Worth Seeing
[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 19, 2012]
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In Les Misérables, directed by Bille August, it is the film itself which turns out to be misérable: thin and poor and wretched and in need of feeding up. The one thing you don’t want to skimp on when you are filming an epic is the epic proportions. August, a fine director of intense and…
An anti-traditional look at the latest in criminality which is saved — at least in terms of box office success — by its politically suspect belly-laughs
Beshkempir: The Adopted Son by Aktan Abdykalykov from Kyrgyzstan is written in Kyrgyzstani and stars the director’s son (Mirlan Abdykalykov) as Beshkempir, a name which literally means “five grandmothers.” It is a name sometimes given to adopted children to signify the role played by a sort of council of old women of the village in…
There are just enough good things about Cast Away by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Contact, What Lies Beneath) to make it worth seeing. These are as follows: (1) what is perhaps the most thrilling and frightening representation of a plane crash on film; (2) magnificent photography of the South Seas and the island where Tom…
Why Do Fools Fall in Love — apparently meant to be rendered without its mark of interrogation — is written by Tina Andrews and directed by Gregory Nava and is based on real events. Frankie Lymon (Larenz Tate) wrote and sang the Do-Wop hit of the 1950s of that name and never rose to that…
