portobellobelle Reviews

Sultans of Swing: The Very Best of Dire Straits (2000 Video)

Fine, but get Alchemy

[8/10 · 18 September 2001]

Dire Straits are my favorite group, and so I love the music on this tape. But let's be honest, most of the "videos" consist of people pretending to play their instruments. That just gets kind of old for me after a while. If you're going to buy a Straits video, I recommend seeing/hearing Straits in their purest form: live. Alchemy (1984) is my favorite; On the Night (1993) isn't bad.

Interiors (1978)

Allen's best

[10/10 · 18 September 2001]

Without any question this is my favorite Woody Allen film, and I've seen them all. Forget the nonsense about it being "Bergmanesque." Take it on its own terms. Has anyone else ever explored the harm that art and "talent" can do more fully than Allen has here? How many films are this uncompromising? Just about everything in this film is perfect for me. I wish he'd try something like this again. He needs to forget about Wynona and DiCaprio, get six great actors (regardless of name recognition), and make a quiet film like this. And by quiet, I mean NO MUSIC. This is a fairly radical film, believe it or not.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Lumet and Pacino at their best

[10/10 · 18 September 2001]

Lumet and Pacino achieve a moving, believable portrait of a gay (or bisexual) man--in a mainstream 1975 film! What an achievement. No one films the streets of New York better than Lumet--and that includes Scorsese and Lee. John Cazale is both funny and heartbreaking. One of my favorite films, and I've seen thousands.

A Question of Silence (1982)

Powerful and challenging

[9/10 · 5 August 2001]

Very powerful and thoughtful. Much superior to Gorris' more-acclaimed Antonia's Line, in my opinion. This film has none of the cutesiness of Antonia but all of the thoughtfulness and thematic weight. The theme is a subtle examination of the roles of men and women in Dutch society, and I guess it could apply to many societies. The film has a viewpoint, but it problematizes and complicates matters so that it's impossible for the viewer to blindly accept that viewpoint. It examines SUBTLE discrimination and dehumanization.

The only frustration I had was the fact that the copy I viewed did not give subtitles to a lot of the dialogue--e.g., a woman listens to the radio for about a minute, but non-Dutch speakers (like myself) don't understand any of it, and I'm guessing that with a filmmaker as careful as Gorris, this dialogue is important.

Kundun (1997)

marginal improvement for Scorsese

[5/10 · 20 June 2001]

King of Comedy (1982) and Last Temptation of Christ (1988) are two of my favorite films. I have been sorely disappointed with Scorsese since; GoodFellas and Casino, for example, seemed to be all flash and little substance. Kundun is a beautiful film to look at, but Scorsese continues to shy away from the extended dialogue and intricate character development of his earlier films.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

Ignore the conventional wisdom; see this movie!

[9/10 · 6 June 2001]

The critical conventional wisdom on this movie is that it's too forced, too overblown, etc. This usually comes from the same people who tell us that There's Something About Mary is brilliant. No offense to that funny movie, but this is something on a higher plain. Stanley Kramer, director of many heavy films, brings an intensity to this film rarely seen in comedy. He evokes career performances from a number of performances: Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers--people I usually can't stand! And the really funny folks are beyond funny in this film: Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, and above all, Sid Caesar. See Sid in this film!

Lonelyhearts (1958)

Surprisingly Great

[10/10 · 6 June 2001]

I didn't think it possible to make an effective film adaptation of Miss Lonelyhearts, one of the finest American novels. Though certain of the novel's darker aspects are lightened slightly in this film, overall it conveys the novel's brilliance while putting some of the moral quandaries into sharper focus. Ryan and Clift are unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Riding with Death (1976 TV Movie)

very bad but somehow interesting

[2/10 · 26 May 2001]

Like most folks, I suspect, I saw Riding with Death on MST3K. There's no question that it's a totally hackneyed, badly acted, horribly edited movie. But there's something about their attempt to splice together two separate episodes into a movie that moves me. They're incredibly clumsy in their attempt; mainly it consists of totally obvious voiceovers while the camera shows a shot of a truck or a landscape. Gene Roddenberry, whatever his flaws, was able to do this brilliantly in "The Menagerie." But watching the attempt in Riding with Death can be fun, and all the 70's stuff (e.g., fadeaway jerk handshake) is a blast. So I give it a 2, perhaps my first-ever non-1 for a Msted movie.

Frosty (1965)

offensive

[1/10 · 21 May 2001]

I guess the reason I hate this film so much is that its target audience is kids and the message it seems to send to those kids is that "conventionally attractive people are good, conventionally unattractive people are incredibly evil." I know this is an old, old theme in fairy tales, but that doesn't make it any more problematic, and I've never seen a movie drive that theme home more consistently than this one!

It's a shame because the outdoor settings and indoor sets for this film are quite beautiful and memorable. But the content is awful.