Change Your Image
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Reviews
Buffalo '66 (1998)
"Let's span time"...NOT!
*SPOILERS* Gallo-you either like him or you don't. His Billy Brown is a patronizing and narcissistic mess of a protagonist. Had I not seen Buffalo '66 on hired DVD in the comfort of my own home, I probably would've walked out of the theater somewhere round the twenty minute mark. And, I never walk out of films. Gallo's Brown is quite simply repugnant, and impossible to tolerate over the film's 105 minute running time. I was distraught when I found that Billy's suicide was only imagined and not real. Truly and utterly betrayed! Ricci is OK, but you can tell she's disinterested. Her Layla is nothing more than a metaphor for Billy's emotional baggage. Weak, very weak. Although the film was moderately well written, and the score complimented the skewed tone of the film, this was a disappointment. Rourke is brilliant and underused as usual. Gazzara and Huston are also excellent. It's as if Gallo needed to liberate himself with this, his most personal film. I imagine him watching it over and over again in a quiet little room, trying to understand and interpret his idiosyncrasies on screen; to fathom who and what he is. Make no mistake, Gallo did this for himself and not for you and I. This is selfish film-making at it's best.
Candy (2006)
Great film amid tired drug-genre
'Candy' will probably garner several AFI awards later this year. Ledger is Dan, a troubled and likable juvenile-come-poet who is in love with Cornish's Candy, a sometimes-practicing artist who falls head first in love with Dan and heroin. Ledger's understated performance gives Dan a boyish vulnerability that would otherwise leave him less sympathetic. And his ability to use his face and especially his eyes to communicate Dan's uncanny reluctance is both staggering and understandable. There are many moments where silence is used to express emotions in this film and Armfield deserves to be commended for his restraint and trust in his actors and the narrative. The script by co-writer and author Davies is decidedly different from the novel but nonetheless strong and taut. It's rarely melodramatic and has been manipulated more for it's performers and their execution on screen rather than resigning itself as merely an adaptation of a great novel. The result here provides superb cinematic balance. Cornish too is brilliant, often abrasive as the troubled artist. Rush is also amazing and understated as Casper, Dan's older homosexual friend. Hazelhurst reprises her role in 'Little Fish' but to less effect. She is great, but those who have seen 'Little Fish' will find her casting a little too convenient. Martin too is good with the little he is dealt. The only thing that stops 'Candy' from being superb is the material. It is too familiar and the characters are too stereotypical. Had this film been made before countless others in the 'drug-film' genre this would have been more refreshing (although the denouement is a much welcomed change). But sadly it isn't. This in turn is nobody's fault. It's just been exploited too many times. The only thing that isn't stereotypical is Dan who is the backbone of the narrative. Ledger has made it his own and could have mimicked any drug-stricken angsty protagonist the 'genre' has spat out. Instead he has made him a hero.