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mrheckman
Reviews
All the Real Girls (2003)
One of the Worst in All Ways
I was ready to like All the Real Girls because I live 20 miles from its location and believe in supporting Asheville's film industry. Instead, I am indignant that 1 1/2 hours of my life were stolen: this was one of the worst films I've ever seen, from the concept to the plot to the direction and beyond. This film bungled the "Poor Urban Factory Worker" concept from The Dreamlife of Angels, added a plot as shallow as that of Flashdance, and then failed at being "Lynchian" in the attempt.
A "Poor Urban Urchin" film needs to be tied to its setting. Here we have an Appalachian mill town where the characters speak at least four different dialects. In one scene, four lifelong friends who have never left "Appalachian Mill Town" speak in a mixture of New York, L.A.Yuppie, L.A. Hispanic and West Texas dialects. Their speech is always articulate, deepfelt and life-astute, in complete contradiction to the setting and their character definitions. Curiously, in this town it is always early morning: in an attempt at artsy lighting and cinematography, that seems to be the film's only time of day.
The plot is your dime-a-dozen "young people fall in love/one has sex with someone else/love falls apart/tears and shouting/they get back together" structure. Because real love can always overcome a minor sexual mistake, this plot outline has never worked, and again fails in this film.
To be Lynchian, a film needs to have a consistent surreal edge all the way from the set to the music to the actors' deliveries, which need to be finely paced and polished. In All the Real Girls, it appears that the director went with the first or second take in most scenes (probably in an attempt to be "raw" and "real"), but this idea simply upsets the pacing with maddening delayed responses, and makes the whole film seem amateurish from beginning to end. The sequence of scenes is completely disjointed: if it weren't for the heroine getting a haircut, we would have no concept of the passage of time.
Moviegoers who are open to experimental techniques will think that's what they're getting. But when they go and spend their precious time, All the Real Girls will only deliver a disappointing mix of all the worst cinematic ideas.
A Little Romance (1979)
What a Jewel
A Little Romance--what a jewel! Finally, a film from the late 1970's that has perfect casting, great cinematography, and non-painful music. A film about pure adolescent love and the obstacles to romance. Laurence Olivier is masterful as the gentleman has-been con-man who guides two love-struck kids into Europe's most romantic myth. I fell in love with even the minor supporting characters. This film is worth two hours for lovers of any age!
Salvador (1986)
A 1980's film that makes me glad for the 1990's
Salvador is one of those painful 1980's copy films that makes me glad for the great film decade of the 1990's. John Savage plays an excruciating clone of John Malkovich's sweaty bandana-wearing war photographer from The Killing Fields, injecting feeble echoes of his own shell-shocked character from The Deer Hunter. James Woods is even worse: unless he's playing a bungling evil corporate guy or a nerdy dad with glasses, this actor is almost always mis-cast. In Salvador we are given no reason to like him until his character undergoes a sudden 180-degree development for the mandatory love-interest angle. It appears that Oliver Stone simply decided The Killing Fields was commercially worth a copy and went ahead with it.
Even though this film is full-on Hollywood, in the 1980's it seems that a big-budget film crafted poorly enough could still be sold under the stylish "independent" label. Here Stone's apparent rush to crank out another Killing Fields leads to an obviously expedient mix of English (spoken by Salvadoran campesinos when convenient), Spanglish and high-school Spanish (Woods and James Belushi), and Spanish in un-readable white subtitles (apparently for mood). The language problem is only one element among many (including poor cinematography and inconsistent music), that nudged this big-director, big-cast film into the "independent" bin.
Salvador does have some documentary value, though. As a synopsis of Newsweek articles on El Salvador from the 1980's it passes. For this reason, I rate Salvador a "6" because in my system "6" is the minimum rating for a film worth spending two hours of my life watching. My recommendation is that, if you want a recap of the events of the war in El Salvador, watch Salvador (hopefully while doing laundry or shining your shoes). If you want a decently-crafted drama, stay away.
The Score (2001)
Great for a "Crime" Film
After "Cape Fear" I'll at least watch anything with Robert De Niro. "The Score" enjoys what has made this a great decade for film: artful casting. Everyone from De Niro to Edward Norton to Marlon Brando to the actors playing French Canadian security guards fit this film perfectly. These more minor actors and the film's cinematography also give a real sense of place, in this case a sense of Montreal. Since I wasn't looking for The Meaning of Life from "The Score," I think it was worth my two hours and I rate it an 8/10.