Tag: Sharon Stone

Casino (1995, Martin Scorsese)

The best part of Casino isn’t my favorite part of Casino because the best part is James Woods bickering with Erika von Tagen. It’s mainly in the background, and it’s the only time anywhere in the film anyone shows any personality not expressly required for their scenes. Director (and co-screenwriter) Scorsese doesn’t believe in background action; if it’s not foreground, it doesn’t matter. The problem is von Tagen is a kid, and Sharon Stone’s her mom, and Woods is the pimp who groomed Stone from age fourteen. The movie doesn’t even seem to see its problem, which isn’t a surprise because Casino is holy shit levels of misogynist.

My favorite part of Casino is a scene where Robert De Niro bitches about Stone being all about money and fame when he’s walking through the dressing room for the showgirls who dance on his big-budget local talk show. He needs the talk show so he can bitch about how the state government is targeting him even though he’s just a successful businessman who happens to be helping the mob steal from their own casino. During that sequence, when Casino is dragging its way through its second act, it’s clear just how little self-awareness has gone into making the film.

It hurts De Niro the most, as he plays a caricature of Robert De Niro in a mob movie. He spends most of his time not being the super-genius bookmaker he’s supposed to be and getting more possessive and controlling of Stone, a successful Vegas hustler who De Niro gaslighted into marrying him. The omnipresent narration (by De Niro, Joe Pesci, and occasionally a surprise narrator for effect, but never Stone because women don’t think) sometimes teases a significant plot development involving the mob, the FBI, or the casinos. Still, until the rote mob clean-up sequence at the end, it’s always about De Niro and Stone. Specifically, De Niro being awful to her, Stone reacting poorly, and De Niro being more and more horrific. It’s a strangely crap part for Stone. She’s there to decorate and be decorative, and when she refuses to decorate, well, De Niro’s done with her.

The film runs three hours. The first act takes about an hour, almost all of it in summary, with the first twenty minutes or so jumping ahead, jumping back, filling in the details from different perspectives (well, De Niro’s and Pesci’s), and dumping a bunch of great exposition about how the mob ran Vegas. The second hour and a half is about Stone’s failings as a weak woman bringing down De Niro, which will eventually affect Pesci, then the casino, then the mob, then Vegas itself. Also, we’re not sure who’s narrating from Norma Desmond’s swimming pool because the movie opens with De Niro getting blown up in a car bomb. Once you’re narrating from beyond the grave, anything’s possible.

Though not De Niro’s character listening to The Rolling Stones all the time, and they’re practically every other song. Casino’s got a great soundtrack. Clearly, a lot of work went into it. Shame more didn’t go into the writing.

Given the speedy first hour and the absolutely fantastic procedural set-up, it seems like Thelma Schoonmaker’s cuts alone make the picture coherent. It looks excellent–Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson do a remarkable halo effect with the lighting, then some cool spotlighting later—but the “scenes” are so short, it’s hard for anyone to work up any acting momentum.

Except Pesci and Stone, who both do well until they just can’t beat the film working against them. De Niro’s never particularly good, always just fine. Not exactly miscast, but the part’s so thin it gets blown around the frame. If it weren’t for his spectacular wardrobe (having De Niro look glamorous in his silly clothes really works against the film) and Richardson’s lighting, you could forget De Niro’s even there.

The supporting cast has some good acting, but no one’s in it long enough to give full performances. Woods is excellent; Don Rickles and Alan King are perfect, but scenery. Rickles is in an extended cameo; King is just a cameo. The most significant supporting part is Frank Vincent as Pesci’s chief goon. He’s fine, but the narration explaining his behavior does a lot more than anything Vincent can do onscreen.

It’s clear from the start Casino’s got a low ceiling and will probably just be a masterfully directed mess, but it ends not even being energetic enough to be considered a mess. I suppose it’s vaguely interesting to see how the film presents De Niro as a hero, but even then, not really. The writing is too tepid, and there’s nothing to his performance past the pomp. It’s most disappointing for Stone and Pesci. Scorsese and Casino fail them. Besides them (and De Niro), everyone else in Casino gets to ride the prestige wave while it lasts.

Shame it’s in such a shallow pool.

Sphere (1998, Barry Levinson)

Sphere is not a justifiable use of eighty million dollars. I don’t think you could justify spending a dollar to rent a copy to watch, much less eighty million of them to make the thing.

The big problem is the script. Whatever Kurt Wimmer (ominously credited with “adaptation”), Stephen Hauser, and Paul Attanasio did to adapt the Michael Crichton source novel does not a successful script make. It’s got ludicrous character development and bad pacing, and is artificially bewildering and exceptionally crappy to women, specifically Sharon Stone. But there’s so much to fix, so much to compensate for, director Levinson just gives up on even trying. Script’s a big problem but Levinson’s inability to crack any aspect of the project is the biggest. It’s not incompetently directed. It’s incompetently written, incompetently produced, but Levinson’s direction isn’t actually incompetent. It’s just vapid.

Vapid is the word for Levinson’s direction. He’s not interested in executing the film successfully, just executing it. At 134 minutes, it’s a bit of a chore to watch but I imagine it was even more of a chore to make with so little investment whatsoever. Amusingly lead Dustin Hoffman has a bit—apparently ad-libbed—where he explains to Samuel L. Jackson, before the government submarines them to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to meet space aliens, Hoffman bullshitted a report about how he, Jackson, Stone, and physics whiz kid Liev Schreiber should be the ones to first contact with any space aliens. He used the money to pay for the downpayment on his house, making one wonder what everyone involved with Sphere did with their paychecks before turning in their bullshit….

Okay, that one is a little unfair. Schreiber busts his ass to show-off in a bad part. There’s also these weird optics about competitiveness between Jackson and Schreiber and it’s inexplicable why Schreiber’s got it out for Jackson. Jackson doesn’t like Schreiber because he thinks he’s obnoxious, which is fine—though Schreiber gets intentionally less obnoxious in the second act and it backfires. Schreiber’s a lot better being annoying and doing exposition dumps than not being as annoying and giving them. Of course, the second act stuff isn’t his fault exactly because the film needs its eggheads—Jackson’s a mathematician, Schreiber’s physics, Hoffman’s a psychologist, Stone’s a biochemist-to do all sorts of things you’re not sure they’d know how to do… like setting explosives, repairing underwater habitats, on the fly code-cracking—Stone’s basically a medic, they all know how to get into their underwater suits and go for solo strolls. On and on. Sphere’s got a very limited cast—seven people in a habitat next to a giant spaceship, crash landed 300 years ago, but you’d need a support crew of a dozen to get everything done in the movie you need to get done considering they’re a bunch of narcissistic academics.

But back to the Schreiber vs. Jackson thing—it feels like there are some optics. Jackson’s the Black guy in what turns into a horror movie. He’s got a predicted part in the film.

See, once they go inside the spaceship they find all sorts of weird things, including a giant gold ball and they all become obsessed with it. Except Schreiber and Man in Black boss of the mission Peter Coyote. Oh, if only Peter Coyote were good in the movie. I really think a good performance in that part would at least keep Sphere somewhat buoyant.

Because Coyote, Jackson, and Schreiber have the film’s most important parts. Hoffman’s a terrible leading man. His part seems inflated and Stone’s decreased, which is concerning. Sphere feels very poorly assembled. Stu Linder’s cuts are fine, but the pace of the film, the focus of the narrative impulse? Not good. Whatever Levinson needed to crack with Sphere in terms of characters, plotting, scares, science fictions, musics, whatever… he doesn’t. He’s got no more idea what to do with Sphere at the end than he does at the beginning.

Except to crap on Stone whenever possible. See, she was once Hoffman’s patient and so they had an affair. But he forgot to mention he was married, so he was lying to her while treating her medically. When she felt bad after their breakup and took a bunch of pills, sounds like Hoffman had her sent to electro-shock. Like, he’s a criminal. He shouldn’t just lose his license, he should be charged with something. It’s messed up.

But it’s not the subplot—the subplot is Stone is a crazy woman and no one should trust her, something Coyote rails about, Jackson rails about, Hoffman has an arc about. A vague, vague, vague arc but he definitely goes from thinking he can trust Stone in the beginning to thinking she’s psychotic by the end. With Coyote and Jackson at multiple times counseling Hoffman not to trust Stone because she’s a crazy woman.

It’s really icky.

And even more unfortunate because Stone’s really not good.

She’s got a crap part—such a crap part, just guys violently gaslighting her scene after scene—the writing’s terrible, whatever… and there’s still just something Stone doesn’t bring. Jackson’s got his part down, problematic as some of his scenes get when they think he’s Brett after Ripley let him back into the ship; he’s still got it down. When something goes wrong with Jackson’s performance, it’s the script. Schreiber’s working. Coyote and Hoffman, to differing success, just aim low in every scene and always hit that effectiveness. The least effort possible. Hoffman’s just wrong for it. You wish he weren’t wrong for it because it’d be cool if he could do it, but he can’t do it. Not with how the film’s set up, not with the bad writing, not with Hoffman’s maximum level of effort for this project.

Queen Latifah gets fifth billing and is in what ends up being the film’s best looking visual sequence. Adam Greenberg’s photography is boring, but it’s not his fault. Levinson refuses to give Sphere a visual style, horror, wonder, drama—the second act showdowns between Stone and Hoffman, better written and directed, are Bergman-esque—but it’s not a cheap looking film (save the late nineties CGI) and so it occasionally looks quite good. Latifah’s effect scene’s the one where they spend the time. Shame it’s early on and the film never tries to top it.

Because Levinson’s not trying to ape Kubrick. Worse he doesn’t even seem to acknowledge he should. A bunch of failed homage would make Sphere at least a little fun, instead of frequently upsetting. It’s a drain to watch characters start dying off during the haunted house portion of the film and no one care about it. It’s actually impossible to have less empathy for another character than the characters in Sphere have for one another. Multiple times people get informed of someone dying and the reaction not even warranting a shrug. The biggest question the film raises is, “Is the writing right now bad or lazy and how could you tell the difference?”

Of course, if Sphere were an inevitable fail, it might be fun. But there’s no reason, with a better script, with better direction, with someone else in for Peter Coyote because Coyote’s not showy enough for the part, the film couldn’t be a success. But Levinson’s not the one to do it. It’s clearly the wrong kind of dumb idea for him to fix.

This post is part of the Out To Sea Blogathon hosted by Debbie of Moon in Gemini.

Above the Law (1988, Andrew Davis)

Above the Law is just about as slick as a film can be. It’s all thanks to director Davis. Even though Davis and star Steven Seagal co-produced, Davis has to overcome Seagal’s acting inability. So all credit to Davis. It isn’t just about maximizing the action, but about getting the plot to provide some interest, so it doesn’t all feel like a commercial for Steven Seagal.

But it is a commercial; Above the Law is an amazing star vehicle. Everything is weighed to make the viewer more and more sympathetic to Seagal’s character. Oh, look, his suffering wife (Sharon Stone in a terribly directed performance) doesn’t want Seagal to battle the CIA task force blowing up Chicago to get Seagal. Oddly enough, the film was released overseas as Nico (Seagal’s character), which suggests some understanding of the egomania on display. But on beautiful display, because even though Davis significantly fumbles almost every action sequence, he’s got these great Chicago locations and he has a great sense of how to use them (which does lead to a rather good foot chase sequence), and he’s got photographer Robert Steadman, who is fabulous.

Unfortunately, editor Michael Brown is awful. He misses visual beats. It doesn’t matter, of course, because Above the Law isn’t actually an action movie, not in a traditional sense. It’s a prototypical mid-to-low budget major studio action movie. Something to not embarrass itself in the theater and do surprisingly well on video.

A slick commercial. Not so much visually slick, but almost pathologically manipulative in making a Seagal a serious movie star. Not an actor; Above the Law never asks Seagal to act. Davis does try to make him likable and is even able to get slight success with Pam Grier (though Davis fumbles directing their scenes; Brown being no help), but it’s not much. It’s never a good performance.

And I don’t even want to look at the Frank Silva villain, which leads to Seagal figuratively throwing away the previous standard–the more exploitative, lower budgeted action movie.

Inoffensive, likable performances from Grier and Ron Dean help a lot. Though Davis is clearly indifferent to his actors’ performances; no one gets any favors. So, either Davis or the editor. Can’t give anyone too much time, otherwise it might not look like Seagal’s a big time movie star.

In the end, Davis is due a lot of respect for this film. He’d be due infinitely more if Above the Law were actually any good.

Sliver (1993, Phillip Noyce)

Sliver is a beautiful film. It’s got Vilmos Zsigmond photography, it’s got Phillip Noyce directing, it’s got a great score from Howard Shore–it’s just a bad movie. The story has two things going on. First is Sharon Stone’s recent divorcee moving into a high rise apartment building where she discovers there have been a bunch of suspicious deaths.

Now, if you remember that detail you’ll be doing more than the filmmakers do because when it gets to the point in the story where someone talks about the recent deaths in the building and there are only a couple. Sliver forgets about at least three of them, maybe four.

The second thing the film has going on is Stone discovering she’s a voyeur. I’ve got no idea if it’s in the source novel by Ira Levin, but Joe Eszterhas wrote the screenplay for Sliver so there’s got to be something slightly sleazy otherwise they would have presumably hired someone who can write.

Most of the film is Stone being courted by two losers. Tom Berenger’s a creepy writer, William Baldwin’s a creepy video game designer. She has zero chemistry with either of them. Berenger’s a little better just because Baldwin’s indescribably bad.

Sadly, Stone’s really good in most of the non-absurd scenes. Eszterhas and Noyce don’t give her a real story arc; instead, they hope the big thrills are enough. They aren’t.

With the production values and Stone’s performance, Sliver should be better. But not with Baldwin and Berenger.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Phillip Noyce; screenplay by Joe Eszterhas, based on the novel by Ira Levin; director of photography, Vilmos Zsigmond; edited by Richard Francis-Bruce and William Hoy; music by Howard Shore; production designer, Paul Sylbert; produced by Robert Evans; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Sharon Stone (Carly Norris), William Baldwin (Zeke Hawkins), Tom Berenger (Jack Landsford), Polly Walker (Vida Warren), Colleen Camp (Judy Marks), Amanda Foreman (Samantha Moore), Martin Landau (Alex Parsons), CCH Pounder (Lt. Victoria Hendrix), Nina Foch (Evelyn McEvoy), Keene Curtis (Gus Hale) and Nicholas Pryor (Peter Farrell).

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Basic Instinct (1992, Paul Verhoeven), the unrated version

Basic Instinct somehow manages to be smart and stupid at the same time. The direction and the production are impeccable. Verhoeven sort of does a nouveau Hitchcock thing–ably aided by Jerry Goldsmith’s score–while mixing in a bit of film noir. He does this thing with establishing shots; the focus is always on character, never the setting (with a costal highway being the exception). Jan de Bont’s photography, Frank J. Urioste’s editing, these guys are at the top of their game. It’s a brilliantly made film.

It’s also frequently dumb. Verhoeven coats over most of the stupidity in Joe Eszterhas’s script with ease. There’ll be a dumb cop scene but it plays great, usually thanks to Verhoeven’s composition, his direction of the cast and the actors in the film. Instinct has great supporting turns from George Dzundza and Denis Arndt, but also excellent bit support from Bruce A. Young, Chelcie Ross, Wayne Knight, Daniel von Bargen and Stephen Tobolowsky. Verhoeven uses actors with immediate gravitas. Works beautifully.

The leads aren’t as simple an equation. Sharon Stone’s performance is integral to the film and all of her scenes–except one, where Eszterhas can’t come up with any motivation for her so tries to be sensational–are great. Michael Douglas, not so much. Both he and Stone are unlikable, the mystery is supposed to be the hook. It’s a decent hook, but Douglas can’t sell his character.

Jeanne Tripplehorn’s okay in the third biggest part.

Instinct’s beautifully made, utter nonsense.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Paul Verhoeven; written by Joe Eszterhas; director of photography, Jan de Bont; edited by Frank J. Urisote; music by Jerry Goldsmith; production designer, Terence Marsh; produced by Alan Marshall; released by Tri-Star Pictures.

Starring Michael Douglas (Detective Nick Curran), Sharon Stone (Catherine Tramell), George Dzundza (Gus), Jeanne Tripplehorn (Dr. Beth Garner), Denis Arndt (Lieutenant Walker), Leilani Sarelle (Roxy), Bruce A. Young (Andrews), Chelcie Ross (Captain Talcott), Dorothy Malone (Hazel Dobkins), Wayne Knight (John Correli), Daniel von Bargen (Lieutenant Nilsen), Stephen Tobolowsky (Dr. Lamott) and Benjamin Mouton (Harrigan).

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The Specialist (1994, Luis Llosa)

Technically speaking, the best thing about The Specialist is probably John Barry’s score. Except he ripped off his James Bond scores and threw in some of his Body Heat music. Neither mood fits The Specialist, which isn’t glamorous enough to be Bond and isn’t sexy. I would have liked to say “isn’t sexy enough to be Body Heat” but The Specialist just plain isn’t sexy.

It’s supposed to be sexy, given how much emphasis director Llosa puts on stars Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone in various stages of undress (not to mention the two carry on some painful phone flirting), but it isn’t. While Llosa’s direction is lame and both Stallone and Stone are bad (Stone’s worse), Llosa simply doesn’t realize the picture right.

It might be sexy if it were about a broken-down ex-CIA assassin and a damaged woman who’s prostituting herself to avenge her dead parents (long story). But The Specialist treats Stallone and Stone as megastars, not people. The scenes where James Woods–in a great performance as the bad guy–berates her and Stone actually gets to show emotion, those scenes almost work. They suggest a film worthy of a good John Barry knock-off score.

Eric Roberts costars as her target and he’s nearly good. Alexandra Seros’s script is too laughable for anyone (save Woods, who mixes insanity and mocking contempt) to actually be good.

As for Rod Steiger’s Cuban gangster? He’d be funny if he weren’t such offensively bad.

The Specialist‘s awful.

Bobby (2006, Emilio Estevez)

I knew Emilio Estevez directed Bobby, but I didn’t know he also wrote it. From the dialogue and the construction of conversations, I assumed it was a playwright. There’s a certain indulgence to the dialogue, which some actors utilize well (Anthony Hopkins) and some not (Elijah Wood).

Estevez’s an exceptionally confident filmmaker here. He changes the film’s premise in the final sequence, going from a Grand Hotel look at people in the hotel where Bobby Kennedy was shot to an extremely topical, socially relevant picture about how little the world has improved between the shooting and the film’s production. He relies heavily on the audio of a Kennedy speech over the film’s action because there’s no other way it’d work. And it does work.

There are some great scenes in the film, particularly one between Demi Moore and Sharon Stone where the two former sex symbols discuss aging. Stone’s great throughout the film. Moore’s great in that scene (and okay in the rest).

Other great performances include Freddy Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Jacob Vargas, Nick Cannon, Joshua Jackson, Brian Geraghty and Shia LaBeouf. Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt are both good, just not exceptional. Similarly, Christian Slater’s impressively slimy without being fantastic. Hopkins is outstanding. Only Wood and Ashton Kutcher are bad. Kutcher’s worse. Much worse.

The real acting star is Rodriguez.

Estevez gets great work from cinematographer Michael Barrett and composer Mark Isham.

Bobby is impressive work; with Estevez establishing himself as an ambitious, thoughtful, if not wholly successful, filmmaker.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Emilio Estevez; director of photography, Michael Barrett; edited by Richard Chew; music by Mark Isham; production designer, Patti Podesta; produced by Edward Bass, Michel Litvak and Holly Wiersma; released by The Weinstein Company.

Starring Harry Belafonte (Nelson), Joy Bryant (Patricia), Nick Cannon (Dwayne), Emilio Estevez (Tim), Laurence Fishburne (Edward), Brian Geraghty (Jimmy), Heather Graham (Angela), Anthony Hopkins (John), Helen Hunt (Samantha), Joshua Jackson (Wade), David Krumholtz (Agent Phil), Ashton Kutcher (Fisher), Shia LaBeouf (Cooper), Lindsay Lohan (Diane), William H. Macy (Paul), Svetlana Metkina (Lenka), Demi Moore (Virginia), Freddy Rodríguez (Jose), Martin Sheen (Jack), Christian Slater (Daryl), Sharon Stone (Miriam Ebbers), Jacob Vargas (Miguel), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Susan) and Elijah Wood (William).

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Total Recall (1990, Paul Verhoeven)

Total Recall opens with some of the best music Jerry Goldsmith has ever scored. It then moves on to a sci-fi sequence, set on Mars, and Verhoeven soon gets in his first animatronic head. There are a lot of animatronic heads, which get exposed to atmosphere and explode or get turned into grenades and so on. Some of these sequences are entirely unnecessary and it’s just Verhoeven showing off.

Most of Recall is along those lines. It’s Verhoeven showing off. He mixes a rough, violent action picture with a high-minded sci-fi story and the result is rather successful. There are a handful of bad performances, but Schwarzenegger’s fine in the lead and the movie’s mostly him so it works out. There are also a bunch of good performances; while they can’t overcome the bad ones, they help.

Worst are Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside. Stone’s just plain bad, nothing special, but Ironside’s in a spot in Recall. He’s this big heavy (supposedly) but he’s opposite Ronny Cox, who knows how to play a big heavy. Ironside gets chewed up in their scenes together.

Mel Johnson Jr. is fairly awful, but Rachel Ticotin is all right. Marshall Bell and Ray Baker are great.

The film’s greatest asset is Verhoeven. He manages to make it a slyly absurdist comedy. With editors Frank J. Urioste and Carlos Puente, he constructs these wonderful tight scenes. His composition isn’t particularly thoughtful; he’s utilizing forceful action in the shots.

It’s pretty darned good.

Streets of Blood (2009, Charles Winkler)

Of all the crap Millennium Films has released theatrically, it’s shameful they let Streets of Blood go straight to DVD. Sure, there’s an absolutely ludicrous Sharon Stone (playing a faded Southern belle Ph.D., the worst Ph.D. casting since Will Smith), but it’s a solid cop thriller slash character study slash Katrina exploitation film. It’s even mildly subversive, with the federal government playing the bad guys. And there is some bad acting–besides Stone–Barry Shabaka Henley, for example, is awful and, even though his character’s arc is solid, Brian Presley is lacking.

But the film does feature, as far as I can tell, the best Val Kilmer performance in about ten years. Maybe a little less, but definitely his best since Spartan. It’s an amazing leading man performance–again, it’s a shame this one didn’t a) get a theatrical release and b) a lot more production money thrown at it once it was clear the caliber of Kilmer’s performance. Kilmer really should have been done the Dave Robicheaux adaptation instead of Tommy Lee Jones.

Curtis Jackson’s bad in the monologue sections but he does well with Kilmer. It’s impossible to think anyone could not do well with Kilmer (even Presley does and Henley doesn’t have any scenes with him) in this one.

Only Stone and Kilmer come off wrong, with her character being totally nonsensical.

Oh, and Jose Pablo Cantillo is excellent.

But the problem’s the script. It needed a capable rewrite.

Even so, Kilmer makes the film essential viewing.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Charles Winkler; screenplay by Eugene Hess, based on a story by Hess and Dennis Fanning; director of photography, Roy H. Wagner; edited by Clayton Halsey; music by Stephen Endelman; production designer, Gary Constable; produced by Randall Emmett, George Furla, Avi Lerner, Matthew O’Toole, John Thompson, Charles Winkler and Irwin Winkler; released by Millennium Films.

Starring Val Kilmer (Andy Devereaux), Curtis Jackson (Stan Green), Sharon Stone (Nina Ferraro), Michael Biehn (Agent Brown), Jose Pablo Cantillo (Pepe), Brian Presley (Barney), Barry Shabaka Henley (Capt. John Friendly), Luis Rolon (Fernando Chamorro), Defecio Stoglin (Jambalaya Jake), Davi Jay (Ray Delacroix), Pilar Sanders (Yolanda Green), Darcel White Moreno (Tanya) and Shirly Brener (Selina).

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Broken Flowers (2005, Jim Jarmusch)

If I had any foresight, I would have realized Broken Flowers wasn’t going to end well. Actually, most of the film is just a ruse to disguise that fact. Instead of thinking about how the film was going to turn out, I spent all my time marveling at Jarmusch. His composition, his dialogue, everything, just beautiful. The first hour of Broken Flowers is wondrous, to some degree because it’s the portion of the film most featuring Jeffrey Wright as Bill Murray’s detective novel-obsessed best friend. The relationship between Wright and Murray is the film’s high-point, with Jarmusch handling it… well, perfectly isn’t right, because it’s such a rare, fantastic relationship, there’s nothing available for comparison. The first twenty minutes of the film, featuring Murray and Wright going over to each other’s houses (they live next door to each other), set an expectation for Broken Flowers, one the next forty minutes do nothing to hinder.

Watching it transition from that friendship to the plot, Murray tracking down ex-girlfriends, I wondered how Jarmusch was going to manage. Basically, it’s all Murray, all the time. The viewer learns nothing about the girlfriends beyond the visible, certainly not the information Murray’s searching for, and each successive girlfriend is more mysterious than the last. So much so, when it finally gets to be Jessica Lange’s turn, she’s overshadowed by her character’s assistant, played by Chloë Sevigny. Sevigny’s hardly got any lines even, but something about the scene construction, she’s more active than Lange and more memorable. As the variety of the women’s lives takes over, some of Jarmusch’s construction techniques begin to show. The first visit, with Sharon Stone, is best. The last visit is worst, as it’s short and bored with itself, assuming the viewer is ready to get the film over with.

The end of the film would be infuriating if, like I mentioned, Jarmusch hadn’t fooled the viewer. There’s no good ending to certain films and Broken Flowers is one of those films. What Jarmusch manages to do, for the majority of the picture, is make the viewer not care what’s going to happen, because the scenic beauty is so great.

As far as actors, the most surprising performance was from Jeffrey Wright, just because I’ve never seen him act well (or even acceptably) before. Bill Murray’s good, best in those scenes with Wright and the ones with Sharon Stone, who’s good too. The rest of the performances are all fine, but no one really stands out. Christopher McDonald has a really restrained role and I’m used to him going a little nuts, so I spent that scene waiting for him to burst.

Broken Flowers is a spectacular disappointment, but whatever… most of it is excellent and all of it is beautifully made. Even the lame ending has some great camerawork.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Jim Jarmusch; screenplay by Jarmusch, inspired by an idea from Bill Raden and Sara Driver; director of photography, Frederick Elmes; edited by Jay Rabinowitz; music by Mulatu Astatke; production designer, Mark Friedberg; produced by Jon Kilik and Stacey Smith; released by Focus Features.

Starring Bill Murray (Don Johnston), Jeffrey Wright (Winston), Sharon Stone (Laura), Frances Conroy (Dora), Jessica Lange (Carmen), Tilda Swinton (Penny), Julie Delpy (Sherry), Chloe Sevigny (Carmen’s assistant) and Christopher McDonald (Ron).

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