ken2000

This film is a match for Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. A very tightly controlled drama with richly vivid characters and the casting is excellent. Robin Willimas has never done anything better and without all of that comedy schtick that he is so famous for. Joseph Wiseman is an absolute monster and that 'hotel' they live in might as well be hell. It is even depicted as hell with those scenes in the steam room/spa with all those walking corpses wondering around. I read the novel this was based on nearly thirty years ago, and my feeling then as now, seeing the film, is that there is no resolution. Wilkie has no exit from his situation. One thing for sure, he needs to get away from those people (his girlfriend seems to be in love w/him, regardless of the money, so that's something). I give this a very strong recommendation.

Cimino has created an epic, this is a very ambitious film, which unfortunately went exactly nowhere. Christopher Lambert plays Giuliano, a Sicilian bandit/revolutionary in post WW2 Sicily. Cimino effectively balances all of the powers that be --the church, the mafia, the nobility-- and presents a complex picture of the forces that were at work. Giuliano was a peasant hero, a kind of Robin Hood, whose heart was right but whose head lacked the smarts or the wisdom and ended up being destroyed. Watching this film, I thought of Visconti's The Leopard, it has the sweep of that earlier film, starring Burt Lancaster. Cimino has been in disfavor since Heaven's Gate, but with the Sicilian, he proves that he knows how to direct a film, even if no one ever sees it. BTW, this is one of the few films produced by the late David Begelman, who unfortunately blew his brains out, since he was in over his head legally and financially in 1995. Rent the Sicilian, it is on DVD.

This is as slight a story as it gets, basically a sappy love story (lovers break up, have affairs, get back together). However, the way that Coppola presented it is extraordinarily unique. He presents two realities at once -- Teri Garr's and Fred Forrest's stories. It is very stagey, but we do not lose track or in any way get disoriented. Also, most of all, is the kinetic/electric quality of the film, the sets, the lighting is all art-deco and god knows what else. Coppola recreates Las Vegas on his sound stages and it actually works once you accept the unreal reality of it all. One From the Heart is now in a short, too short, rerelease and I have seen it in the big screen of San Francisco's Castro Theater (1/3/04) and it is well worth the effort and a priceless artifact of Zoetrope at its best.