artsfiend’s Film Reviews

36 Films have been rated or reviewed by artsfiend.

Serious Man, A (2009): Perhaps the best of the Coens\' half–dozen–or–so great films, the cinematography (particularly in the stoned bar mitzvah) is stunning, the humour devastating.
Generation Kill (TV Mini-series) (2008): Forget the Hurt Locker, THIS is the only cinematic depiction of the Iraq War which you really need to see. Utterly sympathetic towards most of the soldiers, utterly unsympathetic towards the war.
Hurt Locker, The (2008): 80% of the film is a poorly executed macho action flick. The Beckham subplot brilliantly depicts troops utterly baffled about what they are doing – but the director fails to make anything out of this, and returns to more boring action scenes. Irritating.
Birth of a Nation (1915): "If we let negroes vote, they'll slouch around in parliament with no shoes, eating fried chicken and chasing white women!" Many very good directors have called this the first masterpiece of cinema; really it's a waste of good charcoal.
Persona (1966): Makes much more sense as a sequal to the Silence than as a standalone work, but where the Silence struggled to fit its ideas into an engaging film experience, Persona soars.
Wild Strawberries (1957): In which Bergman disproved the idea that writers for the movies have to tone down the intelligence of their dialogue to get a hit.
Matrix, The (1999): Besides the fact that the action scenes and soundtrack are AWESOME, I love this film because now whenever you're trying to explain Descarte's evil demon to someone, you can just mention this film and they'll understand what you're rambling about.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975): Pacino's greatest performance, with lumet dragging hitchcock's tension through the gutters
Scarface (1983): Pacino gives the greatest one–dimensional performance ever – but it's still one dimensional, since De Palma is a hack who doesn't really know how to ask for anything more.
Lancelot Du Lac (1974): The first five minutes sum up Bresson's view of the romance of the middle ages: two guys in heavy armour slowly bashing each other to bits. Awesome prologue, but then he repeats the same message for another hour with a bunch of dudes who cannot act.; DVD $34.95

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artsfiend’s Film Reviews