Reviews

A very tired remake of a bad Israeli movie, with, i think, Simone Signoret. Reminds me of Mae West in Sextet. Only with tissues for the manufactured blubbering.

Totally not funny 'comedy' which is loud, strident and deeply offensive. Webb does his standard schtick but juiced up to at least a 12 out of 10. Bizarre is one of the kinder things that can be said about this sorry mess. The young lovers are duds, hordes of faceless youngsters scurry about and Coburn looks like he's dead. The way is lips swell and sag is alarming. Too much embalming fluid? Art direction and costume design gone crazy with every set an explosion of faux Victorian rainbow colors. Smug, superior, condescending Hollyweird, just like today's version. Prehistoric woke.

Despite some nice photography and a mildly amusing if cartoonish nod to pre-soviet melodramatic Russian cinema, the good/bad PC politics sink this as soon as the message kicks in. Those wonderful (and so handsome!) Bolsheviks, always out to make the world a better place for the sick and the children. Neat that they courageously go forth to document White atrocities. Too bad they didn't have enough film stock to document what the Bolchies did, eh? as in the Ukraine in 33-34.

1966...where was this shot? It looks like Spain, and the sets look like those from The Fall of the Roman Empire. The big interior set is probably one of the 33 entire finished interior spaces built for that massive Anthony Mann film that were never used in the production. Otherwise, this movie stinks, with awful dramatic scenes and absurd battles - the people who made this movie apparently never heard of the Roman legion, as the fights all involve a bunch of extras just running at each other in chaotic scrimmages.

Mackaill is natural, gutsy and pretty (a good friend of and with an uncanny resemblance to the much more beautiful Marion Davies) as always but even her commitment can't save this tired, conventional and totally predictable bore. All the other performances are bad, particularly Loy's. Sure her part stinks, but she is worse, much worst than the role she is given. I like Keith's stagy ways, but they don't help here. Not one thing happens in this movie that isn't telegraphed from the credits and the presentation (other than Mackaill's work) doesn't do a thing to freshen or enliven the construction or the dialogue. Musical numbers range from mildly eccentric (the male lead's two comic pals) to boring Mexicana. If a director's job is to control, coordinate and inspire the performances and create tension and pacing (it is), then the direction here is extremely deficient. For Mackaill fans only - and then with fair warning.

As the initial blurb puts it 'stalks.' And that is oh-so-cute when the stalker is a terminally unattractive and weird queer person doing it to the straight guy he had a crush on long ago (in high school or something). Displaying hilariously retard sensibilities, our person of gayness, stares at, leers over, grabs and gropes the straight friend. Instead of putting his straight fist through his gay face, or at least throwing him out, the straight guy learns the lessons that all straight persons very much need to learn about tolerance, understanding, loving all terminally disgusting persons of queerness who come on to you, etc. Or I assume the straight guy learns this and more, as I baled after the first groping. Flip the sexes and it's even more cutting edge as a weird, terminally unattractive and dysfunctional straight guy does the same thing to a woman and she learns much needed lessons in blah blah blah. Stalk her, grab her and grope her – hilarious, and she too will learn the third grade morale so tiresomely preached here, in derivative minimalist style. This is agit-prop crap, very unsuccessfully masquerading as entertainment. And people wonder why the movies attract fewer and fewer every year? I guess they didn't/don't teach logic in the almost ivy league.

Major pacing (and logic) problems. The end of the world is minutes away, but the hero (and heroine) spend lots of time running hither and yon, and worse, frequently stop dead for lengthy baby talk heart-to-hearts. Way trendy too - Repoman meets On the Beach... Deep dish stuff for the zoned out crowd between joints.

Sometimes suspenseful and gripping, too bad they don't know how to move a story along.

Always nice to see John Agar.

And since I need 10 lines, I'll say that Hawks' The Thing (from another world) is quite a nifty movie.

I caught most of this on HD last night, but missed the credits. The drearily tranquilized acting, monotone dialogue delivery, lengthy and frequent (and stoopid and boring) heart to heart scenes, PC characterizations and utter humorlessness had me in a trance in no time. The deep with a capital D story isn't very deep, but is remarkably pretentious, particularly in that the material has the profundity of a typical fortune cookie fortune. That this mess and the 'Artist' who created it take themselves so very seriously makes this crap far, far worse than the norm for rotten movies.

And then it came to me -Signs is the product of the oh so fashionable N. Sittydammed Putrid, a real auteur for sure, as all his movies suck exactly the same way(s) as this one does.

For aliens out to conquer the world, or harvest humans...or whatever it is they supposedly plan to do, they do it awfully slowly always giving sobbing Gibson plenty of time for (some more) quality time with someone or other. Someone or other exactly as boring as he is (here).

'Intellectual' filmmaking for the self appointed PC elite.

Musically, this is a superb production - not only entirely faithful to the sublime score, but shot through with a fire and intensity that is thrilling. Superbly sung, all the many principle roles are cast from strength. Merritt was always the best Arnold, and the only one in my experience (I have around 50 performances of Tell) to sing it totally uncut. Studer knocks off the glittery coloratura of her big Act III scene admirably and Zancanaro is a tower of vocal and dramatic strength. I have nothing to say about the musical aspects of this performances that are not complimentary.

Scenically though, it's as awful as only this type of Euro Trash production can be. Visually, this contemptible production is at war with Rossini's music from start to finish. All the principles are dressed to be as unattractive as possible (Merritt looks like a singing hedgehog, for instance) and for the most part are directed to stand around. The national geographic photo montages that pass for decor would be merely laughable if they weren't so overwhelmingly in your face at every moment. The actual sets - church pews, I believe, limit the possibilities of stage action to trooping in and sitting down, then standing up and trooping out.

The ballets - probably the loveliest in any opera - are grotesquely choreographed, with the girls and boys hideously dressed. To think that August Bournonville's choreography for these dances still exists and La Scala chose to go with this crap instead!

And, finally, this production does not look as it does because of lack of funds - it is by choice. Euro Trash, in action. The 'director', you see, has a 'concept' and that it is at total war with everything Rossini's masterpiece is, means nothing. Look at the parody of La Vestale, or the even more disgusting Mose for corroboration. La Scala could easily have provided Tell with an appropriate, and a gorgeous, production but did this instead, and purposely.

Bravi to the artists, go to hell to the designer and director.

Buy the CDs instead.

Manzotti's spectacle on the triumph of progress debuted at La Scala in 1881 where and when it was a overwhelming success which toured the world and which has never been totally out of the repertory in Italy. As the only existing example of 19th Century Italian dance it is valuable beyond measure. As an (admittedly a recreation in many parts, and much, much reduced, as here we have only about 100 dancers - as opposed to the original 600! - entertainment, we can only regret that times have made an extravaganza like this virtually impossible to stage outside of special occasions.

With colors in keeping with the period, and also using appropriate stage machinery and painted drops, this production is a succession of marvelous precision mass dancing interspersed with a series of quite lovely pas for the two principle couples (and other equally fine principle dances too).

Some of the transformations via translucent scrims and drops are truly gasp inducing (though the first and best of the scene changes is slightly marred by the camera staying with the principles rather than cutting back as the stage transforms to Mt. Olympus (?) for the first big scene.

The material is illuminating - this is the beginning of art being itself transformed into overt propaganda. 'Progress' is light, and conservatism is darkness, and we all know how that turned out. Funny how Utopias always turn into something like our own spiritually, morally and intellectually bankrupt environments.

That is something to think about - and that the simplicity of the message is in no ways any simpler than that of our own time, is something else to maybe consider.

That is, if you have the time to think about anything as your eyes and ears are delighted and dazzled by the really fun music, the brilliant decors and the riot of color, fringed costumes and fine, enthusiastic dancing that never stops.

This is hard to find but really worth the effort. This isn't Giselle and it isn't Napoli either, but for what it is, it's near unique and a totally exhilarating experience.

This 20 minute movie was the last of Verhoeven's shorts. It has the same super-ugly look (clashing, bleary colors, aggressively non-attractive people and compositions) that is characteristic of his early features, and the same raunchy bitterly ironic humor too. Made in 1970 - it is a typical (except anyone as talented as Verhoeven is never typical) example of swinging 60s sexual morality. Well paced, nicely amoral and with Verhoeven closet-fascist (I share his views entirely) disgust with the grossness and worthlessness of the age in which we live palpable beneath the surface. Wickedly, deadpan-ironic and confrontational as only Paul Verhoeven can be. All in all - it is a Paul Verhoeven picture and better in some ways than his early features - certainly better than the one about the Amsterdam hooker.

I'd sure love to see his other shorts - especially the one on Mussart and the Dutch Marines.