Reviews

Criticism of this film has focused on its refusal to be as political or revolutionary as Lennon himself - I don't think it's such a bad thing. Of course, not all films turn into Michael Moore-style propaganda pieces the minute they endorse a political viewpoint, but there are certain inevitable compromises that must be made (just as we see in Lennon's life, in fact - though here Lennon states that he considers himself an artist first and a politician second, the mere fact that it was necessary to make the distinction points to tension).

In the end, The U.S. vs. John Lennon does what it needs to do. It sets out to tell the story of Lennon's post-Beatles activist life, and does it well enough. Yoko Ono's presence in the film could (and should) have been examined more critically, but this is a cursory complaint.

Sharp, seamless editing of the mainly archival footage - interspersed with contemporary footage of interviews with some of Lennon's friends, acquaintances and (not enough) enemies helps propel the not particularly complicated narrative forward, but it's not dull.

It's a pretty simple formula here: if you like Lennon or The Beatles, you'll probably like this. But you won't write home about it.

Are there redeeming features here? Because I can't find them. This film is horrible on just so many levels.

The set design is shoddy to the point that it looks like a high school performance for the most part (despite the assembly of a great cast of English character actors - Ian Holm, Steve Coogan, Kate Beckinsale as Alice - we know where the money went then).

The cinematography is awful, constantly leaving the viewer second guessing the possible motivation for the camera changes - Blair Witch style hand-held becomes a staple for some reason, but why? Are we meant to be scared? I mean, hey, I was...but not for the right reasons.

The script is not so bad, but then how could it fail, coming from such a magnificent text to begin with. Rather, the problem is the pacing and lack of action - how often do we need to sit, bored and restless, as the actors and camera sit statically in front of us, reading slab after slab of text? This is supposed to be a film, a dynamic movement - for the love of God give me some movement.

There is just so much bad to be said about this film that it's not worth going on. Oh, in case you haven't quite figured it out yet, don't see this film. Go rent the Disney animated version of the original Alice instead, or, better yet - read the book.

"Remember, before Star Wars, when sci-fi was smart?" wrote one IMDb reviewer, apparently astounded at the intellectual merits of this film, the 1973 adaptation of Harry Harrison's novel, Soylent Green.

I know, I'm supposed to be reviewing the film here too, but let me start off pointing out everything that's wrong with the above statement - sure, there were plenty of intelligent sci-fi films before Star Wars, like the original Solaris (1972), Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965) and Chris Marker's La Jetee (1962) amongst others, but it's not as if Star Wars set in motion an out-of-control train wreck of brainlessness.

In fact, in the time since Star Wars, we've had Terry Gilliam's superb Jetee-inspired Twelve Monkeys (1995), The Matrix (1999 - the first one had plenty of brains) and Dark City (1998), to name only a few. Perhaps the argument might only be made that the genre took some time to recover from the action-oriented Star Wars, but the fact remains.

The main flaw here is the idea that Soylent Green is a great example of an intelligent film. It's not. A dystopian look into the future and a bunch of unhappy humans does not necessarily turn a mediocre story into a great one, and nothing the film puts in place does anything to change that. Heston is his usual wooden, masculine posturing self, and the only bright sparks amongst the actors come from Edward G Robinson's last role as Sol, and the police inspector.

The story is so well-trodden by now that it's essentially common knowledge, and it's not a horrible one. But the circumstances are obvious predictions to make if you have a pessimistic enough mind, and the "surprise twist" has nothing on that of the other famous Heston vehicle, Planet of the Apes.

But the film soldiers on. There are good things about it - the moments of calm between Sol and Thorn are occasionally poignant - like when Thorn brings home rare foods - vegetables and even meat. Robinson's face tells a story that Heston couldn't approach in a million years. Affecting also is Sol's departure, staring up with wonder into an enormous television screen of fields and waterfalls.

Unfortunately, things that could easily have been strengths are not acted upon. The film's sets are cheap and badly made - but where Godard, in the aforementioned Alphaville - used his limited sets and location shooting to enact a commentary on his modern day society, in Soylent it is a mere distraction from the story.

For all its faults though, Soylent Green trots along at a fairly even kilter, and though its story provides little new (even, when one considers the amount of science-fiction literature around, in its time), it is occasionally thought provoking, and certainly still relevant - perhaps even more so - in these days of political unrest and global warming. Just don't get sucked into thinking Soylent Green is the bastion of science-fiction cinema, because it isn't even close.

Ostensibly, there's nothing at all wrong with this film. It's nice enough - characters that you can (mostly) identify with, a wonderful sense of forgiving family that we all either have or wish we had, and some predictably humorous fish out of water moments as we watch our two Italian protagonists struggle to get along in the States.

But there's nothing really beyond that - the problems faced by the two brothers, Stanley Tucci (who also directed) and Tony Shalhoub, are the same we've seen time and time again. Tucci, playing the self-centered but occasionally "adorable" (well I think that's what he's aiming for) Secondo, cheats on his girlfriend and paces around depressingly, presumably too hung up on the monetary problems he faces when he and his brother's restaurant looks like going bottom up to care about much else. And his brother Primo, played by Shalhoub, is so little more than a device to elicit more sympathy for the familial pains that they must all surely be feeling - unfortunately, it's hit and miss at the best of times.

Instead, the film's only moments of real resonance come in the humorous asides of the communal gatherings in the restaurant itself, relying not on the chemistry of the two brothers, but instead on the audience's preconceived notions of family and community and the occasional joke that actually hits its target.

The film isn't bad for a lack of trying, and it credit is due for the fact that it manages to come together at all. But the more subtle moments - like the silent final shot of the film - tend to say far more than the scenes which are overwritten to do exactly that. Big Night is a reasonable time waster and its occasional moments of humour do enough to relieve the boredom that might otherwise set in, but for the most part it is as dull as its horribly unimaginative title forebodes.

If you want a real feel-good film that focuses on food but doesn't leave such a bland taste in your mouth, try Ang Lee's superb Eat Drink, Man Woman.

well, i was really disappointed with this. after being absolutely blown away by gus van sant's last film, elephant, i was so looking forward to this too. and since elephant, in some ways, covered similar ground (it was an imagining of a columbine-like school shooting incident, this is an imagining of kurt's last days), i thought there was a lot of hope for it.

alas, it's really, in the end, just kinda dull. harris sayides' cinematography is quite beautiful at times, and very melancholy, but where in elephant it felt as if the lingering shots and heavy pacing had a lot to say about the monotony of school life, here they just labour the point that kurt is sad, wistful, perhaps already dead. there's a point, but we got it five minutes in, you know? pitt does a pretty good kurt, but he's not identical, and that sort of frustrated me. of course it's going to be impossible to find someone really identical most of the time, but perhaps more could have been done with make-up (i'm thinking charlize theron's transformation in monster).

in all, there were some nice moments where you felt as if things were probably spot on - even if van sant didn't guess the events of kurt's final days wandering the earth, he certainly seems to have pinpointed the atmosphere and feelings that i imagine would have been there - but the film just didn't have enough drama to hold up. now i'm glad that van sant didn't feel it necessary to over-dramatise (ie. make up) anything (although what was with him talking to himself? it seemed a little art school to me...), but perhaps if the story was just too dull to hold our interest, it was too dull to be made?

nice idea, failed experiment, i guess.

it's funny though; reading through some of the other comments here on IMDb, maybe i should reevaluate this. pitt's performance was perfectly muted, defined more by his lack of life than anything he actually showed. the stark human interactions were exactly how you might imagine things to have been, and - as a 'mood film,' as one reviewer calls it - the film works well enough. perhaps then, it's good, and it's merely my own failings that meant my interest wasn't held. anyway, i respect van sant - while he might make unusual films, he never leaves you without anything to think about.

edit: months later, and i now adore this film - go figure. i guess it just took a while to settle in my mind, but i've come to respect the subtlety with which van sant filmed it, and i'm totally in love with the manner in which we meander through the days just as kurt did himself.

haha, i thought this was quite good. of course, it wasn't amazing, but for a quirky (understatement, i guess) little take on a well-worn story, it was very entertaining.

plus, i even "felt" for the tree (in a weird kinda way, as you'd expect) when he made his journey home at the end. it's always amusing to see film-makers and the like transplant a bit of human emotion into whatever they can think up - never thought i'd be close to shedding a tear over a murderous christmas tree though ;)

managed to catch this in melbourne as part of the travelling "flickerfest" of short films, and though it wasn't the best film i saw, it was quite enjoyable - anything with such a novel approach is going to get points in my book, too.

saw this film today, and though i thoroughly enjoyed it, if you're at all familiar with the film noirs of the 1940s and '50s, this movie won't surprise you in the least - the plot is lifted straight from that mode (or genre, or whatever it is we're calling it these days :).

the acting is quite good, especially by william hurt, who plays the role of the dumb as a doornail ned racine to a tee. kathleen turner (and, if the other comment i read on this page is correct, in her first role) is also quite good, as the updated femme fatale, but we never really believe that she loves ned, do we?

derivative it might be, but it's certainly a quite enjoyable film, even for those noir fans like me, who could pick the film's ending about three minutes in. the symbolism (harking back to the '40's noirs again) is often amusing, and even borders on parody at times - hurt *literally* throws himself through a window to get to turner...having seen her body though, who wouldn't :)

all in all, this is an enjoyable flick, and if you're not noir-knowledgable, probably quite thought provoking too.

six out of ten.

it's 8.08am, friday morning, and i'm sitting on the train writing this review, on the way into uni. about eight hours ago, i was sitting in a room full of people in anticipation of what i hoped, even expected, to be the best film of the year. now, it *is* only may, but i think that it's a pretty safe bet to speculate that andy and larry wachowski's sequel to the matrix, reloaded, *won't* be at the top of my list come year's end.

first, the hype. yes, some of the effects are stunning (there's few words that can give them justice) - the explosions, especially when viewed in 'bullet time,' are probably the most visually exciting things you'll see in a long time. sure, the neo versus agent smith(s - and that's plural with a big fat emphasis) fight is amazingly coreographed and enthralling (depite the unshakeable feeling of watching a video game, in which neo is made of playdoh, that the scene gives - the cgi is *not* as flawless as some might have you believe) and the fourteen-minute, *epic* car chase that we've heard so much about has to be seen to be believed. it's truly one of the greatest action sequences of the last decade, and it's doubtful that we'll see any better in the near future.

but, and herein is the crux of the issue, the impact of this eye-candy, style, and action cannot stand in for an enjoyable plot, consistent and realistic dialogue or character development.

where the matrix combined the previously (almost) mutually exclusive super-hero 'cool' with an enjoyable and thought-provoking story line, reloaded just seems to stall. not that it isn't as philosophically intense as the first (it's probably far more so), it's just that it spends the first two hours 'wowing' us with the spectacular, and the last thirty-five minutes playing intellectual catch-up.

just to be picky, i have to mention the role of humour in reloaded too. in the matrix, much of the humour came from the fact that much of the audience identified with neo's geekiness. this allowed our amusement to be stimulated in subtle ways, and suited the film much better. sadly, the wachowski's attempts to add some sort of irreverance to the humour in reloaded (mostly through the horrible, *horrible* link) was as out of place as a child-care centre at an abortion clinic.

all this said, it must be made clear that i'm viewing this movie so harshly because of my expectations, and it's *potential* to be so much more. reloaded *is* a good film, the hero's journey of the christ-like (and a good few more jc references are thrown in for good measure) is enthralling, and morpheus's stubborness (which is surely being set-up for the third film, revolutions) is somewhat enthralling - almost like slowing down as you pass a car accident. neo and trinity's foray into love trundles along nicely without becoming the schmaltzy sideshow that it could have been, and the fate of zion will surely be the subject of intense (and interesting) debate. most interesting however, is the film's *re*posing of the original question, as we are left wondering - 'what is the matrix?'

in the first film, and even for the first three-quarters of reloaded, the answer seems far simpler than fans and critics have made out (whatever those pseudo-intellectuals might have said, the matrix was still a fairly straightforward hollywood film, not exactly philosophically earth-shattering), but the final thirty-five minutes of reloaded really throw up some difficulties. the matrix's 'architect' provides us with the revelation that this is the *sixth* 'version' of the matrix, the sixth neo, and the sixth destruction of zion. so far, i have not been able to provide answers to these questions, though they are of course not unanswerable. surely it would have been better however to build these questions up throughout the film, as opposed to hitting the audience with a ten-minute diatribe that we can't possibly ingest, leaving the vast majority of the audience a confused mess.

reloaded is dissapointing, but it *is* still an enjoyable film. neo is a likeable hero, and though it seems a little more muted than in the matrix, he's still an enjoyable figure for those of us who like computers a little too much, and are scared of the sun. so, go see it, and enjoy it, but please, *please* let's hope that the matrix revolutions, the final film in the trilogy (to be released in november), rights reloaded's wrongs.

In Anne of the Indies, and not for the first time, Jacques Tourneur takes a fairly clichéd genre (a swashbuckling adventure film doesn't seem particularly flexible) and moulded it to his whim. Other examples include the lesbian subtext of Cat People and critique of populism in Canyon Passage.

And as with these two films, Anne of the Indies' genre bending and most of Tourneur's other semi-studio oddities, it works a charm.

This film is essentially a battle between the feminine and the masculine. Starring Jean Peters as the female-but-hardly pirate Captain Providence, Tourneur uses expectations of gender roles and genre to explore Providence's struggles with her sexual identity. In fact, she remains almost asexual - whilst she shows little interest in men, or only as sexual objects, she is similarly ambivalent (or downright hostile) to women, or "wenches".

Although the cinematography and lighting lacks the stylistic force that is inherent in so many of Tourneur's other films (Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie and Out of the Past most notably), the film is almost thematically flawless. Though these stylistic concerns are to the film's detriment, the script and Tourneur's ability to play strongly to subtle subtexts overcome such problems.

Don't get me wrong: I'm as big a Star Wars fan as *most* people - I have a pretty good understanding of the SW universe, the characters' relationships to each other and all the rest of it. I'm not as dedicated as some, but I still bought my tickets a week before the movie came out, and saw it on the day of release - I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, like The Phantom Menace before it, Attack of the Clones, George Lucas's second film in his attempt at creating a prequel trilogy to the original Star Wars threesome of the seventies and eighties, does not live up to the hype.

As you've probably heard, the special effects often look _very_ nice, and that's fine - if that's your kinda movie (think Independance Day), go ahead and enjoy it. But personally, I like a movie's special effects and CGI trickery to *add* to the plot, rather than displace it.

However, Lucas seems to have lost his writing skills over the last 20 or so years. Even though, as even the most hardcore SW fan must admit, George Lucas was never a literary master with his scripts, his skills seem to have gone excessively backwards in the last twenty or so years. Whilst I don't have the script in front of me (and it's been a while since I saw the film), I do remember one line, and it pretty much summed up the corniness of the whole thing; when young Anakin tells Padme (paraphrasing here): "I don't like the sand, it's coarse, not like your skin". Now forgive me, but that's just awful, AWFUL dialogue. And even though that's probably the most extreme example in the movie, it's also pretty indicative of it in the same way.

Not only was the dialogue of AotC bad, but it paralelled the rest of the script - ask yourself what it is that made a Star Wars film Star Wars. For me (and this is obviously just my *own* opinion, but from the other people that I've asked, they seem to agree), it is the battles (duh :) - on ground with a lightsaber, or in space; and the byplay between characters. Whilst there was a very nice battle between Obi Wan Kenobi and Jango Fett (probably my favourite scene of the film), these were few and far between, and Yoda's fight was too laughable to really take seriously. And of the byplay between characters? Probably my biggest problem, amongst others, with AotC - there's so little of it. We get a few amusing lines of dialogue between C3PO and R2D2, and it's pretty damn clear that this is what Lucas does best, so why doesn't he stick with it???????!, but there's very, very little between any of the other characters. In fact, there are only one or two that come to mind, one being where Obi Wan tells Anakin that "you'll be the death of me". Very amusing (to us at least), but so scarce!

Anyway, I've probably concentrated far too much on a few little things that annoyed me to class this as a real view, but I hope you enjoyed my comments so far, I'll try to mention a few things that I *did* like about AotC - really, there were some :)

As I mentioned, the fight scene between Jango and Obi Wan was fantastice, showcasing all the lightsaber work that we came for, and some quite nice cinematography as well. While the film occasionally seemed a little self-concious of the "necessity" (well, I don't think it was necessary, but a lot of other people do) of the film's large spectacle, there were some scenes that were pulled off quite beautiful, and with that touch of SW/George Lucas class - I'm particularly thinking of our first glimpse of the Clone Army. Unfortunately, there wasn't really a lot more that I liked about the movie though - the casting was horrendous (Jango Fett...Anakin...and I was just *waiting* for Mace to bust out his M-16 and "bust a few caps in yo' ass" :), the acting was bad (Christensen, Portman especially, and even Macgregor in parts), the script was terrible and the Star Wars magic shone through on too few occasions, even worse when you saw *parts* of it, but then had it stolen away by Lucas's decision to centre the movie on the relationship between Anakin and Padme rather than have it as the secondary story, as romances have been in previous SW films.

5/10 (Previously, I gave: 3/10 The Phantom Menace 8/10 A New Hope 7/10 The Empire Strikes Back 8/10 Return of the Jedi And, I'm a notoriously hard marker :)