walshio
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walshio's rating
"In an old house in Paris covered with vines Twelve little girls were learning their lives."
So, begins this muddled children's yarn. The title character (Hatty Jones), one of "twelve little girls who live in a line," is a feisty, redhead orphan, who attends a posh girls' school in Paris. Her teacher and mentor is a nun, Miss Clavel (The Coen Brothers' favourite actress Frances McDormand), and her contemporaries are a bunch of spoilt young girls, who come out with such debatable witticisms as, "It is better to be super everything, than super nothing!"
Plainly a pain in the rectum, Madeline causes all kinds of "jolly" and "super" havoc throughout the film. This includes plummeting from a bridge into the Seine, releasing a scourge of mice and having her appendix out. By attempting to blend together too many elements from Ludwig Bemelmans's classic children's book series, Madeline only serves to nonplus and alienate its audience.
Essentially there are three plots. Firstly, when the benefactor of the school Lady Covington passes away, her husband (Nigel Hawthorne) resolves to close the school. Secondly, there is the loneliness and mischievous antics of Pepito, the son of the Spanish Ambassador who has just moved in next door. Lastly, there is some vague, poorly explained abduction scheme involving Pepito's tutor (Ben Daniels) and a bunch of clowns, Les Idiots.
For a children's film of this sort to work, the bad guys have to be truly wicked. However, Ben Daniels isn't remotely scary and only comes into play with the obligatory car chase finale. Madeline lacks the sinister sense of say a Roald Dahl creation and also falls flat as a charming piece of entertainment. Lacking in suspense and quite simply arduous in places, the kids aren't even that endearing. An irritating and uneven film, suited to ages 3 to 6.
Ben Walsh
So, begins this muddled children's yarn. The title character (Hatty Jones), one of "twelve little girls who live in a line," is a feisty, redhead orphan, who attends a posh girls' school in Paris. Her teacher and mentor is a nun, Miss Clavel (The Coen Brothers' favourite actress Frances McDormand), and her contemporaries are a bunch of spoilt young girls, who come out with such debatable witticisms as, "It is better to be super everything, than super nothing!"
Plainly a pain in the rectum, Madeline causes all kinds of "jolly" and "super" havoc throughout the film. This includes plummeting from a bridge into the Seine, releasing a scourge of mice and having her appendix out. By attempting to blend together too many elements from Ludwig Bemelmans's classic children's book series, Madeline only serves to nonplus and alienate its audience.
Essentially there are three plots. Firstly, when the benefactor of the school Lady Covington passes away, her husband (Nigel Hawthorne) resolves to close the school. Secondly, there is the loneliness and mischievous antics of Pepito, the son of the Spanish Ambassador who has just moved in next door. Lastly, there is some vague, poorly explained abduction scheme involving Pepito's tutor (Ben Daniels) and a bunch of clowns, Les Idiots.
For a children's film of this sort to work, the bad guys have to be truly wicked. However, Ben Daniels isn't remotely scary and only comes into play with the obligatory car chase finale. Madeline lacks the sinister sense of say a Roald Dahl creation and also falls flat as a charming piece of entertainment. Lacking in suspense and quite simply arduous in places, the kids aren't even that endearing. An irritating and uneven film, suited to ages 3 to 6.
Ben Walsh
"Strip away the morality, strip away the ethics, and we're left with a 105 pound problem. 105 pounds that has to be moved from point A to point B." (Christian Slater as Boyd).
Boyd is an estate agent. He is also a psychopath. Fittingly, given his recent incarceration for violence, Slater is landed the plum role. However, it turns out to be merely an extension of the nutcase he played in Heathers many moons ago. Only not half as good.
Very Bad Things is part of a trio (the other two being The Opposite of Sex and Your Friends and Neighbours) of very nasty American independent movies coming out in the next month or so. Like its contemporaries it's memorable and scabrous.
The tale concerns a trip to Las Vegas for the boys. Kyle Fisher, Favreau (of Swingers fame), is getting wed to snotty ex-sorority girl Laura (Diaz), but before he takes the plunge Boyd has organised some drugs and frolics in seamy Las Vegas.
Accompanied by brothers Adam (Daniel Stern) and Michael (Jeremy Piven) and mute-like Charles (Leland Orser), the big boys' entertainment is abruptly curtailed. Michael, high on coke, has accidentally embedded an Asian (played by real-life porn star Kobe Tai, a.k.a. Carla Scott) prostitute's head to a coat-hook in the bathroom. This is a truly gruesome scene that is interspersed quite cleverly with the revolting sight of two wrestlers on the TV. Noticeably, Berg's direction lingers very uncomfortably on her naked corpse.
The boys panic and before you can say "blood bath", Boyd misuses a corkscrew on a hotel security guard, leaving him wailing like a pig, before, inevitably, slaughtering him. He duly announces: "Surrender is no longer an option."
This kicks-off a lot of histrionic yelling and a burial scene reminiscent of Shallow Grave - shopping for equipment, decapitation and dismemberment. Aiming for humour, these scenes flop laugh-wise. Left in the hands of Tarantino or the Coen brothers, these sequences may have succeeded, but in Very Bad Things there is far too much screaming going on. The Coens would have tempered the chaos and brutality with pathos or a hint of humanity. Director Berg aims hard for "cool", but only achieves bad imitation.
After the horror of Vegas, the utterly charmless set of businessmen return to their suburban homes and go swiftly mad. What ensues is a series of events reminiscent of the classic Ladykillers, interspersed with the occasional witty line. Diaz, in particular, gets some fine dialogue: "The scent of cheap hotel's whore's sex" and "No one is going to rob me of the wedding I've waited 27 years to have." Slater also gets a couple of good scenes where he takes corporate business logic to an insane limit: "I'm a lighthouse, I never go dark."
Ultimately, Very Bad Things is disjointed, mildly irritating, far more violent than the pilloried and much finer Natural Born Killers, contains obnoxious characters and receives a rather good finale that it doesn't really deserve. A film that illustrates just how clever the likes Tarantino, John Dahl, The Coens and David Lynch really are.
Ben Walsh
Boyd is an estate agent. He is also a psychopath. Fittingly, given his recent incarceration for violence, Slater is landed the plum role. However, it turns out to be merely an extension of the nutcase he played in Heathers many moons ago. Only not half as good.
Very Bad Things is part of a trio (the other two being The Opposite of Sex and Your Friends and Neighbours) of very nasty American independent movies coming out in the next month or so. Like its contemporaries it's memorable and scabrous.
The tale concerns a trip to Las Vegas for the boys. Kyle Fisher, Favreau (of Swingers fame), is getting wed to snotty ex-sorority girl Laura (Diaz), but before he takes the plunge Boyd has organised some drugs and frolics in seamy Las Vegas.
Accompanied by brothers Adam (Daniel Stern) and Michael (Jeremy Piven) and mute-like Charles (Leland Orser), the big boys' entertainment is abruptly curtailed. Michael, high on coke, has accidentally embedded an Asian (played by real-life porn star Kobe Tai, a.k.a. Carla Scott) prostitute's head to a coat-hook in the bathroom. This is a truly gruesome scene that is interspersed quite cleverly with the revolting sight of two wrestlers on the TV. Noticeably, Berg's direction lingers very uncomfortably on her naked corpse.
The boys panic and before you can say "blood bath", Boyd misuses a corkscrew on a hotel security guard, leaving him wailing like a pig, before, inevitably, slaughtering him. He duly announces: "Surrender is no longer an option."
This kicks-off a lot of histrionic yelling and a burial scene reminiscent of Shallow Grave - shopping for equipment, decapitation and dismemberment. Aiming for humour, these scenes flop laugh-wise. Left in the hands of Tarantino or the Coen brothers, these sequences may have succeeded, but in Very Bad Things there is far too much screaming going on. The Coens would have tempered the chaos and brutality with pathos or a hint of humanity. Director Berg aims hard for "cool", but only achieves bad imitation.
After the horror of Vegas, the utterly charmless set of businessmen return to their suburban homes and go swiftly mad. What ensues is a series of events reminiscent of the classic Ladykillers, interspersed with the occasional witty line. Diaz, in particular, gets some fine dialogue: "The scent of cheap hotel's whore's sex" and "No one is going to rob me of the wedding I've waited 27 years to have." Slater also gets a couple of good scenes where he takes corporate business logic to an insane limit: "I'm a lighthouse, I never go dark."
Ultimately, Very Bad Things is disjointed, mildly irritating, far more violent than the pilloried and much finer Natural Born Killers, contains obnoxious characters and receives a rather good finale that it doesn't really deserve. A film that illustrates just how clever the likes Tarantino, John Dahl, The Coens and David Lynch really are.
Ben Walsh
"Writer-director Don Roos' film has a gnarled wisdom about modern romance, straight and gay, that makes it a road-movie Chasing Amy, a Heathers for the whole post-nuclear family." (Time magazine).
Mighty praise indeed. Deserved? Well, it's no Heathers and its script isn't nearly as fine as Chasing Amy's. Our narrator and peroxide 'heroine' is teen tart Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci). Dedee promptly warns us, "I don't have a heart of gold and I don't grow one later on. But relax. There are lots of nicer people coming up - we call them losers."
Dedee, 16 years of age going on 70, is pregnant and vicious with it. She ditches her dismal family life in Sucktart, Louisiana ("My mom was one of those mothers who's always telling her friends she's her daughter's best friend. Oh great, I used to think, not only do I have a shitty mom, but my best friend's a loser bitch.") to throw herself on the tender mercies of her gay half-brother (Martin Donovan), a small-town high school teacher. Once there, she seduces brother Bill's hunky lover Matt (Ivan Sergei) and takes off for California with the befuddled Matt in tow. Hot on their heels are Bill; Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), a fellow teacher with a yen for Bill; the earnest father of Dedee's baby (William Scott Lee); and local sheriff Carl Tippett (Lyle Lovett).
Dennis Price's narrator in Kind Hearts and Coronets was wicked, dastardly and captivating. Ricci, an actress who is usually sensational (had a recent barnstorming performance in The Ice Storm), is by contrast nasty, evil and tiresome. Throughout she informs us at which points to feel emotion. An interesting, but not engaging technique. However, her turn of phrase is even less appealing: "If you don't breathe in, you can do anything for ten minutes" or "A blow job is a blow job."
With Ricci laying it on far too thick, the pleasure in this confused, slightly inconsequential film lies with Donovan, the king of American indie cinema, and Friends' Kudrow. Donovan's careful, studied performance never hints at schmaltz and counterbalances the film's more crass characters. Kudrow also equips herself extremely well, playing an uptight, sexually repressed school madam. She gets the best lines: [On The Sound of Music] "I just want to stuff that guitar up that nun's arse" and "Matt, that is not your baby. It's some other idiot's, who probably has an eighth grade education and a trunk full of Waco pamphlets."
Minus Ricci, the main character, this may have made an engaging one-hour TV special. As it is, The Opposite of Sex, is a mess with the odd funny line and two fine performances.
Ben Walsh
Mighty praise indeed. Deserved? Well, it's no Heathers and its script isn't nearly as fine as Chasing Amy's. Our narrator and peroxide 'heroine' is teen tart Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci). Dedee promptly warns us, "I don't have a heart of gold and I don't grow one later on. But relax. There are lots of nicer people coming up - we call them losers."
Dedee, 16 years of age going on 70, is pregnant and vicious with it. She ditches her dismal family life in Sucktart, Louisiana ("My mom was one of those mothers who's always telling her friends she's her daughter's best friend. Oh great, I used to think, not only do I have a shitty mom, but my best friend's a loser bitch.") to throw herself on the tender mercies of her gay half-brother (Martin Donovan), a small-town high school teacher. Once there, she seduces brother Bill's hunky lover Matt (Ivan Sergei) and takes off for California with the befuddled Matt in tow. Hot on their heels are Bill; Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), a fellow teacher with a yen for Bill; the earnest father of Dedee's baby (William Scott Lee); and local sheriff Carl Tippett (Lyle Lovett).
Dennis Price's narrator in Kind Hearts and Coronets was wicked, dastardly and captivating. Ricci, an actress who is usually sensational (had a recent barnstorming performance in The Ice Storm), is by contrast nasty, evil and tiresome. Throughout she informs us at which points to feel emotion. An interesting, but not engaging technique. However, her turn of phrase is even less appealing: "If you don't breathe in, you can do anything for ten minutes" or "A blow job is a blow job."
With Ricci laying it on far too thick, the pleasure in this confused, slightly inconsequential film lies with Donovan, the king of American indie cinema, and Friends' Kudrow. Donovan's careful, studied performance never hints at schmaltz and counterbalances the film's more crass characters. Kudrow also equips herself extremely well, playing an uptight, sexually repressed school madam. She gets the best lines: [On The Sound of Music] "I just want to stuff that guitar up that nun's arse" and "Matt, that is not your baby. It's some other idiot's, who probably has an eighth grade education and a trunk full of Waco pamphlets."
Minus Ricci, the main character, this may have made an engaging one-hour TV special. As it is, The Opposite of Sex, is a mess with the odd funny line and two fine performances.
Ben Walsh