Anth-8

After watching the movie a few times, I found so many subtle touches and emotions within the dialogue. Jing Ke, the Assassin has become one of favorite movie characters of all time. This fine Chinese actor says more with his eyes and his economy of words and movements then any big screen American actor today. Qin, the Emperor, is brilliant as he leads the audience to believe the kindness in his heart, only to unleash the most cruel acts upon the people around him. The promises he makes with incredible passion and shattered with an evil fist. Gong Li, as in just about every movie I've ever seen her in, is simply fantastic. Her screen dominance is so graceful and emotionally charged.

In case you couldn't tell, I loved this movie.

I am a lot of things, mostly contradictions. I'm progressive and mostly liberal, yet I'm still very Catholic. I like a good bible/religious thriller, but Stigmata doesn't deliver. I won't use the term "anti-Catholic" because it's overused and undefined, but if I was writing the dictionary entry for anti-Catholic it would reference this movie.

The plot has potential. A Vatican priest/scientist is sent out to investigate mysteries of the faith. The originality in plot ends there. His supervisor is a one dimensional figure who is of course working counter current to what he seemingly should be. The supervisor is doing whatever it takes to protect the Catholic church by preventing the lost Gospel of Jesus to come to light.

The movie tries to scare us at times, but it's stereotypical fright. So much promise this movie held, but so unwilling the scriptwriter and director were to fleshing out a real plot.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a movie that does so many things right...It was beautifully filmed, it was well acted, it had rich characters and a believable setup to the story line. What I think the movie failed to do was provide any reason to like, admire, or wish well on any of the principal characters presented. Tom Ripley was a very troubled man who envied, lusted after, and then killed another troubled, yet very rich, man. Dickie, the very rich young playboy whom Tom kills, isn't a very likeable person either. He was full of life in a 50's Kerouac kinda way, but likeable he wasn't. Tom killed one of Dickie's friends(Frankie) who was incredibly even less likeable. In between all these killings Tom fancies himself a better man for Dickie's girlfriend and also has a Roman affair with another rich girl who remarkably turns up around every corner that Tom does. I left out the lunacy of the hard edged private detective and the idiotic father of Dickie who can't thank Tom enough for being a "fine young man." Please, spare me the antihero stuff, it was a sick movie of a glorified serial killer, nothing more. I was very disappointed in Miramax, they generally never fail my expectations.