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Cinema-Scene.com
Volume 5, Number 48
This Week's Reviews: Sylvia, The Missing, Pieces of April, The Haunted Mansion, Timeline.
This Week's Omissions: Bad Santa.
Director: Starring: Release: 17 Oct. 03
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Sylvia BY: DAVID PERRY
Sylvia Plath took her life 11 February 1963 by asphyxiation
after turning on the gas stove in her apartment. She was a great poet
married to a rotten, philandering man. She is the poet icon of the feminist
movement. |
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©2003, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 28 November 2003 |
Director: Starring: Release: 26 Nov. 03
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The Missing BY: DAVID PERRY
Ron Howard, possibly the worst of today’s A-list directors,
didn’t waste much time after A Beautiful Mind’s disappointing success
to turn his sites to another story that might have had bite and lets it
dwindle into a deluge of overburdened artiness and flaccid storytelling. His
love letter to John Ford’s The Searchers, one of the most important
Westerns of all-time, turns into a piecemeal collection of words and phrases
more likely to be the product of eight-year-old Opie Taylor than 16-year-old
Richie Cunningham or 49-year-old Ronnie Howard. |
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©2003, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 28 November 2003 |
Director: Starring: Release: 17 Oct. 03
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Pieces of April BY: DAVID PERRY
There are three stories in Peter Hedges’ Pieces of April,
but none of them are really worth the 20-30 minutes they comprise. A good
film would have the viewer wishing that each one could be a feature film
unto itself, much like waht Richard Curtis achieved with Love Actually.
By the end of Pieces of April, the audience is likely wishing that
none had existed in the first place. |
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©2003, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 28 November 2003 |
Director: Starring: Release: 26 Nov. 03
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The Haunted Mansion
BY: DAVID PERRY
Universal Studios can be a great experience with theme rides
created for people who know the movies and TV shows that catalyzed them. A
person enjoying Back to the Future, Terminator 2, Jaws,
or Alfred Hitchcock’s later films will find something to fit their fancy at
every turn walking through the place. It’s like heaven on earth for someone
who gets their kicks researching and analyzing films. |
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©2003, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 28 November 2003 |
Director: Starring: Release: 26 Nov. 03
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Timeline BY: DAVID PERRY
As a diehard Francophile, I should be willing to embrace
Timeline if only for its willingness to spurn modern political mores by
celebrating the French. But, with Woody Allen preparing to produce
pro-France commercials for the country’s Ministry of Tourism, I feel that
Timeline serves only to give a kitschy, counterproductive view of
Frenchmen in a positive light. Regardless of the way it may commemorate the
French, how much respect can a film hold when it tries to mix the Hundred
Years War with cybernetic FedEx? Worse yet, how can any respect be found
when said film stars Paul Walker, blander and whiter than Muenster cheese? |
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©2003, David Perry, Cinema-Scene.com, 28 November 2003 |
Reviews by:
David Perry
©2003, Cinema-Scene.com
http://www.cinema-scene.com