adamjohns-42575

Romeo And Juliet (2019) -

Assuming that this was the version by the Ural Opera Ballet and choreographed by Vyacheslav Samodurov the review that follows should be accurate.

I do tend to tune in to the ballet for the handsome me with nice thighs in tights so I was immediately disappointed with the selection on display in this production. The leads were especially effeminate and I know that sounds wrong by today's standards but when I watch a romance I do like to believe that the boy might actually be attracted to the girl and hats an appeal of his own too. They weren't ugly but they didn't have that traditional look for a Romeo and so on.

I also thought that there was too much going on across the stage and because of the way it was filmed it seemed an eclectic mess. I didn't get the whole picture to make up my own mind or look at my choice of dancer due to the camera persons choices. This was especially obvious in "The Fight" at the very beginning where it actually looked more like they'd been given only a rough idea of what to do and not been fully choreographed. I certainly struggled to see any dancing as I know it let alone ballet.

And when the "Dancing" did actually start it was a bit, what my Mother would call, "All Together, One At A Time" and with terrible spacing. I thought that a large part of the issue with it visually was that there were too many people on stage which made it easier to notice when they weren't all in sync. And at other times it made it too busy because they weren't all doing the same moves or they were ad libbing in the background anyway. It felt kind of amateur or made by a group who were new to the world of professional ballet.

The red lighting at "The Ball" was an odd choice too, especially with the costume colours. Everyone blended together so it was difficult to distinguish the main cast and the beautiful needlework was lost.

A large part of that dance seemed to be Dress-ography, with lots of swishing of trails, which was just naff and actually appeared to cause problems for them whilst also not actually looking that attractive.

As Romeo(Vladislav Lantratov) finally met Juliet (Ekaterina Krysanova) the dance moves in general were frenetic and a bit daft which again made it look less rehearsed and messy.

It was also an odd directorial idea to have only the 3 uninvited guests at the ball in masks because it took away the whole reason of that plot point.

I do have to say something positive and that would be that the music was obviously very nice.

On another day I might have watched it all the way through, but this time I just didn't feel that I could waste my energy on something that I wasn't loving.

Unscored as Unfinished.

Monster (2003) -

I must have seen something on the TV when Aileen (Charlize Theron) was being prosecuted in real life, but I didn't actually remember what had happened. As such I couldn't tell whether I was supposed to feel sorry for her or not. Certainly at the beginning the suggestion was that she was misunderstood and abused and had fallen in to bad ways because no one had ever really cared for her or shown her a better way. Later she became a bit of a caricature at times and seemed to be channeling 'Beetlejuice' (198?, some cartoon, 'The Joker' or something similar. Her performance was just a tad over the top and her wide maniacal eyes kind of made her look a bit surreal. Aileen's behaviour was harder to explain away too.

Her journey from small time prostitute to serial killer accompanied by her runaway girlfriend Selby (Christina Ricci) was very angry and eclectic with random mood swings. She did seem to be trying to be a better person, but also seemed clueless as to how to go about it.

Charlize definitely played the part suggesting that Aileen had some sort of mental health issue which I didn't know whether that was the actors or directors choice but if I'm honest I came away thinking that she should have been put away as insane rather than the other outcome depicted.

I don't know what they did to Charlize' face but I did have to wonder why anyone would ever pick Aileen up for sex. I'm not saying that it was a waste to get the beautiful Ms Theron and make her ugly like so many other reviewers have, just that I don't understand why men would pay for sex with someone who looked like she needed a wash, a check up for STD/I's and would probably murder you while you were getting pleasured and picturing anyone else but her.

The only other not that I made was that I had expected more courtroom scenes. Perhaps to start in the courtroom and show the events in flashback whilst going over the case or something like that. I felt that what I'd seen of the trailers had mostly suggested a court based story, but that's probably just me and I might have been remembering the news after all.

Honestly though, it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen, it did appear to be well made and mostly acted out in a watchable way, but it was definitely not my sort of story. I've ticked it off a list of films to watch so that I can now have an opinion on it and I might use it to refer to in conversation or to make a comparison to at some time, but I won't be adding it to my DVD collection or tuning in again on TV any time soon. It wasn't exactly horrific in its depictions of the murders, but if crime and murder are your interest or perhaps just for curiosity then it's worth a go.

708.11/1000.

The Masque Of The Red Death (1964) -

I can't fully remember the book that this film was based on but I did feel that it represented it quite well from what I could recall. And I liked the inclusion of the Pendulum clock and the Raven among other nods to the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, the author of this story.

This one was a slightly more convoluted story than the previous Roger Corman/Poe films, but it still seemed to work quite well if lacking as much peril and tension as those others.

You could almost call it a precursor to 'Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom' (1984) with Francesca's (Jane Asher) trip to a sketchy place where she witnessed an archaic ritual going against everything that she held holy and with everything centering around the one castle.

The story was mostly focused on Vincent Price's dealings with the occult and his cruelty to the villagers of the town that I assumed he was the ruler over as Prince Prospero. He left the townspeople to face the Red Plague and called his friends to him for protection from it, so that while they were celebrating with a masked ball the common folk were rapidly dying.

At the time of production Prospero's views on traditional religion were probably meant to show how evil he was, but watching in 2025 they actually only showed the similarities between his form of worship and Francesca's and made me wonder whether we were supposed to have questioned any faith that we might have had.

My only other note written whilst watching was that using a child to portray a dwarf/little person was very pervy, especially with all the men lusting after her as they did. Perhaps this was also to show how unethical those that Prospero deemed fit to reside in his castle were.

The general production values were all very good for the time it was made, but even Vincent didn't always deliver an amazing acting performance at times. Some of the crowd direction and resulting delivery was really quite childish and over the top too.

I personally think that it's time for Poe's works to be made again, but in the meantime these efforts by Roger will suffice as there is something about these older films that feels kind of gothic anyway, apart from the obvious fact that they were modelled that way. Not my favourite of the Corman/Poe productions but valid nonetheless.

526.61/1000.