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The Tiger and the Snow - (2005)
Roberto Benigni can be a little too manic for me, and annoying - something like a hyperactive child. Watching yet another film he's made with wife Nicoletta Braschi was pretty chancy, but it's a risk that somewhat paid off -
The Tiger in the Snow isn't too bad. At times the comedy really works, and the idea of a retelling of the
Sleeping Beauty fairy tale set in Baghdad during the Iraq War is just crazy enough to be interesting. Benigni's character, poetry professor Attilio de Giovanni, is the same old Benigni we always see - rapid-fire jokes, clumsiness and silly mistakes. He has the aura of an old silent film comedian such as Buster Keaton or Chaplin, and like them he basically plays the same character in every film he appears in. Giovanni dreams of marrying the woman he loves every night, Vittoria (Braschi) - replete with Tom Waits singing the excellent "You Can Never Hold Back Spring" - but this woman doesn't want him. Regardless, when Giovanni hears that Vittoria has been badly hurt while reporting in Iraq during the war, he rushes to be with her. He'll have to face the many dangers occurring at the worst of times, and try to save the love of his life any way he can. The cast includes Jean Reno as Giovanni's friend Fuad, but he isn't given nearly enough to do in this. I have to admit that
The Tiger and the Snow made me laugh from time to time, and the only off-putting aspect to Benigni's writing is that he makes himself a sex-magnet who everyone loves, and his college students all laugh their head off at his somewhat middling improvised jokes - it's that manic "20% of these quick-fire jokes work" energy that needs to be toned down, but otherwise this was a kind of sweet, funny and charming movie.
7/10
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Diary of the Dead - (2007)
I really wanted to like
Diary of the Dead, but I couldn't. George A. Romero was going for the found-footage version of his usual zombie films, but he wasn't willing to sacrifice what you have to sacrifice to get that done - cheating enough to make the whole enterprise kind of pointless. Therefore he ends up giving us overloaded exposition to explain away different shots, points of view, score, effects and editing - but little matter, because this doesn't feel in any way like a found footage film regardless. When a dear friend is getting attacked by a zombie, two of our characters just stand there recording it while she fights for her life - and this has it's own explanatory exposition, with characters mentioning how addictive and all-consuming filming these events are. Romero wants everything in each shot -
everything - so it never feels improvised or real at all, and the whole process is ruined. It probably doesn't matter, because
Diary of the Dead has a turgid screenplay, is dumb, and has sub-par performances. The plot holes and lack of nous ate away at me, and I tried hitting a mental reset button numerous times - to no avail, it never gets any better and when you add bad CGI effects to the list of offenses this film commits, you have to conclude that this chapter of the
Dead franchise will never rise from the grave. Hated it.
3/10