| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Armond White,
New York Press |
Because I Said So |
"[Diane] KeatonÕs post-feminist consciousness takes Because I Said So out of the
realm of a chick flick Wedding Crashers. Where Meryl StreepÕs meddling mother in
Primer merely stylized the old stereotype Jewish yenta for the new millennium,
Daphne goes deep. Keaton unearths the girl inside the woman; she pals around
with her daughters, but in one remarkable scene, her heart-to-heart with Milly
exposes a vulnerability that suggests special commitment to this particular
child. ÔDonÕt tell your sisters I asked,Õ Daphne sweetly confides." |
Is that all it takes, Armond? Palling around with your daughters? Elsewhere,
Armond wonders astonished at the fact that Keaton once portrayed career women
and is now portraying mothers. Wow. How do they do that? |
|
Stephen Holden,
New York Times |
Factory Girl |
"When making a movie set in the recent past, youÕre dead if it doesnÕt look
authentic. And the kindest thing to be said about this deluxe photo spread of a
film is that Sienna MillerÕs Edie and Guy PearceÕs Andy capture their
charactersÕ images and body language with relative precision. (Mr. Pearce is
much prettier than the real Warhol; if Ms. Miller doesnÕt have SedgwickÕs
throaty smokerÕs voice and aristocratic air, she gives a furious, thrashing
performance as a lost little rich girl.) The crinkled tinfoil glitter of
WarholÕs East 47th Street "Silver Factory" is accurately rendered, and the
actors cast as members of the Warhol entourage are reasonable physical
approximations. ItÕs the captions that are the problem. How do you discover the
inner life of people determined to live so fast and hard that they can outrun
their demons? How do you bring substance to charismatic personalities whose
glamour may camouflage a void?" |
Interesting questions. HoldenÕs style can often be a bit dry, but he delivers a
pretty incisive review here, that actually manages to go beyond the tabloid-y
nature of most coverage on this film. |
|
Dana Stevens,
Slate.com |
Factory Girl |
"Factory Girl, George Hickenlooper's biopic of actress/socialite/Warhol muse
Edie Sedgwick, is a bit like Sedgwick herselfÑwhatever substantial qualities it
might once have possessed have been wasted, picked over by rumor and gossip, and
sullied by the pawing of many hands. Since the Weinstein Company snuck the film
onto screens in December to qualify for Oscar consideration (yeah, good luck
with that), Factory Girl has had a troubled release history. Most recently, its
opening date was held up after Bob Dylan threatened a defama tion lawsuit.
Dylan... feared the film would imply he was responsible for Sedgwick's death by
overdose at the age of 28. In a last-minute reshoot after the initial
screenings, new footage was added, including the flash-forward framing device in
which we see Edie (Sienna Miller) telling her own story on a therapist's couch.
If Dylan's only concern was defamation, he needn't have fretted about the
release of Factory Girl. Its portrait of the artist as a young a-
hole isn't exactly flattering, but it still manages to be hagiographic by all
but declaring that Edie would have been saved if she'd only managed to bag the
elusive Dylan." |
WhatÕs that we were saying about the tabloid-y coverage of this film? Not a bad
review per se, but it seems less about the film and more about its context. Oh
well. |
|
Nathan Lee,
Village Voice |
In the Pit |
"Filmmaker Juan Carlos Rulfo finds an endless number of ready-made spectacles
for the delectation of his high-def video camera: ant-sized men toiling in
gaping dirt holes, cataracts of traffic roaring through the night, immense
platforms hoisted in place. Lovely to look at, In The Pit is energized by an
impulse to abstraction; the strongest images aspire to something like the
harrowing lyricism of Lessons of Darkness, Werner Herzog's operatic docu-poem on
the burning oil fields of Kuwait. Rulfo's strong eye compensates for a weak ear,
overly indulgent of a cutesy-clever score (by Leonardo Heiblum) arranged from
ambient clanks and snippets of talk, a sort of perky techno-concrŽte ideally
suited to a PerifŽrico promotional video." |
Another solid review, this time finding an ironic and perhaps unintended love of
technology and objects in this documentary about oppressed workers. |
|
Carina Chocano,
Los Angeles Times |
Because I Said So |
"Not long into ÔBecause I Said So,Õ which stars Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore as
a mother and daughter bound by a mutual dependence so neurotically obsessive it
makes the affair in ÔLast Tango in ParisÕ look breezy and wholesome, I was
reminded of the pancake-wrapped sausage that Jon Stewart has been waving around
lately on ÔThe Daily Show.Õ It may not seem immediately apparent, but ÔBecause I
Said SoÕ and breakfast-on-a-stick share a great deal in common: a
fresh-from-the-R&D-lab quality common to food that's engineered to be ÔfunÕ but
is actually sad, an utter lack of nutritional value combined with a surfeit of
kidney-macerating toxins Ñ they combine certain recognizable properties that
have been distorted into something unrecognizable and scary." |
It actually gets better; she goes on to compare Diane Keaton to a sausage.
Pretty great stuff, and it also explains that weird aftertaste and heartburn we
got from this movie without even seeing the damn thing. |
|
