Sunday, March 18, 2012

Weekly Round-Up (3/11/12 - 3/17/12)

The White Sheik (Federico Fellini) ***1/2 - A newlywed breaks away from a rigid unromantic honeymoon schedule set up by her husband to a film set where she meets up with an actor playing an idealized romantic character the White Sheik. It's lighter and fluffier than the works of Fellini which I've seen so far. It's also quite funny and absurd. I was somewhat annoyed by the characters at first but it won me over in the end.

Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem Singh) **1/2 - A lavishly designed reimagining of the Snow White lore suffers from an uneven tone. It wants to be goofy, comedic and campy while at the same time trying to tell straightforward fairy tale. It's a very tricky thing to do especially in a live-action film (Animated features can get away with this easier, I find). It's all over the place. I believe at least some of the fault lies on Julia Roberts, woefully miscast as the Evil Queen. She was trying to be both funny and menacing but failing both which throws off the entire film. This is the last film of costume designer Eiko Ishiaka and her costumes are gaudy, lavish and elaborate as always and compliments the great art direction.

6 comments:

Outcast said...

Both films sound okay to me but not really much better than okay... Thanks for the round-up as always mate.

Simon black said...

I can't stand Julia Roberts for some reason, nice reviews anyway.

Mark said...

I guess the movies this week were better than last weeks.

G said...

I'm not a Julia Roberts fan either...but you never know one day she might just be brilliant

DWei said...

Yeah... Not surprised that Mirror Mirror didn't do that well.

Thomas Duder, Author of the Things said...

Yeesh, sounds like a subpar week. x_X

Well, there IS good stuff on the horizon, right? I must admit that your blog is the only way I'm currently looking at movies right now...just nothing lately has really piqued my interest, y'know?