Change Your Image
Bert-82
Reviews
Angela's Ashes (1999)
Best seller ill-served
A movie of Frank McCourt's bestselling memoir was always going to be a box office smash and that is the only reason I can see that Alan Parker had to be associated with this project. Biography isn't really his oevre and, while he has worked in the area of working class social realism, he hasn't really tackled the issue of poverty. And here is the problem :- there is no narrative in the book, it is a collection of incidents linked by three major themes (poverty, class & [like "Angel At My Table] the heroes' rotting teeth). Parker even throws away the minor theme (which grows through the memoir) of a desire to return to America. The result is a mess of pottage. It is as if Parker hasn't even bothered to read the book (and, incidently gives more screentime to Malachy's alcoholism than Frank does). It's as if the old Victorian melodrama fable of the poverty stricken family linked to the drunken father is irresistable to Parker - irresistable but he's unable to actually DO anything with the dramatic cliche. The film is ill-served by some very peculiar camera-work. For instance : the early parts of the film are all shot down at the level of young Frank but the POV is looking down on the action (i.e. camera low, set far away, and framed at a downward angle). For all sorts of reasons this is wrong: not the least being that it distances the audience from the characters by making us appear to sit in judgement upon them.
Candyman (1992)
Half of a good movie
Half of a good horror film is right here. The problem probably goes right back to the source material - I am not a fan of Clive Baker who specialises in the horror of pain & death, a subject that is naff (I am NOT saying I am squeamish. I get to see plenty of the blood and guts stuff in my job so I find it in movies pretty boring. Same as cemetery's. After 30 years living close to the biggest one in the Southern Hemisphere I find the atmosphere of cemeteries soothing rather than creepy, the opposite of what most horror films try to make you feel. The opening to "Night Of The Living Dead" - that works for me). Back to the main programme ... The trouble I have is with the second half of the movie where it moves from urban legends/paranoia into a trite formulaic rehash of Universal's "The Mummy" via H. Rider Haggard's "She" (which has literary antecedants of its own). At this point the film becomes violent and down right silly i.e. an entity that claims only to be the personification of the Candyman myth goes after what it claims to be the reincarnation of the real Candyman's lover - uh-huh?
Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)
Unsatisfying
Unsatisfying but adequate sequel to "Candyman. Instead of focussing on the theme of the original (urban myths) we get an attempt to turn Candyman into a continuity character. The format is very stale although this version of it is stylish (although I have never like Clive Baker's idea that horror consists of depictions of pain). Candyman is not very spooky in this film because we are manipulated to feel sympathy for his plight (his humanity rather than his mythos is emphasised. Without the mythos Candyman is nothing more than a deranged serial killer indulging other people's suicide fantasies but without a will of his own. Hardly the stuff of great horror!) The combination of humanity and lack of free will destroys the narrative (and any suspense which can be derived from it). The essential tension in horror is between the inexplicable and the unexplained. Too much explanation here.
Gladiator (2000)
Big disappointment
My nephew, Matt (10 yrs old), summed up the picture very well when he said as we were leaving - "That Roman Emperor was REALLY whiney". There is a problem inherent to all gladiator movies - people come to see them for the fight sequences and not the plot. Not even Stanley Kubrick could surmount that problem (which, in reality, is a studio problem i.e. the grafting of studio morality, storytelling and themes onto a foreign stock). Thus we have a VERY long movie, full of fight sequences, and when there is no fighting there are certainly people trying to tell us about IMPORTANT themes that appear nowhere else in the story. Then there is that studio morality thing. Rome is not America. Neither is the conflict between Imperialists and Republicans one of freedom (both sides wanted slavery). And, in the end, what is the story about. Nothing but a pathetic and rather far-fetched Hollywood revenge fantasy.
I am a fan of director Ridley Scott. He does some wonderful things with candlelit scenes. The action scenes are fun (although the slo-mo/strobing gets tedious over the length of this piece). Also a delight (not to mention an in-joke) having Derek Jacobi. In toto, however, the film is a big disappointment.
Free Willy 3: The Rescue (1997)
Save The Wails
Sam Pillsbury (who, incidently, was born in the US but raised in NZ despite what this database says) left these shores to direct the excellent "Eerie, Indiana" series and a number of thrillers. I don't think this film will feature prominently on his CV. Basically the script keeps to a format and the format has become so stale everyone performs in a by-the-numbers fashion. I get the feeling this movie was made for profit rather than love of the characters. It focuses on a simplistic "message" rather than the more complex problem of looking at "issues".