Q: This was a truly insipid film. The performances are third rate, and the dialogue is so stilted that at times it seemed to have just rolled over and died. My reason for renting this was simple: Find a movie with scriptwriting. I needed a visual aid for my presentation, so I figured why not use a clip? Boy was I wrong. After searching my local video store, I came upon this, where it was suspiciously titled "Starstruck". I thought, "What the hey", and decided to give it a try. Well, I was very unhappy with my results. There was maybe one scene I could use, and meanwhile, I was practically falling asleep because of the sheer banality of the flick. So.....I took this back and picked up Ed Wood. There's a movie I can use as an example. Then again, anything would be presentable compared to the drivel that is "Starfucker".
A: negative
Q: This film was so amateurish I could hardly believe what I was seeing. It is shot on VIDEO! NOT film! I have not seen the likes of this since the early 70's, when late night networks showed movie of the week 'horror flicks' shot in......video. It looks like a bad soap opera, and that is paying it a compliment. Some of the actors give it their best shot. Michael Des Barres does okay with what he is given to do, which is to act like a sex addict out of control. I can't say that it is pleasant to watch.

Nastassja Kinski as the therapist sits in a chair for practically the entire film, with very little variation in camera angles. I can't fault her for someone else's poor blocking, but she is totally unbelievable in her role. Her little girl voice works against her here. And I consider myself a Nastassja Kinski fan. She is certainly ageless and exotic, but she's outside her range with this.

Alexandra Paul is pathetically overwrought. Every line she delivers is with three exclamation points. Someone must have directed her to scream at all costs. Why would Michael Des Barres want to have sex with such a raging shrew?

Finally, Rosanna Arquette as the sweet, maligned wife comes off okay, and probably the most believable of the bunch. But that is not saying much.

This has to be the worst film I have seen in years.
A: negative
Q: Like the Arabian Nights this film plays with storytelling conventions in order to make us feel that there's plot, plot and more plot: it opens with what appears to be the frame device of a blind man telling the story of his life, then plunges into a flashback which takes us right up to the blind man's present, where we discover that about half of the story is yet to come. (It must be admitted that the second half doesn't quite live up to the promise of the first.) Like the Arabian Nights it tries to cram as many Middle-Eastern folk motiffs as possible into the one work. A freed genie, a beautiful princess, a flying carpet, fantastic mechanical toys, sea voyages, a crowded marketplace, a wicked vizier, jewels ... I don't know why it all works, but it does. Everything is just so beautiful. The sets are beautiful. June Duprez is beautiful. Rozsa's score is especially beautiful. As usual, it sounds Hungarian; but somehow he manages to convince us that he's being Hungarian in a Persian way.
A: positive
Q: My scalp still smarts from the burning coals heaped on it when I vowed I love this film. Bring on the coals; I'll walk over them as well to say again that I love "Bend it Like Beckham." Granted, there's a lot of "in spite of" in that confession. It's a bit movie-of-the-week; the screenplay is on the paint-by-numbers side. And, most troublingly, the director's commentary implies that in this film beauty can be found primarily amongst the white of skin.

The film's genius is not in what's obvious to the Syd Field-doctored eye: character arcs, themes, construction. It's in both the surface and what lurks deep beneath, but not in those layers of artistic topsoil that reviewers seem most often to scratch at. Powerful, sometimes semi-clad female bodies not simply on display but kicking the crap out of a football do a better job of naturalizing female strength and agility than Lara Croft or Zhang Ziyi will ever do. These are real bodies (Keira Knightley's excepted) whose work is not to look great first and kick butt later. They are working bodies whose beauty is in their movement and self-determination. And, in my book, lead actress Parminder Nagra is one of the most gorgeous creatures ever captured on screen not only because she can lay claim to that hackneyed adjective, "luminous," but because her performance has an honesty and un-bookish intelligence that's utterly compelling.

The result is a film women can enjoy without feeling like they're making a pact with the devil to do so. As in Chadha's "Bride and Prejudice," the relationships amongst women sizzle with a chemistry that can't be neatly slotted into the stodgy, Sweet Valley High categories of "best friends" or "sisters." Perhaps Chadha is even right in her commentary to disavow the film's flirtation with lesbianism. "Bend it Like Beckham" has an electricity that can't be reduced to the simple hetero/homosexual love triangle its conventionally structured script would suggest. The precise nature of its pleasure is, ultimately, a bit of a mystery and is all the more seductive for it.

Oh yes, and did I mention that it's hilarious?
A: positive