Word: coppolas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...documentary filmmaking is that craft is somehow absent, that the lack of actors and scripts translates to films that make themselves. Moreover, because of the twice-Oscared Kopple's towering reputation, Wild Man Blues bears the brand of a "vacation film"; as with Scorsese's Cape Fear or Coppola and Altman's recent Grisham adaptations, the idea of Kopple filming a celebrity bio sounds on paper like a hard-working master taking a crowd-pleasing breather...
...fitting. Look at any recent film by the Former Artist Known as Coppola. Check your local theater marquee, where endless variations of the same $100 million jokey-action movie are displayed. Or consider that the company making the most maverick pictures today, Miramax, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney. It's enough to make you want to stay home and read a book...
...Hollywood maxim, and nowhere is that more true than offscreen. We're talking about those ego-driven dictators of Panavision dreams who consume truckloads of drugs, frolic with call girls and go millions over budget as carelessly as if they were writing a bad check for groceries. Take Francis Coppola, who drank from Lalique crystal and cavorted with bimbos on the set of Apocalypse Now while his crew suffered from hookworm and rabies. How about Martin Scorsese, who was so wired at Cannes in 1978 that he sent a plane to Paris just to score cocaine? Or Top Gun producer...
Best (Study Break) Picture: Face/Off. Clocking in at close to two-and-a-half hours, Face/Off is John Woo's pulp epic with one of the most devious action plots ever. Woo breaks out the book of Coppola for the artistry behind his intricate family entanglements, lush cinematography and immaculately choreographed violence. So he doesn't have Coppola's storytelling skill; who needs a story when you can have Travolta and Cage...
Francis Ford Coppola missteps in a heavy-handed moralistic mess that has none of the storytelling grace he's displayed on happier occasions. In fact, he's succeeded in making John Grisham--the king of popcorn thrillers--lethally boring. There is no shameless entertainment here, no chance to be swept up in instant thrills. Instead, we see Harvard dropout Matt Damon lost in two hours of disjointed storytelling without a touch of drama. --Soman S. Chainani...