TheMulderFox

There are a few special movies that are both adored and loathed in equal measure by viewers, and "Blow-Up" is certainly one of the most discussed of these movies. I'll admit that I love thought provoking movies that stay with you long after you've seen them. Unlike most of the Hollywood tripe we get these days that you all but forget 5 minutes after the credits have rolled past.

A number of reviews point to the "confusing" nature of the story or that plot points are left unexplored or entire characters are disposed of without a second thought and so on. These reviews are however missing the point that Antonioni is trying to make as these are central to the very idea that the movie is exploring : the nature of reality. Thus the movie should not be viewed as confusing as it is left purposefully ambiguous by director Antonioni.

The central narrative of the film turns around a successful photographer whom unwittingly films an apparent murder in a public park. The problem arises when he starts to scrutinize the evidence. The closer he looks at his film the more ambiguous it becomes and at the end he, and the audience, is left wondering whether he saw anything at all.

The true brilliance of the movie lies in the fact the Antonioni never explicitly gives any answers to the questions posed throughout the film. Instead he leaves it up to the viewers to decide for themselves. In so doing he allows the audience to impose their reality onto the movie, instead of the director imposing his reality onto the viewer. Was any of it real or merely a far fetched fantasy? You be the judge.

On it's surface the movie is almost a detective story or murder mystery, but these waters run far deeper. As I mentioned above in "Blow-Up" Michelangelo Antonioni explores the nature of reality. When does something have meaning? Can you will something into existence? And if something loses it's meaning, can it then cease to exist altogether? Definitely a movie that demands multiple viewings, and one that is well worth the effort.

The questions posed have as much relevance today as they had in 1966, and the story is told in a highly entertaining and clever way. Granted this is not a movie for everyone, much like Mulholland Drive and Barton Fink are not for everyone, but if you have an open mind the I'll highly recommend this movie.

Orson Welles reportedly once told Peter Bogdanovich that he(Welles) will likely only be appreciated once he is dead. And so it seems was the case with "The Lady From Shanghai", considered a flop in Hollywood at the time of release. Today however, decades later it is considered by many to be a masterpiece and a highly influential work of film noir.

To be completely fair when I first saw the movie during my more formative years I didn't much care for it. I liked the look of the movie, interesting shots with Welles' fingerprints all over them. But it was more recently with subsequent viewings that the movie truly began to shine for me.

This is yet another example of how studio interference can ruin a good film. Orson Welles and studio boss Harry Cohn were at constant odds with one another about nearly everything. The story, the running time, the location shoots, the fact that Welles made Rita Hayworth cut her signature crimson locks and die her hair platinum blonde, production overruns, budget and the score.

I would truly love to see the "director's cut" as I suspect that it would be fantastic, but sadly it is lost to us forever. Harry Cohn cut nearly an hour of footage from the version that Welles submitted, 155 minutes was reduced to just about 87 minutes - one can just imagine what could have been. The single largest point for Welles was the score. He just hated the music and wrote an extensive memo to Cohn about how it can be fixed and why, every single point on the memo was ignored. And viewing the movie with these points in mind you can clearly see that Orson was right too.

Rita Hayworth simply steals the show, her performance as the consummate femme fatale with a shady past and sinister motives is enchanting, and I maintain that Welles did her a great service in the way he lit and shot her scenes(overall and not just the close-ups that were inserted on Harry Cohn's insistence). The movie also delivers some very memorable scenes. The Chinese theater sequence, the fun-house mirror finale and the shark speech at the picnic. The latter remains both chilling and relevant to this day.

The movie also has one of my favourite closing lines of all time in Michael O'Hara's(Orson Welles)epilogue.

Apart from the music that was misapplied the dialog and acting both tend to fade between brilliant and hammy at times. The movie was brilliantly shot though and is simply a pleasure to view, and so inconsistency is the real problem that seems to plague "The Lady Form Shanghai" and keeps it from being a true masterwork. Had the original cut survived and the sound issues been addressed, who knows? To bring this laboursome review to a point. The Lady from Shanghai is a great story told with style. It certainly does have issues and is not without fault but stands as a must see movie for anyone even remotely interested in the Film Noir genre.

I went into this movie not expecting much, the average dumbed down action flick with the Rock putting boots to @rses. Something akin to "The Marine". However, much to my delight what I received was so much more.

Award material? Certainly not, but one hell of a ride for sure. Technically this movie is average at best. The story is predictable, clichéd at times and we have all seen this so many times before. A character with a shady past returns after a long absence to take some well deserved revenge. People die, but wait there is a twist as all may not be as it seems. More people die, etcetera...

It takes some serious cues from old spaghetti westerns, perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the alternate ending(which I actually heavily prefer over the theatrical ending). The character of Killer even has the theme from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" as a ringtone on his phone.

I could personally have done without the rather heavy handed religious overtones at times. The themes of vengeance, forgiveness, redemption, pride and acceptance run throughout the various sub-plots. These do manage to nicely weave themselves into the main story later on in the movie. Giving a fairly acceptable reason for their brute force application.

As an all-out action revenge film "Faster" is great though, not the best one out there - but still great. The overall product seems to transcend it's various problems and deliver a solid revenge movie at the end. I was pleasantly surprised by the movie as a whole and had a great time watching it, just don't expect too much.

Critically I would hand "Faster" a 4 but from a more basal pure enjoyment level I might go as high as 7.5 handing in an overall score of 6 out of 10.