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rpawliko
Reviews
The World's Fastest Indian (2005)
Cudos to Anthony Hopkins
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and it was pretty much all Anthony Hopkins. A wonderful characterization of a classic character - the old eccentric, nearing the sunset of his life, get's one last chance to realize his dream, and through shear tenacity, and a bit of ingenuity, he triumphs.
I couldn't help but think of my father and the men of his generation (the WWII vets). A shade tree mechanic, my father seemed like he could fix damn near anything with a pocket knife, some wire, a curse, and a prayer.
It's not a perfect movie, there are some moments that I felt the script writer doing a bit too much "emotional button pushing", when there was no need. In the end, I wanted to know a few more details (for example, what was the speed record that was set?), and the movie ends just to a little too quick for my taste. I wanted just a couple more minutes with the character - but it's always better to leave the audience wanting more than overwork the material.
A good story, well told, with a great lead actor. Everyone was smiling when we left the theater. Pay the ticket, get your popcorn, and settle back for a very entertaining couple of hours.
A Christmas Carol (1999)
Not enough miserliness, not enough joy
Don't get me wrong, I like Patrick Stewart, but I love "A Christmas Carol", and I feel that this version falls a bit short.
First the good. Great production values - you can almost smell London circa 1845 looking at this version. The ghostly effects, esp. Marley and Christmas Past, are right on the mark.
Also some interesting choices in the film work. Scrooge and Christmas Past walking through the old school building, and having the building change from an apparent burned out shell to the facility it was in Scrooge's day (and back again) was inspired.
Pretty good casting all around. Joel Grey steals this show as Christmas Past - an excellent performance. Stewart is very good, though I wanted more range from him. Tiny Tim was handled well - the part is all too frequently sacharine. I've nothing good to say about Christmas yet to come - it doesn't seem like much of a part, until you see how bad it can be in this version.
I was unsatisfied with the Ghost of Christmas Present. I've always liked the Ghost of Christmas Present as seen in the 1951 version (aka, "The Alistair Sim version") - Scrooge is overwhelmed with what is spread before him. In this version, Stewart hardly seems surprised at the "bounty" before him. No surprise, as it's a fairly meager bounty to begin with.
The Ghost of Christmas yet to come? Bah! Humbug! It seems like the production was filmed in sequence, and they ran out of money in the third act. A tall dark figure with glowing red eyes - looking more like a character from the first "Star Wars" movie than a specter from the grave. Not even a bony hand, but a fleshy grip that looked like it belonged to a butcher more than a reaper.
The transformation of Scrooge from miser to Christmas fanatic lacks the range I'd hope to see. If most of us are at a mid-point on the Christmas spirit scale, I would hope to see Scrooge start out at a (-10) and go to a +10 - at least when he wakes on Christmas morning. For me, Stewart starts at about a (-2) and goes to about a +5. Again, in the Sim version, his reformed Scrooge is all laughter, dancing, head-standing, JOY.
Stewart's Scrooge seems more like a man that has recovered from a bad cold.
Still, it's worth watching, especially the Christmas Past scenes. I'm sticking with the '51 version as my favorite, but this one shows that someone may yet get this story right in an up to date production.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
Good but not great - some strange changes to the story line
While I feel the film is very good, and certainly a competent retelling of the tale, I feel that it falls short of reaching the status of a "classic".
Coppola has given us an operatic "Dracula" One almost expects Van Helsing to break into a rousing baritone aria when he realizes that he is chasing not just a vampire, but "THE" vampire; and a final desperate duet between Drac and Mina at then end as they share a final kiss before she cuts off his head.
I found the bits of narration through the first half of the movie a bit irritating. Coppola's a master story teller - why did he need help with narration for exposition?
The sequence of Harker's imprisonment in Dracula's castle was, for me, the best part of the movie. Oldman's performance is quirky, spooky and fascinating as the near corpse-like count. The licking of Harker's razor after he cuts himself shaving is wonderfully disgusting. The cinematography and special effects in this sequence are great - especially the Dracula's somewhat disobedient shadow, almost an entity unto itself, sometimes with Dracula, sometimes apart from him.
The casting of Keanu Reeves as Harker disappointed me. So many terrific English actors, and we get the man most frequently associated with the California inflection of the word "Dude"? He was adequate in the part, and I really think he was miscast.
Lot's of exposed breasts throughout the film, but especially in the first half. I couldn't help but think of Terry Thomas' admonition in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World", "What is this American preoccupation with bosoms?"
I can just see some executive production meeting where a rep from distribution was saying, "look Frank, the Dracula thing's been done to death - if you want to do it, fine, but make sure you've got something to bring in the 15-25 year old boys..."
Honestly, I'm not a prude, but most of this stuff was pretty gratuitous. On the IMDb, one listed anachronism was "when Dracula bites Mina, her 20th century bikini briefs can be seen beneath her sheer 19th century night gown." In consideration of everything else, it makes you wonder if it WAS an accident.
Lucy was a little too "tartish" for me. A tease, to be sure, but her line, "Oooh, Quincy, what a big knife you have..."? Just doesn't fit into my idea of a Victorian woman of privilege.
Mina, as portrayed by Winona Ryder, was beautiful, innocent, torn between her two lovers, yet I wasn't completely won over by her character. I think this is more the problem with the story line (see below) than the actress.
The character of Dr. Seward, played as a borderline drug addict in charge of a mental institution was wrong for me. The character is far from the Dr. Seward of the novel and the play. When faced with good versus evil, the original character was a skeptic who must come to terms with the limits of science. As depicted in this movie, he's neither skeptic nor scientist, he's mainly just there as a vehicle to bring Van Helsing into the story.
I liked Anthony Hopkin's Van Helsing, although there were aspects of the character that didn't make sense to me. Why would a man, seemingly advocating an open mind to the super natural, almost in the same moment be almost callously scientific in his dealings with other people?
When Mina asks if Lucy was in great pain as a vampire, Van Helsing's response is, "Yeah, she was in great pain! Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace." It's comic, but hardly the spiritual kind of response we'd expect from Van Helsing.
Tom Waits turns in a very good Renfield. I think they could have backed off on the make-up just a little bit, but he does a good crazy. The scene where Renfield asks to talk to Mina, and and ends up blessing her was terrific. We fear for Mina, and we want to find some way to help poor Renfield, but know he is doomed.
For me, the fundamental flaw in this production is changing the main themes of Dracula - good vs. evil, faith vs. science, chastity vs. pleasure, sanity vs. rationality; into a love story that transcends time.
Coppola has lifted the a minor point in the original story - that of Mina asking for Dracula's executor's to be merciful, and extended it to a doomed love story.
I like my Dracula's bad, lustful, and irredeemable, but Coppola gives us a Dracula to understand. After all, he's not such a bad guy, he only turned away from God because his wife committed suicide.
Personally, I reject the idea that love is not only blind, but amoral. At it's core, Dracula IS a morality tale. We cannot give entirely to lust, for it robs us of our humanity, and makes us the same as not just animals, but the lowest carnivores - blood sucking bats, or wolves howling in the night.
In sum, I rate this as a good Dracula movie, but not a great Dracula movie. The scenes with Harker and Dracula in his castle are among the best in screen literature. The women are beautiful and sexy, but a little too sexy to be virtuous, The men seem somewhat two dimensional, with the exception of Renfield and Dracula himself. The cinematography is excellent, as are the special effects. The music was fine. The sound could have been better, but was certainly adequate.
For me, the problem is an unsupportable point of view, that has changed the story line to a kind of Gothic "Love Story", where love is never having to say your sorry, even if I bite you in the neck and steal your soul.
Nevada Smith (1966)
Not a complete waste of time, but close
Westerns, Revenge, Steve McQueen, Karl Malden, Martin Landau and Arthur Kennedy - this sounded like a great way to spend an evening. I was sadly disappointed.
McQueen's performance is good, although in my estimation, not his best (I award that to "The Sand Pebbles" - also done in 1966). I would have to say the same for almost everyone else in the picture.
I lay the blame at the feet of the director. Here you have a great deal of talent, beautiful scenery and a story that has the potential to be compelling, but it meanders almost as much as the central character - from Nevada and parts west, to the Lousiana bayou and back west again.
I never fully believed McQueen's murderous desire - a desire so intense that it takes him all over the West and a number of years. He is not so much dispassionate as distant - he sheds not a tear nor bears a smile, he just works on trailing the bad guys to kill them, and he does that with all of the emotion reserved for getting an oil change.
The ending too is less than satisfying. Presented with the opportunity to kill his final adversary, he merely maims him extensively, leaving the man to demand that McQueen kill him. "You're not worth killin'" he says, and then rides into the sunset.
But the character's motivation is unclear - did he reach an epiphany from his time spent with a Spanish Priest? Did he finally have a sense of closure by having the man in his sites? Or was it just enough to shoot a man in the hand and both legs and leave him to die in a freezing mountain creek? If someone could re-edit this film down to the 100 or so minute level it deserves, it could have been very good. As it is, pass on this movie unless you're a die hard McQueen fan.