|
New movie reviews, DVD reviews, interviews, and all things film.
Home | Archive | About | Cinematical.com | Lists | News | Links | E-mail me | Sign up for my weekly newsletter! The Girl on the Train *** Greenberg **1/2 Mother Repo Men **1/2 The Runaways More Armored Astro Boy Broken Embraces Dillinger Is Dead Fallen Angels (Blu-Ray) The Fourth Kind Ninja Assassin The Princess and the Frog Undead: The Vampire Collection Wonderful World The 25 Best DVDs of 2009 More The Decade's Ten Best Films: 2000-2009 My 2003 Interview with Brittany Murphy San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2009 Richard Linklater John Woo Jared and Jerusha Hess Essential Halloween Movies Michael Stuhlbarg Jane Campion Bobcat Goldthwait Hugh Dancy Kathryn Bigelow Willem Dafoe: The 2009 CineVegas Interview David Carradine A 2002 Interview with Edward Asner Vinessa Shaw Henry Selick 2008: The Year's Ten Best Films The San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2008 The 25 Best DVDs of 2008 Bruce Campbell Darren Aronofsky and Marisa Tomei Josh Brolin A Tribute to Paul Newman Steve Coogan on Hamlet 2 Manny Farber (1917-2008) Bernie Mac (1957-2008) Emily Mortimer Brad Anderson Don Cheadle at CineVegas Abel Ferrara at CineVegas Tina Sinatra My Top 100 Films [Updated] My Top 60 Directors [Updated] The Top 50 Movies of the Past Ten Years (1997-2006) Terry Zwigoff on the new Bad Santa Director's Cut Alfonso Cuarón Interview Guillermo Del Toro Interview Christmas Movies Combustible Celluloid's Big Guide to Halloween & Horror Movies Cult Movies Actress Interview Gallery The Top 100 More Features and Interviews James Agee: The Library of America Collection, by James Agee Just Making Movies, by Ronald L. Davis Guide to Essential Movies, by Joe Leydon Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard Profoundly Disturbing, by Joe Bob Briggs A Third Face, by Samuel Fuller Dark Lover, by Emily Leider Agee on Film, by James Agee Lulu in Hollywood, by Louise Brooks Negative Space, by Manny Farber 5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael More Books Reviews A-C Reviews D-F Reviews G-J Reviews K-M Reviews N-Q Reviews R-T Reviews U-Z The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!
© 1997-2009 Combustible Celluloid |
The Constant Gardener (2005)Rating: 2 Stars (out of 4)Starkest AfricaBy Jeffrey M. Anderson
Buy The Constant Gardener on DVD
Now Meirelles has taken several steps to insure another nomination with The Constant Gardener. He has made an English language film, which will attract even more viewers, and he has adapted a source novel (by John Le Carré) with a strong social message: AIDS in Africa and the greedy drug companies who refuse to help. And this time, instead of borrowing from good action directors, he has copied the current trend of documentary-style hand-held camerawork. There are two major problems with this approach. Meirelles does not have the first idea how to cinematically adapt a complex novel, and so he ends up simply filming long conversations. In an effort to make these conversations seem visual, he stages them in interesting places, such as the top of a cliff or in a shade-draped garden, but they are still nothing more than long conversations. Additionally, the hand-held cinematography is so jumpy and jerky that it continually draws attention to itself and throws the entire film off-balance. Fortunately, The Constant Gardener has going for it some decent performances by Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz and Danny Huston. Weisz plays Tessa, a liberal activist who marries British diplomat Justin Quayle (Fiennes). The couple travels to Africa, where she becomes involved in covert operations to bring down an evil drug company. Unfortunately, Quayle has no idea what's going on; he believes his wife might be having an affair. Huston plays a shady bureaucrat who aids Tessa for his own selfish reasons. Cult actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Shaun of the Dead) turns up in a small, but refreshingly snarky role as one of Quayle's colleagues. Fiennes alone drums up enough support to keep viewers from leaving the theater, but Meirelles can't find a decent pace for the overall film. He limply tries to punch up certain scenes with action or intrigue, but during other sequences he can't keep his shaky camera from wandering, looking at birds in the sky or nearby statues. It's as if the camera is as bored as we are. In certain throwaway scenes Meirelles lets the camera play over the faces of poor African kids in a lazy attempt to garner our outrage and sympathy. As usual with this kind of socially conscious film, many have already fallen all over themselves to praise it, and it will no doubt come in strongly in the year-end Oscar race (it's this year's A Beautiful Mind). But one look beyond the message will reveal a very bad attempt at art and a complete failure of cinema. Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Daniele Harford, Hubert Koundé, Richard McCabe, Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite, Anneke Kim Sarnau, Jason Thornton, Rupert Simonian |
| Home |
News |
Search Reviews |
Classic Movies |
DVDs |
Features |
Film Books |
Gallery |
Links |
About |
The Rating System |
Email Me |