The Red Cockatoo
March 15th, 2006
It’s heartening to see a German drama that isn’t about World War II, but compared to the Holocaust, the building of the Berlin Wall has rather less oomph. This abortive love story from Dresden ‘61 is terribly by the numbers: ah, now the young hero meets the youthful revolutionaires, now he falls in love, now he learns a lesson about responsibility etc. And the ending is telegraphed through helpful intertitles that announce, “3 weeks to the building of the Wall.” For a premiere, they didn’t have enough free booze.
Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge
March 13th, 2006
Jaw-droppingly awesome. Only downside: people in 1924 simply weren’t as quick in reading images, and it shows. Part of me wants to re-edit the damn thing, this one and the first part down, bring them down to two hours instead of five. It would be the greatest thing you ever saw.
Hmm. I wonder what the legal implications would be. Isn’t this stuff in the public domain?
Home
March 10th, 2006
I have a coupla things to say about Matt Zoller Seitz’s feature, but I’m in a hurry. It was surprisingly good.
Frida
March 8th, 2006
Surprisingly good. Visually interesting, and not just because of Salma Hayek. Alfred Molina does a great Diego Rivera, and the love story between the old commie and the hot cripple is effective & touching. We were gonna turn this off when we suspected the misery would get too much (hate that about biopics), but they don’t overdo the surgery and amputations. Makes you want at more of FK’s art, so it must’ve been doing something right.
Kings and Queen
March 5th, 2006
This movie was good. I liked this movie. Many people died and there was a lot of crying but I liked it anyway. The woman in this movie was very beautiful. It was long and I had to read subtitles but I was interested all the way through and I sometimes dream about this movie and I liked it very much. That’s my movie report.
Popeye
March 2nd, 2006
A lot more fun than I was led to believe, or remembered. Robin Williams does a strange mumbling shuffling turn in the title role, and Shelley Duval was born to play Olive Oyl. The singing is hilarious, and the script by Jules Feiffer has a lot of very funny low-key lines that are easy to miss with Altman’s trademark overlapping dialogue. A very odd movie–I enjoyed it more now then I did when I was 11.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081353/
