Rating: 
Summary: Scary for Grown Ups!
Review: Before "Leaving Las Vegas" Mike Figgis directed this rather nasty adult thriller which features Kim Novak's most recent film appearance to date. She's brilliant in this small part as a dying woman reunited with the son she gave up for adoption. As she slips into morphine induced dementia, he stumbles into...incest?...adultery?...ghosts?... I'm not sure but anyway, my blood ran cold for weeks. This is recommended especially to people who miss Ken Russell's exuberant directorial excesses!
Rating:
Summary: Scary for Grown Ups!
Review: Before "Leaving Las Vegas" Mike Figgis directed this rather nasty adult thriller which features Kim Novak's most recent film appearance to date. She's brilliant in this small part as a dying woman reunited with the son she gave up for adoption. As she slips into morphine induced dementia, he stumbles into...incest?...adultery?...ghosts?... I'm not sure but anyway, my blood ran cold for weeks. This is recommended especially to people who miss Ken Russell's exuberant directorial excesses!
Rating:
Summary: A great, great stunning flick
Review: Best movie I've seen in years. The critics and I must have seen a different movie. Very romantic, with over the top emotion. Where has this movie been the last 8 years?
Rating: 
Summary: The worst movie I have ever seen
Review: I could not believe that anyone could make a film as bad as this one until I actually saw it. Even 6 years after seeing it no other movie has come close to the depths that this movie reached. I read the other reviews and I am convinced that they were all written by the people involved in the film because no one in their right mind could sit through this without screaming at the screen. I cannot get this film out of my head, but for all the wrong reasons.
Rating:
Summary: An ignored masterpiece
Review: I first saw a trailer for this on a now defunct late night TV programme back in 1991. It had me hooked from the start with stylish lighting, great music and sharp editing promising a modern noir thriller with shades of "Dead Again". Due to a limited cinema release the first chance I got to see the film was a couple of years later when I saw the box in a video store. I bought it immediately, figuring might be interesting. I underestimated. This is a fantastic film filled with emotion and beauty. The first time I saw it it blew me away. I expected a cool little thriller and was rewarded with something much more. This is not a murder mystery or a thriller, per se, but a love story shot through a noir lens. The soundtrack (also by Figgis) is astounding and the acting is perfect. Particular kudos to the then-unknown Bill Pullman who puts in a career best performance. Also, if you actually figure out the central twist of the film (listen to the conversation in the car between Jane and Nick) you will wonder how on earth Figgis got this past a studio. Ever since I first saw it I've been trying to convert my friends to it's wonders with much success. See it now and your life may not be better, but two hours of it will have been well spent. Remember: Only you can prevent forest fires
Rating:
Summary: An ignored masterpiece
Review: I first saw a triler for this on a now defunct late night TV programme back in 1991. It had me hooked from the start with stylish lighting, great music and sharp editing promising a modern noir thriller with shades of "Dead Again". Due to a limited cinema release the first chance I got to see the film was a couple of years later when I saw the box in a video store. I bought it immediately, figuring might be interesting. I underestimated. This is a fantastic film filled with emotion and beauty. The first time I saw it it blew me away. I expected a cool little thriller and was rewarded with something much more. This is not a murder mystery or a thriller, per se, but a love story shot through a noir lens. The soundtrack (also by Figgis) is astounding and the acting is perfect. Particular kudos to the then-unknown Bill Pullman who puts in a career best performance. Also, if you actually figure out the central twist of the film (listen to the conversation in the car between Jane and Nick) you will wonder how on earth Figgis got this past a studio. Ever since I first saw it I've been trying to convert my friends to it's wonders with much success. See it now and your life may not be better, but two hours of it will have been well spent. Remember: Only you can prevent forest fires
Rating: 
Summary: strange symbolism
Review: I have a feeling most people would find this movie stilted and seriously flawed. I am at a loss to explain my fascination with it. It's partly all the cryptic symbolism that I never could decipher, like why is the letter N missing from so many signs? I suspect Mr. Figgis may have been sending some personal messages. The movie has such an ominous, dream like quality and so accurately depicts the loss of control that comes with obsessive and illicit love/lust. But I didn't find it the least bit romantic, as other reviewers did. In fact it's a pretty uncomfortable, disconcertingly raw picture, no soft focus love scenes and happy endings here. I strongly recommend this film to oddballs like myself who insist on digging into every hidden meaning, all you Jungians out there. Others should probably avoid it; it's definitely an aquired taste.
Rating: 
Summary: SEXY KEVIN MAKES THIS A LITTLE GEM
Review: I saw this film for the second time the other night. It is one of those films that people seem to have missed and I think it is quite difficult to get into or understand the first time you see it. But, having said all that if you stick with it is a sexy pot boiler of a film - that has a few plot twists/complications along the way. All the actors concerned, Kevin Anderson, Bill Pullman, etc are all really good, helped by a lot of sexual tension from the main characters. Basically the plot is that Kevin Anderson's character goes to see his dying mother in hospital and while he's back in his home town bumps into one of his old friends and his wife. His old friend (Bill Pullman) is knocking down an old building that is very different architecturally (it is made of cast iron) and Kevin Anderson is an architectural journalist, so this is of interest to him..........There, now I've started you off - I'm not going to say anymore, except there some surprises to come! I know my description of the plot thus far may make the film sound boring - but believe me this is not a boring film! I do not want to give any of the plot away. Final verdit: very film noirish. Love from Kevin Anderson's new fan - he's gorgeous!!
Rating:
Summary: A bit slow...
Review: Spoilers - A slow movie with two, similar and parallel, stories set 30 years apart. Kind of predictable except it is one of the few non-porn movies where a brother and sister aren't killed for commiting incest. Instead, the husband turns away and leaves the two lovers embracing at the end of the movie.
Rating:
Summary: Contorted Love
Review: The word Liebestraum has two meanings in German, "Dream of Love" or "Dreaming While Loving." Neither meaning would seem to be a suitable title for this dark film about obsessions and sins, and the ripple effects visited and revisited upon family members --unless it is that true love remains, in the end, out of reach. Liebestraum is also the title of a romantic musical piece by Schumann. A jazzed-up and decidedly unromantic, contorted version of the piece helps open the film. So perhaps the metaphor here is contorted love. From the start, there is such a creepy and unnatural chill in the relationship between the featured lovers that I could not care about them or their situation. I actually suspected the twisted nature of the ties between them and some other characters halfway through the film, but was not bored after that. There is that much going on, what with the plot twists and trying to understand the meanings (or not) of all the really odd happenings in the film --like a letter falling off of a sign or the crude sherrif taking an unbeliabely long wiz'. Plus, my suspicions weren't confirmed and fully explained until the very end. I did care about the fate of a frozen-in-time, caste iron building and also, oddly enough, about the man in charge of its demolition. A good man gone bad or a bad man with heartfelt remorse? Or both?? The feelings of this conflicted character are played out in the best five minutes of the film; the bar scene, and is one of the examples of why Bill Pullman is among the very best actors working today. There is a more recent film, The Guilty, in which he again manages to bring out the heart and complexities of a seemingly unsympathetic character. But in that film he was the star, rather than having just a handful of scenes to create that feat, as in Liebestraum.
|
