Reviews

I think Mike Judge thinks that everybody except himself is an idiotic jerk. It comes out in "King of the Hill", it came out in "Idiocracy", and it comes out in "Extract".

Of course, in ways, everybody is or can be idiotic and jerkish, but his pattern of surrounding a so-called "reasonable" man with morons who cause him to suffer needlessly is tired. Supporting characters in a Judge piece are to be laughed AT, not WITH.

The wonderful thing about Michael Bluth on "Arrested Development" was that, even though he was the MOST sympathetic member of the family (possibly excepting George-Michael), he was not himself immune from behaving badly. He THOUGHT of himself as virtuous, but it was clear to the audience that he was deeply flawed.

In "Extract", Bateman likewise plays a man who is more sinned-against than sinning, but I felt like we were expected to EXCUSE him for his own misdeeds because he was "driven" or "tricked" into them. The disingenuity of this approach was disappointing. And poor Kristin Wiig looked like she was given absolutely NO direction about what her character was supposed to be feeling about anything.

Of course, all of this would have been forgivable if the movie had simply been FUNNIER.

My comment on the film: Bloody marvelous. "Sita Sings the Blues" shows how one person with a laptop computer and something to say can make a far more satisfying work than 90% of the garbage that gets cranked out by people with a thousand times the money but one-thousandth the inspiration. Whatever its entertainment value (which I found considerable), "Sita..." is a work of ART; it's an individual statement. But it's not simply the "message", either; in terms of execution, Nina Paley made as effective use of this tool (Flash animation) as I would ever expect to see.

My comment on previous comments: Some have suggested that the piece would be "better" if Paley had left out the autobiographical bits, but that's simply nonsense. Her own story is integral to understanding how and why she chose to tell Sita's story the way she did. It isn't simply "background" to the telling of a story from the Ramayana; the piece is a meshing of Sita/Nina. By making the legendary story relevant to one woman's life, we see that it can be relevant to the lives of many. If the "point" of the work were simply to present the Ramayana on film the way "The Ten Commandments" is a filmed presentation of the Book of Exodus, it would be kind of silly to have Sita break into Blues songs in the first place, wouldn't it? Ms. Paley uses Sita's story as raw material, and uses Annette Hanshaw's recordings as raw material, to create something new and personal and totally contemporary.

I can only hope that John Lassiter sees "Sita". Not that I think Pixar has any need to learn anything from Nina Paley, but maybe he can channel some Disney bucks to her so that it won't take her five more years to produce a follow-up. (Just so long as she's allowed total creative control.)

While I enjoyed this movie a lot, there's one thing which REALLY bugs me. The IMDb editors wouldn't accept this as a "Goof", but I can't let it pass without comment...

The plot requires that Maria meet with Sobinski in her dressing room while Joseph is delivering the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from HAMLET, III:i. But since since Maria is playing Ophelia, THIS CANNOT BE. Ophelia is IN that scene, both immediately before and immediately after Hamlet delivers this 33-line speech. It's doubtful that she leaves the stage at all (there are no stage directions calling for an exit and re-entrance), and she would CERTAINLY be no further from the stage than the wings.

OK, OK, I'm being anal. It's creative license, and like I said I DO really like the movie. But still, it seems like this ought to fall into the category of "Factual Error", even though it's a forgivable error.

I'm not sure how well I can articulate the ways in which this movie disappoints me. I'll throw out some random thoughts, and see if they lead me in the direction of a coherent opinion.

There's a difference between a "free spirit" and a "loose cannon"; Maude definitely struck me as the latter. I imagine an alternate ending wherein the doctors save Maude's life after she takes the tablets, but while at the hospital she's arrested for multiple auto theft. Faced with spending years in prison (although she's 80, she's in good health), she suffers a complete loss of composure and/or a breakdown, and Harold sees how Maude's "independence" is actually a reckless disregard for the rights of others.

Everyone in the movie is a caricature rather than a character, but since that's so blatantly obvious I can't fault the movie for it. I figure it must be deliberate. Still, the scene where Harold breaks down in his shrink's office makes me suspect that there IS supposed to be some depth to Harold, but the writer didn't develop it. Harold IS more than merely "eccentric", he's truly disturbed, and it would take more than his adventures with Maude to bring him any sort of peace. If, as I assume we are expected to, we end up seeing his analyst/therapist/whatever as a buffoon on an equal footing with the mother, the uncle, and the priest, I can only say that THIS doctor may be a fool, but Harold STILL needs professional help.

Perhaps, after Harold drives his car off the cliff, he goes back home and calls Sunshine. She may be a flaky actress wannabe, but she was the one who SAW THROUGH Harold's staged suicide, and was willing to play along. From her OWN death-scene it appears that Sunshine is a very BAD actress, though, so perhaps that's why Harold shunned her.

All this being said, I personally wasn't troubled by the "ick" factor of Harold and Maude consummating their love. I wouldn't PERSONALLY have found Maude sexually appealing when I was his age, but I credit Harold with recognizing that true love and passion have very little to do with the beauty of our bodies and much to do with the beauty of our minds.

I watched "Pi" for the first time in a number of years yesterday, and I was struck with a reference that I had never noticed before.

In Max's first meeting with Sol over the Go board, Sol asks Max whether he had gotten around to reading "Hamlet" (which Saul had previously recommended, presumably). It can't just be coincidence that "Hamlet", like "Pi", is ALSO about a "haunted" young intellectual who THINKS TOO MUCH.

Both Shakespeare's play and Aronovsky's film deal with the frustrations of trying to understand the fundamentally-irrational through the use of reason. In Hamlet's case, it means trying to reconcile a supernatural call for vengeance with Rationalist philosophy. In Max's case, it means trying to reduce all of Nature - even the True Name of God! - to a mathematical principle. Both Hamlet and Max are driven to (beyond?) the edge of sanity by their labors.

So Sol's recommendation that Max read "Hamlet" is not merely to give him something to take his mind off his work, but is in fact a veiled warning against the path he sees Max heading out on.

PS: I also wonder if it's a coincidence that Max's mentor is named "Sol"; Max is too close to "the sun", after all.

Mind-boggling. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but what if a life is so given over to self-examination (and self-description) that the process of examination itself is what ends up being chiefly examined? This film, not "Adaptation", is the one in which Charlie Kaufman should have named his protagonist "Charlie Kaufman." It's a surrealist film about the surrealism inherent in trying to produce "realism" in Art.

Caden wonders at the idea that his vast theater space might have been used to stage "King Lear", and that's an apt question (as well as a production of "Lear" I'd pay any amount to see), but he might just as well have wondered about staging "Hamlet" there. "Synecdoche, New York" is Kaufman's "Hamlet." Or perhaps it might best be considered "Bottom's Play", because it hath no bottom.

Maybe this was *An Important Movie* and that's why people rank it so highly, but honestly it isn't very good. In hindsight it's easy to see that Chaplin (probably all of Hollywood) was incredibly naive about the magnitude of what was really going on in the ghettos, so you can't fault him TOO much for the disconnect that affects a modern viewer, but the disconnect remains.

More disappointingly, the movie is just clunky; it's as if Chaplin had no idea that movies had progressed in sophistication since the silent era. The set pieces, those involving both the Jewish Barber and the Dictator, don't flow into each other; they just sit there like discrete lumps of storyline that progress in fits and starts, moving SOMEWHERE but never arriving at resolution. Some are funny, some less so.

What charm the movie has is strictly in the person of Chaplin himself. His parodies of Hitler's speeches were the best part of the whole thing, and there's no denying that he had a physical grace that was delightful to watch. But virtually everything he surrounded himself with was ANNOYING. Hannah was TOO DAMN American. The Storm Troopers were TOO DAMN American.

Oooh! Oooh! One more thing! I don't know what purpose was served by having Garbage be the source of evil behind the throne. It almost seems like the film is saying that, if it weren't for malign influences like Garbage, Hynckle wouldn't have been that bad a guy.

One could judge this two ways: first, as an original, self-contained film by Peter Brook; or second, as a production of Shakespeare's play.

While it's true that this is a handsome and well-acted production, I have to mark it down insofar as I think it gives the viewer a somewhat skewed idea of the play. Some of the cuts are actually quite drastic, particularly at the beginning of the play (it opens right into "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt...", and jumps right to Hamlet's meeting with the ghost), and while some of the lost dialog is replaced later on, it's often placed where it makes no sense (1. Polonius's and Ophelia's "Tender yourself more dearly".../"...All the holy vows of heaven" exchange takes place while Ophelia is telling her encounter in the sewing closet, when Polonius is supposed to be REPENTING his interference in Hamlet and Ophelia's romance; 2. The "Cast thy nighted color off...return not to Wittenberg" exchange comes AFTER Hamlet has spoken with the ghost, which changes the dynamic of Hamlet's barbs to Claudius entirely; and 3. "To be or not to be..." is dropped down in place of "How all occasions do inform against me...", when Hamlet's mood is inappropriate for it).

Mostly, though, the production bugs me in one specific way: it is done entirely humorlessly; Osric is gone, much of the graveyard scene is gone, and Polonius is played with all stately dignity. POLONIUS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A COMIC CHARACTER! The play, most especially the first half, is loaded with jokes which are designed to throw the audience off guard for the trauma and pathos of the climax. If the mood of the whole is played dark and brooding, you're losing much of the entertainment factor at which Shakespeare was a master. 'Hamlet' is a roller-coaster, not a subway train.

In sum, I'd say that Brook's 'Hamlet' is recommended for those who are familiar with the play and can see this as one man's vision, but is not recommended for those coming to the play for the first time.

Good, entertaining, very imaginatively filmed (loved the settings!). Very nice performance by Gosling, I love Naomi Watts, but I thought McGregor was just adequate. I wasn't looking for much in the way of deep symbolism or "meaning", so I was content simply that the loose ends were generally tied up to my satisfaction...

HOWEVER: A particular scene shows us a young actress rehearsing the role of "Hamlet", and I was gritting my teeth through it all because she was playing EXACTLY the sort of watery, neurasthenic, bloodless Hamlet that I can't STAND to watch. It's all Olivier's fault, I suppose, because he was the best-known Hamlet of the 20th century yet he played the role (at least on film) so low-key that everybody who follows his example underplays it to the point of listlessness...

I don't blame Elizabeth Reaser, but Mark Forster apparently has a poor understanding of the play in question. Unless his INTENT was to have Athena come across as a poor actress, which I doubt...

By the way, while I don't agree that anyone who didn't like 'Stay' must have been too dim-witted to understand it, those of you who take EXCEPTION to that characterization should be VERY careful about checking your spelling before you post. If the best you can come up with is "Where not imbessiles, you know!", you're really not helping your case.

A wise man once said: "Any fool can be offensive; it takes an ARTIST to be truly obscene." Did anyone in "The Aristocrats" achieve true "art"? Perhaps not. But I have to admit that halfway through the movie my face hurt from laughing so hard. Laughter comes from surprise, which is akin to shock, which is akin to offense. I submit that someone who is offended by nothing would have as little patience with this joke as someone who is offended by everything. There is in this film the exhilaration of transgression, of inversion. There used to be ritualized outlets for large-scale transgressive behavior, but modern society has more or less done away with them (except for watered-down versions of April Fool's Day and Halloween). We don't f*** in the fields to bring a good harvest anymore; dirty jokes are just about all we have.

Take the film's warning to heart: If you can be offended in any way at all, "The Aristocrats" will offend you. But if you can laugh at it nonetheless, you'll probably walk out of the movie in a better frame of mind than you had on entering.

All interpretations are valid to some respect, I suppose, but some choices the director makes end up radically altering the flow of the play; and any choice that REQUIRES excising 'inconvenient' bits of the text must be considered an alteration of the playwright's intent, rather than an interpretation. A few comments:

1) Campbell Scott's portrayal was quite good; he played Hamlet quietly and intensely rather than explosively, which is fair enough. But the decision to underplay other characters came off less well. For instance, Claudius barely seemed upset at all during his "My offense is rank" soliloquy. THIS was a soul in torment? (But bland Claudii are a pet peeve of mine.) And Gertrude, in her closet, often seemed unperturbed that she'd just seen her son kill a man. And most of all, having Laertes give his "That drop of blood which is calm proclaims me bastard!" speech in a controlled, subdued manner is basically an oxymoron. On the other hand, keeping the emotional level low was effective in creating an atmosphere of tension and creepiness throughout, rather than one of high drama and spectacle.

2) Nonetheless, POLONIUS IS A COMIC CHARACTER!!! To play him straight, with unrelenting quiet dignity, changes the whole tone of the first half of the play. You're SUPPOSED to laugh through the first two acts, to set you up for the shift that comes in with "The Mousetrap" and culminates in Polonius's death. Polonius, like Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet", is a representation of Comedy itself, and his death marks the point from which there's no escape from tragedy. I see nothing gained by stripping Polonius of his laughs, and much lost (including, if nothing else, our simple AFFECTION for the character).

3) Another pet peeve: I own 6 "Hamlets" on DVD, 4 of them substantially 'complete', and yet EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM cuts Hamlet's observation: "This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, which inward breaks and gives no outward show why the man dies" (said upon seeing the forces of Norway headed for Poland). This line is VITAL, because it is Hamlet's value judgment on Fortinbras; this is the line that shows that Fortinbras is a yob. As Hamlet admires the Player's capacity for passion while recognizing the absurdity of his concern "for Hecuba", so does he admire Fortinbras' boldness while recognizing the absurdity of wasting 2,000 men and 20,000 ducats "for a straw." And if it's not made clear that Fortinbras is an absurdity, then the irony of Hamlet's turning-over of Denmark to him at the end of the play is lost... (end of rant)

On the whole, if you're familiar with 'Hamlet' already I would say that this might be an interesting addition to your viewing inventory, but I would NOT recommend it as your first encounter with the work.

No one production of "Hamlet" can completely satisfy except for the one that plays in your head as you read the play, but this is the extant version that comes closest for me (with one glaring exception).

Derek Jacobi is probably the best actor that I've seen play the role, although he's brittle and snappish in places (his first exchanges with Claudius and Gertrude, his comments to Polonius during the 'Rugged Pyrrhus' speech) where I think a mellower touch is called for. But on the whole it's a wonderful performance, and since Hamlet has almost half the lines in the whole play Jacobi himself is enough to strongly recommend the whole.

This Polonius is better than most, although not as funny as Hume Cronyn was. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are well played, straddling the difficult line between being friends to Hamlet and scoring points with the King. A fine, fiery Laertes, and an Ophelia that's no worse than any others (I've yet to see Ophelia played the way I feel she ought to be). Gertrude was adequate (I've also yet to see a compelling Gertrude, but I don't particularly know what I would suggest). It's also too bad that nobody seems to put any sense of spectacle into the Ghost's appearance any more; the Olivier film and the Burton stage production both give it an unworldliness that the Jacobi, Kline, Gibson and Hawk versions lack (although if I remember correctly Brian Blessed was well-used in the Brannagh film)...

The big drawback to this version is in the casting of Patrick Stewart as Claudius. The fault is not in his performance, which is worthy, but in the man himself. Granted, Claudius may not be as much of a toad as Hamlet thinks him to be, but his "natural gifts" should be poor compared to his murdered brother's. Stewart in fact HAS "the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command," which Claudius pointedly lacks. In short, Stewart is just too REGAL to play Claudius, the "king of shreds and patches". (And it's not just the father-and-son Hamlets that consider Claudius visibly inferior; Gertrude herself, when Hamlet makes her confront the two pictures, sees black and grained spots on her soul at the comparison.)

All in all, though, it's an excellent production.

I'd put off viewing this version of "Hamlet" for a long time, because I'd heard that they'd turned this most cerebral of plays into an "action movie", but I ended up quite liking it.

I should begin by saying that I approve of ALL interpretations, because each choice reflects different possibilities all of which are supportable by the text; no one vision can encompass every potentiality inherent in the play. And the text per se, of course, will always exist in absolute form despite the number of hands that manipulate it.

All productions (except Branagh's) cut certain elements as a sacrifice to tighter (though narrower) focus. And the use of film rather than stage allows (even necessitates) different types of dramatic development. Films unfold at a different pace than stage plays. Zefirelli's adaptations WORK as film-making, without detracting from (or unnecessarily supplementing) Shakespeare's language. For instance, the little "prologue" scene showing the internment of the dead king. It is original to the movie, and yet the dialogue is still from the play; it doesn't misrepresent anything about the characters in its new context. And perhaps most importantly, it "works" in the movie that the director is making. But on to the substantive comment...

Mel Gibson was, in my opinion, too old to be Hamlet (making Glenn Close, by extension, too young to be Gertrude), but the issue of Hamlet's age has always been a problem. He's 30 in the text (this version leaves out that calculation), but that makes some of his relationships (with Ophelia, for instance) seem a little... immature. And yet if he's portrayed too young, his depth of thought is almost impossibly precocious. But I thought he was convincing nonetheless, particularly in expressing something that I've found central to my understanding of the play but I all too rarely see dealt with in Hamlet's portrayal, which is this:

Hamlet IS quite mad. 'Tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true. From his first meeting with the ghost onwards, he is profoundly disturbed. It is irony that he then puts an 'antic disposition' on, because he has in actuality gone quite 'round the bend.

Mel Gibson not only gives the first convincing portrayal of Hamlet's "pretended" madness that I've seen, but he also shows us the desperation of the character in his quiet moments. Hamlet is not, as Olivier posited in his 1948 version, merely "a man who could not make up his mind." Gibson's Hamlet spends much of the film alternating between mania-induced impulsiveness and paralyzing inability to act. The Dane is not merely melancholy, he is certifiably manic-depressive. (Claudius, I believe, sees this.)

Over all, I believe that this would be a good introduction to the story of Hamlet for those who otherwise would have had no contact with it, although as I said it can then be supplemented by other adaptations (and of course there's no substitute for, ultimately, reading the text).

Unfortunately I can't call "Team America: World Police" the best adults-only puppet movie I've ever seen, because I've seen Peter Jackson's magnificent and vile "Meet the Feebles" (and if you're even reading this page, so should you). But it's still pretty damn funny.

Yes, some of the laughs come just because it's puppets (for instance, the puppet kung fu), but I was laughing nonetheless. The movie at its best, though, wasn't any particular moment, rather the merciless dagger into the heart of the Bruckheimer explosion-fest blockbuster CRAP genre. If you want to see property damage, "romantic" sex, carnage, and over-earnestness that's INTENTIONALLY funny rather than unintentionally ridiculous, this is your movie. It's too bad the songs weren't nearly as good as in "South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut", but then again, since they were mostly spoofs of lame movie songs (such as "Freedom Costs a Buck-o-Five") they wouldn't be accurate if they weren't somewhat lame themselves.

However, even though I enjoyed the movie thoroughly, it is NOT even-handed in its satire. Gary's final speech, while very funny, also seems to be a fairly sincere argument in favor of U.S. global intervention, and that's a position that I, along with the actor/activists portrayed, find arrogant and dangerous (run a web search on "the Wolfowitz doctrine" and see if you like what you find).

On the whole, though, if you THINK you'll like the movie, you probably will.

7/10

The only two Adam Sandler movies that I really, REALLY like are "The Wedding Singer" and "Punch-Drunk Love", and much of what I like about them is that Adam Sandler is in them; I can't imagine anyone other than Sandler playing either Robbie Hart or Barry Egan. With the exception of, say, the first 20 minutes, I don't see why somebody else couldn't have played Henry Roth in "50 First Dates". Mind you, I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing; that first part was for me the least engaging piece of this movie.

What worked for me here was the romance, not the comedy. Given the rather ridiculous premise they had to work around, I thought that Henry's attempts to court and, later, to help Lucy were really rather touching. I also felt that the way their relationship went up and down and up again was honest for the situation (again, granting the the premise was absurd), and I thought that the ending was both emotionally satisfying without being a cheat (given that they could have taken the easy way out).

Of course, I could have done without the puking walrus and Rob Schneider, and Henry crying his way through 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' felt like a rip-off from "Wedding Singer", but Willy the penguin more than made up for all that.

7/10 for Drew and Adam's second pairing. If they do another together, I'll make sure to see it in the theater.

This is not a feature film; it is a 15-minute short with 75 minutes of prologue appended to it.

The scene with Daisy was OK, apart from the fact that the dialogue was so low that I couldn't understand half of what was being said. It had a payoff, but the "twist" wasn't particularly shocking or revelatory; any 12-year-old kid could have come up with the same thing for a creative writing assignment.

The biggest problem is that the first hour-plus was just INTERMINABLE. Even in those few instances when Bud interacted with other people, it was painful waiting for them to get to the point, and the "points" that were gotten were of minuscule value. During that first 75 minutes I was struggling with the urge to walk out, but I figured that SOMETHING had to happen eventually...

I'm glad that I waited, because I thought that the one scene was done reasonably well, but my recommendation to anyone else would be to enter the theater an hour after the posted start time.

My advice to Vincent Gallo would be a paraphrase from "Life in Hell": "You do what you do reasonably well, Mr. Gallo, but now you must ask yourself, 'Is it worth doing?'"

Think of a photograph of a child rescued from a war zone. There may be scars, blood, missing limbs, but the child is now safe, and being cared for, and loved, and is perhaps more beautiful for what it has been through.

"Punch-Drunk Love" is more a poem than a narrative, perhaps. At a mere 90 minutes it may be a haiku. There's something almost Japanese about its sensibility; that which is not shown is as meaningful as that which is revealed.

I don't say that I fully understand this movie, but I EXPERIENCE it fully.

I would recommend that everyone see this movie, although I'm aware that many will despise it. Still, it would be a shame for anybody who WOULD appreciate it to be deprived of it, and I wouldn't want to judge beforehand who that person might be.

(By the way, here's a note to those who are overly concerned with determining why Lena is attracted to Barry: Bear in mind that, with very few exceptions, all of the events of the film are given to us from Barry's perspective. Perhaps leaving us in the dark about Lena's motivations is merely to reflect Barry's misgivings about the same thing. Barry "doesn't like himself very much" sometimes; I would imagine he finds it difficult to understand why anybody else would like him either.)

To repeat a theme, I'm not a big fan of Adam Sandler, but I love this movie.

Robbie Hart is a genuinely likable character; he's a person I would like to have as a friend, and he's a performer I would gladly hire to sing at my OWN wedding (Sandler also seems completely comfortable with his character, while even Drew Barrymore sometimes sounds like she's merely reciting written dialogue). Yes, he's a capital-R Romantic, but that seems like a strong qualification for someone who makes his living at other people's weddings. I like the whole idea of a romantic comedy being set behind the scenes of the whole wedding game, and some of the most telling scenes involve Robbie guiding Julia through the preparations with an insider's eye.

Probably the funniest parts of the movie (to me) are those that play to Robbie's broken heart; it's probably the best depiction of the depression of the newly-dumped I've ever seen (in particular, I love the "Kill Me Please" song). Hey, I've been there.

This all being said, however, I think the touch-all-the-landmarks-of-the-mid-'80s approach gets awfully heavy-handed at times. The musical choices, though, were excellent.