Word: axels
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Johnny Depp plays Axel, an orphaned fishmonger from New York City. The film opens with what we eventually learn are Axel's favorite dreams of Eskimo fishmongers. Soon, Axel's Uncle Leo (Jerry Lewis) sends his mafia punk son, Paul (Vincent Calo), to fetch Axel from the city to attend Leo's wedding in Arizona. Here, the film leaps into the surreal skies and endless planes of the midwest...
...Axel quickly falls for a wealthy widow named Elaine (Faye Dunaway). Like Daedalus escaping from Crete, Axel builds endless air machines at her insistence. The numerous crash scenes range from dumb to dumber. Though there's hardly a wrinkle on Dunaway's face and her figure is curvaceous, her Elaine clutches beauty like an iron mask, with quickly spoken words and twitchy mannerisms...
Elaine's suicidal daughter, Grace (Lili Taylor), is a bizarre amalgamation of hobbies. Chain-smoking and accordion-wielding, Grace spends half her time playing with her transcendental turtles and the rest trying to seduce Axel. Whe finally succeeds, to tragic consequences, it's as if the two women are rifting on a sequel to "Mommie Dearest...
...When Axel and Elaine break up, their fighting is filmed obscurely from outside and the pouring rain renders their screams indecipherable. The scene is frustrating in its escape of the challenges of acting and dialogue...
...gallery devoted to "Vanitas" images, the vast majority of the paintings are traditional scenes of hunted game; three modern works--a Max Beckmann, a Georgia O'Keeffe, and an Axel Kesselbohmer--show skulls. Not one seventeenth- or eighteenth- century painting shows any of the other symbols associated with passing time; after such a lengthy label description of the section, their absence is conspicuous. However, in the "Fruit" section and again in the "Trompe I'Oeil" section, there are perfect examples of decaying fruit (one label doesn't even acknowledge its symbolic value) that would have been far more effective...