First half is okay, but as much as I get what the film is trying to do, sugarcoating the Holocaust just seems like a terrible idea no matter how you spin it or how good a cinematographer you get in to help you. Chaplin famously said that he wouldn't have done The Great Dictator if he'd known to what extent Nazi atrocities would stretch, Benigni knows, and ignores it, without Chaplin's talent to match or even a Jewish heritage to make it more palatable, which surprised me. Quite impressive that it takes the worst scene from The Shawshank Redemption and somehow ruins it further.
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Naked 1993
Glad I waited for a cinema viewing - the sheer amount of unpleasantness on display here for well over two hours would be a real slog at home. The performances are fantastic, particularly Thewlis, and Dick Pope (lol) is on top form as well, and I loved the music, but I miss Leigh's humanity in this, it's just so mean-spirited. All the men are creeps, all the women damaged, everyone is compulsively smoking, drinking, and fucking in order to forget themselves, and Johnny's tirades are ultimately hollow if eloquent.
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Winter Kills 1979
Absolute boss shit. Besides John Huston giving an absolute all-timer performance which frequently had me in stitches, and Jeff Bridges doing his best proto-Lebowski clueless dope work, this has got Toshiro Mifune! Tony Perkins! Dorothy Malone! Liz Taylor! Eli Wallach! Sterling Hayden!
Add to that Jarre's soundtrack and Zsigmond's imagery and you get something great already, but the movie has more to offer than that - it simultaneously functions as a very funny parody of conspiracy movies that were all…
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