Baz Luhrmann has a great deal to say about his native Australia, and he has very ambitiously attempted to say it all in one film. It’s a bold choice more admirable in the intention than in the execution. He has essentially grafted two separate films together, one an over-the-top homage to adventure films from the… Read More »
THE PIANIST
Truth can be and often is stranger than fiction and so it is with the true story of pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who through chutzpah and luck managed to escape the clutches of the uber-efficient Nazi death machine. His experiences have been rendered with a melancholy poetry by Roman Polanski, who as a… Read More »
THE STATEMENT
Conspiracy buffs will enjoy THE STATEMENT more than just about any other sort of moviegoer. For the rest of us, this story about a Frenchman who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II fails as the thriller that the filmmakers may have had in mind. It is, rather, more along the lines of a… Read More »
OLIVER TWIST
Roman Polanski’s take on the Dickens classic, OLIVER TWIST, is a respectful one, and by respectful, I mean safe. Nowhere is there the distinct voice of the auteur that could raise a gaggle of goosebumps with the perfectly positioned camera angle that one finds in ROSEMARY’S BABY, CHINATOWN, or THE PIANIST. There is none of… Read More »
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA sweeps across the big screen like a stifled yawn. Adapted from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s poetic novel by Ronald Harwood and directed by Mike Newell, the grand passion that dominates the life of its hero, Florentino (Javier Bardem), fails to rise to the occasion. Rather than the stuff of great… Read More »