fatburgr

If you can handle a world about half a bubble off plumb, there's a lot of fun to be had in "Free Money". It's quite obvious that all of these characters would vanish in a puff of smoke in what we call the "real world", but inside their own rules of logic and social constraints it all makes perfect and hilarious sense.

Brando's warden personifies what Joseph Heller once called "a gigantic belch of a man", and Hayden Church and Sheen are perfect as man's men dragged either unconscious or screaming into their twin high school bride's playhouse version of married life.

Donald Sutherland has a nice turn as a psychotic judge, and Mira Sorvino turns in a fine performance as a kind of bridge between "our world" and the asylum run by lunatics that the rest of the characters live in.

It's quite possible that we could have lived without some of the brutality (cattle prods, gladiator fights in the prison) but then again, what the hell. It's a 90's film.

--bt

I haven't read the Virginia Woolf original, so no comparisons will be made, illuminating or otherwise. This review refers to the DVD edition.

Excellent costumes, stunning cinematography, effective score, but only a seriously overheated feminist could find any hint of a serious examination of sexual politics in this film. It doesn't help that no one could believe for a moment that Orlando is EVER male, let alone masculine, at any time. It's quite obvious that Potter has chosen early on to avoid the real prickly issues of what it means to be male, female or ultimately even human in favor of creating a visual style that first amazes, then seduces but ultimately wears thin as one's brain kicks back in.

I hoped for a good deal more than style in a film this good in every way but substance. I was disappointed.

And when the number 8:27 comes up it's time to write a movie review...

Many critics seemed to see the basic premise of the film as a conflict between the "good" natural state of the bushman and the "bad" civilized state of the city dwellers and revolutionaries.

To me, it's more of a comment (and a pretty badly dubbed comment at that!) on the inherent comedy of culture conflict that proceeds from the completely arbitrary nature of ALL cultures. It's no funnier (or just as funny, depending on how you look at it) that a bushman doesn't "get" the nature of a car, than it is that a city dweller doesn't "get" the nature of a fire-stomping rhino or a wait-a-bit bush.

And you can play with the nature of god, if you like. Perhaps that ten commandments thing was just a "coke bottle of the gods" something wrapped around something that actually was important - at least to the gods.