Word: lumet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that has not stopped him from trying. In addition to writing the score for the upcoming Sidney Lumet film Q and A, Blades has completed acting parts in three movies: Spike Lee's film; The Lemon Sisters, starring Diane Keaton; and The Two Jakes, the sequel to Chinatown that features Jack Nicholson as star and director. Nicholson shot around Blades' music tour in order to nab him for the role of Mickey Nice, a Jewish gangster from Los Angeles' Boyle Heights section. "He brought a lot of energy and good acting instincts to the role," reports Nicholson. "I think...
...fact, the movie treats its political issues in only the most cursory and simplistic way. In reality the movie is about family, about love and about a son's coming of age. Politics is a pretext for these other issues, and unfortunately, in the hands of director Sidney Lumet, they are made tired and trite...
This silly, TV-movie treatment extends to just about everything in the movie. The movie never deals intelligently with the guilt and political doubts of the Popes. Lumet trots out a bad guy revolutionary from their past to show that the Popes are nice guys, but aside from that brief scene, it doesn't really matter why they are underground except that it provides the movie with its premise...
Occasionally the movie is so inconsistent that it's hard to believe Lumet watched his own film. Arthur spends the entire film castigating his whole family about the need for secrecy, yet in one scene he gets drunk, comes home, and shrieks out a confession to the neighborhood at the top of his lungs. It is one of the first moments where the movie goes definitively from implausible to just plain stupid...
...that scene makes the rest of the movie seem even more duplicitous and phony. The convinctions which led the Popes to their unorthodox lives were infinitely more complex than Lumet would have us believe. But these issues are sidestepped to turn their story into a melodrama. Running on Empty relies on platitudes about both people and politics and ultimately runs...