Fargo
[See “Entry from August 5, 2009” under “My Diary”]
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[See “Entry from August 5, 2009” under “My Diary”]
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A never-less-than-watchable film about the immigrant experience in America that diminishes its own considerable power with touches of magic realism
David Mamet’s State and Main is so slow moving, so sluggishly edited, that you’ve got to wonder if it is so through incompetence — though this might be OK for other kinds of films, it’s disastrous in a comedy — or if there is some subtle purpose to it: an attempt to assert, for example,…
It used to be said of anything that sounded overwrought and over-writerly that it “smelled of the lamp” — because the author was supposed to have had to stay up late to think of all the labored and artificial expressions he uses. Trixie, directed and co-written (with John Binder) by Alan Rudolph doesn’t just smell…
Le Mépris, or Contempt, based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, was directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1963, but has just been re-released in a newly refurbished print. Michel Piccoli stars as Paul, a Communist playwright being wooed by a dumb American millionaire called Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance) to re-write a script for a film…
The Beautician and the Beast, written by Todd Graff and directed by Ken Kwapis, is built entirely on the comedic talents of Fran Drescher, “The Nanny” in a moderately popular TV series of that name. Unfortunately, those foundations are not quite firm enough to support the house. Or castle, as it happens, since the “high…
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