The Hoax (2007)

Publciado por russelllewissblog - 29/09/09 a las 06:09:21 pm

"The Hoax" fearlessly wades through the slippery thought processes of a shameless fabricator — journo Clifford Irving — who sold a sham "autobiography" of Howard Hughes to McGraw Hill and came close to pulling disappointing the publishing scam of the century. Lasse Hallstrom's breezy, fast-paced, fairly loose-ended account of how he did it offers a surprisingly layered vehicle for a maniacally conniving Richard Gere, backed up by a exceptional Alfred Molina as his colleague. But it marks a much-needed expansion of Gere's repertoire beyond the dreamer lead he has continued to play well into his 50s, this complex loser's role marks pic as a marketing doubt for Miramax in U.S. release next April.

Overseas distribs will have to face not just the hurdle of selling a tale about the long-forgotten Irving, but also won't have the comfort of a large-size Hughes myth to draw on. Their only choice will be to present the film on its own irregular merits. On the plus side are a fascinating, stranger-than-fiction story and many tensely comic scenes in a darker second half that breaks into multiple narrative and thematic facets as the film strains to be about not just about a man, but about an era in America, without fully succeeding.

Still, for Hallstrom, this is a move in the right direction after the unhappy trio of "The Shipping News," "An Unfinished Life" and "Casanova," all of which represented a sharp drop-off from the critical and box office success of "Chocolat" and "The Cider House Rules." Here the recipe for combining the director's European free spirit with American storytelling techniques and rhythms is a happier blend, with the added spice of Nixon-era political corruption and a critique of national greed and self-deception.

William Wheeler's script, based on Irving's own tell-all book, which came out after he served a two-year jail sentence for fraud, taps into both Irving's and Hughes' colorful lives. There is more than enough plot to go around, and events race by so swiftly the film demands a good amount of concentration to keep abreast.

It's late 1971, with Vietnam and protest marches dominating the news. But the politically charged times, underscored by newsreels and catchy period music, pass by unnoticed for egocentric, bright-eyed author Irving, about to sell a new novel to McGraw Hill through his icy inhouse publisher Andrea Tate (Hope Davis). When the deal falls through, a crestfallen Irving recklessly blurts out that he is writing "the book of the century," without a clue as to what it is.

Inspiration attaches itself to his foot — Howard Hughes on a magazine cover — in the makeshift studio of his wife, Edith (Marcia Gay Harding), a hippie painter of no great talent but deeply in love with her philandering mate. They have reconciled after he broke off with his mistress, the beautiful and amoral European baroness Nina (a comically dippy Julie Delpy.) Thus begins the theme of personal trust and betrayal, which will be skillfully intertwined with the main Hughes plot.

A third thread arrives in the pudgy form of Irving's best friend and loyal researcher Dick Suskind (Molina). Almost as a joke, they start to fantasize about convincing Irving's publishers he's in Howard's good graces and has been chosen to co-author the billionaire's memoirs.

Some of the film's most enjoyable material revolves around Irving's chutzpah and daring in persuading an army of suspicious McGraw Hill suits, headed by a deliciously greedy Shelton Fisher (Stanley Tucci at his understated mightiest).Mistrust farcically battles with raw greed as they eye Irving's forged letters from "Howard," desperately wanting to believe they're real but afraid of being taken for a royal ride.

In the end, greed wins out or, as Irving rationalizes it, "a man who says something completely implausible will always be believed." At every credibility hurdle, he ups the ante, forcing the publishers to pay the unheard-of sum of $1 million to Hughes (i.e., himself) for rights to his story.

Meanwhile, the two lovable swindlers, who are writing up a storm based on illegally procured documents, succumb to panic attacks that have them racing down the McGraw Hill backstairs, followed in their dizzy flight by a vaulting hand-held camera. Though rarely laugh-out-loud comedy, scenes like these roll off the screen like perfectly directed clockwork.

Last part of the film sinisterly suggests Irving was himself the victim of a much larger hoax on the part of the man he was writing about, who used him to force President Nixon to ease antitrust laws and save TWA, which he largely owned. Going even further, it speculates that Nixon's paranoia over what might be in Irving's book motivated the Watergate break-ins.

Gere, his hair cut and darkened like the historical Irving, is strongly on key with the bravado and euphoria of the early scenes, creating a likable rogue whose bloated ego has nowhere to go but down. When reality starts hitting the fan and his lies come back to haunt him, he keeps up a bold front while mentally disintegrating.

Molina is a constantly strong comic note as the red-cheeked researcher who nearly has a heart attack carrying out Irving's wild schemes, yet whose touching faithfulness to his own wife (never seen in the film) contrasts effectively with the wandering of his weak-willed friend. Harden is similarly balanced between a spaciness and her very real feelings of betrayal. They make the most of Wheeler's amusing, down-to-earth dialogue.

There is much in Hallstrom's complex direction that recalls a past master of mirrors and deception, Orson Welles. Apart from the obvious parallel between Hughes' enormous behind-the-scenes power, which rivalled that of the government itself, and that of Charles Foster Kane, another link is Welles' "documentary" "F For Fake," where the real Irving appears telling his story.

Tech work creates a strong feeling for the '70s, with credit going to all hands, but especially to the expressive and varied lensing by Hallstrom's regular cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, and to Carter Burwell's delightful soundtrack, which becomes central in establishing time and mood.

The Ninth Day review

Publciado por russelllewissblog - 16/09/09 a las 12:09:45 am

"A fresh way to illuminate another
worthy dark Holocaust story."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Volker Schlöndorff ("The Tin Drum,") presents a different way
of looking at the Holocaust experience. He uses the prison diaries from
a priest, Father Jean Bernard, who survived a four-year internment in Dachau
and fictionalizes a nine-day leave in Febuary of 1942 of the priest named
in the film Reverend Henri Kremer (Ulrich Matthes) and his visit with a
fictionalized particularly vile high ranking Gestapo official Gebhardt
(August Diehl), a former Catholic seminarian, who wants the priest to betray
his faith like Judas and get the passively protesting bishop of Luxembourg,
Bishop Philippe (Hilmar Thate), to sign a 'pastoral letter' to give sanction
to the Third Reich (showing Nazism is in accord with Roman Catholic teaching).
If the priest flees, his family will be sent to the camp and all inmate
priests from Luxembourg would die. In Dachau there were 3,000 Catholic
priests imprisoned in the Priests' Block, where the so-called dissident
clergy were subject to abuse but still treated better than the Jewish inmates
in an attempt to make them hated by their fellow prisoners. Half of them
did not survive the camp, but Kremer did. The gripping film examines the
conscience of the priest, arrested for his anti-Nazi activities on the
French border, as it shows how the priest is tormented by this decision
he has to make and is uncertain which is the wisest course to take as he's
being emotionally manipulated by the Nazis. The film, divided into nine
chapters that correspond to the days of his leave, eventually turns into
one of an ethical question, more than anything else, as the war of words
between the sparring cold-blooded Gestapo agent and the taciturn, hollow-cheeked,
physically drained and sallow looking priest show his doubts about making
a secular decision that asks that so many others besides himself bear the
cross as compared to the rigid certainty of his barbarian counterpart who
has intellectually rationalized Judas to be a good guy and therefore the
Nazi proudly has taken on the identity of Judas.

The somber script by writers Eberhard Görner and Andreas Pflüger
can't help but be heavy and filled with unpleasant situations. We see the
grief through carefully worked in scenes of misery in the camp shown in
flashback and the anxiety felt by Kremer's concerned family (his sister
Marie and her husband, and his wealthy industrialist brother Roger (Germain
Wagner) who is prepared to help Henri escape after a failed attempt to
bribe the Gestapo official). The Church's collaboration with the Nazis,
a hot-button issue, is glossed over with doublespeak, so by the end it's
not as important a presentation as is the personal moral conflict of the
priest. The blank nine-days from the diary are given a good philosophical
working over by the ambitious but careful writers, not willing to step
on the toes of the powerful Roman Catholic Church to go any further than
they have to. Nevertheless, even if not the most daring film, the serious
and sincere portrayal by Matthes, who goes from playing Goebbels in "Downfall"
to the saintly concentration camp priest here, gives the drama a fresh
way to illuminate another worthy dark Holocaust story.

The Forgotten review

Publciado por russelllewissblog - 10/09/09 a las 08:09:17 am


The Movie:


A sleeper hit that still merited more recognition than it got, Joseph Ruben's "The Forgotten" is a distinctly icy thiller, a spooky little riddle that keeps the viewer on their toes with a group of twists and the ceremonial boo. The film focuses on Telly (Julianne Moore), a mamma who has lost her son in a small plane run. One day, she wakes up to find that all demonstration of her son has vanished - not only that, but her husband (Anthony Edwards) and shrink (Gary Sinese) don't remember him, either. Her shrink suggests that it could all be due to mental trauma she suffered after a miscarriage - that her son has on all occasions been imagined.

But she's convinced that this could not have happened, as she apparently and vividly remembers seeing her son getting on that plane. She sets out to find former hockey player "Ash" Correll (Dominic West), who also had a child on that aircraft, but doesn't remember. Dialect mayhap Telly is crazy, but then the presence of some very non-stop federal agents bring around her that she's trying to know something that she shouldn't. A local detective (Alfre Woodard) starts to hear in all directions her case and, in lieu of of upright dismissing her, finds clues that proffer Telly may be effectual the genuineness.

It's unquestionably difficult to reprove more about the cinema than I've shared, because the pleasures of this picture cock-and-bull story solely in the twists and turns. There's also in unison particular visual effect used in the film a couple of times that is nothing less than remarkable. Moore's carrying-on as a mom who will do anything to get service her son is also powerful - it's one of her better performances in up to date years. West is a nice off appropriate for Moore, as superbly - his quiet power plays off her more spirited acting strongly. Woodard and Sinese also contribute well in supporting efforts.

The film's finale is a bit too much; while the idea isn't bad in theory, the blear doesn't develop it ample (at 91 minutes, a fuller exploration of the resolution would have in the offing been welcomed, and the insufficient briefly overlay certainly has the passe for the purpose it.) The film's mood and atmosphere are terrific - the film's cinematography is splendid, producing motif is stellar and I liked James Horner's score, even though I haven't much cared as regards the composer's work in recent years. Ruben's directing is effective, and although Gerald Di Pego's screenplay does have some holes and inconsistencies, it even then has made for a exquisite, modish and mostly clever thriller.

There's two versions of the covering on the DVD: the theatrical idea and an extended edition, with an alternate ending and a couple of other extended/alternate bits. I liked the alternate ending a little better, as I felt it was a more successful rationalization of the film's events. The extended idea is not more than a couple minutes longer.


The DVD


SOUND

: "The Forgotten" is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 by Columbia/Tristar. The film's soundtrack is "subtly aggressive", as it presents a lot of minor ambience scattered about the listening space. There are, however, more aggressive moments, such as in chapter 20 (despite the fact that the trailers give away this moment and others, I will not.) The film's audio packs a very solid punch during the few moments that call for it, but otherwise, the picture has rather subdued sound, along with fine clarity and no concerns.


EXTRAS:

The main insert is a commentary from

director Joseph Ruben and writer Gerald DiPego

. There's also two "behind-the-scenes" featurettes - "Remembering the Forgotten" and "On the Set", the latter being a much more "promotional" piece. The three alternate/deleted scenes are available in the supplemental group, as adeptly. In the end, a series of trailers are readily obtainable: "Forgotten" (teaser/theatrical), "Hitch", "House of Flying Daggers", "Are We There Yet?", "Guess Who?", "The Grudge", "Spanglish", "Youthful Foul Book", "Boogeyman" and "Fifth Element: Ultimate Edition".


Final Thoughts

: "The Forgotten" is an elegant and abstruse thriller that engaged me greatly. The performances are terrific and the film boasts strong atmosphere and twists. Columbia/Tristar's DVD edition offers exact good-hearted audio/video quality and a nice helping of supplements. Recommended.


Coat Grade

The Film

*** 1/2


DVD Grades

Video 92/A

Audio: 91/A

Extras: 83/B

DVD Information





Subtitles: English

1.85:1

Dual Layer:Yes

Rated:PG-13

91 minutes

Anamorphic:Yes

Quarter:1

Available At Amazon.com:

Animal Room review

Publciado por russelllewissblog - 08/09/09 a las 07:09:27 am

Big:
Animal Room is one of those movies where you ask yourself why receive they wasted in unison a all the same making this film when they could have just made a commercial with a view antagonism directors and the danger of virulence? The film directed by Craig Nightingale is sort of a The Breakfast Club meets Rock 'n' Roll High-frequency School meets A Clockwork Orange without the mainstream camp-site of the first two or the truly perturbing dramatics of the other.

Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser himself) plays Arnold - a four-eyed (somewhat)nerdy kid who has turned to substance abuse due to his dysfunctional family life and who gets put into a school basement detention room with a bunch of bad eggs. His counselor knows that he shouldn't be there and so do we and it's just a matter of time before the evil kids in detention beat him up. Really, though, only one disturbed bully named Doug Van Housen (played by Matthew Lillard) turns out to be Arnold's bête noire.

The performances are all over the place. Most of the gang kids are annoyingly over-the-top and Neil Patrick Harris and Gabriel Olds (who plays Gary his best friend) give rather flat performances. Lillard (who plays Shaggy in Scoopy Doo) is the best actor here even though he gives a one-note performance. This couldn't have been much of a challenge for him but I'm sure that he enjoyed the one dream-like sequence where he is made up to look dead and has maggots crawling from his mouth.

The problem with the film is that it tries to provoke anger or outrage in the audience but it doesn't have the ability to engage the audience enough to do this since it is so hackneyed with cliché's. In the end the film turns dark as a way to make it all seem legitimate: Arnold kills himself, Van Housen gets beat up by Gary and the cops come and accidentally shoot Gary dead.

At least Director Singer hired the right people in the production departments because the cinematography, the editing and the use of music are the only worthy things in the film.

Audio:
The audio is presented in Dolby surround sound and sounds very good.

Identity (2003)

Publciado por russelllewissblog - 07/09/09 a las 09:09:54 am


Identity






A Film Review By Paul Perkins        
(Film Info

Click Here

)               
Download This Review 

PDF
Format


A Outstanding Suspense Thriller
That You Don't Want To Miss

When watching a Hitchcock haze you know you are in as a
godly suspense thriller
Identity

reminds you of a grievous Hitchcock coat.
Next to comedy films that I like is a competent indecision, thriller with a hint of
scariness.

Individuality
is this picture with a whole infinite more. Let me tell you a
little about the record not to much, because this is one film you don’t want to
identify too much approximately. 

Ten strangers with includes a Limo Driver (John Cusack), A
TV morning star (Rebecca DeMornay), A cop (Ray Liotta) who is transporting a bee's knees
(Jake Busey), a style bit of skirt (Amanda Peet) a pair off of newlyweds (Clea Duvall and
William Lee Scott) and a blood in disaster (John C McGinley, Leila Kenzle, Bret
Loehr) all get stuck in a motel because of a horrific rain storm. 

Mezzo-rilievo 'medium relief' in finding dwelling is quickly replaced with fear as
the ten travelers begin to die, one by bromide. They soon make happen that if they are
to survive they must uncover the furtively that has brought them all together. 

Accord was an outstanding film that had entire lot you
expect from a great suspense thriller. But Individuality is the type of film after
seeing the film you should prefer to to talk close by it to the child who seen it with you or
maybe see the film again because it will have you wondering if you drive have a weakness for it
and once you break down the film and figure out the purport of the film you will
say this skin is a lustrous concept and a great sheet. 

The story was a basic one and the point of the film was a
cool stance and after private what the glaze is alongside you could tell the
screenwriter thought intrinsic hard on every side the fairy tale and it shows in the final
product. They story did not be suffering with any bad parts or machinate holes, it shows what the
film was post to be about and it did not pest it all. The peel was just now the
accurate measurement and it was about 87 mins long which was the strategic length. 

The acting was harmonious complimentary Oneness had a great out and
each of them had their own style of acting that made the film even greater. John
Cusack was great as the main actor in the film. This is a unheard-of impersonation for him
and he acted like he did this genre of screen before. This is a film that after you
seen it if anyone ask you about it don’t give away too much of the skeleton key lot
points it will ruin the movie trial. 

Anyone who like a good-hearted expectation with a massive premise with a
gobs c many of bone chilling moments, with a great cast of characters and special
acting with a powerful climate to the film look no further then
Identity

this is the membrane worth the every worth of divulgement and is the best agitation
layer of the this year and outline right up to form year The Rink. Don’t miss this
tremendous filmmaking.

What Did You
Think Thither The Film
Your Comments About The Film

© 2003

Paul Perkins

And a written apology. It's p…

Publciado por russelllewissblog - 04/09/09 a las 02:09:43 pm

And a written apology.

It's punishing to watch this muddled thriller, directed by Chilean
filmmaker Raul Ruiz, about a disturbed woman with a split identity.

Played by Anne Parillaud (“La Femme Nikita''), Jessie Markham is a
fragile heiress on a Jamaican honeymoon with husband William Baldwin. But
she's also Jessie the menace, a cold-blooded assassin who wears a shaggy
black wig and looks like something out of a Japanese animation flick.

The gimmick here is that each Jessie dreams of the other, and the movie
jumps back and forth between them so you never know which is real and which
is the dream.

The concept is vaguely intriguing, but the execution is bad enough to put
you off movies for good. You know you're in for trouble from the first
scene, set in a restaurant with chairs and Plexiglas dividers that look like
shards of broken glass — as if we hadn't noticed the movie's title.

The good Jessie was raped once and thinks the guy is stalking her.
To quell her fears, Baldwin caresses the slash scars on her wrists, says
he'll protect her (we don't believe him) and makes love to her in a large
canopy bed that Ruiz shoots through an aquarium.

The arty fish-and-sex motif is repeated in the parallel story when the bad
Jessie picks up Baldwin — she already knows him from her dreams — and has
sex with him in the Vancouver Aquarium in view of a killer shark.

Back and forth, back and forth. Bad Jessie jumps in a cab in Vancouver,
and in the next shot good Jessie steps out of a cab in Jamaica. Bad Jessie
menaces Vancouver in a sexy vinyl dress while good Jessie, who starts to
distrust Baldwin, seeks out a voodoo psychic in Jamaica.

Ruiz has a fascination with doubles. His French film “Genealogies
of a Crime,'' starring Catherine Deneuve in a double role, played the 1997
San Francisco International Film Festival, and in “Shattered Image'' he
rips off Hitchcock, whose “Vertigo'' is the last word in double puzzles.

He's even got a music score
that plagiarizes Hitchcock's great composer Bernard Herrmann.

Eventually the two Jessies meet in a rest room, where — guess what? —
their images are caught in the same mirror.

“You're a dream,'' the good one says.

“You're a f– nightmare,'' the bad one retorts.

You be the judge.

Ruiz's direction is clumsy, his pacing is slack and Parillaud delivers
her lines in a semi-intelligible, monotone whisper.

On the bright side, she and Baldwin look good naked and will probably be
showing up on Internet Web sites shortly.

I Love You review

Publciado por russelllewissblog - 01/09/09 a las 09:09:27 pm

A sardonic look at in anomie from Croatian helmer Dalibor Matanic ("Fine Dead Girls"), "I Have a crush on You" is visually commanding but tonally uneven. Filtering soulless consumerism to the experience of a under control ad exec whose drive to achieve hard and play harder is rudely interrupted by HIV, pic imperfectly marries spaced-out cold solipsism with social critique. Helmer-scribe Matanic's off-kilter style finds a fittingly moody centerpiece in Kresimir Mikic's intriguing lead perf, but script's awkward portrayal shifts undermine pic's otherwise effective ambiance. "Love," from the start made for Croatian TV, opened Jan. 3 in Gotham, but seems nicest suited to fest play.

Matanic's antihero is an interesting mix of alienated romantic and rich-kid prick. Succinctly summing up the emotional bankruptcy of his whole generation in a voice-over monologue composed equally of cynicism and self-pity, Kreso (Mikic), having learned that he is HIV-positive, wanders around in a state of shock, unable to sustain any viable reaction. He cannot even completely embrace his anger, since his diagnosis feels like karmic payback: He received a contaminated transfusion after drunkenly running over a woman at a crosswalk (his attorney father got him off).

Kreso's selfishness likewise comes back to haunt him in dealing with friends and acquaintances. If he manages to penetrate the walls of self-absorption surrounding his g.f., buds and co-workers long enough to announce his tragic news, they laugh incredulously (AIDS is as yet fairly rare in Croatia) and/or head for the hills. Only a barmaid (a Vermeer-like Ivana Roscic, in a performance of singular warmth) shows any human compassion.

Matanic maintains a steady distance from his alternately sympathetic and monstrous protagonist as he careens from despair to tenderness to murderous self-entitlement. Mikic perfectly balances his character's charisma and egoism, while d.p. Branko Linta exploits Mikic's beanpole height to create a vertical divide between the hero's reeling subjectivity and the "uncaring" masses.

But Matanic stumbles in limning Kreso's changing relationship to people he knows, particularly the men, who are prone to homophobia and misinformation. Pic tends toward story points that yield bald, largely unconvincing statements, giving short shrift to narrative subtleties (if rarely to compositional ones).

Thus, though scenes often unfold with great nuance within a given moment, major plot twists are pulled before setups are satisfactorily established, so the film's final switcheroo uncertainly hovers between irony and bathos.

Tech credits are excellent, Jura Ferina and Pavle Miholjevic's music eerily echoing lenser Linta's zoned-out Zagreb cityscapes.

Asignatura de Litografía y Serigrafía - Departamento de Dibujo - Universidad de Sevilla
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