Film Reviews by RN

Why are revisionist westerns so highly praised. Revisionist noirs are judged on their merits. China Town stands comparison with the best. Altman's The Long Goodbye is usually panned - though I like it. But boy make a revisionist Western and the critics love you.

Slow West is stupidly violent, vaguely homo-erotic, full of inanityy: "in a short while all this will seem a long time ago," a plot straight out of film school, wch is so zilly, see other reviews, to be beyond description.

At the end a dozen hardened desperadps are unable to take out two people trapped in a wooden cabin that looks like a shiny show-model at a garden centre And all killed.

Noirs can adapt to any era. Westerns set in the 19th century like this one can't deviate much from the classic mode. If that's the writer's ambition s/he should make a modern western. Excellent egs are Hud, Brokeback Mountain.

I have enjoyed a number of Fassbinder films. I was lured into renting this disaster by favourable reviews. It's a b&w filming of an artsy, avante-garde, surreal, experimental, call-it-what-you-will "play" written by Fassbinder when he was 23. It's apparently a homage to French & American film noirs/gangster movies. The 30 minutes I watched focused on characters who exhibit their coolness by staring full-face, blankly & silently at a static camera, occasionally spouting some improvised & nonsensical dialogue. It's supposed to be about pimps & prostitues or something. It views as a film made by deluded first-year Film Studies students. Somebody should have taken the camera away from them or persuaded them to fictionalise their own experiences. It may be intended as a comedy. The early scene on the train where two strangers exchane banalities designed to convey sexual tension certainly made me laugh.

Hitchcock imitators often forget that the great man's pictures had quite simple plots, not the messy & repetitive narrative we find here. An escaped rapist chances upon & rapes a young French married woman living in a down-at-heel Riviera resort with a jealous husband and a neglectful but likeable mother. She shoots him & disposes of his body. This is the premise for a convoluted, over-long & eventually silly thriller, partly relieved by a bright performance from victim Marlene Jobert. And why would a colonel in military intelligence, or whatever Bronson is supposed to be, find himself pursuing an escaped rapist. Bronson bullies Jobert & "acts" by his usual squinting, to the point where it's a wonder he can see at all. A great commercial hit & liked by most critics; but as one critic said a great come down for director Rene Clement, who made Jeux Interdits, Gervaise and Purple Noon, Alain Delon's first major film. If you want to see a good thriller watch that, which by the way is a much better adaption of P. Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley than the 1999 version with Matt Damon..

I rented this film because it gets RAVE reviews. It is probably the stupidest and most ridiculous film i have seen in a decade. A bit of Rear Window and Atlantic City voyeurism mixed with Polanski weirdness, eg the Tenant: based on a Simenon novel, an author who uses psychological disintegration as the narrative force because he hasnt got the imagination to do anything else. Even the twist, in what is a horrible mixture of thriller and romance, is obvious from half way through. It could only be made in France and should have remained there.

Don't normally write reviews but this film is over-rated. Director's previous film, Ida, was excellent. Here, the political stuff is OK, & the black & white photography is competent -- surely we can expect that! The problem is that there is no chemistry between the star-struck lovers & their relationship is unbelievable & indeed irritating rather than engaging. Who cares.

So the older man makes a fool of himself over a younger, bruised-looking blonde with a past. But what's in for her. He is quite dull, specialised in silent vacuity & spends his life carrying round round a battered suitcase. Her sulky, moody behaviour gets tedious. It's one of those films where you keep thinking -- why would anyone do that? Eg., why would the man risk life imprisonment by returning to Poland to be with a moody brat who has already rejected him & tried to emasculate him. I was fast-forwarding from half-way.

Bresson is the darling of critics and indeed French film makers. But this is one of the most solemn and boring of his films. The main character tiwtches & grunts his way through his uninteresting criminal caree, keeps a dull diary & pontificates about the need for supermen and criminals to bring about human progress. Weirds. I love French movies of the 30s-60s but I fast=forwarded this so much the agony was soon over.