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Reviews16
koop-2's rating
Although my hopes were not that high I was disappointed with Cube. I would have hoped that a Canadian film would have more originality in its performance than an American. But that is not the case here. The actors with the exceptions of the two who plays Worth and Kazan are surprisingly bad! But then, the material they work with is not making things easier for them - the dialogue is sometimes embarrassing. I was surprised when I read that the film only was only 90 minutes long, it feels much longer, but in favor for the film it's actually not THAT boring.
One can only fantasize how much better this film would have been in the hands of a director like David Cronenberg. Plus another cast and the occasional rewrite.
One can only fantasize how much better this film would have been in the hands of a director like David Cronenberg. Plus another cast and the occasional rewrite.
The End of Violence. Define it. Well, I'll try... Ciby 2000. The late 1990's. Irony. Satire. Subplotting. I could go on, but I won't.
The casting scared me at first, Pullman, Byrne, MacDowell. Not exactly a dream team for me. More like the other way around. But, they work surprisingly good portraying these characters.
The story is complex. And the subplots are many. And most of them both unusual and interesting. The dialogue is smart and often very funny, but not in the punchline-laugh-here kind of way. More like the punchline-by-the-way-smile kind of way.
The End of Violence is not at all as pretentious as its title. De facto, compared to Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin it is down to earth. But neither is it near the masterwork of Paris, Texas. But The End of Violence is better than its reputation. And the overall casting is very successful. Particularly I think Loren Dean and Traci Lind stand out. They both deliver some great ironic lines and the super cool Lind acts in a film in the film (where the director is played by Udo Kier) in which The End of Violence makes fun of itself in general and Hollywood and the whole American movie industry in particular.
The End of Violence works better as a satirical film than a big-brother-is-watching-us and the-government-is-after-us film. They just seem to can't get those right, can they? But there are too many already, that is even if you don't count The X Files.
The casting scared me at first, Pullman, Byrne, MacDowell. Not exactly a dream team for me. More like the other way around. But, they work surprisingly good portraying these characters.
The story is complex. And the subplots are many. And most of them both unusual and interesting. The dialogue is smart and often very funny, but not in the punchline-laugh-here kind of way. More like the punchline-by-the-way-smile kind of way.
The End of Violence is not at all as pretentious as its title. De facto, compared to Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin it is down to earth. But neither is it near the masterwork of Paris, Texas. But The End of Violence is better than its reputation. And the overall casting is very successful. Particularly I think Loren Dean and Traci Lind stand out. They both deliver some great ironic lines and the super cool Lind acts in a film in the film (where the director is played by Udo Kier) in which The End of Violence makes fun of itself in general and Hollywood and the whole American movie industry in particular.
The End of Violence works better as a satirical film than a big-brother-is-watching-us and the-government-is-after-us film. They just seem to can't get those right, can they? But there are too many already, that is even if you don't count The X Files.
"Just because you f***ed some junkie in a street corner doesn't make you his mother!" / dialogue from Losing Isaiah.
The film starts with a drug addict (Halle Berry, who is surprisingly good.) goes around in one of Americas less glamorous blocks with a screaming baby. But the withdrawal symptoms becomes to strong and she lies the child in a container. When she wakes up the next day she can't find Isaiah. She is devastated. (Isaiah has been taken to the hospital when a couple of dust men found him.)
Jessica Lange, Hollywood's best actress, plays the successful doctor that sees a little crack baby lying and screaming on the ward and thinks "Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those around the house?". She adopts the little fellow and raise him together with husband and daughter.
The film jumps between Lange's family that take care of the kid and his biological mother, Berry who is building up a new drug free life. She eventually finds out that her child is alive and, of course, then wants him back. Lange doesn't want to let him go. Berry then hires a tough lawyer (Samuel L. Jackson) and trial it is.
An interesting dilemma. And the film handles it good, very good. You really want to know who will get custody and which of the two mothers who gets the ending frame (and then 'wins' the film). The ending and the ending frame unfortunately is a cowardly compromise.
The film starts with a drug addict (Halle Berry, who is surprisingly good.) goes around in one of Americas less glamorous blocks with a screaming baby. But the withdrawal symptoms becomes to strong and she lies the child in a container. When she wakes up the next day she can't find Isaiah. She is devastated. (Isaiah has been taken to the hospital when a couple of dust men found him.)
Jessica Lange, Hollywood's best actress, plays the successful doctor that sees a little crack baby lying and screaming on the ward and thinks "Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those around the house?". She adopts the little fellow and raise him together with husband and daughter.
The film jumps between Lange's family that take care of the kid and his biological mother, Berry who is building up a new drug free life. She eventually finds out that her child is alive and, of course, then wants him back. Lange doesn't want to let him go. Berry then hires a tough lawyer (Samuel L. Jackson) and trial it is.
An interesting dilemma. And the film handles it good, very good. You really want to know who will get custody and which of the two mothers who gets the ending frame (and then 'wins' the film). The ending and the ending frame unfortunately is a cowardly compromise.