A very vivid, masterfully made, elegantly written, performed, shot, edited wonderful production all around. Lumet's very satisfying 12 ANGRY MEN is as good as DAZED & CONFUSED, I think; and it evolved, at least for me I suppose, out of similar hangups. Or I'd just underrated it for other, dense reasons. Better than DOUBT very probably, and better than MIRACLE ON 34TH ST assuredly. Etc.!
Well, Martin Balsam plays Juror 1, the jury foreman, calm, methodical. John Fiedler plays Juror 2,…
Totalitarian here, but that's bald totalitarian the way Orwell lays it, so it's just dystopian. Like, when criminal justice becomes automated, it'll be sort of worrying but sort of benevolent (like the risk assessments documented in an episode of Crazy/Genius?), but the worries will mount and intensify until they suddenly spill into a 1984 system. Huh? Huh?
And anyway, America of today isn't so hot, what with the racism, prisons, fanatical cops, environmental stubbornness, deranged religion, endless war, unchecked mass…
Violence never really ends, though, does it? Not to stupidly suck at an immediate, surface-level joke opportunity that is, off the titular proof of a pretty-good Wenders film. Who do you think I am anyway? Someone evil? I've got four words for you. EVIL DOES NOT EXIST. Not that I don't do evil things, just that I'm not evil myself. Ha! Was that what I was supposed to get?
Btw, Eels' "Bad News" is an excellent song. Rough racial stuff…
An early lump, unfortunately Velma-less, with hardly any charm at all. This newcomer we've got, to shoehorn in with ironic camp chuckles? Let's just call him Flim-Flam: who cares? Plus, Vincent Van Ghoul, voiced by Vincent Price. Pass me more cocaine. All these damned directors… they must have been, like, producers at best. But '80s low-budget TV writers rooms don't usually reflect a clear auteur tier? Jeez, news to me. Anyway, this sucks.
Profoundly misunderstood and underrated! My God, I cannot believe some of the negative reviews this received. The relentless and psychotic quirk that it wears is brainy and hit-or-miss, but the humor is legitimate and fun and (mostly) quite flexible in hitting all the nooks and crannies of its syrupy, Thoreauvian screenplay.
If more mid-budget pop movies were this insanely smart and bold -- and if Sandra Bullock continued being a creepy obsessive (delivering weird, no-holds-barred hilarity within a colorful, wacked-out…
Bergman's early-'80s beauty! Supposed to be his swan song at times… and we're lucky it wasn't (everyone should have long, beautiful, productive lifetimes if they're wise, positive, the longer the better) but sometimes it seems a touch unlucky (the wise cap at the end would be perfectly positioned at the end, not near the end? Sorry! It's a shame to say, clumsy to play with people's lives like they're playthings and not my fellow human individual mortals, but it has…
