Here's the one: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

Omigosh!

Sidney Lumet, age 80-something, turns in the most youthfully vigorous performance of his career.

Like Orson W. in CK, he employs and amplifies certain formalistic filmic devices to aesthetic ends.

Most notably the regressive (time-disjointed) editing trick -- which normally I abhor.

But here, rather than breaking the pace, it gathers the narrative momentum until we hit real time (as it were) and all that has gone before is illuminated. Never has real time seemed... so embracingly real.

What a film!

Both those who require ambiguity, and those who need the ending tied down, will be pleased.

Let's stipulate, however, that without the acting treasures present, no manipulation of devices would have produced such a result. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke transcend even themselves, and Marisa Tomei throws a couple into the mix... but Albert Finney as the Avenging Angel ultimately steals the show.

Yes, Avenging Angel. We have Bergman here.

Go. See Greek tragedy.

clark

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Topic - Here's the one: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - clarkjohnsen 23:31:29 12/01/07 (1)

Saw it here in South Florida, where I am and where the exhibition is fine and temperatures are in the 80s. - clarkjohnsen 11:20:05 12/02/07 (0)

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