Change Your Image
nwadamson
Reviews
Before You Go (2002)
Great cast... Awful script
I can't understand why somebody would bother assembling such an amazing cast - Julie Walters, Tom Wilkinson, Victoria Hamilton etc. - and then waste them on such appalling material.
No wonder Britain doesn't have anything approaching a film industry if projects such as this are seen as worthy of funding. TV movies starring Kate Jackson or Lyndsay Wagner ('Please Don't Take My Owl - The Jodie Lee Boxheimer Story' etc. etc.) are eminently more watchable than this trite, aimless, middle class nonsense.
Britain has some of the greatest acting talents in the world. Is this really the best we can come up with for them?
Shameful.
El crimen del padre Amaro (2002)
TRULY AWFUL
Mawkish... Over-simplified... Wooden... Like a badly written soap opera.
To rely totally on the notion that the subject matter - a young priest has an affair with a female parishoner - makes for compelling drama is rather naive.
There was nothing in this film that set it apart from a Jackie Collins made for TV movie.
That it was ever considered for an Oscar is quite simply baffling.
Jaw-droppingly awful.
El bonaerense (2002)
Highly Original
This is a raw, passionate and brutally honest piece of film-making by a director destined (one would hope) to make more films of this quality.
Pablo Trapero, sharing his unique view of the world via the camera, not only gives us stunning and arresting imagery but draws remarkable performances from his cast, especially Jorge Roman as Zapa (frighteningly vacant at times) and Dario Levy as the charismatic but ultimately underhand Gallo.
One of the best films I've seen in a long time.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
CAN'T WAIT FOR THE COMPUTER GAME
Whilst Quentin Tarantino is undeniably masterful at forming the shorthand of cinema into stunning imagery and unique characterization, his adolescent preoccupation with misogynistic violence has become both wearisome and troubling.
As an auteur, Tarantino quite rightly has complete artistic freedom, but his own ability to sift the post-modern references in his work isn't matched by that of his core audience, who are no doubt comfortable with the familiarity of the computer game violence, pithy dialogue, and MTV promo wrapping.
It's interesting that Jackie Brown is described by Tarantino fans as his most `disappointing' work. Could this be because Grier and Forster's characters were the director's most sympathetic and mature yet?