Reviews

I love Johnny Depp and I love Tim Burton. Together they can be sublime. Look at "Ed Wood" and "Sweeney Todd" Here, well here they seem kind of lost. Everything is in over the top tones without getting to the root of anything. The performances are shrill and disconnected with the exception of the wonderful Helena Bonham Carter. The script is underwritten and the story is tired and unconvincing but in the present film going landscape it is more enjoyable than most others. I'm tempted to advise Mr. Burton and Mr.Depp to be a bit more daring in their intentions. We're all aware of Burton's visual wizardry and of Depp's remarkable beauty and talent, why not put all that at the service of something meaningful?

Irritating at times but only at times when the writer, director, producer puts himself in front of the camera and all we see it's him. But, most of the time this is a surprising, smart comedy of pains with a sensational Annette Bening - her best performance without a doubt - her disintegration is, apart from everything else, shattering and absurdly entertaining. She descends her psychic road wrecking havoc wherever she wants to do "the best thing for you". Under the effects of the medication and the advise of her con-shrink she slides away, brilliantly. Alec Baldwin has three little moments that he manages to wrap with so much truth that his character lingers in my mind. Well, there you are, I'm talking about the performances because that's what makes this movie really fly. Jill Claybourgh, Joseph Finnes, Brian Cox, Gwynneth Paltrow, Evan Rachel Wood and Joseph Cross with his literary future and his thing for hair, they all transform this stranger than fiction real life tale into something memorable, yes, memorable. I don't quite understand why this film was so mistreated by critic and public alike. I found more rewarding elements here than in most of what 2006 had to offer at the movies. Give it a try.

Strange what happens with some movie experiences one has as a very young person. "La Leçon Particulière" is one of those films that I've been trying not to see again because I have a tingling memory about it and I know it could reproduce today that tingling sensation that provoked in me then. Well, I was right. I saw it, and although the film is as light as a feather I could remember what was it that made me love it. It wasn't the gorgeous "older woman" played by Natalie Delon (Mrs Alain Delon then), but Renaud Verley. I though he lighted up the screen and he did. I predicted then an enormous career for him but other that a smallish part in Luchino Visconti's "The Damned" I've never seen him in anything else. His beauty, sexiness and charisma will be forever stored in this little film. That in itself is something to talk about and to recommend it for.

Exactly. That's at the core of zero. "If that is a mask, take it off now or keep it on forever". In a way is like saying I don't care who you really are as long as you're here, with me. Pretty nifty premise for a thriller. I call it a thriller because that's where you find it, under "thrillers" but for me is as far away from a thriller as "Persona" - that could be considered a thriller too - "Apartment Zero" is one of the most powerful love stories ever put on film. It's not unrequited love that keeps Adrian and Jack together but exactly the opposite. Their tragedy is that they've never loved, not really, never anything real. Adrian has his prematurely deteriorating mother and his movies and Jack, well Jack confesses that when he killed his first person, he really loved it and when he's saying it, in his eyes there is no hate but love and a sort of romantic melancholy. It's chilling, it's disturbing, it's superb. Superb like Colin Firth's performance. He goes to the depths of zero and comes out with something we rarely see on the screen. The truth! The hardest truth to tell, the most personal the most intimate. The truth in all its innocence in all its ugliness in all its twisted varieties. Hart Bochner is the perfect tempter falling into his own trap. What a credible devil. I'm talking about it now because I bought the DVD, I hadn't seen the theatrical version, only on tape and I had resisted the temptation of seeing it again because I have a powerful memory of the film and 9 times out of 10 the experience of seeing a loved film after many years is kind of depressing. Not with "Apartment Zero". If anything, now in its original theatrical length, it has acquired something extra and whatever it is, it's very moving and very powerful.

I admire Gonzalez Inarritu's balls and his talent of course. He opens himself up for a barrage of criticism and ridicule but at the end his genius wins. I saw the film months ago and I still think about it. I haven't seen it again because the recollection is so powerful and I don't want to mess it up by seeing it again intentionally. The Mexican woman with the white kids in the desert has become part of my nightmares. What an enormous thing for a movie to accomplish. I'm giving it a 10 and not because I "like" the film so much but because I saw myself coming to the conclusion that the film is a masterpiece all on my own. It inspires respect. Christ! I can't believe I'm saying that but I am and I'm meaning every word. In a way it reminds me of Bunuel's "Viridiana" a film that I hated so much it has become one of the most important films of my life. Go figure. To be disturbed. I mean deeply disturbed is a strange experience and I suspect that it has to do with being confronted by the truth.