markel-87497's reviews

This is a perplexing story from Argentina about fame and the fact that as Thomas Wolfe advised, you can never go home again. A pampered writer, in fact, a Nobel prize winner, impulsively decides to return to his native village which he left half a century ago without ever returning. He longs to revisit where it all began and our sympathy is with him because who hasn't longed to retrace the paths of life to see what might have been? The provincials in his home town pull out all the stops to curry favor with the man, lectures are scheduled, there's a parade,, he asked to judge the local art contest and they erect a hastily improvised statue of him. But instead of understanding their jealousy of his fame mingled with their genuine pride in his accomplishments, he pompously mocks their country ways and their longing to escape from the monotony of provincial life. Suddenly the tables are turned; we see the the bumpkins as honest and fallible human beings even if they lack the will and talent to escape, and the writer is revealed to be the pompous ass he probably has always been. This transformation is very skillfully done in a film that is at once funny and sad. Highly recommended.

This film could have made some interesting points about the art world Instead it opted for a routine horror show which failed to horrify. A waste of good acting and cinematography.

This was a disappointing series because it used the contrivances of bad drama to obscure an important subject: the human nature of the justice system. I have been on two juries ( none a murder case) and deciding evidence is 'beyond a reasonable doubt' is dramatic enough without all the histrionics employed by this team of filmmakers. The inveterate use of close-ups is usually a good indication of bad directing; in a real trial trial there are no close-ups, just the tense space of uncomfortable people in a room together because of distressing circumstances.

Then there was the constant use of dramatic recreations. In a real trial you would have barren recreations of time and space sketched out in a video or on a whiteboard instead of these filmed dramas which could have never been used as evidence in a courtroom. Also, the timing was excruciatingly slow; there was about two episodes of material there stretched out to five overly long hours.

The drama in a real trial is the studied absence of drama and even the occasional flamboyance of a famous lawyer is looked up with distaste. Speaking of that, the defense lawyer with his organ-tone drawl was very irritating. he might as well have been selling snake oil. If he had been my lawyer, QC or not, the moment he opened his mouth he'd be out the door.

The way to due a series like this would have been to make it as realistic a trial as possible, not by hyping the drama but by revealing the boredom, the slowness of time, and the moments of real drama involving human beings and their lives. I have seen similar programs do this very effectively; one, done a few years ago, featured John Turturro as a shambolic detective. "The Night of...". That series made prison life come alive for me. "A Murder in the Family" just reminded me of a lot of bad movies.

To add to my original review now that I've seen all 7 episodes. My enthusiasm if anything is even higher for this remarkable show. I am simply astounded by the layers of meaning that Patricia Arquette finds in the character of Tilly. And as the series went on, the brilliance of Paul Dano's acting comes to the fore. Talk about the deck being stacked against you. Dano shows us the agony of man who knows that life is cruel and unfair and there's nothing he can do about it. A great tragedy for our time. My one complaint is the music, it gets in the way.

I am not usually a fan of plot-driven series but this one is solidly directed with a good cast. The result, thanks to some good scriptwriting, is also entertaining primarily because it also manages to be character driven. The characters seem like real people for the most part, caught up in the ugly political maelstroms of the time.

Pine Gap is frightening because the show actually emphasizes that no one's hands are clean, that America, China and Australia are all players in a drama that will likely see the decline of the US and Europe, and the emergence of China as a world power. But one wrong move could easily make all our previous conflagrations look like minor skirmishes.

What a pleasure it is when all the elements of a movie fall into place. And how rare for the writing, the direction, the cinematography and the acting to work so seamlessly at such a high level of excellence. A great script, and direction that doesn't get in the way but just enhances the narrative and gives these supoerb actors room to express themselves. Which they do beatifully. Bob Hoskins is muscular, enegertic and funny and about as natural as an actor can be. As usual you can't take your eyes off of Michael Caine, maybe the last great novie star left. The subtext is the empty world of prostitution and the seedy London of the 80s. Movies gain a whole new dimension when the locale they faithfu;lly present changes and is no more. In that sense Mona Lisa is also a great documentary. and that makes the recent HBO The Deuce, which not a document but a recreation of Times Square paralleling the time of Mona Lisa, seem forced by comparison.