New Releases
Better than Chloe, but a plausibility nightmare; gets plain silly
Lordy, I loathed this -- ugly, amateurish and intolerably overextended
A hot mess, barely intelligible, with some (almost) redeemingly weird scenes
Horses
B
Not Zoo 2. Somewhat faux-naif, but engagingly sad and gently whimsical
Late Autumn
A–
Wondrous colours and a fascinating relationship with urban modernity
Temple explores the backstreets of music history with addictive flair
Precious*
B+
Plenty of mistakes, but the movie's half-deranged empathy can't be denied
Lovely visuals when it's in New Orleans; the bayou bits drag, unfortunately
Other Adventures
The Woman in the Window* (1944)
A–
An old favourite I still love for its implacable, paranoid logic and the perfs
The Lodger (1927)
A–
Hard to beat for clockwork build-up of suspicion and eroticism
Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)
C–
Neeson's quite good, but Nesbitt's terrible, and the script flails conceitedly
Georgia (1995)
B+
A sublimely complex sisterly relationship; the occasional duff note elsewhere
Bananas (1971)
B+
Irresistible nonsense: surely one of the funniest of the "early, funny ones"
Billy Bathgate (1991)
B+
Elegantly muted, nobly adapted and way-underrated. Steven Hill is superb
4 comments:
Meanwhile, I can't help looking to my right and noting your deliciously low rating for "The Lovely Bones" ... can't wait for you to rip into that one.
And interested to see you got round to "Billy Bathgate" after our conversation the other day ... really intrigued to hear if you have as much time for Kidman in it as I do, since this is the first performance of hers I ever gave a second thought. And that production design is something else.
She gets better as it goes along... at first she seemed to me like uncertain window-dressing, but that's a pretty apt take on the character, in that situation! And from the first scene where she undresses in front of Billy, she seemed totally in charge to me -- it reminds me of a certain unabashed early-90s eroticism in movies that's sorely lacking 20 years later. I'd give her third prize after Hill and the admirably contained Hoffman (though John Costelloe is also terrific as Lulu). Really, more than a pleasant surprise, all round.
(but it's a shame about Bruce)
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