Word: portraits
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Which is a pity, since Tarantino plainly believes his movie to be putting his sensitive side on parade: this is his touching portrait of a woman who is vulnerable yet strong. Accordingly, we are subjected to long stretches of Grier, punctuated with experimental or retro techniques. Grier gets a '70s long-shot in which we wait for her to walk towards us from 50 feet away (sent up hilariously by Woody Allen in Annie Hall). The screen goes blurry for Forster's bondsman as he thinks. Grier and Jackson carry on an argument behind glass doors...
...doesn't help matters). The Holnists are led by one General Bethlehem (Will Patton), a ruthless former copy machine sales clerk who found his true calling in fascist leadership after nuclear war vaporized society. Because he knows five or six lines of Shakespeare and can paint a passable self-portrait, he has risen to power in a world of idiots (remember, these are the same people who think Costner's mumbling Postman is brilliant). Patton is a serviceable villain, but there's nothing about his "mad cowboy" shtick that Jack Palance didn't master 40 years...
...Amistad Again Steven Spielberg puts his craftsmanship in the service of moral seriousness. Again, in this true tale of a slave mutiny and its nightmare aftermath, he creates a gripping portrait of human decency mobilized to help an inhumanly abused minority. Again he unsentimentally places us in touch with our best sentiments...
...look back someday and decide that the great portrait of 1997 was Dolly the cloned sheep. In her anonymous face our misgivings about science are perfectly duplicated, mostly because she's our best picture of the assembly-line production of life. (Unless you count the McCaughey septuplets.) Dolly is also our sphinx in the manger. Somewhere in the black dots of her eyes there's a message, something about how hard it is to micromanage the most subtle departments of creation. Lamb of God, lamb of man--when we look at her, is that our future we see? Maybe...
...voice trails off as if in contemplation of his place among the actors of the current generation. There is no doubt that Damon is unlike the brooding, bewailing young actors that dominate Hollywood's scene. Witty, down-to-earth and full of enthusiasm, he is a sparkling portrait of normalcy and a worthy successor to the past generations of actors that he venerates...