Change Your Image
Shlomtzie
Reviews
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
A Beauty
This movie is nothing short of an epic existential poem, beginning with a tragi-hopeful Hedwigian mythology of separation and return and culminating by debunking the very myth it sets up. Hedwig exits, a naked boy, the essentially solitary human being. The film is also a meditation on Rock'n'Roll's primarily unacknowledged debt to transsexual theory. It's a demanding work. Repeated watchings yield and yield. John Cameron Mitchell's performance is exquisite, and his writing--as well as Trax's--commanding.
Pi (1998)
Glorified MTV
Hokum. This movie is teen-angst drivel rigged up with fancy visuals and a snazzy soundtrack. Want the same effect but a better buzz? Go to any techno club. The cast of characters promises to be more interesting, and even spazzed out on E they'll have more insights than this imposter. Poor professor Sol delivers his lines beautifully, even the most embarrassing (keep an ear out for the gem about a computer being programmed into self-knowledge; dude... heavy!), and for that he deserves accolades. Alas, the accolades end there. The existential finding this movie trumpets can be summed up in one sentence, but I won't do that; I will be considerate, just in case you enjoy being beaten over the head many, many times (as many as fit into a frenetic yet curiously stultifying hour and a half) with a single concept.
London Kills Me (1991)
Magnificent Acting, Inspired Script
See this movie! Sure, the lives of the characters in it are terribly sad, but the only grim sort of sadness I felt, watching this, was due to the overwhelming lack of such richness in most American films. We're talking actors who throw themselves into their parts, rather than ride the oily wave of celebrity. We're talking a script that tackles, with only minute concessions to gimmickry (at times the playfulness crosses over into winsomeness), the true complexity of human beings. Clint, Muffdiver, and Sylvie are multi-faceted, unfolding (but only so far--no easy answers here) characters. The end's a bit tidy, but this remains a minor qualm in light of the film's rewards.
Small Time Crooks (2000)
Don't let Small Time Crooks rip you off!
What a clunker. Odd, seemingly improvisational delivery highlights the wretched predictability of every line and plot twist. The only surprise is the sheer gall of such sloppy filmmaking. Where does the ensemble of crook characters go, all of a sudden? Vanished. But perhaps for good cause: God forbid they should steal precious screen time from Allen's bleary-eyed, one-note bore of a lead part. When Hugh Grant is the best thing in a movie, you know you've hit rock-bottom.
My Son the Fanatic (1997)
For a stunning performance by Puri, a must-see
It's a rare treat to see a film character of such complexity. His story, a love story, is as homely and real as a wound.
Om Puri's character is not to be forgotten and Griffith gives the searingly intelligent performance I have come to expect of her. Kurtha, as the son, is very poor, his delivery stilted and amateurish, and an outdoorsy scene with the two lovers is cinematographically squandered; otherwise, nothing but raves for this one. Also takes the prize for sexiest and most heartbreaking love scene in movie history.
Kadosh (1999)
Inferior script, criminally lazy characterization, wooden acting
As a writer and a lapsed Orthodox Jewish woman, I was let down tremendously by this movie. The dialogue is hackneyed and wasteful, the characters, too engaged with lines ranging from the wrackingly prosaic to the stunningly melodramatic, aren't allowed to expand into genuinely textured individuals. The one-trick musical score tries to make up for the blandness, swooping portentously into the silence to jar the viewer and the script out of protracted catatonia.
Like an adolescent revolutionary on a self-righteous tirade, this film is blown away by the wisdom of its revelation--patriarchy is wrong--and thoroughly squanders its energies, hammering on this point. The resultant artistic crime is a complete lack of imaginative development; the moral crime is the reduction of human beings to caricatures: martyrs and grotesques.