by Dean | Jun 22, 2016 | General
High School Musical (2006), the popular Disney Channel production, isn’t perfect, but its songs range from good to outstanding and mostly the latter, and they are performed with admirable prowess. Yes, Ashley Tisdale (Sharpay) overacts, but is a captivating singer and dancer. It will probably be a long time before another movie musical offers a fine-voiced actress singing a ballad as nice as the one Vanessa Hudgens delivers—viz., “When There Was Me and You.” Indeed, except for the fun dance song, “We’re All In This Together,” the ballads are the hook-iest tunes. (Granted, the lyrics are pedestrian, but they’re better than HSM‘s book, which is really obtuse.)
“We’re All In This Together” was reprised in High School Musical 3—-a hokey, unimaginative decision. The original show is the one that song belongs to, and that, incidentally, is the only HSM I want to see.
High School Musical (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jun 21, 2016 | General
Obviously Lucian Pintilie had no love for or faith in perilous Romania when it was Communist. In The Oak (1991), it is often a sick joke and Pintilie’s film a dark but compassionate comedy. The two protagonists are smart and temperamentally strong, but a society where somebody is always needing to be rescued from something—and frequently no rescue comes—gives them a terrible run for their money. No wonder Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceausescu was executed.
Sobering and sassy, The Oak is political satire and then some. It is a fast-moving, post-Red expression of despondency over past nightmares and absurdities, sharply directed by Pintilie. In the leading roles, Maia Morgenstern and Razvan Vasilescu perform superbly, but it is Morgenstern who gets to display an enviable range. Look for her under the heading, “Force and Femininity.”
(On VHS, yes, but DVD and Blu-Ray?)
by Dean | Jun 19, 2016 | General
Come Undone (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I don’t understand why Domenico (Pierfrancesco Favino) prefers his mistress Anna (Alba Rohrwacher) to his wife in the 2010 Italian film about an illicit love, Come Undone. Neither do I think the movie’s moral neutrality is a good idea. Directed by Silvio Soldini, Come Undone is, however, robust and sufficiently imaginative. Its dandy realism breaks down a bit near the end, but I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the film is acceptable. It’s available on DVD.
(In Italian with English subtitles)
by Dean | Jun 16, 2016 | General
The Lineup (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Lineup (1958) is one of Don Siegel‘s crime flicks, and the first third of it shows us nearly no one but the good guys as they investigate the killing of a fellow cop. Then it is predominantly the criminals who appear in this riveting story revolving around postwar America’s increasing attraction to illegal narcotics.
While watching the film, I couldn’t help thinking of the harrowing murders in Orlando, Florida a few days ago. Stirling Silliphant’s script, you see, carries the message that if psychopaths (here played by Eli Wallach) want and are inclined to kill, they WILL kill, even if the money from heroin sales is actually what they’re after.
Wallach is rattlingly credible, with Robert Keith (the gangster Julian) and Vaughn Taylor (“The Man”) also impressively good. Siegel does all he can with the San Francisco setting, producing a wonderful urban starkness. The Lineup is further proof that the Fifties were a great decade for him.
by Dean | Jun 15, 2016 | General
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) follows the wonderful, horrible career of Leni Riefenstahl: dancer, actress, master filmmaker. A German in Ray Muller‘s German documentary, she was of course hired by Hitler to make what was for him a Nazi propaganda film (and work of art), Triumph of the Will, which brought her the severest notoriety and contempt.
Muller’s narrator announces that the picture “will approach [Riefenstahl] without preconceptions,” and it does. Although she has no qualms about discussing Triumph‘s virtues, Riefenstahl says she is “deeply unhappy” that she directed the film. She did not then know she and her crew were making “a pact with the devil,” afterwards claiming that the glorification of Nazis was merely the attempt to avoid making Triumph look like a newreel.
(In German with English subtitles)
by Dean | Jun 13, 2016 | General
In my opinion, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) is worth watching, just not to the end. Kyle Smith is right about its being rather sophisticated, but typically it gets boring too, and befuddling.
On the other hand, the cast is good while production design and cinematography communicate beautifully. Plus there is some genuine sensuality as Lois Lane (Amy Adams) sits naked, without any of her privates showing, in a bathtub.
A bevy of real-life liberals, including Patrick Leahy and Democratic Congresswoman Holly Hunter, is hauled in for further fun and games. A subcommittee hearing regarding Superman (Henry Cavill) is held, and it seems fitting that liberal senators are discussing the excesses of a comic-book figure.
