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Rick-8
Reviews
Verso sera (1990)
Italy's late 70's generation gap
Very literate and poignant, and sometimes comical, the script storyline tracks the arc and back again of the relationship between a wealthy, upper-class professor who cursory espouses to Communism, his free-spirited daughter-in-law who is sexually and experimentally focused, and his reality-based five year old granddaughter. The Professor's son can't face his responsibility and, with his father's help, leaves the city for farming. The elderly housekeeper tries to keep order, even though she, too, is effected by the chaos that swarms around the household. Outstanding performances by the entire cast culminates with the growth in understanding by all parties involved. Or so you think...
Great Performances: Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1976)
A Warbling Strangeness
**possible spoilers**
Like the proverbial bird in the gilded cage who finally got away, Alma escapes into the arms of her doctor neighbor, a former bad boy, who looks at her in wonder. As a superior American playwright, Tennessee Williams manipulates language in metaphor, illusion, and devastation for turn-of-the-century Mississippi. This revised version of his play, Summer and Smoke, seems more naturalistic than the forbearer. This is a filmed version for PBS and very stagy, but there are close-ups and two shots. Watch for the impersonation of Tennessee himself. If one listens hard enough, the songs of ancestors can be heard.
The Slaughter Rule (2002)
Amongst Male Compassion
Love is difficult no matter what relationships are binded together. However, male bonding can be the most difficult and fraught with anxiety. To find love among men means weakness in parts of our society. "The Slaughter Rule" converges on that dilemma within an archetypal framework of male sports.
Superb casting is generated in the chemistry between the mature teenager Roy Chutney (Ryan Gosling) and adolescent adult Gideon Ferguson (David Morse), who wrangle on the dangerous edge of pederasty. Not finding true love with women, Gid searches and grasps for intimacy the only way he has known: football. Roy subconsciously searches for the father he never really had, getting a little more than he bargained for in return.
In bleak blizzard landscapes and amid hard scrabble lives, the Smith brothers and their camera freeze on the action, whether on the playing fields or the local restaurant or honky tonk. Beautifully photographed in Montana and containing wonderfully written dialogue, one feels they have known the characters for a long, long time. They embody flesh, blood, bones, brains, guts, heart, and love.
The Deep End (2001)
PC Drownings...?
Isn't it time to move on from this sideshow melodrama? Doesn't anyone see this film as stereotypical in some places about gays? That the company they keep is always bad or negative? "We're talented, but self-destructive." Now that is a cliché Vito Russo would have pointed out. As much as I like it....6 out of 10.
L'âge des possibles (1995)
A slice of Alsace college life among graduate students
This dramatic coming of age story evokes Ingmar Bergman and Arika Kurosuwa in its depth of character portrayal. Twenty-somethings on edge of full adulthood in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, recombine in a myriad of human interaction.