I'm Losing You

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Film
Review: I rented this film on a whim while looking around a video store. I was hooked from the first scene on. The story centers around a television producer who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and his family. His adopted daughter is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His son a frustrated actor with a young daughter and a self-destructive ex-wife, becomes involved with an HIV-Positive woman. The film is basicaly about death and redemption. The story is beautifully written and the acting is superb. The standouts are Frank Langella who plays the dying father, Rosanna Arquette as his troubled daughter, and Andrew McCarthy (who goes deeper than i've ever seen him go in this film and shows just what a superb acter he is.)as his son Bertie. This film is a deeply felt film and should appeal to anyone who appreciates great writing and acting.

Rating:
Summary: very real...and surreal
Review: there is not much i can say about this film except that i walked around in a daze for a couple days after seeing it. it starts off rather slow but in the end it is tragic and redemptive and completely stunning.

Rating:
Summary: he didn't lose me cos he never had me
Review: Though I am unfamiliar with Bruce Wagner's novel, which he has adapted and directed himself, going from the book's editorial comments I have researched, the movie version seems to be vastly different. The book was praised for it's powerful and revolting representation of Hollywood characters and their drug-dazed sexually abusive lifestyles. Oliver Stone is quoted as saying the book "is like a wire stretched across the throat." However Wagner's screenplay seems to have lost most of the book's characters, their cell-phone and email means of communication, the stench of gossip, and his much admired humour. Perhaps if the film worked on it's own terms, this might be forgiven, but even as an adaptation of a best-selling novel, it leaves the viewer in a state of exasperation. It reads like a foreign movie where someone forgot to type the subtitles. Wagner cannot be faulted on any major technical level as a film-maker, apart from the essential one of providing a clear narrative. As the title suggests, the theme here is death. The interconnecting characters are either dying or interact with someone who is, specifically from cancer or AIDS. However since all the sturm und drang eventually has no point because all the threads are never brought together, we're left unsatisfied. Wagner's casting is another issue. The idea of Andrew McCarthy as a bad actor is initially funny, but since he doesn't possess the skill to play a father or a believable lover, for that matter, the casting seems suicidal. Rosanna Arquette also has a problem portraying a woman with a dark past, who may be unbalanced. The best performer is Elizabeth Perkins, quite magnificent as a woman who is HIV positive. It's only a pity she is partnered with McCarthy. It's wonderful to see Salome Jens on screen again, but she is given little to do, as is Buck Henry, Amanda Donohoe, and even Frank Langella. Wagner uses some cute watch and time double entrendes, gives us the phenomena of an HIV positive only party, and presents L.A. Jews and their bathing of the dead. But there's not one laugh line. The ones who so admired him for his supposed accurate portrayal of Hollywood may be appalled to see that he sold out for the movies.