Anyway. Some of mine.
This has pretty muched turned me away from seeing any more Cassavetes films, it's not as terrible as Shadows, but still, incredibly boring, incoherent, annoying and amateurish. I don't get what's so great about the acting either, Rowlands and Falk have never been so hammy and over the top ridiculous. If I didn't feel for or understand the characters, which I don't, that would be fine as long as they were interesting, but they're not. You know what you get when you make a movie of two people doing nothing but having dinner conversations and screaming and freaking out for no explicable reason for two and a half hours?
Something that starts out mildly amusing for it's laughable badness but gets really damn boring fast, that's what.
Color Purple lost best picture to THIS? And Brazil didn't even get nominated.
Seriously. People like this movie? I want to know how and why. I forget what it's even about, all I remember is that it's the most painfully boring film I've ever watched, and I'm usually a pretty big Streep and Redford fan. It's one of those movies that has "we want oscars" written all over it but there's really nothing going on.
I like Holly Hunter but her character may very well be the most unlikable character in movie history, there's not a scene where she isn't doing something both incredibly bitchy and incredibly irrational and confusing and that might work if the filmmaker used that thing called exposition every now and then. Simply watching characters flip out isn't emotionally poignant to me, I know that these kinda filmmakers are going for objectivity and realism but f*ck that, this is storytelling, you need cause and motive goddammit.
Like, when this bitch tries to kill herself just because she can't play the f*cking piano, is that supposed to be touching? She really doesn't have anything to live for other than her piano? So terrifying the f*ck out of her kid just because she can no longer play a piano while staring at Harvey Keitel's naked ass is no big deal to her? The whole movie is her being a bitch, but we're supposed to be touched by her passion in music?
There's passion in music, and there's having a f*cking problem.
The visuals are fantastic (including Nicole Kidman's red headed hotness) and Jim Broadbent is kickass as always, but those are really the only things it has going for it. Everyone is ridiculously hammy and over the top (even by musical standards) but not in an entertaining way, more like a creepy "wtf is going on and why should I care" kinda way. The film fails to entertain whenever Broadbent isn't on screen, his cover of Like a Virgin is by far the best scene in the movie.
The film has so much going on and yet nothing that should be going on, the love story should be the focal point but it never evolves beyond a mere plot device and for a plot that takes forever to get anywhere. The original songs are quite overbearing and forgettable, and the covers and references to contemporary pop and rock songs seem like a pointless excuse to be "hip". McGregor and Kidman, usually pretty reliable actors, are incredibly annoying in this movie.
But you know what I hate most about the film? The editing. Yeah, that's right.
I have never seen so much ludicrous overuse of fast paced editing, I swear not a single shot lasts more than a second, what good are vibrant and imaginative visuals if you can never get a good look at them because the camera is cutting away so damn much? I can barely make out actor's facial expressions it's so damn fast.
I guess that's Baz Luhrmann trying to be all arty and MTV for ya.