If you want to make a film about murder and guilt, then a) don't flag it up by having the main character very obviously reading "Crime and Punishment" in Scene 1, and b) if you do, don't be surprised when the audience spends the next hour muttering "OK, OK, just get on and murder her, will you?" Still, at least this allowed the one good bit of the film - the unexpectedly early ending. Based on "Crime and Punishment", I expected we were in for at least another thirty minutes of guilt and agony.
And please, before you write dialogue for British characters, go and listen to some actual British people talking. If not, just listen to some actual people of any nationality talking. All the characters in 'Match Point' except Scarlett Johansson (who was playing an American) talked like a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Jane Austen.
Now that would be a film I'd pay to see. "The Pride and Prejudice of the Lambs." Jodie Foster plays a young FBI agent racing to track down the serial killer who is bumping off the Bennett sisters one by one. The only way into the murderer's mind is to enlist the help of notorious psychopath Fitzwilliam Darcy, aka "The Barsetshire Cannibal". Sample dialogue:
"I am cursed with being the father of the five silliest girls in England!"But overall: Uurgh, basically."Ah, that's 'four silliest girls', Mr Bennett. I'm afraid we have bad news."
It's odd, really. It looked so promising. Woody Allen has made some great films. Brian Cox and Emily Mortimer are really pretty good at the whole acting thing. Scarlett Johansson is, well, not bad either. But the result was completely pants. No redeeming features whatever.
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.
8 comments:
"A census taker tried to quantify me once, Miss Starling. I ate his liver while wearing a wet ruffled shirt and unfeasibly tight breeches. F-f-f."
Sorry love, only me.
Yep, having read universally bad reviews of it (and regarding Woody Allen as disturbing and iggy-wiggy) I have no intention of paying good money to go and see it. I believe there may be some mileage in the hybird films idea though.
How about, 'There's something about the void', screwball gross-out romcom about two guys trying not to die on a mountain.
'Flashdancer in the Dark', A departure for Lars von Triers as an ill factory worker has a dream of dancing in a big loft to an eighties soundtrack.
'Abigail's Baby', vicious comedy of manners involving a social climbing hostess who gets impregnated by the devil.
"There's Something About The Void." Giggle.
"Abigail's Baby". Hee hee hee.
Staying with Jane Austen, I could go for "Clear and Present Emma", a thriller in which a CIA agent must stop a designing young woman from detonating a nuclear weapon in an English country house in order to force her friend Harriet to marry the eligible Mr Elton.
Or "The Hunt for the Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", a chilling story of obsessive love between a fashion designer and her model aboard a rogue Soviet missile submarine.
Or "Fitzcarraldo 9/11", a biting comic documentary ridiculing George Bush's insane plan to drag a steamship across the Amazon jungle.
"Conan vs. Conan"; Dustin Hoffman plays a successful but neurotic mighty barbarian warrior in the middle of a tricky divorce.
"It's stuck in the zipper! If you don't cut it we'll both die up here!"
'Conan vs Conan' just had me laughing out loud at my desk.
'Band of Blues Brothers' where Jake and Elwood fight Hitler with Rock and Roll.
Just after I wrote it I thought of "Kramer vs. Predator". (WHOEVER WINS, WE LOSE ACCESS RIGHTS.)
I like "Band of Blues Brothers."
'They can't stop us. We're on a mission from Ike.'
"The Seventh SEAL". A team of elite US commandos, trapped in mediaeval Sweden, are forced to confront their own mortality and the futility of existence.
"Night of the Living First Wives' Club"; Four divorced women resolve to revenge themselves on their ex-husbands by eating their brains.
'The Starsky and the Hutch'. Knockabout comedy featuring two eccentric detectives in first-century Judaea.
The Butterfly - Opera about a scientist who, following an accident in a new matter transporter, finds himself turning into a young geisha.
The wizard of Oz - a Kansas farm girl wakes up in a violent men's prison full of munchkins.
Kiss of the Spiderman - a superhero and a political prisoner share a jail cell and find themselves drawn together.
Saving Meg Ryan - A cute ditzy blonde is stuck behind enemy lines in wartime France.
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