civex

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Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1935)
By civex in civex Blog
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"Director Josef von Sternberg had a long and distinguished career interrupted by "Crime and Punishment." Among his stellar performances are "The Blue Angel," "Morocco," "Blonde Venus," and "Duel in the Sun," to mention only a few. Many of his motion pictures starred Marlene Dietrich. In "Crime and Punishment," von Sternberg works with Peter Lorre, Edward Arnold, and Marian Marsh to get this gargantuan novel down to 99 minutes of screen time. Since I haven't read the novel, I have no clue what they left out. I'm sure it's a travesty. Since I haven't read the novel, however, I treat the movie on its own merits. I consider of plot of little importance in this movie version. Raskolnikov (played by Lorre) is introduced as a student with great promise. Our next scene shows him impoverished but too proud to accept a loan from a former school chum. Raskolnikov is slowly pawning all his belongings because he has no other means of supporting himself. The pawn broker (played by the famous Mrs ... " [More]

Diabolique

Les diaboliques (also Diaboliques)
By civex in civex Blog
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"This 1955 French film stars Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse. It is set in a boarding school which is being run into the ground by Headmaster Michel Delassalle (Meurisse). Delasalle is married (his wife, Christina, is played by Clouzot) and has a mistress (Nicole Horner, played by Signoret) who also teaches at the school. The two other teachers at the school, the doorkeeper, the students, and sundry others can't stand the cad. Delassalle refuses to spend money on maintenance, decent food, and - horror of horrors for the French - good wine. Delassalle is a despicable lout, and his wife and mistress decide to murder him. Signoret takes the lead and comes up with a credible plan giving them an alibi, and it goes off with those little hitches that keep you on the edge of your seat as you wait for various interlopers to discover the secret in the large wicker basket. Once they've successfully carried out their plan, things go horribly wrong. The body disappears. The two ... " [More]

Re:Stats are stuck
By civex in Spout Customer Care
"Still stuck. Any word on whether it will be fixed? " [More]

The Man Who Laughs

The Man Who Laughs (1928)
By civex in civex Blog
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"Conrad Veidt stars in the movie based on Victor Hugo's novel, L'Homme qui rit. In this silent film, a boy is sold by the King of England to "comprachicos," a word made up by Hugo to represent people who buy children to deform them for the amusement of noblemen and crowds at carnivals. The boy is Gwynplaine (played by Conrad Veidt). Abandoned by the comprachicos, Gwynplaine and an infant girl find shelter with a traveling mountebank Hugo has called Ursus (played by Cesare Gravina) and his pet Homo the wolf (played by Zimbo the dog). The infant grows up to be a beautiful blind blonde they call Dea.* Gwynplaine is cruelly deformed by the comprachicos - his mouth is surgically altered into a permanent grin. Although Veidt may be best remembered as Major Strasser in "Casablanca," a role in which he appeared suitably dissolute, Veidt was a very attractive young man. His appearance here is bizarre because of the character's deformity, a deformity which makes Gwynplaine the object of ridic ... " [More]

The Night of the Hunter

The Night of the Hunter
By civex in civex Blog
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"This interesting failure was directed by Charles Laughton in his only directing foray and stars Shelly Winters and Robert Mitchum. You may also recognize Lillian Gish and Peter Graves. There's some dispute on how to characterize the film (film noir, horror, melodrama), and I will be so bold as to say that this is one of the flaws in Laughton's vision - he didn't get his vision clearly on the screen. The story is something like this. It's the Depression. Ben (Graves) is married to Willa (Winters), and they have two kids. Ben is involved in a robbery/murder and hides $10,000, telling only his two kids where the cash is. Ben is caught and sentenced to hang. His cell mate is Mitchum's character, Harry Powell. I guess in the Thirties you didn't have a Death Row, since Powell is in for 30 days for stealing a car. Powell knows the ten grand was never found; Ben mumbles enough in his sleep to let Powell know the kids know the location of the loot. Ben is hanged; Powell serves his time and ... " [More]

Stats are stuck
By civex in Spout Customer Care
"My stats for total views have been stuck at a number for weeks even though I've added new reviews and gotten more views on them and old reviews. " [More]

Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle (1966)
By civex in civex Blog
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"This 1966 film starred Jeanne Moreau as a horribly repressed teacher in a small town where things go horribly wrong. It was directed by Tony Richardson, and co-starred Ettore Manni as Manou, the Italian laborer who attracted our Mademoiselle's interest. Richardson, though, is the subtle star of this movie. His scenes of Mademoiselle are stellar. Richardson and Moreau reveal Mademoiselle's inner secrets in silent scenes of Mademoiselle walking through the woods or dressing in her room. Not until "The Dresser" do we feel such anger watching an actor silently perform a seemingly mundane task. This is a gripping story of a sociopath who must control or destroy. Mademoiselle's march through the movie is like Sherman's march through Georgia: ramrod straight and completely destructive. Richardson did a remarkable job of capturing Moreau's towering performance. " [More]

Smoke

Smoke (1995)
By civex in civex Blog
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"An inspired script by Paul Auster, directed by Wayne Wang. There are excellent performances by a large ensemble cast that includes Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, and other great character actors I've never heard of. The problem with the movie is that it barely hangs together on the thread of a tobacco store. The philosophical issue is whether you think your life has meaning: it starts at the beginning, goes to the end, and you get your reward; or whether you think your life is a series of happenstances that may not be related at all to what's gone before and that you don't build on, but go through and learn from. Maybe. Keitel plays Auggie, the owner of the smoke shop, and their's a cast of characters that comes into his store and his life, and they smoke and tell stories. Most of the stories work - some of them are told, but many of them are 'shown' as the character spins the yarn. Some of the stories didn't work for me, but the promi ... " [More]

Lone Star

Lone Star (1996)
By civex in civex Blog
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"This is a quietly excellent movie about mystery, racism, and love. Chris Cooper plays present-day Sheriff Sam Deeds, filling the boots of his late father, Sheriff Buddy Deeds. Much of the movie is told in flashback by director John Sayles, with the camera panning from a present day scene to the location of some event in the Fifties where we see it replayed, then panning back to the present characters, lost in recollection of those days gone by. It works very well, without having to have title cards telling us when we've moved in time. The story takes place in a sleepy hick town in Texas on the Mexican border, near a US Army base. In this town, everyone has a past. Even the sheriffs. Sam has gone through a divorce, and we get to see him with his ex-wife, Bunny (Frances McDormand). It's a heart-tugging scene, as it becomes clear Bunny will never be the son her father wanted. Sam moves back home to see his high school flame, Pilar (Elizabeth Pena). However, his father's friends press ... " [More]

Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road
By civex in civex Blog
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"This bleak, bleak film was hard for me to watch. Leonardo DiCaprio absolutely mesmerized me as Frank Wheeler, and the supporting cast was phenomenal. Kathy Bates and Kathryn Hahn were heartbreaking; Michael Shannon was alternately dead and manic as the certified insane version of Frank and April Wheeler (April was played by Kate Winslet). But I'm getting ahead of myself. Frank meets April and they get married. April has dreams of becoming an actress, but she's lousy. Leonardo DiCaprio's attempt to soothe April while blowing off her ambitions was utterly believable. DiCaprio's Frank is a shallow jerk with no soul and no ambition. I didn't know DiCaprio was this good. "Revolutionary Road" shows their lives together in the Fifties, as they end up in the march of grey flannel suits in grey, sterile lives. Shannon's character, John Givings, gives voice to their hopeless emptiness. Frank and April make a big decision to blow it all off, move to Paris, and live a happy, fulfilling life. A ... " [More]

Apartment Zero

Apartment Zero
By civex in civex Blog
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"This film has more layers than I can delve into. And I like that. Let's take the name of the movie. Adrian LeDuc (played by Colin Firth) lives in Apartment 10, but the 1 fell off the door and was never replaced. Adrian has lived in the apartment for years with his mother, but she's suffering from a degenerative mental disease and is now institutionalized. Is Adrian emasculated? Gay? Is the loss of the 1 meaningful? Does the 0 represent gender as well as zero? Adrian runs an art film theater. At the night we drop in, his audience consists of two elderly women. Adrian is very well-dressed in a suit, his popcorn seller is there, and so is the projectionist. So staff outnumbers audience. Adrian decides to rent out his mother's room in the apartment since it seems she's not coming home. Adrian compares himself to Felix Ungar, and he's correct. He rejects every one of the prospective tenants, and then Jack Carney (Hart Bochner) shows up in a t-shirt and black leather jacket, standing pr ... " [More]

Beowulf

Beowulf (2007)
By civex in civex Blog
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"Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this is a "performance capture" film. It stars performances by Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, and Crispin Glover. Oh, and Angelina Jolie. Performance capture, also known as motion capture, basically means the actors wear skin tight clothes with markers on them and act in front of a green screen. Later, computers render the peformance digitally, with costumes, sets, and even the characters created by algorithms. For some people, this is a killer, and they can't accept the movie as a movie. I have some agreement with this. Wright Penn's character, Wealthow, was a blank for me. Whatever expression the actress gave the character, it never showed on the CGI face. Brendan Gleeson's Wiglaf, on the other hand, was totally credible throughout. But you must know that the sets, the costumes, the scenery, and the characters are all generated on computer and do not look photorealistic at all. My perspective was t ... " [More]