9 reviews
Anthony Hopkins reprises his role as Hannibal-the-Cannibal, Edward Norton replaces Jody Foster as the plucky young FBI agent assigned to milk the Cannibal for insights into another psychotic serial killer, Harvey Keitel puts on a business suit and eases off on the strangeness to play Norton's supervisor, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman joins in as a pusillanimous tabloid reporter. Lastly, blending pathos and horror, the officially certified top-cinema-villain (American Film Institute) Ralph Fiennes brings us the tortured torturer whose capture drives the plot. So much talent-talent that couldn't overcome the implied director's instruction "make it just like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS".
By the midway point of the film, the pace had picked up considerably as had the threat level to the good guys and the edge of the seat races between gothic murders and heroic rescues. But to both my wife and me the whole enterprise seemed stale. The performances of the great actors lacked energy. The term "phoned-in" comes to mind.
We watched this movie with our 13 year old granddaughter, who is a very savvy film-goer, for her age, and she liked it. She is in fact a real connoisseur of the horror genre, and she had no complaints about this venture. We should also mention that we saw this film on an up-to-date 85" Sony 4k model attached to a fairly high-end LG Atmos sound bar with powered sub. I feel that we gave the movie a fair shot at showing its "stuff", but it just isn't there. If you are not as jaded as a pair of old movie buffs you may enjoy this mediocre performance by a team of gifted actors and production pros.
By the midway point of the film, the pace had picked up considerably as had the threat level to the good guys and the edge of the seat races between gothic murders and heroic rescues. But to both my wife and me the whole enterprise seemed stale. The performances of the great actors lacked energy. The term "phoned-in" comes to mind.
We watched this movie with our 13 year old granddaughter, who is a very savvy film-goer, for her age, and she liked it. She is in fact a real connoisseur of the horror genre, and she had no complaints about this venture. We should also mention that we saw this film on an up-to-date 85" Sony 4k model attached to a fairly high-end LG Atmos sound bar with powered sub. I feel that we gave the movie a fair shot at showing its "stuff", but it just isn't there. If you are not as jaded as a pair of old movie buffs you may enjoy this mediocre performance by a team of gifted actors and production pros.
De gustibus non est disputandum...Taste is not a matter for argument. The great director's next-to-last American-made movie is either a fine example of the man's social criticism or a tedious melodrama. Review "numbers" that we amateur critics have given the film range from a barely watchable 4 to an enthusiastic 10. Talk about a lack of consensus.
The twin plot lines concern a fight over management of a news media empire and the hunt for a young male serial murderer of attractive women. The element connecting the two is the contest among executives set up by the callow new owner of the company, the ne'er do well son of the hard-working founder. The "contest" offers the position of second-in-command to the newsman who solves the mystery of the murderer.
The newsmen are a mixture of high-mindedness and venality, genuine romance and shabby use of women. I don't have a clue as to the background of my fellow reviewers, so I can't say why some found insightfulness in Lang's portrayal of a modern news media company while others, such as this reviewer, saw nothing beyond the obvious. It was the longer scenes between male and female that proved hardest for me to watch, and not because Lang was making an unpleasant point. To be blunt, the scenes seemed ridiculous. We've all seen films with lots of snappy dialogue between men and women, in which realism takes a back seat to cleverness. There's nothing snappy in these scenes.
If one is curious, one might want to watch this movie to see how unfamiliarity with the everyday behavior of people from a different culture than a director's own distorts the director's attempt to produce realistic scenes.
The twin plot lines concern a fight over management of a news media empire and the hunt for a young male serial murderer of attractive women. The element connecting the two is the contest among executives set up by the callow new owner of the company, the ne'er do well son of the hard-working founder. The "contest" offers the position of second-in-command to the newsman who solves the mystery of the murderer.
The newsmen are a mixture of high-mindedness and venality, genuine romance and shabby use of women. I don't have a clue as to the background of my fellow reviewers, so I can't say why some found insightfulness in Lang's portrayal of a modern news media company while others, such as this reviewer, saw nothing beyond the obvious. It was the longer scenes between male and female that proved hardest for me to watch, and not because Lang was making an unpleasant point. To be blunt, the scenes seemed ridiculous. We've all seen films with lots of snappy dialogue between men and women, in which realism takes a back seat to cleverness. There's nothing snappy in these scenes.
If one is curious, one might want to watch this movie to see how unfamiliarity with the everyday behavior of people from a different culture than a director's own distorts the director's attempt to produce realistic scenes.
As a member of the Psychoanalytic community, but not a Psychoanalyst, I feel qualified to opine that this film has nothing informative to say about this difficult subject. A few years ago, the writer Janet Malcolm dubbed it "The Impossible Profession", which nicely sums up the arduous training requirements and the hardships of putting the technique into practice.
Siegel approaches her subject from the above-it-all position of the skeptical reporter, whose rude and disingenuous questions put the subject in a bad light no matter what answers are offered. "Do you ever lie to your patients?" she asks. The question may tell us more about the "auteur's" problems than could possibly be revealed by the discomfited analysts. When I heard this tacit accusation I wanted to snap "What are you--two years old?"
If anyone is telling fibs, it is Ms Siegel herself, though she believes she escapes that accusation by tipping us off to deliberate torture of the truth. Her documentary mixes straightforward interviews with concocted sessions with a pretend patient. She brings all the players together at the end in a cast party, which has the effect of levelling the high and mighty one more time. The person with the camera is the one in control, the puppeteer. Everyone else is just "the talent".
Who can forget the late Anna Russel's contemptuous dismissal of the very kings and queens of Opera on whose glorious talents she made herself rich and famous. "Great singers have resonance where their brains ought to be." Of course Ms Russell's whole shtick was burlesquing opera, and she never called any of her comic routines an examination of serious vocal music.
Others may have found the conceits of the current film to be clever ways of getting a fresh look at a much-discussed subject, I had trouble keeping up : oh I see, this looks real, but it's actually constructed; and the previous scene contained the phony patient talking to real analysts. We should also get to hear an academic in the field of architectural design discuss the main piece of furniture in the analyst's office, the Eames Chair. By its very nature, says the expert in furniture, the chair suggests certain things about who has the power in the analytic consulting room. Again we're confronted with the "dishonesty" of analysis, where even the furniture is intended to reinforce a relationship of dominance and submission.
The professor was occupied throughout her discursive tour of the psychology of space and shape by the breast-feeding of her baby. Whether our society is rather backward in accepting this as a public activity is a question in its own right, but at this juncture such behavior still is freighted with meaning. I felt more buffeted by this piece of theater than I ever have by the analyst's choice of chair.
If any phenomenon is held up for examination by this film, it is the power we give to people who have the motive and the means to put our pusses in front of the public. I saw analysts dropping their pants to please this director. Far from taking what they said as the truth, I'd say that I've been witness to coerced confessions.
I saw this movie as a guest at its pre-release showing in Philadelphia, and I'd imagine that with a full house instead of a half dozen media commentators the funny parts would have seemed a whole lot more hilarious. It's possible not only to confess against one's will but to laugh in spite of being appalled.
The current flap over Michael Moore's docu-torial alerts us to the weaknesses of taking big liberties with the facts. Even a work of declared fiction loses its punch when the audience finds out that key elements of the story are just wrong. That's why good authors and screenwriters really research their subject matter, and often collaborate with a consultant from the field undergoing study.
Cecil-B Philadelphia, PA
Siegel approaches her subject from the above-it-all position of the skeptical reporter, whose rude and disingenuous questions put the subject in a bad light no matter what answers are offered. "Do you ever lie to your patients?" she asks. The question may tell us more about the "auteur's" problems than could possibly be revealed by the discomfited analysts. When I heard this tacit accusation I wanted to snap "What are you--two years old?"
If anyone is telling fibs, it is Ms Siegel herself, though she believes she escapes that accusation by tipping us off to deliberate torture of the truth. Her documentary mixes straightforward interviews with concocted sessions with a pretend patient. She brings all the players together at the end in a cast party, which has the effect of levelling the high and mighty one more time. The person with the camera is the one in control, the puppeteer. Everyone else is just "the talent".
Who can forget the late Anna Russel's contemptuous dismissal of the very kings and queens of Opera on whose glorious talents she made herself rich and famous. "Great singers have resonance where their brains ought to be." Of course Ms Russell's whole shtick was burlesquing opera, and she never called any of her comic routines an examination of serious vocal music.
Others may have found the conceits of the current film to be clever ways of getting a fresh look at a much-discussed subject, I had trouble keeping up : oh I see, this looks real, but it's actually constructed; and the previous scene contained the phony patient talking to real analysts. We should also get to hear an academic in the field of architectural design discuss the main piece of furniture in the analyst's office, the Eames Chair. By its very nature, says the expert in furniture, the chair suggests certain things about who has the power in the analytic consulting room. Again we're confronted with the "dishonesty" of analysis, where even the furniture is intended to reinforce a relationship of dominance and submission.
The professor was occupied throughout her discursive tour of the psychology of space and shape by the breast-feeding of her baby. Whether our society is rather backward in accepting this as a public activity is a question in its own right, but at this juncture such behavior still is freighted with meaning. I felt more buffeted by this piece of theater than I ever have by the analyst's choice of chair.
If any phenomenon is held up for examination by this film, it is the power we give to people who have the motive and the means to put our pusses in front of the public. I saw analysts dropping their pants to please this director. Far from taking what they said as the truth, I'd say that I've been witness to coerced confessions.
I saw this movie as a guest at its pre-release showing in Philadelphia, and I'd imagine that with a full house instead of a half dozen media commentators the funny parts would have seemed a whole lot more hilarious. It's possible not only to confess against one's will but to laugh in spite of being appalled.
The current flap over Michael Moore's docu-torial alerts us to the weaknesses of taking big liberties with the facts. Even a work of declared fiction loses its punch when the audience finds out that key elements of the story are just wrong. That's why good authors and screenwriters really research their subject matter, and often collaborate with a consultant from the field undergoing study.
Cecil-B Philadelphia, PA
Fred Schepisi's semi-autobiographical "memoir" of life in an Australian Catholic seminary for boys and young men supposedly takes place in the 50's but was shot in the 70's and looks it. The stylistic tropes of the film are as distinctive as Disco, but the portrayal of all of the people who inhabit the pastel tableaux is lifelike and sympathetic. Anyone who has listened to old 78's of the great voices of long ago has undergone a similar process of adjusting one's senses to the medium and finding the performer very much alive under the "static".
This movie was shown to a group of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists who are also serious students of film. Their reaction was unanimously favorable. There's no difficult symbolism here. It's all right there for us to see, enjoy, and understand.
I think that Schepisi has tried to present life in such an institution as it really is. Not being Catholic myself, I suppose it's easy for me to agree with the author's obvious criticism of the astonishingly prudish standards set for both students and faculty. Maybe I'm a little dim, but I'm still trying to figure out how these fellows could get their "bottoms" clean when they have to wear bathing trunks in the shower!!
I may also be showing my ignorance when I say that the emphasis on sex seems realistic. Maybe men and boys who have to refrain from every expression of sexuality don't find themselves just as focused on sex as people who can do as they please. Maybe. On the other hand, my experience with the male species is that we're a horny lot who are NOT the "masters of their domains".
As the old humorist Alexander King observed when he was asked what he thought of a new organization that wanted to put an end to the nudity of domestic pets (by dressing them in specially designed pants), "There are people who are so repressed that they see something obscene in the crotch of every tree."
In spite of the seemingly serious subject matter in the film, with much moral gnashing of teeth evident, there are many funny moments, which come across as gentle and true to life. Anyone hoping to see "Seminarians Gone Wild" is in for a disappointment. There's not a hint of burlesque to be found, and when one of the guys is doing something a little naughty we feel like saying "Hey Buddy, don't sweat it." One of the old brothers or priests takes that view, and his way of talking about it is delightful.
But if the movie showed only the hairy-palm issue it wouldn't be the ageless classic that it really is. This is a typically "British" (in this case Australian) movie about civilized men living in a closed society. The boys boarding school, the regiment housed in its Scottish garrison, the sailing ship on a long and terrible voyage, the class of schoolboys marooned on an uninhabited island--all have become settings for intense dramas that emphasize both the beauty and the pressures of highly developed codes of conduct. Take a look at TUNES OF GLORY, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, LORD OF THE FLIES, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
Lastly, the great thing about films with really long "legs" is that everyday life keeps recycling issues, so when it comes time to study the "latest" disaster, we can look backward into the vaults to see what has already been created that might pertinent. The Church sex-scandals have definitely made this movie required viewing. The fact that it doesn't touch directly on the subject of pedophilic practices among some clergy will spur some discussion, as it did with the group to whom I showed it.
This movie was shown to a group of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists who are also serious students of film. Their reaction was unanimously favorable. There's no difficult symbolism here. It's all right there for us to see, enjoy, and understand.
I think that Schepisi has tried to present life in such an institution as it really is. Not being Catholic myself, I suppose it's easy for me to agree with the author's obvious criticism of the astonishingly prudish standards set for both students and faculty. Maybe I'm a little dim, but I'm still trying to figure out how these fellows could get their "bottoms" clean when they have to wear bathing trunks in the shower!!
I may also be showing my ignorance when I say that the emphasis on sex seems realistic. Maybe men and boys who have to refrain from every expression of sexuality don't find themselves just as focused on sex as people who can do as they please. Maybe. On the other hand, my experience with the male species is that we're a horny lot who are NOT the "masters of their domains".
As the old humorist Alexander King observed when he was asked what he thought of a new organization that wanted to put an end to the nudity of domestic pets (by dressing them in specially designed pants), "There are people who are so repressed that they see something obscene in the crotch of every tree."
In spite of the seemingly serious subject matter in the film, with much moral gnashing of teeth evident, there are many funny moments, which come across as gentle and true to life. Anyone hoping to see "Seminarians Gone Wild" is in for a disappointment. There's not a hint of burlesque to be found, and when one of the guys is doing something a little naughty we feel like saying "Hey Buddy, don't sweat it." One of the old brothers or priests takes that view, and his way of talking about it is delightful.
But if the movie showed only the hairy-palm issue it wouldn't be the ageless classic that it really is. This is a typically "British" (in this case Australian) movie about civilized men living in a closed society. The boys boarding school, the regiment housed in its Scottish garrison, the sailing ship on a long and terrible voyage, the class of schoolboys marooned on an uninhabited island--all have become settings for intense dramas that emphasize both the beauty and the pressures of highly developed codes of conduct. Take a look at TUNES OF GLORY, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, LORD OF THE FLIES, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
Lastly, the great thing about films with really long "legs" is that everyday life keeps recycling issues, so when it comes time to study the "latest" disaster, we can look backward into the vaults to see what has already been created that might pertinent. The Church sex-scandals have definitely made this movie required viewing. The fact that it doesn't touch directly on the subject of pedophilic practices among some clergy will spur some discussion, as it did with the group to whom I showed it.
Since I first saw it, 15 years ago, a little film in a little theater, I have regarded John Boorman's recollections of life as a grade-schooler during "The Blitz" as astonishing. Over the years I've used the movie to bring to life the very points that Anna Freud makes in her diaries of the "War Nurseries" she ran in Hampstead. While the movie is always entertaining, it nevertheless shows the effects on kids and families of life at home during a war: the separations, the losses, the physical damage, the inflammation of aggressive impulses in normal kids, the loosening of parental control over adolescents, the dropping of the curtains we use to keep kids from seeing more than they ought to. The film is wonderfully English, with customary attention to period detail, and a great collection of eccentric and memorable secondary characters. You've just got to see the geography lesson, featuring a middle-aged martinet school-marm who whacks away at a world map, using her pointer to punctuate her lesson on the vastness of England's pre-war empire. I have seen this movie on video, and can say that it translates well to the small screen. In fact it was created for British TV. See it. You'll laugh. You'll cry. And don't tell anyone--You'll learn something, too.