Change Your Image
halley-devestern
Reviews
My Favorite Year (1982)
Not amazing, but Bravo O'Toole...
I've heard people gushing about this movie for years and have always been interested in seeing it. I finally had the chance to see it for the first time today on TCM. I'm sad to say I was quite disappointed overall, but I did enjoy Peter O'Toole's performance immensely. This movie could have been truly amazing if the direction and editing were better. The cast is wonderful (I like Mark Linn-Baker, but a better director would have reined in his youthful over-acting here), the script is good and the story is charming. But the pace is tediously slow. As they say in the industry, you could have driven a truck through the pauses between the lines. Yikes. The movie could still have been tightened up in post-production editing, but no soap. And I'm not a youngster whose attention span has been irrevocably destroyed by the Internet. It's a sad day for me, I had been really looking forward to this movie. But, as always, Bravo O'Toole. What a treasure.
8½ (1963)
I have nothing to say, yet I want to say it all the same...
My poor words will never fully explain what this film means and the emotions it evokes; perhaps no one's will. The elusive, beautiful, painful, joyful nature of art, life and love are richly captured here. Yet for me to attempt an analysis of this film is to do it an injustice. I can only say that it affects me on a deep and complex level, leaving me in bittersweet tears at each viewing. It saddens me that not everyone enjoys this film as much as I, and many others, do. That sadness hearkens to the frustration of the artist (and of "8 1/2"'s Guido): To be endowed with the intense drive to share his vision, yet saddled with an obligation to make that vision accessible to an audience that wishes only to be entertained.