Posted on September 28th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Phantom of The Opera – Director Joel Schumacher You are on the edge your seat throughout the PTO: will the stupefying banality of the screenplay and lyrics, outstrip that of the music? It’s a close call, but after 142 interminable minutes I think the words won by a brass neck. There is after […]
Filed under: 2 star, Drama, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Joel Schumacher, Musical, Romance | No Comments »
Posted on September 22nd, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Hours – Stephen Daldry Oh Ms Kael, where are you when we need you most? The Hours is the kind of meretricious, overblown, overacted, worthy movie for which Pauline Kael kept her sharpest wit and keenest barbs. And just the kind of art-on-its-sleeve literary pretentiousness members of the Academy love to reward with […]
Filed under: 2 star, Drama, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Stephen Daldry | No Comments »
Posted on September 17th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Black Dahlia – Brian de Palma De Palma makes heartless movies. He shows no warmth of feeling for character nor commitment to the logical demands of a convincing plot. Technique is the artifical engine that pumps life into his always skillful, sometimes suspenseful, but never for me, likeable movies. Dressed to Kill (1980) […]
Filed under: 2 star, Brian De Palma, Detective, Drama, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Rating | No Comments »
Posted on September 16th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Flight of the Red Balloon – Hsiao-Hsien Hou A Damien Hirst sheep of a movie. It looks like a movie; has all the elements of a movie: one superb acting performance; a screenplay and a narrative, of sorts; careful scene set ups; thoughtful cinematography, precise editing; even a ‘tarty’ lone piano soundtrack – blatantly, […]
Filed under: 2 star, Drama, Europe/World cinema, General, Hsiao Hsien Hou, Philosophical | No Comments »
Posted on September 9th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Dead Girl – Adam Coleman Howard It is unlikely that this one will find its necrophiliac way to your neck of the woods. I picked it up on spec as part of the Raindance Film Festival at the UGC Shaftesbury Ave. Aiming I think for the seriously weird, it gets seriously stuck at slightly […]
Filed under: 2 star, A Coleman Howard, Drama, Fantasy, Hollywood, Humorous, Philosophical | No Comments »
Posted on September 7th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Gangs of New York – Martin Scorcese This film will delight the large number of people who disturbingly profess to ‘love’ Scorcese’s brilliant and hateful Goodfellas. GONY looks like the film of a bullied child who longed desperately not to be freed from, but to share the oppressive power that had been exercised […]
Filed under: 2 star, Drama, General, Hollywood, Martin Scorcese, Philosophical, Political | No Comments »
Posted on September 3rd, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet American Gangster – Ridley Scott Sentimentalising gangsters and fetishising guns are twin cancers at the heart of American culture. Each feeds off the other to create a moral landscape that can be obscenely equivocal and cumulatively corrupting. I have been corrupted enough over the years to enjoy the tension and excitement of conflict in […]
Filed under: 2 star, Action, Detective, Drama, General, Hollywood, Philosophical, Political, Ridley Scott | No Comments »
Posted on August 28th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Atonement – Joe Wright (BBC Prize Review) Andre Previn to Eric Morecombe, “you’re playing all the wrong notes.” Eric Morecombe, lifting the Maestro up onto his toes by his DJ lapels, “no, I’m playing all the right notes……but not necessarily in the right order.” Joe Wright has gone one better in this extraordinarily bad […]
Filed under: *BBC Prize Reviews*, 2 star, Drama, General, Joe Wright, Romance, War | No Comments »
Posted on August 22nd, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Hancock – Peter Berg I like Will Smith; you (probably) like Will Smith; all God’s children like Will Smith; why Will Smith even likes Will Smith – though for Will it may be less of a stretch sometimes than for us. To wit – Hancock. This movie doesn’t quite make you lose the will […]
Filed under: 2 star, Comedy, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Peter Berg, Sci-Fi | No Comments »
Posted on August 10th, 2008 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Elegy – Isabel Coixet Age is not oldness. Age is a fact, oldness is an attitude to life. It is the besetting vice of our culture to conflate these two concepts leading to misunderstanding and misinterpretation of both. So we invest ‘age’ with a social and moral significance it should not have: and promote […]
Filed under: 2 star, General, Isabel Coixet, Philosophical, Romance | No Comments »
