bob998

OK, there was a writer's strike in Hollywood as they were making this, and some scenes were shot on the fly. The bar fight scene is particularly bad: cheap set, clumsy blocking, ridiculous looking. So there is a production problem. The story is absurd, as many users have noted. Lee Oswald with one rifle took down a president, he didn't need a corps of psychologists and military types to guide him through the assignment.

Beatty is mediocre in this; you can tell he didn't really believe in the project. Hume Cronin brings some class to his part, and Paula Prentiss makes an all too brief appearance. Hard to believe this was made by the man who did All The President's Men.

The good people at Criterion Channel sent me an email this morning with a link to Cloud. I'd never before seen a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film so I jumped at the opportunity. I have to say that the movie doesn't live up to the extravagant claims made for it. While it provides some vicarious thrills--just watch what happens to a dishonest reseller when the people he scams go after him--the two hour running time is far too generous. The bodies pile up, the plot gets more and more muddled and the viewer is left asking 'what's the point of all this?'. There's some nice cinematography but Kurosawa's direction is pedestrian.

As a French film enthusiast who was around for the first run of Vivre sa Vie and Pierrot le fou, I enjoyed this memoir of Godard's career. He wasn't the greatest director by far--men like Renoir, Clair, Carne and a few others have a claim to that title--but his films were so provoking, in both the good and bad senses that they stick in our minds. Who can forget Jean Yanne and Mireille Darc as they make their way through a disaster-ridden countryside in Weekend, or Belmondo wrapping sticks of dynamite around his head in Pierrot le fou, or again Macha Meril as a human billboard for lingerie in Une femme mariee. Nobody created more gripping images in those days.