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The Man Who Cried

The Man Who Cried

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It had potential...
Review: First of all, don't let the cover fool you: Johnny's hardly in it at all even though his picture's the biggest. It's a good movie and has a lot of potential, but has a lot to be desired. The movie ends very abruptly without explaining things. There are a lot of plots going on at once; it seems like they move from one to another without ending them. The only one that is really resolved is the first one which involves finding her father, and that one was a little disappointing. This movie creates pretty much a foundation for you if you want to add in your own creative details in your mind. I'd suggest it to watch once, but it's not one of those you want to run back to again and again.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: not resolved tension
Review: The beginning was promising, but by the end I felt disappointed.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It had potential.
Review: I enjoyed the story line but felt it really didn't go into the depth of the characters. I also felt that the romance was just thrown in. So much more could have been done with the movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Stereotypical Film by the Stereotypical Director
Review: It is hard to silently watch this "well photographed" film - there is a constant never-ending stream of questions and comments that arise from an educated viewer.
Why does the father look like a reformed Jew while the other Jews in the shtetl are fashionably Chassidic?
Why do some of them speak Yiddish, while others ( during the late gathering) speak German?
Why the Jewish village is burned down and during what war in Russia in 1927?!
Why does the girl's father look rather young comparing to his cherished photograph showing a grey-haired old grandpa with abundant facial hair?
Why supposedly a Moscovite dancer (Cate Blanchette) doesn't immediately get that her friend is Jewish, and not Russian, while looking at her father's unambiguous photo and reading the last name Abramovich?!
Why is an actor, who plays girl's father, and whom we see right at the beginning of the film, and right at the end; whose masterful portrayal of a loving parent is so nuanced and multilayered that it shames all other "great" actors in this production, why is he named only at the end as "Father: Oleg Yankovsky"? As if being one of the greatest Russian actors, with dozens of first class roles, means nothing to the Western colleagues?
There is only one answer I can think of: the film was written and directed by Sally Potter.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: needs more depp
Review: DEPP is always good to look and and the best actor around. They needed him more in this weird confusing film, then I'd give more stars.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: avant-garde failure
Review: i personally find johnny depp and christina ricci to be not only excellent actors, but incredibly aesthetically pleasing, so i looked forward to renting this particular film. Some reviewers of "The Man Who Cried" argue that the talents of the starring actors saved an otherwise horrifying script, but i disagree; not even sexual appeal could save this movie for me. i found the plot dull, difficult to follow, and unconvincing. if you adore these actors as i do, look elsewhere to fulfill your depp/ricci sweet tooth.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent! ***WARNING!: This review is a SPOILER!***
Review: Very great performances by Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci. Romantic, dramatic, sad, yet uplifting. Ricci's father leaves for America so he can support the family, soon after she is torn away from her family in the middle of WWII, heading to America. Unfortunately she ended up in Europe where she was raised. She finds a job acting in a theatre with a friend and falls in love with a gypsy(Depp) who was also performing there; she was looked down on because of this relationship. Again she is forced to leave her loved ones behind because of the war, heading to America once again in hopes of finding her father. She finally arrives at America after almost being killed only to find that her father is sick in the hospital and already has a family. I'm gonna leave the very end for you to see...otherwise you will have less of a reason to purchase the movie. Oh, did I mention that this movie is also backed with a beautiful soundtrack?

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great Idea - Horrible Execution
Review: This film had the plot of an amazing drama and the actors that could have really pulled it off... However, somewhere along the line, the story suffered.

'The Man Who Cried' stars Christina Ricci as a Russian Jew who escaped her homeland to find her father in America. Unfortunately, she was sent to live with an English family in Britain. She grew up singing and longing to find her father in America. Through her singing, she is able to find work in Paris, where she mets another Russian woman, played by the amzing Cate Blancett. The two live together and get work at an Opera House in small, 'chorus-line' type roles.

Now here's where I got lost... Johnny Depp, one of the best actors in cinematic history, has one of the biggest roles in the film, yet his says nothing, and does nothing. He plays a gypsy - again - who is the love interest of the female lead - again. It seems as though any substance of the 'relationship' that Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp's characters have is lost to the rest of the film. Kate Blancett's character does little more than stand around and look pretty, and the lead character is a quiet, rather dull individual (sorry, I love Christina Ricci, but this character wasn't well written or acted).

However, that film does have several amazing scenes, and a few memorable, if lost, characters. There are good sides and points to this film, and I did enjoy watching it - until the final scenes.

This has got to be the most anti-climatic endings I have ever scene. When Christina Ricci's character FINALLY finds her father - the purpose in life that has driven her this far - he merely whispers her name, she cries, she kisses his hand, and the screen goes black...

None of the four main charaters receive any conclusion to their parts in the film. We are left wondering what will happen to each person, and while that is sometimes a good thing, this film just proves to be annoyingly cut off. It left me waiting to see where that last half-hour of the film was.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: acting is good, everything else isn't
Review: The acting in this movie is pretty good but I can't say the same for everything else about it. The story is very poorly written. I can't even tell you with certainty what the plot of this movie was suppose to be because the script was so bad. I think that Christina Ricci's character was trying to find her father and while she was trying to find him, she had a love affair with Johnny Depp's character. There was another story involving Cate Blanchett's character and some guy she was sleeping with but I'm not really sure what this story had to do with the one involving Ricci's character. And I use the names of the actors here and not the characters because I don't even know the names of the characters. The character development was that bad. Any depth that the characters had, I attribute to the actors because the characters certainly weren't well written by the screenwriter. So this is a movie that I would recommend avoiding unless you're just a massive fan of one of the actors. But I should mention that Johnny Depp doesn't have a huge role in this movie so you may want to think twice before you rent/buy it just for him.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Beautifully photographed, slow pace
Review: Man Who Cried has wonderfully lush cinematography throughout, but is very slow paced. Although the film starts in Russia, the main action of the film doesn't begin until Suzie (Ricci) arrives in Paris and gets a job with the opera company. If I had been in the editor's chair, I would have opened the story in Paris, introduced our heroine as the newly hired member of the company, and brought out her history in conversations with the other characters. Cate Blanchett has the best role in the movie as Russian dancer, Lola. John Turturro gives a good performance as the sleazy Italian opera singer and Johnny Depp is excellent in the small role of Cesar, the brooding Gypsy horse trainer Suzie falls in love with. Depp is one of those actors who can speak volumes with just a twitch of his cheek muscles. I would add that I thought Suzie/Cesar's love scenes were well-handled. For my money, the most touching moment of the film was when Cesar (Depp) weeps over his sleeping lover (Ricci) whom he knows he will never see again. Ricci, while a competent actress, has very little to do here except look pensive and long-suffering. My advice on the film: rent, but don't buy.


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