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Posts from the ‘1996’ Category

Jan 6

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Blood and Wine

Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson have worked together several times. The most notable of these interactions is probably 1970′s Five Easy Pieces (with all due respect to The Postman Always Rings Twice, of course). Blood and Wine, from 1996, continues the unique working relationship with a dip into the noir pool once again. Rafelson is a skilled director at the genre and he pulls out another golden performance from his star.

What works about Blood and Wine is the seedy feel of the ordeal. It’s a rather bleak piece of work, one of desperation and of character. It is also a movie about isolation and about family, with its more extreme measures serving as remarkably logical outcroppings of the characters’ behaviours. If that doesn’t grab you, a skilled performance from a young and hot Jennifer Lopez should do the trick.

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Nov 7

101 Dalmatians

Live action remakes of animated features almost always wind up being risky affairs. Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, a live action version of its classic animated feature, goes well beyond risky and straight into idiotic territory. This jumbled mess of a film is only noteworthy for the animal acting and for an over-the-top Glenn Close performance that gets worse by the second. Unfortunately, even those rare elements of slight interest get glossed over by CGI and a ridiculous set of sequences that turns the minimalistic joy of the original into nothing more than chaotic clutter.

101 Dalmatians strips all the elements from the animated feature for the sake of laziness, it seems, and what we’re left with is a completely unnecessary project that demonstrates Disney’s unfortunate unwillingness to fully commit to a film with heart. This Stephen Herek-directed movie “updates” the formula and adds a couple of dumb chase sequences to fill time, giving us characters that we don’t care about and putting them in situations that cheerlessly mangle the original plot.

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Aug 31

Fargo

Ah, Fargo. The 1996 Coen brothers picture is a bleak and sparse example of crime drama done right, serving as an elegant and taut precursor to the Coens’ No Country for Old Men and pinning down the black comedy and brutal violence a classic genre pic needs. Fargo earned, and I mean earned, seven Academy Award nominations. It won two: one for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Actress (Frances McDormand).

Fargo comes to us with a “disclaimer” at the beginning of the picture. Joel and Ethan Coen tell us that we’re witnessing a true story, but are we? Much has been made about the veracity of the events of the movie, but it turns out that everything – at least how “everything” shakes down – is fictional. Now the Coens do claim that the events actually took place but cop to having tossed them into a blender (or wood chipper?) to create one story.

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May 1

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Shall We Dance?

shall-we-dansu-01

Remade in 2004 as an American movie, Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance? really has much more cultural and social impact as a Japanese film. More a motion picture about yearning and self-expression than about dance, this is one pleasing piece of work from start to finish. Suo’s movie sparkles with oodles of joy, pushing all the right buttons and playing all the right cards in proper succession. It is manipulative and proud of it!

One of the great aspects of Suo’s filmmaking here is that he knows how to express simple thoughts with simple shots. The idea of loneliness, for instance, is granted to us within minutes of getting to know the characters with which we’ll be spending the duration of the movie. Whether he’s setting up distance by showing a character looking out of a window or showing contentment by offering another dancing in the rain, Suo knows how to express the human experience with clarity and affection.

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Dec 10

Everyone Says I Love You

Everyone Says I Love You

Woody Allen’s 1996 musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You was the break from monotony that I had been enduring as evidenced through my last two or three reviews. Finally, here comes a film with pop and sizzle that is what it tries to be and so much more than that! As my regular readers know, Woody Allen is one of my favourite filmmakers. With Everyone Says I Love You, Allen has crafted a film that is not easy to make and has knocked it out of the park at the same time. Musicals are often not the first choice in terms of modern films, yet there are some successful ones and there are some enjoyable ones. This one is damn sure enjoyable and it did okay at the box office, despite opening on only three screens in its opening weekend.

Everyone Says I Love You is jam-packed with movie stars. With Goldie Hawn, Woody Allen, Julia Roberts, Edward Norton, Drew Barrymore, Alan Alda, Natalie Portman, and Tim Roth all cramming into the film, you would think it would be difficult to spot a performance that wasn’t bent on outdoing the others. Instead, Allen’s film works with a joyous cooperative energy and nothing feels as though performers are showing off for the accolades. Allen keeps it all in gentle focus here and tells a beautiful story with humour, music, and surprisingly poignant moments as well. It unfolds wonderfully, taking its audience on a beautiful journey and packing plenty of heartwarming laughs for the trip.

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