I haven't posted here in a while, so here's a bunch:
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House of Gucci (2021). Audiences loved it, critics – not so much. An outsider marries into a fashion powerhouse, and all kinds of conflicts ensue. TBH I expected more from Ridley Scott but then again: he hasn’t blown me away since The Gladiator. The movie drags a lot longer than it should. The story is simply not compelling enough to keep your interest for 2h37m (see Scott’s recent The Last Duel with exactly the same problem). Just like in The Last Duel, Adam Driver is not charismatic enough to justify excessive screen time. You know who is charismatic enough? Lady Gaga. She is fantastic here, and, no, I don’t like her music. She is convincing and electrifying. Hell, she even outshines the demonstrably aged Al Pacino and the absolutely god-awful Jared Leto (a total disaster of a performance). I wish that the process of her slipping into the dark zone of revenge was depicted better: “a woman scorned” plotline deserves more attention than it received. Overall, worth watching for the Lady Gucci performance alone, but you may want to keep your cell phone nearby, in case you want to check your social media. 3.5/5
Two Faces of January (2014). An excellent thriller about a husband (Viggo Mortensen) and a wife (Kirsten Dunst) traveling in 1960s Greece and befriending an American expat (Oscar Isaac). Some dark secrets will be uncovered and some blood will be spilled. Surprisingly subtle cinematography, and the gorgeous views of Greece are deliberately de-glitzed. Both Mortensen and Hayes are excellent actors; Isaac – on the verge of his breakout, which came in the same year with Ex Machina. Dunst is a little underutilized: I wish her role was a tad bigger. The story may seem mediocre in the beginning but then picks up, and the end was especially enjoyable. It almost feels like a 60s film in itself, recalling Hitchcock and Polanski, which is not exactly a bad thing. 4/5
Interlude in Prague (2019). Great idea, great costumes, great settings. Terrible plot, terrible execution, terrible acting. Mozart travels to Prague and gets tangled in an intrigue with a bunch of cardboard cutout characters. The main villain is particularly pathetic. All he needs is a pair of horns and a forked tail. You can call it “woke in baroque.” My wife and I unanimously voted to turn it off about halfway through. Sure, here Mozart is more upstanding than a goof in Amadeus, but after Amadeus, this feels like a far greater insult to his memory. 1.5/5
Tragedy of Macbeth (2021). An exercise in minimalism and PC. Black-and-white, with lots of interesting shots and interesting cinematography but that’s about it. The elephant in the room is both main leads: it’s not that Denzel Washington is too black or Francis McDermott is too old, but they display a total lack of chemistry between them. There is nothing going on between them. In fact, there is a distinct lack of emotions throughout this movie. It’s like everyone is on a benzodiazepine. The only truly amazing part is in the beginning with three witches being portrayed by a contortionist Kathryn Hunter. Overall, this film is just boring, which is an unforgivable sin. FTR I just rewatched the Soviet King Lear and was blown away yet again. It’s fantastic: passionate, dynamic, and beautifully acted. 2/5
Laura (1944). A great and perfectly executed mystery. A young talented protege of a rich old journalist is murdered. A detective falls in love with the victim’s portrait. Great dialogue and great camera angles (enhancing what otherwise would’ve been better as a theater play… which it had been originally conceived as). It’s not often that the very first frame of a film is, in fact, the most important one, but you wouldn’t know it until the end. The weak link is the lead female role: Gene Tierney is just not as good as some other female stars of the era and not nearly as good as her on-screen partners Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. Still, a very good film. 4/5
The Third Man (1950). Another classic mystery that takes place in the torn and demolished post-WWII Vienna. A pulp fiction writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives from America to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to learn that Lime has died. Viewing his death as suspicious, Martins decides to stay in Vienna and investigate the matter. He comes across Lime’s girlfriend (Alida Valli, once hailed as “the most beautiful woman in the world” by Benito Mussolini) and a British army major (Trevor Howard), as well as other shady characters (including a Soviet officer aptly named “Brodsky,” actually played a Russian). Every frame of this film is fantastic, the mood and the atmosphere are great (in a noir way) but it feels about 10-15 minutes too long. I would have shortened the “action” plotline and slightly expanded the “botched lecture” plotline (it was, indeed, hilarious). Well worth a watch. 4/5
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022). A slightly less coherent and more chaotic Matrix featuring a middle-aged Asian woman instead of middle-aged Keanu Reeves. It’s also less about action but more about emotion. The visuals and the special effects are not nearly as mind-blowing as Matrix was at the time (or even now) but are still excellent, especially for an indie flick. It is, as the title implies, everything and all at once: different dimensions (including one where people have hotdogs for fingers), different entities occupying same bodies, etc., so it might be difficult to keep up, but worry not – Cloud Atlas this ain’t. Both Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Kwan (remember Shorty in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? he has grown and is essentially playing Jackie Chan here) give strong performances as the laundromat owners who become entangled in a multiverse crisis. For a modern film, it’s surprisingly watchable and even good. And, what’s even better, it gives you something to think about for a couple of minutes after it ends, which is more than can be said about vast majority of Hollywood production. 4/5
Funny Face (1957). Shot in New York and Paris, this silly musical has one redeemable feature: Audrey Hepburn. But what a redeemable feature she is! Strikingly gorgeous, with acting chops rarely matched, and even considerable singing and – gasp! – avant garde dancing skills! She almost saves this romantic comedy, but, alas, comes short. It will bring a smirk to your face but mostly for how banal and shallow it is. I also sense it has influenced The Devil Wears Prada but it doesn’t have the Meryl Streep / Anne Hathaway tug-of-war antagonism. But if you want to see Hepburn entering her Olympus-height peak, this is it. 2.5/5
Last Night in Soho (2021). I rarely watch horror films and I confess: I didn’t know it was going to be a horror film. Luckily, it’s not exactly scary. A debutante girl (Thomasin McKenzie) moves to “Lundun” to study fashion. She then starts having strange dreams where she travels back in time to the Swingin’ Sixties. These dreams start out nicely (almost in a Baz Luhrmann glitz-and-glamor style) but then become progressively darker. Other than this great original premise, it’s horror platitudes piling up on each other (with PC / metoo platitude as the icing on this sour pudding). At times it gets downright ridiculous: when Eloise, in a fit of delirium, almost kills her ex-roommate with scissors, in the real world she would not be making a return to class but rather straight to a psychiatric ward, because if that’s not a case of “being a danger to herself and others,” I don’t know what is. I was relieved when the movie was over. It could’ve been “Utopia Avenue.” Instead it became another genre banality. 3/5
