Rating: 
Summary: Wow
Review: I watched this with lowered expectations. The bits I've seen of Ranaldo & Clara didn't really grab me. But after watching this twice, I'm still stunned and weirdly delighted. As surrealistic as his prime "Desolation Row" lyrics all fleshed out by some great actors. The use of language is thrilling and poetically eloquent. Yeah, people don't talk like this in "real life", and this is archly artful and self consciosly poetic in ways that will make some cringe. But Bob's fire and flinty vision pulses through this film with the same vitality as his best songs. And the music is worth the price of admission on it's own. I hope he makes 20 more films with Mr. Charles. The wide world needs more perfectly dream logical fractured visions like this.
Rating: 
Summary: A Visual Dylan Song
Review: I really enjoyed this film. I really didn't know what to expect as Dylan's forays into film have been irratic at best. This isn't a film that you will walk away from saying "That changed my life," but it is one that I will watch repeatedly in the future. M&A feels like a 106 min visual Bob Dylan song. Take that for what you will.
Rating: 
Summary: What is it? How do you rate it?
Review: Here's a movie that got me thinking, I had to give it a chance. It has a plot, but it just hangs together so you might consider that a bad aspect, but in fact I think what is being conveyed is life in a series of images that in the end may not show much except that people try to make sense out of life in their own way. What motivates their decisions is the key.
In order to make sense of the movie I had have to try and figure out what Dylan's world view is. He is not a close friend of mine so I guessed based on his songs. I think he thinks we all are prostituting our morality whenever it seems convenient and that if we don't stop we are headed towards (or already in) the society shown in the movie which will eventually be purged somehow.... one of Dylan's themes in his music is a flood. There is no reference to this in the movie, but my feeling is that it is a probable outcome and on a biblical level. (Is this what Dylan would have seen as the end? All I can do is guess.)
The subject of fame and media is a big part of the movie. One of the best scenes is Dylan talking to Jeff Bridges (playing a reporter). Bridges brings his own set of biases into the interview where Dylan answers none of the questions and at the end Bridges says he "has his story". Are we looking for "answers" from Dylan and making up our own answers as we go along so that we can feel that someone out there, we think, has a better insight into life. Meanwhile Dylan just goes along writing and performing. It is what he does and the rest of us react.
Enough philosphy, the performances I think are great. The concert footage is terrific... how often can you see Dylan like this?
If you give this movie a chance it is worth it, but I had to drop some preconceptions about plots and story lines and go along for the ride.
Every ride will be different and maybe the end won't be recognizable or.....
Rating:
Summary: An American Masterpiece
Review: Either you'll love this movie or you won't. You probably already know which camp you're in. Personally, as a fan of both Bob Dylan and international cinema, I thought it was the most exciting and original film I saw last year.
The "extras" on this DVD are great. They include five deleted scenes, among them a great performance of the song Standing in the Doorway. The way Dylan sings it is absolutely killer. It should have included it in the movie.
After watching these deleted scenes, I felt as though director Larry Charles's three hour cut may be the definitive one. I hope we get to see it some day.
There is also a 15 minute documentary about the making of the movie that includes great interview clips with Larry Charles and most of the cast. During this doc, you see a lot of behind the scenes footage of the making of the movie, including footage of Dylan on the set. Several times you see him smiling and laughing while talking to the other actors and crew members; he looks like he's having a good time.
You also get to see a _very_ tantalizing clip of Dylan and his band playing Knockin' on Heaven's Door, a scene that wasn't included in the film. The only complaint I have is that this documentary is way too short. A lot of what the actors have to say is reduced to sound bites; someone will start to say something really interesting but then they'll cut to someone else.
Also of interest is Larry Charles's audio commentary in which he sheds light on his inspiration for a lot of the scenes, costumes, locations, etc. He also points out who a lot of the bit players are, which is interesting. For instance, the woman who plays "Mrs. Brown" is one of Bob's daughters-in-law.
All in all, well worth the twenty bucks I paid for it.
Rating:
Summary: FOR DYLAN FANS ONLY
Review: After reading the other reviews i felt compelled to make an observation.
This film is unpolished, low budget, no special effects and no inspiring performances.
BUT it has fantastic dylan live performances with his road band. dylan has gotten better and better and these performances prove he is still one of music and poetry's finest.
Definately a must for any Dylan fan.
Definately a "pass" for movie buffs.
Rating: 
Summary: Strictly for the curious
Review: As a Dylan fan, I went to see this in the theater even though I suspected I would agree with the overwhelmingly negative reviews. And I do. This film is a travesty, the kind of pretentious and pointless foolishness that might have seemed to possess bottomless depths and hidden meanings in the Sixties when people seemed not to be thinking clearly (listening to records backwards and treating their bodies like a pharmacy). For those who think Dylan is something other than a great singer and songwriter (which is all he is, folks, and isn't that enough?), there may be layers upon layers of wisdom to be found in this trifle, but I think they're either kidding themselves or engaging in wishful thinking. It's kind of sad that Dylan didn't step aside and simply agree to appear as an "actor" in this film rather than write it, too (under a pseudonym). He may not be an actor, but he has a real presence and an eccentric quality that could make him a fine comic performer. And with that cast, this could have been good. Instead, like the atrocious "Hearts of Fire," it's just another missed opportunity. The Amazon.com reviewer compares this to one of Dylan's songs, but a movie is not a song, just as a movie is not a book. The best books rarely make the best movies, and the best songs succeed because they can't be translated into another medium. Just as a book is a book, a song is a song, and a movie is a movie. This is a lousy movie of interest only to the curious.
Rating:
Summary: Inconceivably self indulgent
Review: Are people giving this movie good ratings because they think they ought to, or because they honestly find it interestingly done? I love Bob Dylan and Jeff Bridges and many of the other people involved in this film, but this is easily one of the worst movies that I have ever seen. A lot of people are going to "say" they like this because they will feel their cultural coolness is at risk if they don't. But most people are going to hate it. Why? Because it is just dreadful.
Rating:
Summary: obviously for true believers (only)
Review: oh dear... Pity the Dylan-obsessives. Condescendingly daring more discerning viewers to con themselves and read deep meaning into what is nothing more than a superficial popstar vehicle. Albeit one in which A Hard Days Night meets Brazil and 1984 with a roadmap by Jean-Luc Godard... Masked & Anonymous is a good old fashioned pop musical for fans, dressed up as some forgotten nouvelle vague art flick. Set in an imagined American dystopia wracked with bloody revolution, the plot of M&A is structured around a medical relief benefit concert, which provides the film's chief dramatic question: will/won't the show go on... in this regard M&A's antecedents predate the Fab Four's film debut back to the movies of Mickey Rooney and the Little Rascals... the other dramatic device concerns the dying dictator president... and so, on a pure plot level M&A is about waiting for a show to go live and a president to go dead. In the meantime, a star-studded cast of characters indulge in "deep" dialogue penned by you-know-who... who, in turn, keeps the audience watching with rehearsal performances for the benefit show. The musical performances will be worth the price of admission for Dylan fans, especially as almost none of them have hade it to the inexplicably programmed soundtrack album. The cast does an admirable job with the script that is more concerned with coining aphorisms than delineating characters. And in a film like this, where there is no character development, the many single scene cameo roles may be the best parts of all. At the center of it all there is Dylan as the singer, Jack Fate. Thirty years after Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid , he still can't act. But to his credit, he's written a script that really doesn't require him to. When not singing and playing, Fate mostly sits or stands there while someone else on screen delivers whatever the scene has to offer. When Dylan is called upon to act dramatically, and take down Jeff Bridges with a single punch he barely manages to throw, it's an embarrassing moment of unintentional humor. Otherwise, he wisely confines himself to more or less just hanging out on camera for his fans to gaze upon him devotedly. Given the general public's undying association of Dylan with the 60's, it is perhaps appropriate that M&A is very much a 60's throwback. The use revolution and dystopia themes is reminiscent of Godard's 60's films like Alphaville, Weekend and La Chinoise ; while the Val Kilmer scene reaches even further back, to the jump-cuts employed by Godard in Breathless . But at its heart, M&A , like the Beatles and Elvis films it evokes, is really about giving the star's music fans - including the ones Godard called 'the children of Marx and Coca-Cola' - some time with their object of adoration. In this M&A achieves its aim, while delivering some fine musical performances in an anachronistically nostalgic film. (Rate it 5 stars for Dylan obsessives and completists; 1 star for everyone else not "keen enough" to appreciate the emperor's new clothes.)
Rating:
Summary: A movie to enlighten your feeble mind
Review: This film is nothing short of brilliant. The script reads like the best poem or song ever written, each line more insightful than the one preceding it. If you do not like this film, then I pity you because you are simply not keen enough to understand it. My only complaint is that it ended too soon and did not contain a love scene involving Bob Dylan.
Rating:
Summary: snore
Review: But for the cacophonous soundtrack, it would have been a nice nap on a rainy day. Mr. Dylan should really offer refunds for those who were kept awake. Any attempt to discern a story line, or heaven forbid a plot, was constantly thwarted by inconsequential retrospective music bites. Much more than merely a major disappointment, did I ever owe my lover big time for getting him to go with me !!
|
