Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (M) on November 15, 2005 at 06:15:12

I didn't want to watch it, but my wife, facing the disappearing Netflix wish list, ordered it... "Well, it's a film" she said, "So you should watch it!"

She of course slept through most of it. I didn't... being a sucker for techno stuff.

I suspected the film was going to be trash, and it was. I don't even know how to put it politely, but it looks like the Director simply reached in the Hollywood bag of bad and tired cliche's and kept pulling until his three hours of fame were finally - and thankfully! - over.

It has that cheap cellophane feel to it, covered with a good dose of obligatory syrup... and I have to admit it, Hollywood is great at making that sort of trush, and their box office track record is superb, so perhaps I am just the wrong viewer.

Leonardo is a wonderful fit - a lame actor in a lame movie, and I am truly curious what caused Scorsese select him over any number of actors with screen presense.

Through the whole film I kept having that sensation that I was watching a bunch of kids dressed in adult cloth, doing a high school Tennessee Williams play. You know... the little boy with glued on mustaches... Howard Hughes left behind HUGE britches, and boy Leonardo is a completely wrong guy for that role.

I have never thought I would see Cate Blanchett produce a bad role... and here she came dangerously close to that. Heck, her first thirty minutes were perhaps her worst performance ever... thankfully she leveled off later and finally became her usual self, the Cate we all love so much.

There is always great risk in portraying well known personalities. We know their manners, their voices, their speech patterns. Hence the trap Cate fell into. She did such great recreation of her heroine speech that it simply did not work coming out of... Cate's body... and the whole thing looked like a caricature, like a voice impersonator on a provincial burleaque stage. I think she should have tried to be a little bit more her own woman, and a little bit less Katharine, and the overal balance would have been far better.

Still, overall she was one of the very few bright spots in the film. She looked like the teacher among all those high school kids. Next to her Kate Beckinsale looked decidedly stupid, starting with her first appearance, when she struggled to mimic Ava's unique maneurism, only to look as... again, sorry, boys, as a little girl trying on her mother's dress and high heels. What a flap!

Ironically, probably the best male performance in that giant trash pile was that of Alec Baldwin, whom I usually hate. Some might mention Alan Alda too, but that was somewhat of a vaudeville villain kind, too lightweight and straightforward, so I would put him well behind Alec.

It clear from that work that whatever promise Scorsese held decades ago, has all evaporated through the years, and today he should really stick to doing comments on great Italian directors - he is good in that role.

But then I am sure I am wrong... practically speaking. With idiocies like Titanic and Aviator producing mountains of cash and stealing Academy Awards left and right, perhaps they ARE the right films for our times...

Sad as it is...