Three movies in six hours! Mon pouvre brain-meats!
Capote: Philip Seymour Hoffman in the main role, for once.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really work, despite the fact that he performs a heroic portrayal of an utterly unheoric character. The film showing his own self-obsession actually works against it — in the first couple of reels, there are numerous cuts from Hoffman being in focus to him being in focus again. For the audience to tire of him is perhaps realistic, but it's still tiring.
Also, the film's music appears to infringe on Arvo Pärt territory without paying the attention to detail that's required to pull it off: often, you'll hear three notes that veer close to something good only to be ruined by a sloppily placed fourth one.
The Libertine: Johnny Depp in a wig, fingering ladies while rhyming, drinking and pillaging. The entire film appears to have been shot on high-speed stock in candlelight alone, and that includes exterior scenes.
The most important difference between Depp here and Withnail in Withnail & I is that The Libertine has no I to act as a straight man for the carousing rascal. Also, Depp's character actually has money, some status and luck with zee ladies, which makes him significantly less funny. Midway into the movie, I'm suddenly subjected to a bunch of half-baked morals about Art and Theater and Love and The Sea, strangling any joy I might have left.
(Though, I still have no idea which part was played by John Malkovich. Now that's acting.)
Finally, Transamerica is the endearing story of transsexual Bree, who, one week before her sex change, finds out she has a teenage son being held on bail in New York. She winds up presenting herself as a missionary of a fictional church, and they somehow get tangled into driving together back to LA.
Those are just the first ten minutes of the film. Even watching it so far, you might be forgiven for thinking this was either vacuous and/or carnivalistic à la Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Interestingly, Transamerica escapes the category by growing more corny, not less. The end has to be the most fucked-up thing I've seen that could still qualify as a happy one.
posted by astutebee at 06:35
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