Reviews

Rarely have i hated a movie enough to decide that i need to finish watching it so as to more thoroughly criticize it, rather than just scolding my tivo for recording it, deleting it, and forgetting all about it.

Basically, it's High Fidelity.

Without good music, humorous dialog, likable characters, tension, cohesive pathos, a believable love interest, a compelling protagonist, an interesting plot, or a good ending.

I liked Dennis Leary as a standup but he is wooden as an actor.

Liz Hurley is a good actress and a bad choice for her part in this film.

The majority of movie watchers in the world would hate this movie. That's OK, but they shouldn't waste my time by telling me about it.

This movie isn't abstract. It is also not, strictly speaking, symbolic. And it is by no means truly literal.

Like most Japanese movies, us wide-eyes can't possibly hope to claim to understand it all, but if you've learned nothing else from Suzuki, you should have learned that you're not required to understand it.

Pistol Opera is a mix of operatic and theatrical styles. There are elements of kabuki, western plays, and European opera integrated in every scene. The result is at once stylized, ritualistic, and loose. The uncomfortable camera angles and bright colors in some scenes are just a reflection of classic Japanese art.

If it feels uneven, that's only because it's uneven. As in any other Seijun Suzuki movie, every shot is treated equally and judged independently.

I think Seijun Suzuki has gotten better. I could never find anything i liked about Branded to Kill except it's sheer inscrutability and absurdity, and BtK is without a doubt, technically speaking, quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen - but i still liked it. I can find things about Pistol Opera that i like. It probably influenced Kill Bill, but the people who made Kill Bill missed the point - I saw that movie for free, and still felt like demanding my money back.

I can't believe i watched this movie.

Between the awful, awful peroxide job done on Jolie's head, and the "plink-a-plink" thoughtful interlude piano music (See Also: American Beauty), and the frequent, gratuitous montage sequences set to trendy college rock, I couldn't find any redeeming qualities.

OK, maybe Tony Shalhoub does a pretty good manic street preacher.

If this movie had starred J-Lo, as it should have, I would have been tipped off to it's vacuous, meaningless script and never watched it. I mean, come on, after "The Wedding Planner", who would?

I am getting so tired of the "tries to make you think, might work if you've never thought before" genre of hollywood films.

Miss this one. You won't regret it.