Ah yes, another Paul Cox film at the festival. The thing about Paul Cox films is that they all seem to revolve around the same themes and ideas, so if you do not care for one of his films, you probably do not like any of them. I happen to like them, including Force of Destiny, though I wish he could have stuck with filming with "film" rather than switching to digital.
Radical Grace is fine for what it is, though I have a hard time categorizing it as a good documentary. The segment involving the nun who counsels prisoners probably does not belong in this film, as it had very little to do with the political activism that is the focus of the rest of the movie. Considering the documentary is only 75 minutes long, I suspect that it had to be padded out to reach this running time, and so they used footage that they had for this other nun, a story that ended prematurely while filming. The trips to Italy also felt a little phony, like they were arranged merely for the documentary.
Love and Mercy didn't work for me. It is always a problem when the most interesting part of these music documentaries is the music making process--a small part of the film. It is still hard to see John Cusack as Brian Wilson.
Blow Out is not as good as I remembered. An excellent premise is weakened by a cartoonish villain and a ludicrous John Travolta out-of-control driving scene. And the score is terrible--it even ripped off Blondie's "Call Me," a song that had been released the year before.
No comments:
Post a Comment