pultzat

I must preface this review by saying that I am a massive fan of Antonioni, not only his early (and more popular) works but also the latter films (Zabriskie Point and to a lesser extent Identification of a Woman).

First, the positives: the film starts out promising, with some nice camera and compositional work at the beginning. Also Antonioni's eye for casting beautiful, interesting women is still perfectly intact.

Now for the bad: the script is hard to stomach, and it also doesn't help that the acting is barely acceptable as well. The music is god-awful; I remember another reviewer comparing it to soft porn, and I think that is a slap in the face to that poor genre.

All in all, it's worth viewing if you want to say you've seen every Antonioni film, or you have a love for beautiful women - and in this case it might be better to watch part of the first segment, and then just fast forward to the nude scenes - but don't expect to be presented with the profound artistic statement that you've enjoyed in his other films.

I guess to start with a positive, the color footage is quite interesting and fun to see...but I'd really like to see it for more than 1-1.5 sec's at a time. I noticed this the most while watching the documentary with some music on instead of the narrative - unfortunately this product is yet another victim of the "MTV" style of rapid-fire editing. If you want a good WWII documentary that might suck you in a bit, try the WORLD AT WAR, produced in 1973. It's in Black and White (so what), and is much more satisfying and includes a lot more detail into campaigns that happened outside of direct American influence. My three stars are a reflection of my disappointment with the documentary and to compensate for the almost ridiculous 9.7 stars (at the time of writing).

This movie reminded me a lot of Cassavettes, where you are watching a relationship that is stagnant and totally hopeless. I think this is a good movie to watch because it can serve as a lesson on how life can spiral down if you find yourself in this situation. The grainy, high contrast film is also a nice touch which captures the gritty reality that this couple lives in. I must admit I was reminded a lot of John Cassavettes while watching this. One of my favorite parts is that we have a scene in a dance hall, which is revisited in his later movies. It's very realistic and made me feel like I was there. I highly recommend this film if you are a fan of Taar, or just like to see realistic depictions of domestic situations.