A pretty routine example of the green screen kids book adaptation with a competent supporting cast playing mostly generic characters and excellent CGI realization of the non-human character. Resonably good showtunes were written for the movie and the plot zips a long at a good pace but it's all kept going by artificial heart. We know what we're supposed to feel, but do we really feel it or are we just going along?
Javier Bardem is fun.
A musical collage of Bowie songs performed in concert intertwined with Bowie's ruminations on art and creation cut together from a trove of interviews with side trips into Bowie's other artistic expressions and only rare mentions of family or relations. Even in this retrospective from a director given access given to the archives of the Bowie estate his private life is held close while the focus is on his public creative life.
In the end what comes through is that…
Filming a stage play is a fool's game; you can't capture the power, intimacy and intensity of a great live show. Spike Lee played that fool's game and won. This is an amazing film.
There is a lot of great filmmaking in "Rocco and His Brothers" and some great acting but I remained unconvinced of the core principle of the film; that Rocco would sacrifice love, happiness, and the woman he loves for a brother who is selfish, brutal, hateful, destructive, and ungrateful. The movie asserts the primacy of family above all in the most despicable way.
