The Music Box

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Story
Review: "The Music Box" is a wonderfully compelling story that highlights issues of personal integrity. In the lead role, Jessica Lange is faced with fundamental ethical quandries. Should she seek the truth? If the truth is harsh, should she face it or evade it? Should she excuse actions by one of her own that she would denounce in others? If you're one of the few looking life in the face, see "The Music Box."

Rating:
Summary: Great movie with wonderful performances by supporting cast.
Review: I just love this movie; Jessica Lange blows you away with her performance and the supporting cast, including Fredric Forrest, are terrific. I highly recommend this movie, it is part of my vast collection and I watch it frequently. The music/score is just right also.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing film with great performances.
Review: I watch this movie each time it comes on to see the two lead performers work magic. The characters are well-drawn and the actors make you care about them. The story is compelling; it kept me guessing till the end. It's also good as a pseudo history lesson about some of the atrocities of WWII and how it still affects people today. I highly recommend this drama.

Rating:
Summary: Tough to watch
Review: If gritty and high strung drama is your bag, then The Music Box is a must see. I can remember the first time I saw it some five years ago. The ending left me all taut with the agony that Mrs. Talbot (Jessica Lange) must work through. The ultimate drama about the power of truth, hidden and revealed, the Music Box is a tense ride. Even the second time around.

Lange gives one of her most intense performances as a first generation American and hot shot lawyer who must defend her father against charges of bestial war crimes committed some fifty years ago in the glowing embers of a dying Europe. To be precise, in the then fascist satellite state of Hungary, then in the grips of Hitler wannabe, Andras Szalasi and his vicious band of goons, the Arrow Cross.

The ever professional Armin Mueller Stahl serves up a riveting performance as the refugee who sought American haven to hide his shameful secret. His character highlights the dark side of American immigration. People not only escaping poverty and prejudice, but justice and truth as well. Even Mr. Laszlo wants to believe that the American Dream can wipe his slate clean. But in vain, as his past closes in.

All the while, Lange bravely struggles to protect her beloved papa, refusing to see what is before her face. Yet, little by little, as the witnesses build up their mountain of irrefutable evidence, tears and all, doubt begins to creep in. Finally, she travels to Hungary, where the truth begins to unravel......and she is forced into the most painful of decisions.....the truth or her love for her father......

This film is quite cathartic and like the other Gravas masterwork, Missing, asks some difficult questions. Yet, unlike Missing, The Music Box gives us an answer. The truth shall set you free. And at great cost.

Despite its occasional heavy handedness, the Music Box is a sterling little drama that will leave you purged and cleansed. Like all good drama should!

Rating:
Summary: Solid Entertaiment
Review: Jessica Lange gives a great performance as the hungarian daughter who's father is accused of war crimes. Well plotted and suspensful, this film was overlooked at oscar time. It should have won a few.

Rating:
Summary: Why is this Widescreen film in Full Screen format????
Review: This film contains the best performance of Jessica Lange's auspicious career hands down. This was also American audiences introduction to the wonderful Armin Mueller-Stahl in the role of Lange's father. Thank goodness I saw this film on the big screen, and then later on the Widescreen Laserdisc. I have never seen this film panned and scanned, and i refuse to now, even though it has been released on DVD. So, unless Artisan Home Video intends on re-releasing this outstanding film in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio and in the 16x9 format, they are not getting my money.

Rating:
Summary: When the past comes knocking, it isn¿t always Teleflora
Review: What if your Dad, the loving and beloved head of your middle-class American family, was suddenly charged with war crimes? This is the scenario for THE MUSIC BOX, a 1990 release, in which Jessica Lange plays a criminal defense lawyer asked by her widower father to defend him against such charges being brought by the US government on behalf of Hungary. The father, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, is alleged to have committed multiple atrocities as an officer of a neo-Nazi police unit in Budapest during World War II. A complicating element is the father's vocal anti-communism, for which, he claims, the Red regime back in the old country is masterminding a frame-up. (Remember, we're talking about bad ol' days of the Cold War here.) Anyway, the Old Man needs a hotshot attorney, so his dutiful and devoted daughter takes the case.

Another reviewer has concluded that the plot is "far-fetched". Hmm. I would think that those aging American residents who've actually been charged with Nazi war crimes during the past couple of decades might not find it so far-fetched at all. Some have even been deported. Perhaps he's referring to the storyline that calls for the accused to be defended by his own offspring. OK, that probably wouldn't happen in real life. But, what is an otherwise idle Hollywood screenwriter to do when called upon to help fabricate a box office success?

The plot's arguable implausibility aside, both Lange and Mueller-Stahl give forceful and bravura performances as two people caught up in the fading echoes of receding history. The final scene between the two should have earned Lange that year's Oscar, but sadly didn't. There're also some quite good visual images of Budapest, which, at the end of the Cold War when this film was shot, was probably the Eastern Bloc's most beautiful capital city.

Notwithstanding that I've always been a little in love with Jessica Lange ever since TOOTSIE, I liked this film a lot. "They" say you can't go back. But, sometimes past history comes to visit uninvited.

Rating:
Summary: Format disappoints
Review: Why does this DVD give only the version that is "formatted to fit your TV screen"? What a disappointment! I already owned the VHS tape and I had hoped for a widescreen version of this compelling movie on the DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Format disappoints
Review: Why does this DVD give only the version that is "formatted to fit your TV screen"? What a disappointment! I already owned the VHS tape and I had hoped for a widescreen version of this compelling movie on the DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Format disappoints
Review: Why does this DVD give only the version that is "formatted to fit your TV screen"? What a disappointment! I already owned the VHS tape and I had hoped for a widescreen version of this compelling movie on the DVD.