Reviews

I had been wanting to see this short film for a long time, and finally got the opportunity. I was expecting it to be good, but did not anticipate how moving it would be! The cast is uniformly excellent--very believable, and great chemistry between everyone, with Sean Dugan as an excellent lead and Joanna Adler convincing as his romantically challenged, heart-of-gold childhood friend. Director Carl Byrd and scriptwriter Peter Macklin made this 19-minute film feel like a fast-moving and compelling 109-minute feature film, in addition to keeping things funny at the right times. I can see why "Dinner at 40" has been sweeping the film festival awards.

I went to see "We Were Here" today at the Cinéma-Village theater in New York. I was afraid it would disappear before I got the chance to see it. This movie was recommended by a friend who is a producer at KQED in San Francisco as being the ultimate resource on San Francisco during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Along with Randy Shilts's seminal book, "And the Band Played on," he was certainly right.

One great element of "We Were Here" is that it gives several quite different perspectives on what the HIV epidemic in San Francisco was like at that time: Ed, the misfit who found his place in the gay community by volunteering with people with AIDS early in the epidemic; Daniel, the Jewish artist who felt he had found his true family among San Francisco's gay men and then lost them all within a few painful years; Paul, the high-profile political activist; Guy, the big-hearted, philosophical black flower vendor; and Eileen, the lesbian nurse who served at ground zero of the epidemic and stuck with it with grit and compassion to the end.

Like Ed, I didn't fit in well in the "gay community" during my years in San Francisco. So disconnected was I that I did not know a lot of what was happening in the early and mid-1980s, although I remember Guy the florist, who always had a smile for every passerby on the street corner where he worked, and I remember James Harning, a beautiful young man who died a hard death in 1992. "We Were Here" helped me understand much of what was going on all around me in those days. It will do the same for others who weren't "there," for reasons of either age or geography, and it will be a moving, bittersweet reminder for those who did survive those difficult years in San Francisco.

Who would have thought that the film versions of The Chronicles of Narnia could get even worse? Or that the acting could deteriorate still further? Well, I would have, for one. I only watched this because it was showing on my flight.

Ben Barnes was particularly wooden as Caspian while Georgie Whose-It has lost whatever appeal she had in the first film, though to be fair this may well be because her lines are all so predictable, along with much gasping and pointing. And Will Poulter as Eustace is a complete caricature, boring to watch, and not at all believable.

The problem with this film is that is simply goes from one action scene to the next, with little or no character development or meaningful down-time. I couldn't care less what happens to the main characters, nor did the plot make any sense. The fact that the acting in this film makes the young Harry Potter protagonists seem quite adept says a lot. But I don't think that is solely due to the actors; the direction of "Dawn Treader" is excruciatingly formulaic and soulless.

Do yourself a favor and stick to the books.

I am rarely interested in seeing new movies, but I knew I would have to see this one when I heard about it. I remember The Runaways, though I was a little too young to really understand or appreciate them. My older sister was wild about them. Thirty-five years later I still know the words to "Cherry Bomb." The film version of the Runaways phenomenon was not disappointing. It was extremely evocative of the heady, edgy years that were the mid-seventies, and the huge splash that The Runaways made in those years. All of the performances were very convincing, including Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie. I have to say, though, it really disturbed me to see Dakota Fanning, who may still have been 14 when the movie was made, simulating sex, smoking, drinking, and taking massive quantities of drugs, not to mention recreating Cherie Currie's lewd and sexually sophisticated gestures while performing. I really hope, for her sake, that Dakota is NOT as sophisticated as she appears in this film. I am far from a prude, but I would never let my 14-year-old daughter play a role like this. The implications are really frightening. I hope that Tatum O'Neal, playing Cherie's mother in the film, warned Dakota about the dangers of living fast and hard at such a young age.

Interestingly, the real Cherie Currie is and was quite a good singer and performer, and her Runaways performances were much more raw and electric that what Dakota Fanning delivered in an otherwise excellent performance. Maybe, hopefully, Miss Fanning really isn't sophisticated enough to inhabit such a chilling role. As graphic as the movie was, I'm sure it didn't show the half of what the real Runaways experienced as 15 and 16 year-olds. Anyway, the film is very effective and pretty original. It's good to see a movie where women get to break out of the mold, which is almost as rare today as it was in the 70s. Just one of the many reasons why I usually don't bother seeing new movies...

I have to give this film 7 out of 10 stars for originality (yes, I saw it was a remake of a 1938 French film, but it is still quite original). It's always great to see Cyd Charisse dance or do anything in a movie, and she is certainly showcased in this film as an alluring but slightly shallow prima ballerina. The real draw, though, is Margaret O'Brien as Meg, a frighteningly intense little girl who idolizes Charisse as the resident ballet star. Meg's rather shocking actions are equally shockingly glossed over in the end. The would-be feel-good coda is not the least bit convincing! What a high price Meg's victim had to pay, despite the faraway look of goodness in La Darina's glamorous eyes! But O'Brien specialized in intense, scary little girls, didn't she? Her crime in this film and the way in which she is haunted by it remind me of her hysterical confession to "murder" in "Meet Me in St. Louis." She was a strange and very talented little girl, and she is an impressive dancer in this film, too. You can't fudge dancing "en pointe," or you couldn't in 1947, anyway, with the camera focused simultaneously on your face and feet. This is not your everyday forties movie ...

I was excited to watch this film on PBS after an early holiday dinner. It certainly didn't get off to a good start, with the young Bohemian roommates overacting and over-singing, about nothing at all. Apparently, director Robert Dornhelm had no idea how to play that down. Or else he didn't bother; I don't know. Rolando Villazón should have been encouraged to start off in a more subtle way, with less volume and less mugging. And the makeup artists surely could have done something to make him appear less lugubrious.

It was disappointing to see Anna Netrebko, a riveting actress and singer, so ill-used. Again, there must have been some way to make her appear both more attractive and more interesting; on stage, she is gorgeous and completely unique. The split-screen technique made no sense and added nothing to the drama, while scenes that featured people singing off-screen were confusing and boring.

I'm sure this is not entirely the director's fault. Grand opera fares best on the stage, and often appears stiff and overblown in film versions. Probably the best idea would simply have been to film the singers performing on stage in front of an audience. We would have gotten the benefit of verisimilitude, and the dramatic gestures and heroic singing that opera demands would have seemed much more fitting.

Oh, well!

I suppose there's not much point in adding yet another voice to the hundreds that have come before, but I just wanted to get my opinion off my chest.

I admit I was expecting the worst from this movie, yet a pleasant surprise would have been welcome. First of all, who is who here? How do you account for a load of British accents, practically the lone American accent (Tom's) and a smattering of German accents? Were those German accents supposed to depict ultra-German Germans? I found that phenomenon extremely confusing and distracting. Next, could not the drama of the events have spoken for itself? Did we have to have a constantly sinister soundtrack to remind us that something serious was afoot? I also found that extremely annoying. Third, I did not feel that Tom Cruise delivering his lines in a sonorous whisper substituted for real depth of feeling and acting ability. Fourth, did they HAVE to give Nina von Stauffenberg the Hollywood-glam treatment? Look at pictures of her. She was not drop-dead gorgeous, or impeccably costumed, nor did she have elegantly flowing locks.

Fifth, I have to take issue with the premise of the movie. "Many saw evil. They dared to stop it." Yes, they dared to stop it, or try, more than 11 years after it began, with most of them as registered members of the Nazi Party. I don't deny that resistance was extremely difficult and dangerous in Nazi Germany, but we have to remember that the majority of Germans, including Claus von Stauffenberg, allowed it to become Nazi Germany in the first place. And by mid-1944, some were resisting so strongly in order to save face, as it was clear that Germany would lose the war. Where was the serious resistance when the Jews lost their civil rights? When Jewish businesses and synagogues across the country were destroyed, and Jews themselves terrorized, BEFORE the war, in November 1938? When Hitler invaded country after country, before and after the war's start? Thank God for people like Claus von Stauffenberg, Ulrich von Hassell and others. But it was far too little, far too late. And Valkyrie, including Tom Cruise's attempt at a noble portrayal of Von Stauffenberg, does absolutely nothing to acknowledge that. Von Stauffenberg's last words, "Long live sacred Germany!" ("Es lebe das heilige Deutschland," I assume), show part of the underlying problem. Too many Germans believed that Germany was somehow sacred, and therefore entitled to more, while subject to less moral judgment. How wrong they were, and what a price they paid. And what a price did pay all those murdered by the Nazi regime. A glamorized, would-be valiant "Valkyrie" can't change that.

Rant over.

I can't believe that (a) I had never heard of Web Therapy until today, and (b) there is only one user comment about it on IMDb! Do we need any more proof that Lisa Kudrow is a genius? And is there anyone in Hollywood more willing to embrace the ugly side of celebrity (okay, Ricky Gervais -- another genius)? Her Fiona Wallace in Web Therapy is just as brilliant and original as Valerie Cherish in The Comeback. No valiant, selfless characters for Lisa. Only those that are devastatingly funny and self-absorbed, and wholly original.

Lisa, if you're out there: keep up the good work! We are starving for your kind of comedy and social commentary.

This movie seems like a good idea -- debunking myths and defusing prejudice, showing us all how diverse America is -- but it also begs the question of why nearly all the main characters are WASPs (okay, except for S.Z. Sakall)! Janet Leigh is lovely in the Hungarian-Greek love story, but why not cast someone Hungarian, or at least Eastern European? And Gene Kelly as a Greek (speaking, by the way, with a perfect American accent, but a few stiff phrases thrown in to show he's a foreigner)? Fredric March as an Italian father (named Esposito?) ... and the list goes on. All wonderful actors, but miscast in this. Not only are all the actors as white as snow, the rhetoric is pretty heavy-handed, too. I love many of the old Hollywood movies, but this one could have used a more realistic approach. The '50s were a strange time in American film, as in American life. Everything and everybody were supposed to be sparklingly clean and chipper all the time. We had to wait until the '60s for a wrench to be thrown into those oh-so-smoothly-functioning works ...