redoubtable

This is one of the best junk movies of all time -- a complete howler. Watching the constant changes of costume -- every single one of which grossly accentuates Ms. Parton's already overly prominent most famous assets (would you hire a nanny dressed like that?) -- is alone worth the price of a rental. Add a screenplay full of clunker lines, a supporting cast earnestly trying to make something of this syrupfest, and, best of all, a wildly retro concept of heaven, and you've got the ingredients for a movie so excruciatingly awful that, by some miracle of transference, it's really rather sublime.

Oh, please. I used to say I could watch Juliette Binoche read the phone book, but this sorely tested that theory. What a mess of a movie! -- by turns a tired liberal pseudodocumentary on the homeless (though by the end, you realize that according to this flick, homelessness is a byproduct of personal misfortune and not, evidently, any societal forces), a down-and-dirty romance (Binoche can be forgiven; what actress [or actor] wouldn't want to play a one-eyed homeless artist losing the vision in the other eye?), an extended music video, and God knows what else, all set in a Paris largely devoid of traffic and people. Completely lacking *internal* logic (and yes, fables do need that), it seems to have acquired quite a few devotees drawn to its alleged "poetry." All I see is pretentiousness and self-indulgence. If the other reviews here tempt you to see it anyway, that's fine; but don't say you weren't warned.

I have to throw in a dissenting voice here. The train shots are fabulous -- thrilling is not too strong a word -- and the realization of the little community formed around the railroad is wonderful. But the individual characters are a profoundly unsympathetic crew, each using his or her suffering (and oh, how they suffer!) as an excuse for behaving very badly. I don't buy it. I doubt the novel was one of Zola's best, and as for Renoir (who is good in his small acting role here), this doesn't hold a candle to La Grande Illusion. Yes, it's the best movie ever made about trains, but the human element makes it fall far short of being a great movie.