Sunday, January 21, 2007
CHOPSTICKS
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was
Any film with Harvey Keitel is going to show dick.
It is his trademark; the go-to guy.
I just thought I would get that out of the way.
It is amazing that Harvey has had so much exposure of his body parts including the private, but there it is. He is in good shape. He is amply endowed. More men should follow his lead.
Why should we have to watch women naked and never ever get the full male frontal?
OK. I am avoiding telling you that, while I know this is a good movie and that, at times, I really gasped at its power, I think that it is a hot steaming mound of horseshit.
Not to mix my metaphors, but the steaming pile is filled with contrivance and gadgetry.
Holly Hunter is dumb since six, we will never know how or why.
Actually, we may have been told and I missed it as the sound on this with the accents and all has half the dialogue come out garble.
Another gadget; Holly can only communicate through the piano.
Connect this to the coincidence that has her mail order husband, wonderful Sam Neill, not liking music while neighbor Harvey does. Or, at least, Harv gets that the piano expresses Holly's soul and that is what he is after along with a few other things.
Well, who do you think that Holly is going to fuck?
And so on.
Hunter has an out of wedlock daughter who talks for her from time to time in a Scottish brogue. Ebert thinks the child, Anna Paquin, has more lines than anyone else. He is probably right. We don't 'get' even half of hers.
So annoying.
I love the title of this review because it describes the great dramatic climax of the film but I don't want to spoil it for you. Chopsticks, indeed.
Oh.
The piano.
Believe that it endures being dunked in the ocean and sitting on the beach for a few weeks and the nasty climate and that there is a tuner who actually comes to repair it in the middle of the most primitive colonial New Zealand area. Or maybe we missed the town over the hill that everyone runs to to get their clothes dry cleaned and pressed.
Hunter always wears a hoop skirt even during sex. Harvey has a thing for it. A hoop fetish.
You want a review? Read Ebert.
Me? I am going to put down a 3 out of Netflix5 because it is pretty and there are some great moments and Sam Neill deserves better than the hand he is dealt in this picture.
