Feb

8

In May 1939, to define the Jewish ‘problem’ to the world, Goebbels had 937 German Jews shipped to the apparent safety of Cuba. Refused entry into Havana, the luxury liner was forced back supporting Hamburg and the camps. Rosenberg here confuses seriousness with tedious solemnity, and with the star glut has produced a compacted TV series. Too many dramas compete for attention on board. The political doings in Havana are confusing; and the prelude to each Cuban scene – maracas, rumbas, curtail-assess Carmen Mirandas – irritates. Very idiosyncratic performances from the big shots: Welles’ wryly kind Cuban magnate; Captain von Sydow, humane and anguished; steward McDowell hitting new heights in public school deference; Dunaway in jackboots and monocle. The paramount moments, such as they are, come in the renowned passenger scenes; though awkwardly filmed, they generate hysteria, a coherence of lose hope.

Feb

5

Ah, the 1960s and antique 1970s, a occasion of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ steal from flatten. It was also the mores when producer Harry Novak, the “King of Group ” and “Sultan of Sexploitation,” made his mark producing sleazy exploitation films including several collaborations with director William Rotsler (aka Shannon Carse*) including The Agony Of Love, The Girl With The Hungry Eyes, Suburban Pagans* and our characteristic for today, Mantis In Belabour (aka Lila), which is presented here in its most complete, uncut custom. You know you’re in for a treat when the chapter stops have titles such as Mammalian Protuberances (someone at Image is a Zappa fan) and Lotsa Blood and a Meat Cleaver. If you’re looking for mindless camp with lots of gratuitous nudity and violence, you found the virtuousness disc.

“Groovy pad you got here, a little kinky, but it’s out of sight.” - Tiger

Lila has a contribution as a topless dancer, and enjoys taking men back to an abandoned warehouse where she sets up her after hours entertainment. She likes things to meet with her way, and on her terms, otherwise she kind of freaks out. When she takes the hippy and trippy Tiger (Vic Lance) home, he suggests they take a petite something to carry out it special, and they drop acid together, her first time. Pygmy does he expect that in the middle of their sexcapade, that she’ll journey peripheral exhausted and begin hacking at him with a screwdriver, then finale him mistaken with a chow cleaver for good measure! (Note to self: If you turn up her with a cleaver, it’s kindest to up and leave her). After discovery all the bits abandoned in a cardboard box, we then assemble Sergeant Collins (Steve Vincent) and Lieutenant Ryan (M.K. Evans), whose procedure it is to, strictly, imprison the pieces back together and find the gunsel. The next tenebrosity, she meets Frank Ackerman (Stuart Lancaster), a psychologist doing field up on. Once again she invites him back to her fill, does more acid, and after doing her striptease foreplay pattern, shivs the person while he’s trying to abscond it with her. A not any chopping spree, and the cops have another case on their hands, but at least they accept some leads. Will they catch her before she stuffs another slug smack of body parts?

Enhance your internet intelligence by watching high-quality streaming movies on your PC and skip the hassles of renting from your local movie store and paying the fees charged for returning a movie late. Through streaming video sites, you can watch your favorite movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. Watch In Search of Beethoven for free online .

Happily, if you haven’t been dissuaded by the give triumphant plot, then you’ll hardly be bothered by the bad acting or cheesy dialogue either, which is of course the whole point! I mean, you have the essential ingredients for a great film here. First, is a topless dancer, which means at least 20 minutes of footage of girls dancing topless. Then, you have a murderer, and to spice that up and get away from too much groovy talking, we’ll reap her whim out on acid, and work out the fit psychedelic thing happening, with slide projections on the actors and the close in and out of concentration import. Styling! Then, right when you think you recall what’s common to take place, we’ll cut in a shafting participate with two characters we haven’t met yet, and instead of the funky throw soundtrack we’ll use an orchestra, well, most of the time anyway. I guess we should include some semblance of a design, so we’ll get a duo of dicks working the case to tie it all together. Throw in a guest looks by Stuart Lancaster, who has credits on just about every Russ Meyer flick produced, and you have planned a great showcase for low buck, sexploitation at its finest (or whateverest). Did I suggest this was filmed by Leslie Kovacs, of Lenient Rider, Shampoo and Ghostbusters fame?

But the show’s not settled yet!

Feb

4

Fever (1989)

February 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment

“Steamy modern film noir.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Craig Lahiff’s steamy modern film noir is set in a backwater outback
Aussie mining town. Paunchy local police sergeant Jack Welles observes
from a hilly desert location a drug deal going down and chooses to chase
the car with the suitcase of money over the other carrying the drugs. The
criminal’s pick-up truck rolls over during the chase and the double-dealing
cop steals the money while reporting only the accident. The nosy cop under
Jack’s command, Morris, suspects something fishy about the accident and
annoys Jack with stinging questions calling for a full investigation into
the Pakistani driver’s death. Arriving home early, a red-faced and sweaty
Jack catches the town’s handsome young mining engineer Jeff shtuping from
behind his much younger lovely slim wife Leanne. The cuckolded man confronts
the much younger stud, and after a tussle Jeff throws a vase which knocks
the cop cold. Thinking him dead, the couple conspire to bury the cop in
a mining shaft. But it turns out Jack is very much alive and escapes. He’s
still very much in love with his attractive but unfaithful wife, even if
he realizes she does not love him, and pursues her as she catches a train
out of town with her shallow lover and the suitcase of money. Unknown to
Jack the cunning Morris has also boarded the train, and he pulls a gun
on the superior officer when he catches him with the money in a storage
room. The tale takes off from that point, as these four unpleasant characters
act out their suppressed desires and undergo a series of bloody incidents
until only one is standing to have the last laugh. 

The twisty plot, using minimal dialogue, effectively conveys how
desperate all these miserable characters are for some spark in their dull
lives. The money is the temptation that makes them chase a false means
to happiness. 

Feb

3

"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile)" is intended to be referred to as "that Romanian abortion movie", so let's get that out of the way right at this very moment. Yes, "4 Months" regarding two women – roommates at a Romanian university – who arrange as a service to an interdicted abortion in 1987, when the motherland was but under Communist rule. The film takes place over one unnerving 24-hour epoch during which we see in painstaking spell out the lengths to which these woman commitment go over the extent of this wont. Abortions were declared illegal in Romania in 1966, causing something of a population thrive until the down of Communism in 1989. During these years, women seeking abortions frequently faced inhuman conditions. This film, written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, tells whole of those stories.

The title, thoroughly plainly, refers to the length of the pregnancy which is to be terminated in the film – a truthfully which makes the abortion not only illegal in Romania but punishable as slaying. The woman in question is Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), who walks completely the film as though perpetually dazed. Gabita, thankfully, has enlisted the aid of her stalwart best mistress Otilia (Anamaria Marinca, in a vital performance) to exist a support by her side from stem to stern this ordeal (we not at all find out who the father is). Otilia is a whirlwind – reserving breakfast rooms, covering to the police and largely problem-solving with an verging on weird decide change into. She's like "The Cleaner" in "Pulp Fiction". Through a friend of a friend, Gabita and Otilia include gotten the christen of Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), a kind of black call abortionist with an unearthly, clinical calmness. Mr. Ivanov's mesmerizing exhibit keeps the gold medal half of the film on sustained pins and needles. Mr. Bebe has utterly done this many times once; there's no question who has the majuscule letters-hand in this post. Where the film goes from here is best left as an immaculate journey. Suffice to about that "4 months" is a tough, unyielding mist that's calumniate to stick with you for a while.

Duck.fm Free Music Search engine gives you an opportunity to find lots of mp3 downloads. Roxette free mp3 download. Explore large collection of free music.

Mr. Mungiu is part of the so-called "New Wave" of Romanian filmmakers (it seems every country is having a "New Wave" of cinema nowadays). "4 Months" has a lot in common with another nice example of that kind, 2005's equally-gripping "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu". Like Cristi Puiu's engrossing, almost existential, third degree of the Romanian medical system, "4 months" tells a dark, distressing story set against a forlorn Romanian vista. But where "Lazarescu" told its story by hopping from one hospital to another, "4 months" takes place almost entirely in entire caravanserai room – prevent for an exceptionally sensitive family dinner sequence that makes

"Meet the Parents"

look like something out of Norman Rockwell. "4 Months" could bordering on procure been a stage play, and at times it lacks any emergency shell of that which is inherent to its guinea-pig. But Mr. Mungiu, to his credit, resists artificially inflating the components and directs the film with a stark, slice-of-life quality using many long, uncut shots. The result is an sudden empathy for these characters. Gabita and Otilia could be anyone – any strife phoney to face impossible obstacles in knighthood a neat to do what she feels is her at best choice. Even when that choice has been entranced from her.

Feb

1

TALES OF TERROR

Synopsis:

Three of the Masters of the Macabre present a visual feast in bringing to life three of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories. Morella

Download full mp3 songs, collect mp3 on your PC and much more. Listen to Skillet online for free.

Tells the story of a husband (Vincent Price) mourning the death of his wife, Morella some thirty years earlier. His daughter comes to visit and is greeted not so warmly by her dear old dad. In the thirty years that have passed, her father has become a shadow of the man he used to be. Now he is an aging drunk who lives out each day in abject despair and grief. Unwilling to commit her beauty to the Earth, the husband, “rescues” Morella’s corpse from the grave and places her in their bed. Upon their daughter’s arrival, Morella’s spirit grows uneasy and prepares to deliver a final blow of her own.

The Cask of Amontillado

Peter Lorre stars as Montresore Herringbone, a mean fart of a drunk with an exceptionally beautiful young wife. Their daily ritual revolves around her cleaning the house and him demanding money for more wine. On a particularly heavy binge, he stumbles into a wine tasting contest where Fortunato Lucresse (Vincent Price) is the featured taster. Convinced he can out-taste Lucresse, Montresore bullies his way into the contest and much to everyone’s surprise he out matches Lucresse at every turn! Totally drunk and disorderly, Montresore is unable to make his way home without assistance so, Fortunato takes him home. Once there he meets, Montresore’s wife and it’s love at first sight. The two become lovers and secret dalliances are the order of the day. No longer a struggle to get money out of his wife, Montresore paints the town, drinking himself under the bar. One particular evening, the bar keep mentions that Montresore’s new found freedom might be attributable to someone else “taking care” of his wife. Incensed, Montresore heads home only to see the two lovers bidding each other adieu as they part. Unwilling to be bested, Montresore plans to put a lid if you will, on these things once and for all.

The case of Mr. Valdemar

Vincent Price stars as Mr. Valdemar. An extremely wealthy man who suffers from an incurable fatal & painful disease that leaves him racked with pain every day. Basil Rathbone is a Mesmerist. He believes that he can, at the point of death, extract the soul of Valdemar and send him blissfully into eternal peace. Well, at least that’s what he’s telling Valdemar and more importantly, his young and beautiful wife. At present, he uses his tools of mesmerism to alleviate the pains that Valdemar suffers from his illness. Neither his wife nor his Physician approves of Rathbone’s methods and they make their disapproval known. Rathbone however, has the full and total support of Valdemar and exercises his considerable hold quite frequently. The day of Valdemar’s death arrives and true to his word, Rathbone extracts his soul at the very moment of death. The end result, a disembodied voice travelling towards eternity. Rathbone has far more sinister plans in store though and once he has Valdemar’s essence safely contained, he brings all his powers to bear on those that remain.

Audio:

the audio as presented is a mono platform that can at times sound quite tinny. While wholly enjoyable, the lack of stereo presentation is painfully evident from the opening moments of the film until the closing credits. As it is in Mono, the surround/sub speakers are not at all used. The overall effect is lackluster but the creepy score makes up the difference!

Jan

31

A young boy raised in the wild struggles to stay where he calls home, despite his animal friends trying to convince him he'd be better off with his own kind.

For a movie that focuses so heavily on musical interludes and so little on story, it's amazing that 40 years later THE JUNGLE BOOK manages to still hold up as one of the Disney greats. It may not be in the same league as THE LION KING or ALADDIN, but I'd argue it's held up much better than some of the older (and more highly regarded) fare like SNOW WHITE or PINOCCHIO. Part of this may be bias getting the better of me, since I grew up on THE JUNGLE BOOK; seeing it again for the umpteenth time, except about ten years later, stirred up some major nostalgia.

There are three things that keep the charm and magic of this Disney classic alive: the music, the characters, and the animation. It's as simple as that.

With toe-tappingly addictive tracks like "I Wanna Be Like You" and "Bare Necessities", the musical numbers are an obvious highlight. This is primarily a credit to the voice actors, who also act as the driving force that make the abundance of characters such a treat. Baloo, a fun-loving laidback bear who befriends Mowgli (voiced by the perfectly cast Phil Harris), is easily the most beloved of the bunch, with the mischievous Kaa (a python with a penchant for hypnotizing his prey) and the unruly King Louie (an orangutan who desires the secret of making fire) coming in right behind him. Tying this all together is the lush animation, which adds an amazing amount of personality and humor to the film. It occasionally looks a little rough around the edges, but that gives it a personal touch a lot of animated pictures could benefit from; that is, if they even made real animated pictures anymore (CGI films excluded).

If I have one gripe with THE JUNGLE BOOK, it's that its second half isn't as fun as its first. Baloo drops out of the film briefly, and characters like the goofy vultures (stylized to look like British rock singers) aren't enough to make up for his absence. This is a minor issue though; one that barely constitutes as a problem since most young kids don't even finish the films they start. And with the rest of the movie being so joyously entertaining, adults aren't likely to care either.


Video:

Presented in 1.75:1 Anamorphic Widescreen. This digitally restored and enhanced transfer offers a visual experience unlike anything THE JUNGLE BOOK was capable of offering before. A true treat for fans.


Audio:

English 5.1 Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix, Spanish/French 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround, and English Mono. The enhanced sound mix is fantastic, and the fact that they've also made available a restored version of the original mono track is an added bonus.

I find it ironic that Disney is so willing to cash-in on pointless straight-to-DVD sequels to their classic films, yet they never hesitate to give those very same classics the royal treatment with DVD releases like this. I guess that makes them "respectful" sellouts.


DISC 1


Audio Commentary (with Richard Sherman, Andreas Deja, and Bruce Reitherman):

This retrospective track offers a lot of interesting information and insight into the film, but it all comes from very odd perspectives. Richard Sherman worked on many of the film's songs, Andreas Deja is the supervising pencil animator at Disney, and Bruce Reitherman is the son of the director and voice of Mowgli.


The Lost Character: Rocky the Rhino (6:35):

Much more than just a deleted scene, this brief but still in-depth featurette gives an extremely worthwhile look at one of the characters that never made it past the storyboard stage.


Deleted Songs (21:00):

Available here are seven "audio only" tracks that never made it into the film.


Disney Song Selection:

This easy-access scene selection allows for kids to quickly hop to their favorite musical number from the film.

Also included is a piece about the

Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund

, as well as a

Music Video

entitled "I Wan'na Be Like You", performed by the teenage rock band the Jonas Brothers, and a vast amount of

Sneak Peeks

. I'm ashamed to say I actually liked the music video.


DISC 2


The Bare Necessities: The Making of The Jungle Book (46:23):

A wonderfully in-depth 5-part featurette that provides every aspect of possible interest in the making of the film. Both old and new interviews have been included, ranging from such topics as the voice work, the music, and Walt Disney's overview of the production.


Disney's Kipling: Walt's Magic Touch on a Literary Classic (15:00):

This slightly shorter but still fascinating mini-documentary looks at the transformation from novel to film.


The Lure of The Jungle Book (9:25):

A retrospective featurette with the Disney animators offering up their thoughts and stories about the film.


Mowgli's Return to the Wild (5:10):

An interesting look at the director's son, Bruce Reitherman, whose voice work as Mowgli kick-started his film career.


Frank & Ollie (3:45):

A vintage interview with two of THE JUNGLE BOOK's main animators.


Baloo's Virtual Swingin' Jungle Cruise:

A 4-part virtual DVD game for kids.


DisneyPedia: Junglemania! (14:19):

A terrific featurette for kids that allows them to learn more about the animals featured in the film.


The Jungle Book Fun with Language Games:

A couple more games for kids (in this case, allowing them to identify jungle animals), this should be fun strictly for those of a very young age.

There are also six

Art Galleries

.


Miscellaneous:

Lastly, there's a handy trifold mini-guide to the DVD.

Enhance your online impression by watching high-digital streaming films on your PC and skip the hassles of renting from your local video store and paying the fees charged for returning a movie late. Through streaming video sites, you can watch your favorite movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. Recent movies divx download movies

I may not like what Disney has become (or at least, what they used to be before Pixar saved the day), but I can't deny the level of excellence they give their treatments of classic films. This "Platinum Edition" is an exceptional DVD worthy of your collections.

Jan

29

Dark City (1998)

January 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Enhance your online impression by watching good-quality streaming films on your PC and skip the hassles of renting from your local video store and wasting the money charged for returning a movie late. Through streaming video webservices, you can watch your best movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. Watch movies online

A fusion of “The Crow” and Kafka, “Dark City” trades in such grave themes as remembrance, thought control, human will and the altering of fact, but is delightful mostly in the degree to which it creates and sustains a visually startling alternate universe. Although not based on a comic book, Alex Proyas’ second emphasize repeats, to an verging on alarming extent, notions and motifs from his debut outing with “The Crow,” and his aiming for grander ideas adds a veneer of pretension that proves not all that edifying. But his skill as a visually gifted director remains unquestioned, and New In accordance should rack up thoughtful coin based on thriving support from the hard-core sci-fi/fantasy audience.

This is essentially an old film noir amnesiac yarn, set in a hostile urban environment defined by late ’40s noir (”Dark City” could easily have served as the title for just about any noir ever made). But tale is shot through with a futuristic element that vastly increases the visual opportunities beyond dark shadows on slick city streets.

Very appropriately for a picture about a desperate search through a labyrinth of time, memory and sinister manipulation, it takes a while for viewers to get their bearings. What is clear is that the Strangers, lean, bald, vampirelike men who dress in wide-brimmed hats and floor-length black coats and possess the ability to transform reality to their own purposes, have come to Earth to find a cure for their accursed mortality. So advanced are they that they can, through a process known as Tuning, will the world to a complete standstill, and can change the shape, size and very essence of material objects.

What is less clear is what any of this has to do with John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), a young man who, after a break with his wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly), awakens in a hotel room with his memory gone and under suspicion in a series of murders. Lamenting, in classic cliched noir fashion, that “I feel like I’m living out someone else’s nightmare,” Murdoch attracts the attention of a clearly demented genius doctor, Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), as well as a curiously sympathetic inspector, Frank Bumstead (William Hurt). Separately, they help Murdoch steer clear of the Strangers, who feel that the panicked gent somehow holds the key to their salvation.

Structured by story originator Proyas and his co-scenarists Lem Dobbs (”Kafka”) and David S. Goyer (”The Crow: City of Angels”) like a detective mystery, pic nonetheless quickly comes to resemble Kafka’s “The Trial,” with its beleaguered protagonist accused of crimes he professes no knowledge of, and a monolithic group of imposing adversaries clearly bent upon reeling him in for malevolent reasons of their own.

As Murdoch and the tale twist and turn through countless dark corners and alleys, it appears that the ominous Strangers have a collective memory, and that Murdoch has been robbed of his in order to help the Strangers try to unlock the key to the human soul.

How all this is supposed to happen remains as intricate as it is obscure, but by the final third the emphasis is on big set pieces anyway, one set on the literal edge of the world and beyond, and another located in the spectacular lair of the Strangers, a “Metropolis”-like underworld where through the excruciating transformation of mental power into physical force, Murdoch and the Strangers’ chieftain (Ian Richardson) each tries to emerge via the triumph of the will.

Along the way, Murdoch tries to patch together scraps of personal memory, mainly to figure out what happened between him and his wife. Unfortunately, the structural impression is that of a plot grid more than of a deepening story, and the principal impression of the characters, including the lead, is one of thorough weirdness rather than anything truly comprehensible.

So even if Proyas and his collaborators intended to add some intellectual meat to a one-dimensional form, they haven’t been able to provide anything extra in the areas of characterization, nuance, originality or complexity. What they have done is taken a few second-hand ideas from noir and speculative fiction and mixed them in occasionally striking ways, even if, in the end, the result isn’t all that much fun.

Visually, there is a great deal going on. Once you get over the startling resemblance of the threatening, perennially nocturnal city to the setting of “The Crow,” the differences start asserting themselves. Entirely created in the new Fox Film Studios in Sydney, the eponymous metropolis rendered with great imagination by production designers George Liddle and Patrick Tatopolous has the general feel and even the specific street sign style of ’40s New York, with Liz Keogh’s costume designs generally fitting that era as well. But the cars sometimes belong to more modern times, the low ceilings and cramped rooms evoke German Expressionism, and the superhuman powers of the Strangers endow everything with futuristic possibilities.

Within the deterministic framework of the piece, performances are solid. The distinctively handsome Sewell is mainly obliged to express the desperate bewilderment and determination of a paranoid victim, and does so better than many others have done with similarly circumscribed roles. As the detective, Hurt fits with great ease into the attitude and look of the picture, while Sutherland has some fun with what can only be called the Peter Lorre role. Connelly fills the bill as the wife with whom the beleaguered hero tries to reconnect, and Richard O’Brien and Ian Richardson are the most prominent of the memorably fashioned Strangers.

Design and technology rep the film’s strongest suit, so even when the story becomes too murky, there is generally something lively going on visually to hold the interest. Trevor Jones’ score works overtime, scarcely letting up for a moment.

Jan

28

Comrade X (1940)

January 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment

By no means classic Vidor: its characters – Gable as an American anchorwoman in Soviet Russia, Lamarr as the authority of his scoop stories – are simply too soothing to animate the film. Only in the last train, where Gable and Lamarr do a bunk from Russia in a tank, closely pursued by virtually the whole of the Russian army, does Vidor successfully visualise (albeit comically: the script is by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer) the tensions that the characters set in motion. A superb connect of pastime, none the less.

Jan

25

Thornton made his mark as writer and actor in One Concocted Move, and his directorial debut (from his own Oscar-winning script) is similarly stirring. He gives a outstanding, hugely credible show as a retarded human beings who returns to his hometown in the The sea South after spending years in a psychiatric asylum for having murdered his watch over as a child. When he befriends a babyish slave, his elan vital takes a dramatic new reorganize. Dinghy but rarely maudlin, beautifully acted, and shot through with foggy humour, this sensitive, insightful photoplay avoids the usual stereotypes to powerful more. (And comprehend the lovely Jim Jarmusch cameo.

Download full mp3 songs, download free wallpapers, express your mind and much more. Listen to Fabolous online.

Jan

24

Instant name recognition aside, literary adaptations have a lot stacked against them from the start. Not only do they have to live up to the source material, they have to feel necessary. Sure, Kenneth Branagh's 1996

Hamlet

was an unwieldy mess, but it didn't help that Franco Zeffirelli and Mel Gibson had done a serviceable job by it in 1990. And viewers apparently didn't feel a need to embrace yet another version of

Oliver Twist

, even one from Roman Polanski. Similarly, the beloved 1995 British miniseries version of Jane Austen's

Pride And Prejudice

casts a long shadow over the newest version, directed by Joe Wright and written by Deborah Moggach?both British TV vets making their full-length theatrical debuts. But after about half a scene, it's clear this new version will cast a pretty long shadow of its own.

The film opens?sans Austen's famous first lines?on the Bennett house, portrayed as a vibrant, lively, noisy, messy place whose everyday activity shoots up to fever pitch at the news of the imminent arrival of Simon Woods, a wealthy, single neighbor. Sensing a good?or at least financially sound?match for her eldest daughter Rosamund Pike, Brenda Blethyn sets about making sure Pike doesn't escape Woods' attention. Meanwhile, Blethyn's next-to-eldest daughter Keira Knightley meets Woods' distant friend Matthew MacFadyen, and they take an instant dislike to each other. (It doesn't last.)

From there, Wright clicks through Austen's familiar impediments to true love, but he never forgets he's making a movie, not porting a book to a new medium. He fills every corner of his widescreen compositions and keeps the camera as lively as his cast, overlapping dialogue à la Robert Altman and choreographing his ballroom sequences in ways that go well beyond the steps on the dance floor. Most importantly, the director, script, and cast (rounded out by Judi Dench and well-placed imports Donald Sutherland and Jena Malone) all recognize that Austen is about much more than pretty costumes and knowing looks. The film captures the financial stakes behind Blethyn's compulsive matchmaking, the lonely fates of unattached and "ruined" women, the games the upper classes play to keep the middle class in its place, and the persistent, understated sexual urgency beneath the polite surface of everyday life.

All the elements get dissolved in the slow-boiling romance between Knightley (striking just the right note of pre-feminist pride) and MacFadyen, whose strong, slightly puzzled-looking features register each lesson as he learns it. And he learns quickly. Wright wastes no time in squeezing the plot into his just-over-two hours running time, but the film never feels rushed, particularly when so much of it is spent watching and waiting, as the characters come to understand the world they live in?and that even with its hypocrisies, love still means more than anyone can put into words.



 

Blogroll

WP Themes