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Reviews
American Beauty (1999)
It's not the clever story, it's everything else
The story's been done before in one way or another, and there isn't a lot of clever dialogue or wrenching plot twists. But this movie is superbly acted by every single actor, and is directed and edited with great taste and restraint. So while it may be a familiar subject, it's the best treatment of it you'll ever see.
Annette Bening is one of my least favorite actresses, and she was great!
Fanny Hill (1964)
Turn an erotic novel into a cheap farce and the result's not pretty
This is probably the most expurgated version of Fanny Hill you'll ever see. The only way to get an R rating in 1964 for a movie with a sexual subject seems to be to turn it into a leering, puerile comedy. The problem is that it doesn't work as a comedy, or as erotica, or even as historic fiction.
The plot revolves around Fanny's belief that she has been taken in by a kind lady to work in a hat shop, instead of in an expensive brothel. Fanny manages to avoid the clients she's been set up with for the entire movie without ever finding out the truth. The plot never evolves beyond this obvious story. There's also no attention paid to accuracy: the setting for the movie lurches around between 1750 and 1890, and the dialogue ranges even further.
Of all the actors in the movie, only Leticia Roman and Miriam Hopkins show any life. The others are stick figures, feigning animation with affected voices and arched eyebrows. Not that Roman and Hopkins aren't guilty of overacting: they just occasionally show there might be more there.
This movie may be worth preserving along with "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" for anthropological studies on 1960's Hollywood attitudes towards sex, but it's not worth watching for entertainment. Read the book.