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Reviews
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
special
Cohen is the Michelangelo of comedy. Perhaps due to the change of director there are some glitches in the filming. Logic goes missing. When Borat talks into the camera is it a Spinal Tap moment or a soliloquy? Pity....cant tell... so one is dragged out of the pleasurable experience. Most impressive is the discomfort Cohen puts himself through to make this film.... Beckett puts his characters in mounds of sand, Cohen nearly swallows a co-star's balls. Genius. The actor who plays Azamat gives what is probably the greatest 'enabling' performance in the history of comedy. Who knows what he has done before but it cant possibly match the contribution he makes here. His genius matches Cohen's... with the special exception that he was not part of the creative process. Nevertheless without this character's total believability, Cohen - Cambridge-polished - will gag at such a word - the film would have missed an important ingredient. Perhaps this great comedy will introduce the sort of hard-hitting 'entertainment' which will expand the horizons of narrow thinkers.
Il deserto dei tartari (1976)
Neglected masterpiece
This extraordinary film sprang from a fertile time in world cinema. In the USA the medium was experiencing heady creativity but in Italy such exceptional ability was expected. To see it now is to witness movie making at its most devoted and personal. Zurlini casts it brilliantly. The acting by an acclaimed cast is both restrained and gut wrenching. Adapted from a classic novel, which I have not read, it leaves its literary provenance behind while still managing to address what are normally literary obsessions: existentialism, nihilism and romantic futility. Visually the film is stunning and makes a mockery of the ghastly special effects which in a film like Gladiator make the world seem like a landscape of precious celluloid grey. It is filmed in the middle east in a now earthquake-torn ancient town. If one didn't know such a place existed one would think that special effects had accomplished impossible beauty. But no, its all real. And all spectacularly realised.