filmit2001's reviews

After the 1st. 5 mins. I knew this film was going to be a total DRAG & so it turned out!

I lived through the 60's as an adult & am also a filmmaker & I can tell you that the depiction of those time was nothing like they were in reality in this self absorbed junk!

The reason I wanted to see the piece was because of the directors work on La La Land which I thought was fabulous! However the dark & dreary way he portrayed that period in history was totally out of touch with the reality of those times.

Needless to say that someone not even born during those times, trying to portray them requires & lot of research & something mystical in their assessment of the period & subject matter & this man has neither.

I could go on for hours finding fault with this mess but let me just suffice to say, that showing instruments on a new spacecraft that were soiled with 60 years of grime just misses the point completely. One last point; the dark & negative feel of the times as shown in this film, is an insult to the courage & sense of adventure of the people of the Golden Age of America!

This film could have been a total waste of 156 minutes but I left after about a 1/2 hr. so spared myself!! What could have been an interesting historical piece, turned into a self indulgent bit of Hollywood masturbation & total excess! It should have been entitled "DeCaprio Plays a Super Human". Give me a break... so after a Grizzly attack that would have left Superman DOA, D survives and still while bleeding & undoubtedly suffering total bodily infection from most grievous bear bites & mauling that would have killed an elephant, he goes on to continue super human feats against the slings & arrows of fortune most foul! I just wonder what drugs the director was on to make this pile of Shite??? Not even visually stunning except for a few nice lens flares but that doesn't make a feature film now does it! Total Hollywood CRAP!!

Like others have stated, the film was beautifully shot, edited, acted, & Directed but I felt like I wasted my time watching it because it portrayed Turner as a totally self absorbed, ugly SLOB that spent the whole movie Grunting & Grimacing! The fact is, that Turner in real life was a very handsome, dignified gentleman & one of England greatest artist. To portray him as Leigh did, is an outrage!

1. Cinematography; Beautiful use of the Cooke Prime lenses to capture the locations of Turners paintings.

2. Editing; The editing flowed very smoothly but I would have liked to see on screen a chronological timeflow by fading to black with dates to supplement the vague chronology of the film.

3. Acting; The acting was excellent with really no weakness in any characters. Make-up got a little extreme toward the end!

4. Directing; Once again excellent direction but with the wrong basic concept being directed!!

Truth Out! Don Bendell didn't direct this film but he wrote it, at least as far as I know. The truth is nobody directed it. Here's the story; I was a Cleveland film producer/cinematographer when I was approached by Bendell a Used Car salesman at the time & a karate freak, to shoot The Instructor. Being a slow time, as it was mostly in Cleveland, I glanced at the script and agreed to do it. A side note, I hate Karate movies except perhaps for the Karate Kid. Anyway after agreeing on the $$$ which were peanuts, the whole budget was $100 K or there about, it was shot on Agfa 16mm, I went down to Akron for a meeting with cast & crew. These, mostly conned volunteers with stars in their eyes except for a few credible people like an Akron U Drama teacher, & Don Chaney who was a real nice guy.

Bendell was a real classic used car salesman I'll give him that because he conned the whole town & even the Akron Police Dept. into trashing cop cars for this joke which you will note if you could sit through this POS! Well I knew from day one that Bendell who had never even been on a film shoot in his life was clueless which only made my job more difficult but as I said I'd nothing better to do then. Anyway to make a long story short, I worked my ass off trying to make something out of the project, at least visually, until Bendell started to try playing Director when we were about 7/8 done with shooting, at which point I quit. You see making film is a pretty tough job & when you have some clown who after 3 weeks on location thinks he's figured out how to put pieces & actor together to make sense, tries to take command for his lame ego, things go all to hell! Anyway after I left, they hired my assistant Ron Hughes to finish the project with his Bolex. You'll note a total different style of lighting happen in the film at about that point. Ron was into the dark "noir" dramatic style of lighting.

What I found really funny and sad on this film was that most of the people involved in this project, relationships & marriages went down the tubes, even Bendells. It was just like you read about film people in Hollywood. Wonder where they got it from??

I found the film to be exceedingly superficial and vacuous. All the hype about O'Tolle getting an Oscar for basically playing himself, I found to be nothing more then studio hype and wishful thinking. Kureishi script is all over the place. They try to do a bit of the travelogue thing that worked so well in "Lost in Translation" but totally fails here because it's just done to do it, to change the scenery. There is also a vague attempt to knock off Shaw with a "My Fair Lady" spin, which once again is just superficial. Why they made the story into a blue collar piece of depression when they could have made it a joyful celebration of old age through sensuality and vitality, I can't figure out. If you want to get very depressed about old age this Winter, by all means go see it!