IN: Review: Thanks to a dull, dimensionless screenplay by Neil Simon, and lackluster direction from Robert Moore, Chapter Two becomes a shrill showcase for Marsha Mason who received her third of four Oscar nods for Chapter Two giving the same performance here that she gave in Cinnderella Liberty(73), The Goodbye Girl(77), Audrey Rose(78) and Only When I Laugh(81);only this time she doesn't have a child to drag around. Chapter Two is the third and last feature film for Moore having previously directed Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective(78) and Murder By Death(76). Caan is miscast, the characters are mono-dimensional, the dialog is overly analytical, and there's virtually no establishing detail. The first half is a less-than-captivating, meet cute, coy romance between a blinkered Caan and a chipper Mason, and the dreary second half makes you long for the first half. The NYC locations as well as Joe Bologna, and a painfully thin Valerie Harper are irrelevant, but at least they provide some welcome distraction. And last and least, there's an awful song played during the credits.
What is this review like?
OUT: negative

IN: Review: I recently viewed Manufactured Landscapes at the Seattle International Film Festival. I was drawn to the movie as a photographer because I'm both familiar and a fan of Burtynsky's work. While I believe the movie does a good job getting it's message across, I couldn't help but feel that it was made as a complete afterthought to the photographs and subsequent popular book by Burtynsky. Obviously one reason for this is the extensive use of still photographs featuring zooms and pans across them. While this is a good effect when used economically, I felt like 75% of the movie was just stills from Burtynsky's book (which I already own). That's probably an exaggeration, but that's how I felt. If you own the book or are familiar with his work you might be better off skipping this one.
What is this review like?
OUT: negative

IN: Review: I'm not at all picky about horror movies, and I'm willing to watch pretty much any of them. That doesn't mean that I'm willing to re-watch many of them, or that I won't have criticism for them. This movie is creepy, and is very well done. In fact, I think this movie would make an excellent double-bill with Session 9.

I should specify, before I get to my comments, that I watched this alone. I started watching it before going to bed, and got about 15 minutes in before I realized that it was too effective, so I saved the rest of it for the morning. Even while watching it in broad daylight, it was still creepy. However, I can't vouch for how effective it would be when watching in a larger group.

After the death of their daughter, a couple move to a remote cabin as a means of trying to come to terms with this death. Let me make note of this death - this is one of the rare movies that doesn't shy away from the death of a child. This is much more important, as it both sets the tone, as well as explains much of the acting that permeates the movie.

The couple is not doing well. The wife has distanced herself from the relationship, and the husband is doing what he can to try to bring her back. While some of the comments have complained about their acting - one specified that they act more like a father and daughter than husband and wife, and that's legitimate. He's trying to give her more direction. It's a role that men sometimes take on.

There are a variety of scares in the film, and most are fairly non-violent, though grotesque in some ways. The story itself feels very straightforward for most of the film, and takes an odd turn near the end. While the turn is not absurd, it is certainly not what you expected from the way things had been progressing.

Moody, atmospheric, and very well done for something that appears to have been shot on video.
What is this review like?
OUT: positive

IN: Review: It was a doubly interesting experience. For some reason the greatest scientific mind of the 20th Century had never been the central figure in a movie*. The closest I can think of as films with Einstein in them are CHAMPAIGN FOR CAESAR, where (like a "deus ex ma-china") the great man is heard clarifying a point on a radio quiz show, so that Ronald Colman is proved to have given the correct answer after all, and in BULLSHOT where the great Albert is one of a dozen leading physicists and scientists who are drugged with cannabis by the villain, intent on stealing some machines of theirs. It is notable that in those two cases, and in IQ, we are dealing with comedies. So far nobody has tried to do a serious film about the life of Einstein, like John Huston's attempt to do one on FREUD with Montgomery Cliff. I guess it is just too hard to get the world of mathematical equations or the secrets of electro-magnetic field theory into exciting dialog. But then, only three years ago Russell Crowe and Christopher Plummer did A BEAUTIFUL MIND. Maybe nobody really has tried.

(*Subsequently, after writing this, I remembered the successful comedy YOUNG EINSTEIN with Yahoo Serious about ten years ago. But that is an exception and it was a spoof.)

The other surprise was the actor playing the great Albert. It was Walter Matthau, here taking time away from the series of films he did with Jack Lemmon in that last decade of their careers. Matthau was a highly capable and gifted character actor, in both comedy and drama, but normally his comic personas were variants of his "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich from THE FORTUNE COOKIE. They were connivers and gonifs. Later they would shed their criminal propensities because we had grown to like them, but they remained grumpy types. But his Albert Einstein happens to be genuinely sweet. More like his Kotch than like Willie Clarke.

He plays Albert as good old uncle Albert. It seems that Matthau's Einstein is living in Princeton with his niece Catherine Boyd (Meg Ryan), and she is seeing a stuffy professor named James Morland (Stephen Fry). But Fry's car needs repairs, and they take it to the auto shop where Ed Walters (Tim Robbins) works. Robbins falls for Ryan, who is attracted to him - but finds that he lacks the mental equipment that she admires. Good old uncle Albert, aided by his three friends (Lou Jacobi, Joseph Maher, and Gene Saks) decide to give their assistance to Robbins and make him an apparently unrecognized physics genius. This will open the doors of romance between him and Ryan, provided Ryan is impressed and Fry does not spoil things (as he hopes to do).

The atmosphere is sweet, as when Matthau and his chums rig up a super physics quiz that they help Robbins cheat on (by switching the positions of their bodies). The plot eventually leads to the outright lie that the brilliant Robbins has constructed an atomic powered rocket ship - which brings in the interests of the nation in the figure of President Eisenhower (Keene Curtis).

It was a charming comedy, and an interesting stretch for Matthau in that he was not as hyper as normal, but far more subdued.
What is this review like?
OUT:
positive