michaelcorleone's Movie Reviews

The Fountain - 2006, Darren Aronofsky

Stars Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz

The Fountain took me off guard. I had seen trailers and posters for the film, and I was expecting a science fiction epic of sorts. I should have known better, seeing as Darren Aronofsky’s name is attached. His independent film Pi (1998) studied insanity and the maddening search for patterns in life. It was shot in high contrast black-and-white. It was troubling, disorienting and extremely powerful. Two years later came the release of his cult classic, Requiem for a Dream. It was an experimental but strikingly focused adaptation of the novel by Hubert Selby Jr.; a film about the human spirit’s deterioration as a result of addiction and impossible delusions. It was even better than Pi, and is arguably one of the greatest filmmaking feats of the decade.

Aronofsky’s third film is my favorite, and possibly his best. It has received harsh response from critics, and limited viewing has reduced it to a box office flop. It’s a visual poem full of passion and originality, and it challenges us to approach the topics of love and death without mindless comic relief. The film takes place over the course of three interlocking timelines that all link to the central theme of timeless love, and man’s doomed struggle to defeat death.



Tom (Hugh Jackman) is a medical researcher who is wearing himself thin in a frantic struggle to find a cure for death. He’s doing this because his wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz) is rapidly dying. Izzi is halfway through writing a novel – Tom’s visions of the novel serve as the first story in the film. The third story takes place in the distant future, where Tom seeks eternity with his love. This segment of the film is the most obscure and the most challenging… Aronofsky offers no easy explanations, and much of the story is up to the audience to interpret. Shamefully, people don’t seem to want to think when they take a trip to the cinema anymore, so very few filmgoers took the challenge.

This isn’t a pessimistic film. It’s dark, and at times it is downright heartbreaking. What sets it apart from existential or angst-ridden film stories is the fact that Aronofsky looks for hope in death. Although fear in death is a seemingly inevitable problem, this film attempts at a little bit of reassurance in the most selfless way imaginable. Tom isn’t horrified at the prospect of his own life ending. He can’t handle the idea of living without the woman he loves beside him.

Needless to say, this is a very heavy and unsettling picture. Aronofsky has a knack for hunting down universal subject matter that can make us ponder days after leaving the cinema. It’s his technical flair and visual mastery that makes these stories so gripping and memorable. With The Fountain, he makes a wise decision and continues his collaboration with cinematographer Matthew Libatique. This is a masterfully shot film. Libatique brings us a subtle visual roadmap that moves progressively with the central theme of death. The lighting is downright gorgeous, and the futuristic element of the movie is completely jaw-dropping in its splendor.

The Fountain’s musical composer (Clint Mansell) is the same man behind Requiem for a Dream and Pi also. Darren Aronofsky and Clint Mansell… so far, their combined force has proved to be on par with Steven Spielberg and John Williams. Mansell’s score for The Fountain is his finest; sorrowful but strangely tranquil.

To bring all of these beautiful touches into something truly great are Hugh Jackman and Rach Weisz. I don't feel strongly one way or the other about either of the lead actors, but they are both at their strongest here. Jackman plays the pivotal character, and he portrays him with enough humanity and honesty to pull any emotion imaginable from the audience. Rachel Weisz's performance is a very restrained, subtle one, and it's all the better for it. Her depiction of a brave woman staring death in the face is original and touching, and contributes to Hugh Jackman's power.

To describe the greatness of this picture is almost impossible. All I can say is that it emotionally affected me more than any film I’ve ever seen. Watching it in the theater was a rare gift that I won’t be able to experience very often. I knew I was watching something special, an overlooked masterpiece that will gain appreciation as time passes. This is the best film of 2006, and probably my all-time favorite. I urge everyone to see it.



MY RATING: 5/5

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Hot.

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Well done michael! I hadn't given much thought to this since it was hit hard by the critics, but I'll put it on my Netflix so I can be one of those that can give it the positive feedback you gave it.

meatwad SHOULD take notes from you.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

Thanks a lot guys.
More reviews to come.

To describe the greatness of this picture is almost impossible.

Then how is this a good review ? Really i don't have much against this style of reviews but it just gives me facts about the movie and what happens in it rather than why you liked it.

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Meatwad, what more facts do you want to know? Michael sprinkled facts throughout relating to the director, composer and lead actors.

Personally, I don't think you have any right to question a very solid review considering the fact that yours, to date, are a bit lacking. There's no doubt your reviews are short, but you need to offer more than what is there.

Now, my apologies to michael for this spilling over into his review thread.

That's the thing i dont want more facts , i want to know why he likes the movie.

He provides facts about the movie. He references Arnofsky's previous films and notes how he also uses the same composer from his previous films. He briefly comments on the Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. You don't want a review to be full of facts, but have enough to suffice an average movie watcher.

Not every review has to be just about the visuals, and such much like your reviews. Everyone reviews differently. There are no rules for how reviews should be done, but it would be nice to provide more than a 5 brief things. Meatwad, I don't dislike you, but I think you have a ways to go before you will understand that you can't slander someone else for providing a better picture in their reviews than you do with yours.

Think about it, and again apologies to Michael for throwing this thread off track.

Did you actually read the review? He gave tons of reasons:

"It’s a visual poem full of passion and originality, and it challenges us to approach the topics of love and death without mindless comic relief."

"This isn’t a pessimistic film. It’s dark, and at times it is downright heartbreaking. What sets it apart from existential or angst-ridden film stories is the fact that Aronofsky looks for hope in death."

"It’s his technical flair and visual mastery that makes these stories so gripping and memorable."

"This is a masterfully shot film. Libatique brings us a subtle visual roadmap that moves progressively with the central theme of death. The lighting is downright gorgeous, and the futuristic element of the movie is completely jaw-dropping in its splendor."

There are more, too. He gave many reasons why he liked the film. And I'll bet he'd be willing to elaborate on any of them if asked, too. Which, again, is the point of all this. It is not just the cataloguing of opinions, but the dissection and exploration of them.

I just read through my post before Yods posted, I must've been somewhere else when I was typing that, cause I was trying to talk about how michael was saying what he liked and such and I went back to talking about facts. It's been a loooooooooong day.

Excellent review Mike, although I loved the movie and was seriously caught off guard (in a wonderful way) when I watched it, I felt it was a 4 outta 5 for me. Saying that I do understand your passion and think your review was outstanding.

T.B.S.: do we have to even give "WAD" the time of day? Certainly he/she is just goading.


Great Job Mike!!!

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Back off read the review

Very well done Mikey

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

I appreciate it a lot. Thanks again.
I'm going to try and write reviews for all of my top 10, and then some more for ones I dislike and feel indifferent too.

Here's another rave review, for the #2 film on my top 10....

Taxi Driver - 1976, Martin Scorsese
Stars: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster

"…You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here…" This memorable, improvised quote is the aspect from the film Taxi Driver (1976) that has become an icon in pop culture, but it’s really just one line in a film where every line is excellent. Paul Schrader’s screenwriting is brutal and personal. There’s a hard, violent edge to this story, and its truth hits harder than its violence. This movie is a character study. It is one of the best character studies ever made, in fact. It’s in the same league as 12 Angry Men (1957) and Citizen Kane (1941), although few would group them together because of their genre differences.

With Taxi Driver, we see the character Travis Bickle (De Niro) becoming numbed to the ugly world that he has consumed himself with. He becomes emotionally distant. He has associated all of humanity with porno theaters, pimps and killers. Ultimately, Taxi Driver is about one man’s self-imposed distancing from reality. Bickle is deeply saddened by his own isolation; in narration he calls himself “God’s lonely man”. With no way to rid himself of insomnia and overwhelming loneliness, he builds a violent grudge against the ugliest part of the city... a part of the city he brought himself to be exposed to night after night.




At the beginning of the film, he applies for a job as a taxi driver. He’ll work from 6pm to 6am. He tells the man he’s applying to that he wants the job because he “can’t sleep nights”. He gets the job, and he observes. Michael Chapman’s cinematography is perfect in bringing some of the most hellish parts of New York City vibrantly to life. Along with the rest of the film’s tone, the photography is dark, murky, and bordering on documentary-style. Almost instantly, Travis’s aggressive voice-over comes barreling into the picture, powered by Bernard Herrmann’s jazzy score.

Travis meets a girl named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and thinks that he’s fallen in love. Really, he’s fallen in love with the idea of a woman who lives outside of the filthy crowds that he despises so much. She works at a campaign office. Bickle knows nothing about politics, but he wants Betsy’s affection. He tries to romance her, but he has alienated himself from people, and he genuinely doesn't know how to treat a woman. On their first date, he takes her to a porno theater, and says "lots of different couples go to these movies." As should be expected, she leaves halfway through in disgust and distances herself from him. He tries to apologize to her, saying he doesn't know much about movies, but he eventually realizes that he has lost Betsy.

This is too much for Travis to take. He stumbles across a twelve year-old prostitute named Iris (played to perfection by a very young Jodie Foster) and feels the sudden need to protect her from the sleazy pimps who sucked her into her nightmarish lifestyle. Travis wants to do something big, something different, something that will help to "clean the scum off the streets." The narration during the film becomes even darker and more menacing as the movie progresses. He becomes more certain that he has a mission and begins to buy guns and weight train daily.

We know that whatever Travis wants to do, it isn't going to be pretty. As an audience, we are fully aware that he is not mentally stable, and that his contempt at the criminals of New York could drive him to do almost anything. Watching this character is like watching a wolf. He quietly surveys his prey for the first three quarters of the film, and in the bloody conclusion, he pounces. Martin Scorsese's direction is incredibly well-executed, and the film is focused entirely on the character of Travis Bickle while also keeping a strong hold of the audience's attention.

The dedication and intensity of Robert De Niro's performance is the icing on the cake, the highlight of a movie with no weaknesses. Travis Bickle is debatably one of the most complex characters ever written for screen, and De Niro’s performance brings him to his full potential. Few actors can wield so much threatening power while also drawing empathy and sadness from their audience. His acting here is up there with the explosive work he did four years later with Raging Bull (1980).

All in all, this is a movie in which everything pieced together flawlessly. It is an important movie not only as an example of 1970's cinema, but as a part of movie history. It goes beyond technical greatness – it’s an emotionally poignant picture about isolation, and society’s potentially dangerous implications on somebody’s mentality. Ultimately, Travis Bickle is just a man who was lost in the crowds, and we have all felt this way or known someone who has felt this way. We know the killer in Taxi Driver, and that’s what makes him believable as a hero.


MY RATING: 5/5

Besieged - 1998, Bernardo Bertolucci

Stars: David Thewlis, Thandie Newton

Besieged is a directorial misfire for Bernardo Bertolucci. Prior to seeing it, I saw Last Tango in Paris (1972) and The Dreamers (2003). I was surprised by both films, but I loved them. Besieged is lacking in the key elements to both of their successes.

The worst aspect of this film is that it’s downright boring. Bertolucci attempts at some implication of meaningful subtext, but it’s simply not there. It’s a very hollow story, and often comes across as unbearably pretentious. The long silences, the messy character nuances, the scarce dialogue, all of it rang completely false and I found myself snickering the whole way through. This came as a surprise, since Bernardo Bertolucci is far from an inexperienced filmmaker.

The roots of this film’s problems are certainly in the script. At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to Shandurai (Thandie Newton) when her husband is arrested by an African dictator. She seeks exile in Italy, where she becomes a maid for an eccentric and seemingly introspective pianist (David Thewlis).



Since this is a Bertolucci picture, I was expecting loads of shocks, character depth and sexual tension. None of these things came. I waited for some sort of statement or plot development, and it never came. We see Shandurai and the pianist look at each other every now and then, going about their daily business. Halfway through one scene, Thewlis’ character unexpectedly seizes Shandurai by the arms and shouts that he’s in love with her. In exchange for her love, she tells him, he must free her husband from prison.

The film continues, and the scene almost comes across as forgotten. Perhaps this was intended to be an extremely obscure picture, left up to the interpretation of the viewer. The approach is strikingly ineffective, since the characters are completely uninteresting and their motives are undeniably scattered. Although David Thewlis and Thandie Newton have both proven to be very gifted actors, the screenplay gives them little to work with, and their performances come across as terribly weak.

Thewlis, in particular, is an enormous let-down here. I have seen some extraordinary work from this man, especially as the self-involved homosexual, Paul Verlaine, in Total Eclipse (1995). That was a role full of depth and complication, however, and this one is a singularly-focused mess. The problem is, as an audience we don’t even know what this man’s singular focus is.

The conclusion to the picture could have been powerful, if the body wasn’t such a dull blob. There is a finale of Bertolucci’s signature sexual blatancy, and it’s a jolt after the utter nothingness preceding it. But, like the rest of the story, it lacks context and we are left wondering why the characters have done what they’ve done, and what the story is attempting to say.

Having said all this, I’m sure that Bertolucci had big intentions with the story, and it was all probably just a large miscalculation. The camerawork, although largely made use of on indoor settings, is fantastic, and there is a lot of ambition in the unique approach… but none of it ends up amounting to anything. I’m sorry to say that this is extreme lesser work from a visionary filmmaker, and I wouldn’t advise it to anyone.

Maybe it’s gathered a little cult following somewhere, but I’m pretty sure that they’re not the crowd Bertolucci intended to preach to. This is a pointless, silly and unnecessary film.



MY RATING: 2/5

Great stuff. Seeing as how our tastes run so similar, I have a feeling I will enjoy this thread quite a bit as it expands...

Awesome to see The Fountain getting the attention it deserves. One of the most personal pictures, for me, that I have ever seen...

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Thanks man. Yeah, it's such an emotionally involving film. I'm always glad to hear there are more fans of it.

The Birth of a Nation – 1915, D.W. Griffith


The Birth of a Nation is very much a product of its time. This has led many people to overlook its greatness. In the year 2007, it is admittedly difficult to dismiss the fierce racism of this picture and suck in all of its brilliant innovation instead. In order to fully appreciate what D.W. Griffith contributed to the art of filmmaking, that’s what we have to do.

This is an in-depth film about the Civil War, and, despite the somewhat warped perspective, it’s very informative. It examines Lincoln’s assassination, reasons behind the war itself, and the development of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan is absolutely glorified in this film – watching them riding in to save the innocent white victims from face-painted “black” extras is an unsettling sight indeed.

I choose to look at the format instead of the content here, because that’s really all one can do in order to appreciate its groundbreaking effect on cinema. Griffith was exploring motion, scope and composition. Some of the more epic scenes in this film are absolutely thrilling; the ambition and the sheer size of it all is really amazing when taking into account that it was just the beginning of an art form.




Despite its epic grandeur and outstanding directorial brilliance, it is a close-minded film, and that’s why it’s so easily brushed aside as being a “piece of its time”. We can’t pretend that 1915 wasn’t a prejudiced time, however. Griffith wasn’t the only one who viewed African Americans as violent, sex-crazed animals. Tragically, this was the general mentality of the period, as history has proven.

What Griffith did differently was direct a stunning, landmark silent epic… it’s approximately three hours long, and it’s still a riveting spectacle for cinephiles to behold. In many ways, D.W. Griffith could have influenced such highly regarded modern directors as Terrence Malick. He did, after all, build a skeleton of the picture in his mind, and shot the entirety of it without a written script. That’s gutsy direction, no matter what decade is being referred to.

I will never come to agree or even try to understand the despicable act of racism, but I will always admire and even love this movie. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call it one of the greatest films ever made… without having some sort of roots, we would never have been given Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Vertigo or Raging Bull.

This is a movie that demands objectivity from modern-day audiences, and I was willing to provide that. What I was given in return was one of the most satisfying viewing experiences I’ve ever had. This is a glorious landmark, and to allow its vision to be marred by the fact that it’s a typical product of 1915 would be a shame. It’s a must-see for anyone interested in the history of direction, cinematography or movies in general.

I’ll say it… The Birth of a Nation is a masterpiece.



MY RATING: 5/5

If I may use harsh language, ****ing fantastic review. More the the film notes, I liked your view and handling of a tough topic, especially this line:


"I will never come to agree or even try to understand the despicable act of racism, but I will always admire and even love this movie."

Racism is a big issue for me, as I believe in a person's right to BE a racist, I just don't agree with the view. For some reason, I can't get many people to even listen to that statement without some lame knee-jerk reaction about how I am some closet racist....

Keep churnin them out michael!