JohnDeSando
Joined Oct 2001
Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Reviews2.4K
JohnDeSando's rating
"Book me a table at a café where the waiters know who I am. I'm in the mood for adulation." Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie)
"Maria" is a study in restraint, the aloof persona of Maria Callas, the 20th century opera diva who died in 1977 at age 53. Angelina Jolie, a motion picture diva, plays her as a reserved former star in the last week of her life. Through the cliched device of an imagined interviewer, Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), flashbacks abound through another device, black and white to denote times ago.
Such a portrait, however, does not good cinema make. The cinematic visual is close to perfection, drawing rooms and concert halls whose immaculate design emphasizes Callas's perfection of voice and arctic mien. Shots through narrow doorways and long-distance shots enforce the design to show her isolation. Her notorious temper rarely appears so tightly does Jolie play the closed-in Callas except when she goes after any reporter who breaks into her personal life.
The storied voice was being lost in midlife to drug overdose and debilitation along with strain. Jolie successfully reflects the diva's strong-headed refusal to comply with doctors' advice that she not sing or take drugs. Thus, her early death.
"Maria" is best when director Pablo Lorrain takes it down to unpretentiousness as he did in Spencer, and to some respects Jackie, unadulterated thoughts about women stressed by fame are punctuated by impassioned moments where this movie has few.
Callas's confrontation with JFK is the kind of repartee, mostly about Jackie and Onassis, crackles by contrast. It depicts a diva in decline where the dramatic value of someone so closed in on herself can be limited entertainment for an audience not needing to experience the gloom of a preeminent artist in decline.
" I come to restaurants to be adored." Callas.
"Maria" is a study in restraint, the aloof persona of Maria Callas, the 20th century opera diva who died in 1977 at age 53. Angelina Jolie, a motion picture diva, plays her as a reserved former star in the last week of her life. Through the cliched device of an imagined interviewer, Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), flashbacks abound through another device, black and white to denote times ago.
Such a portrait, however, does not good cinema make. The cinematic visual is close to perfection, drawing rooms and concert halls whose immaculate design emphasizes Callas's perfection of voice and arctic mien. Shots through narrow doorways and long-distance shots enforce the design to show her isolation. Her notorious temper rarely appears so tightly does Jolie play the closed-in Callas except when she goes after any reporter who breaks into her personal life.
The storied voice was being lost in midlife to drug overdose and debilitation along with strain. Jolie successfully reflects the diva's strong-headed refusal to comply with doctors' advice that she not sing or take drugs. Thus, her early death.
"Maria" is best when director Pablo Lorrain takes it down to unpretentiousness as he did in Spencer, and to some respects Jackie, unadulterated thoughts about women stressed by fame are punctuated by impassioned moments where this movie has few.
Callas's confrontation with JFK is the kind of repartee, mostly about Jackie and Onassis, crackles by contrast. It depicts a diva in decline where the dramatic value of someone so closed in on herself can be limited entertainment for an audience not needing to experience the gloom of a preeminent artist in decline.
" I come to restaurants to be adored." Callas.
Beth: "Everything is falling apart."
Grace: "I'm not sure they were ever together."
And so it goes with an annual Christmas pageant, whose machinations would rival a small military exercise. It's the film adaptation of the child's book, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. And it is just as the title suggests, at least for me who thinks this is the best Christmas film in years.
Comedy and drama march together as Grace (Judy Greer) runs the annual pageant now that its usual director has been incapacitated. Grace is a good person exemplifying the best of Christian virtue, yet her values will be tested to the max with the arrival of the Herdman children, motherless ruffians notorious for being ornery and at times downright destructive.
Although Grace is inclined to accept the clan for major roles, in the absence of other volunteers, most of the town, even her children, are exclusionary of the infamous family. Thus begins the dominant motif of the subtle faith-based dramedy, the acceptance of those not like us.
As Grace uses her people and drama skills to pull off the pageant, so, too, do others see the value of listening to critics of the status quo as the Herdman's are. More destructive than anything else is their challenges to conventional wisdom, for instance, the account of the Three Wisemen delivering gifts wholly unsuited to an impoverished family. The answer of delivering a ham is perfect and indicative of the riches the Herdman's give to the clueless town in the form of vigorous opposition to the outdated norms of the Bible.
I hope I have persuaded you to try director Dallas Jenkins' The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. My tastes run from It's a Wonderful Life to Bad Santa and not faith-based films in general. Yet, I have been impressed by the quality of such Angel Productions as Sound of Freedom, Cabrini, and Bonhoeffer and now the Kingdom Story Company's Best Christmas. I'm open to new experiences.
Happy Holidays.
And so it goes with an annual Christmas pageant, whose machinations would rival a small military exercise. It's the film adaptation of the child's book, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. And it is just as the title suggests, at least for me who thinks this is the best Christmas film in years.
Comedy and drama march together as Grace (Judy Greer) runs the annual pageant now that its usual director has been incapacitated. Grace is a good person exemplifying the best of Christian virtue, yet her values will be tested to the max with the arrival of the Herdman children, motherless ruffians notorious for being ornery and at times downright destructive.
Although Grace is inclined to accept the clan for major roles, in the absence of other volunteers, most of the town, even her children, are exclusionary of the infamous family. Thus begins the dominant motif of the subtle faith-based dramedy, the acceptance of those not like us.
As Grace uses her people and drama skills to pull off the pageant, so, too, do others see the value of listening to critics of the status quo as the Herdman's are. More destructive than anything else is their challenges to conventional wisdom, for instance, the account of the Three Wisemen delivering gifts wholly unsuited to an impoverished family. The answer of delivering a ham is perfect and indicative of the riches the Herdman's give to the clueless town in the form of vigorous opposition to the outdated norms of the Bible.
I hope I have persuaded you to try director Dallas Jenkins' The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. My tastes run from It's a Wonderful Life to Bad Santa and not faith-based films in general. Yet, I have been impressed by the quality of such Angel Productions as Sound of Freedom, Cabrini, and Bonhoeffer and now the Kingdom Story Company's Best Christmas. I'm open to new experiences.
Happy Holidays.
What happened to my wife?" (Father). "She died in childbirth!" (Mother)
Nightbitch is the Swiss Army knife of motherhood psychoanalysis. The joys and sorrows of leaving a profession as an artist to raise a child are in full display as Mother (Amy Adams) eventually sees the downside of motherhood while clueless Father (Scoot McNairy) goes off to work several days in a row most times.
The reality of a job that pays nothing and leaves her sleepless while former colleagues prosper happily merges into Mother's fantasy (?) of becoming a dog. The feral aspect of this motif is handled deftly by writer-director Marielle Heller so that the film is much less horror than the title suggests. Any woman in middle-age, even with an aging parent to tend rather than a child, can identify with the contradictory emotions emerging regularly.
Nightbitch shows that even the all-consuming love of the caregiver is not enough to stem the resentment that can eat away at her happiness. When Mother scrapes the floor for food like a hungry dog, the point is well taken about the primitive nature of survival.
Mostly the loss of one's calling, in Mother's case as an artist, seems the greatest cut of all. But, then, our society has not yet fully embraced the idea of retaining or returning to one's gift during or after child-rearing. At one point, Father admits to never having thought about the necessity of tending to Mother's talent beyond nurturing.
To give dad his due, he was blindsided by her wish to leave her profession, never having been trained to explore motivations more fully. Nightbitch skirts analysis of Father's role probably because it would compromise the attention to the film's core subject-Motherhood. While the film is part deconstruction of the role and bodily horror (try to watch her discover a tale protruding from her backside!), it surprisingly exposes the many sides of parenthood through common sense, little horror, and some magic realism.
Amy Adams should be Oscar-nominated for the 9th time. She's that good and may win this time. As for the audience, the trip home should be full of discourse about the complicated jobs of parents and, by extension, caregivers. It can be a "bitch" and the grandest calling of all.
Nightbitch is the Swiss Army knife of motherhood psychoanalysis. The joys and sorrows of leaving a profession as an artist to raise a child are in full display as Mother (Amy Adams) eventually sees the downside of motherhood while clueless Father (Scoot McNairy) goes off to work several days in a row most times.
The reality of a job that pays nothing and leaves her sleepless while former colleagues prosper happily merges into Mother's fantasy (?) of becoming a dog. The feral aspect of this motif is handled deftly by writer-director Marielle Heller so that the film is much less horror than the title suggests. Any woman in middle-age, even with an aging parent to tend rather than a child, can identify with the contradictory emotions emerging regularly.
Nightbitch shows that even the all-consuming love of the caregiver is not enough to stem the resentment that can eat away at her happiness. When Mother scrapes the floor for food like a hungry dog, the point is well taken about the primitive nature of survival.
Mostly the loss of one's calling, in Mother's case as an artist, seems the greatest cut of all. But, then, our society has not yet fully embraced the idea of retaining or returning to one's gift during or after child-rearing. At one point, Father admits to never having thought about the necessity of tending to Mother's talent beyond nurturing.
To give dad his due, he was blindsided by her wish to leave her profession, never having been trained to explore motivations more fully. Nightbitch skirts analysis of Father's role probably because it would compromise the attention to the film's core subject-Motherhood. While the film is part deconstruction of the role and bodily horror (try to watch her discover a tale protruding from her backside!), it surprisingly exposes the many sides of parenthood through common sense, little horror, and some magic realism.
Amy Adams should be Oscar-nominated for the 9th time. She's that good and may win this time. As for the audience, the trip home should be full of discourse about the complicated jobs of parents and, by extension, caregivers. It can be a "bitch" and the grandest calling of all.