nitznitch Reviews

Afterwards (2008)

Framed like an IMAX

[10/10 · 22 July 2010]

From the reviews I gathered that the 2008 Afterwards is an adaptation of the novel in French, Et Apres. This explains the theme of us not knowing the hour of our own deaths, and even more importantly, not knowing before then, which of the people we know well and who are well, will die and how. But the interest of the story doesn't explain why the director handled the theme the way he did. What are the images of the Quebec countryside, summer and winter, in direct contrast with? After all, Claire is a photographer of nature who is insisting on photographing in the snow at night a plant that only blooms one day a year. She thinks husband Nathan is a creep for being a natural at his job as a New York City lawyer. Cinematographer Pin Bing Lee and film editor Valerie Deseine have filled a large number of earlier frames with office building windows. All this is woven together by the music of Alexandre Desplat. Surely an intention was for all of us to see a bright white light surrounding each of us, in preparation for not knowing when the next NYC 9-11 will be and how.

Yentl (1983)

Piece of sky?Let me fly! *SPOILER*

[3 July 2010]

The pioneering sexual complexity of the storyline of Yentl allowed for much later gender- bending films including David Cronenberg's M.Butterfly ALSO MADE IN ENGLAND (1993) and John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig And The Angry Inch (2001) ALSO A MUSICAL. The plot mixes this bit in with the idea of a young woman wanting to be a student and study, just like a man. When the young man she studies with finds out she has disguised herself as a man in order to do so, he rejects her as a sexual partner, not because she has been lying to him all along about her gender, but because she STILL WANTS TO JUST STUDY. My form of The Yentl Experience was that I found out that there were none of these women, even among university professors, a fact explicable from my finally understanding that there are NO MEN WHO JUST WANT TO STUDY either. So my Yentl experience developed further into my real work being what Yentl wanted to escape from - housework or mundane chores or exhausting drudgery traditionally for women, so that I could be alone enough to do what I want, which is to just study. Why? The MGM studio's trademark slogan around the roaring lion is ARS GRATIA ARTES. I do this free and I'm grateful.

The Timekeeper (2009)

A Genie!

[8/10 · 17 June 2010]

My two fellow reviewers, we are certainly concerned to give due recognition to all things "up north." And we desire beyond a doubt to recognize films put together in places we know by people like ourselves. To say The Timekeeper(2009) may not win Genie is going too far! Both the inventor of this film's drunken bum dialogue - Samuel Beckett - and his protégé in the theatre who invented the post-dialogue world of aimless thugs - Harold Pinter - they both won the NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE. So, here we are, take a look at your lifetime expectations - "As my father used to say, a man can lose everything, and then have nothing." We are living in Harold Pinter's universe. Some of it's features are 1) garbled conversation as it would sound tape-recorded from real life, 2) an uninterrupted feeling of menace that 3) explodes sometimes into pointless violence. This brings us to an explanation of why my two fellow reviewers thought The Timekeeper an unfamiliar movie to most people. There's no sex in it. There aren't even ANY WOMEN.

Gangster Exchange (2010)

Toronto Tarantino

[10/10 · 20 April 2010]

Christopher Russell as Marco and Nobuya Shimamoto as Hiro make a buddy-buddy pair as appealing as Paul Newman/Robert Redford, and as expectantly to be looked for in the future. Russell has the athletic good looks - and hair! - of Tom Cruise in a role that Cruise would certainly turn down, due to the very unDianetics partying and vendettas. What raises the film to being totally Toronto is not only Marco carrying the drug toilet around with him throughout. But also, what I will not give away to future viewers, the identity of the Japanese-speaking PhD in Chemistry who solves our two friends problems. The Tarantino content of guns-and-drugs is treated in a way that calls for the audiences' complicity. The writer/director gets away from the aristocratic attitude on this subject. This is an ORDINARY PEOPLE'S movie.

Il Divo (2008)

As for me

[10/10 · 7 April 2010]

I'll fully take the word of reviewer "Mario Pio" (older author of "The Story of Language" a classic book in it's field), in particular because I was very impressed by his IMDb review as "elvinjones" of Roman Polandki's Repulsion. Reviewer "Donna Augustini" saw right away the bold reference to the dramatic film of Greek politics, Z (He is alive). Other Italians saw how Sorrentini made a script and directed it as a way to say that ALL THOSE PARLIAMENTS Italy had in the 20thCentury were a script and direction by Mussolini-Andreotti-Burlesconi. Unified of Italy in 1860 Camillo Cavour also thought Nicolo Machiavelli was the greatest philosopher, later for his own purposes endorsing instead John Stuart Mill!

Paolo Sorrentini was able to convey such a sweep of impressions in his own style by using printed words at the very beginning and at the end, that way making the back-and-forth of the narrative coherent. The pictures of the characters could be associated instantly with their fates.

Powder Blue (2009)

Maybe requires trained viewers

[9/10 · 3 December 2009]

The tradition of Powder Blue goes back to the watershed classic Magnolia, minus the distracting dominance of Tom Cruise and multiple-tragedy-preventing divine intervention. The writer-director, photographer, and editor have outdone even the second Magnolia production, Nine Lives, ONLY BY being totally derivative. So was Shakespeare. Thank heavens he wouldn't have understood movies as advanced as this one! The camera seems to follow around behind the characters in a tremendous rush. Closeups sometimes have the nearest face out of focus, sometimes shot from behind the elbow of the nearest person, in focus. Anyone who thinks the dialogue has any real importance in a movie like this, is clearly missing the one-second shots that fill in the scene changes.

The Lotus Eaters (1993)

Chilling with Mr Harcourt

[5 October 2009]

Hello Peter Harcourt. You granted me an interview at Carleton University about my having finished an MA in Philosophy and wanting to study for an MA in Film Studies. But we both agreed even if you only want to watch movies you still keep writing anyway. "The Lotus Eaters" uses very long shots to make it seem like an old '60s movie with the comedic use by all characters staring slightly off camera. The "idyllic setting" of the BC island is rendered by each frame being a composed colour photograph, picture postcard perfect. As for "made for TV" director Paul Shapiro and writer Peggy Thompson spent the rest of their careers doing well with work for TV. As a person nothing but Canadian, I picked up on the school principal in "The Lotus Eaters" REFUSING TO ALLOW HIS FAMILY TO HAVE A TV. I'm so glad movies I identify with stopped me from going to England to study philosophy with a friend of FRLeavis. But I do identify too with the movies in your book "Six European Directors"!!