Lucybespro
It is a performances centric movie
AshUnow
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Fleur
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
JasparLamarCrabb
Paul Mazursky's second feature is a not entirely successful patchwork of a film. A director (Donald Sutherland) struggles to come up with an idea for a second film. He has flights of fancy, daydreams, and some pretty interesting fantasies. It doesn't really come together, but it's never dull and Mazursky takes some pointed jabs at Hollywood (note the director's own cameo as a far too mellow studio head). Sutherland is fine and Ellen Burstyn plays his wife. Michael Lerner and Mazursky's own daughter Meg have supporting roles. There's a curious cameo by Federico Fellini and Jeanne Moreau appears, singing a song. Written by Mazursky and then writing partner Larry Tucker. The great cinematography is by László Kovács. A noble failure.
Kenneth Anderson
Contemporary audiences who wonder how loony, "What were they thinking?" early 70s Hollywood studio disasters like "Myra Breckinridge" were ever made would do well to take a look at "Alex in Wonderland": a near anthropologic look at the confused atmosphere that was Hollywood in the 70s.Donald Sutherland (looking alarmingly like "Myra Breckinridge"s latter-day hippie director, Michael Sarne) plays a young, hot, filmmaker of the sort Hollywood was blindly courting in the years following "Easy Rider." With the entire industry opening up their doors to him to do whatever he wants, Sutherland is hamstrung by his inability to latch onto what his next film project should be. Torn between a desire to do something meaningful and yet still operate within the "system" of Hollywood success, Sutherland, through a series of fantasies and vignette encounters, grapples with the very real possibility that he really hasn't any more depth in him than the Hollywood hacks he derides, and that his half-hearted hippie-era beliefs bring him no closer to happiness or self awareness than anyone else.There is much to dislike about the structure of "Alex in Wonderland" (riffing on Fellini's "8 1/2", the film is mired in too many 70s era movie clichés), but I enjoyed how it shined a refreshingly candid light on that point in time when Hollywood was so unsure of itself that it was handing over millions to any and everyone calling themselves a "director" so long as they were young and espoused a "now" and "with it" philosophy. It implodes the romanticism that shrouds Hollywood's most recent "Golden Age" and provides a well-observed character study to boot.If there is a problem with Hollywood films about Hollywood, it's that those involved (understandably) take the business of making movies so very seriously, but most of us average folks find it hard to identify meaningfully with individuals who agonize and fret in palatial homes and near-perfect weather, while producing for the most part, escapist (sometimes willfully mindless) entertainment motivated principally by the desire to make enough money to buy even bigger palatial homes.
Vyth
I really liked this slice of California in the 70's (late 60's?) Donald Sutherland rules. plain and simple.. his charisma would carry a film even if it were not so well put together as this one... his character is likable but realistic, faults included.. whatever.. I just wanted to recommend the film.. I like a film to set a mood and take you there.. and this does just that, i feel like I know what it would be like to be a director on the verge of having it all in the early 70's, and for an hour and a half I lived it with the cast..I felt like the mood was similar to that of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", at the beginning, just watching Richard Drefuss's character with his family.. just like a glimpse of what that life would be.. with the good times, and the arguments etc etc.. no explosions, no car chases, just a slice of life.
Jorge Pereirinha Pires
Made in the aftermath of the sixties - and not without a hint of LSD - this view on the life, times and troubles of a young movie director, is also a must-see commentary on the relations between art and industry, independent film-makers and big-time producers, American cinema and European cinema. Glorious appearances by Federico Fellini (a hard-working man, whom Alex disturbs in Cinecittá while he's editing a TV special) and Jeanne Moreau serve as extra features that will attract every real movie-buff. At the same time, the movie owes much of its intensity (and/or intimacy) to a close-knit cast, where even the director and his wife are listed. And for very good reasons. If you still think at cinema as an adventure in the making, you won't be disappointed by this one.
