
I'm probably one of the few people who saw this movie in the theater on its release... and I never, ever want to see it again. Easily one of the worst movies I've ever viewed. There are some good people in this cast, but how can they do anything with such awful, angsty, pretentious, self-important twaddle? And how can they act against terrible "performers" like Galaxy Craze, who delivers the worst acting job of the decade? (I see she's still working, I hope she has improved!) To make matters worse, a few weeks after seeing this, I saw Ferrara's "The Addiction" and it just brought up bad memories of this one again. I'm not sure which one is worse... on second thought, at least this one gave me a laugh or two toward the end.
Ride with the Devil (1999)
Unremarkable from start to finish
It was easy to choose a single word to describe "Ride With the Devil", because the word "unremarkable" fits it so perfectly. There doesn't seem to be a single thing in this film that is above average (although I'll bow to the other reviewers who say that its historical accuracy is very good). The cast is uniformly average - dull, uninteresting, playing characters with whom the audience has no empathy. Some good actors in the cast seem to merely go through the paces. Everything is flat - dialogue delivery and facial expressions are all monotonously flat and unexpressive. And I've read through all the reviews here, many of which single out Jewel for her "amazing" performance...but the only thing amazing about it is that she's not terrible. She is just as adequate, average and dull as every other actor in the film. Quite, quite unremarkable. The direction, acting, cinematography, script and plot, all unremarkable.
Memento (2000)
Its necessary restrictions cripple it
Perhaps since the storytelling technique - unfolding things backwards - didn't knock my proverbial socks off, I'm not terribly impressed with the movie as a whole. I did like it, and it was an enjoyable film, but in its self-imposed restriction of only allowing the audience to know as much as Leonard it becomes victim to that restriction. Some reviews here have mentioned good characterizations, yet I think that despite very good efforts by the performers, there was no room for character development because of the very limits the movie imposes on itself. Its greatest achievement is in leading the audience to believe that what Leonard knows - what Leonard holds as "certainties" - are all true.
MEMENTO is good, and worth seeing. I just feel that its own narrative rules, clever as they may be, prevent it from the "fleshing out" that it seems to need.