Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Steineded How sad is this?

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

tedg Guest has a very narrow vision, so the game is seeing the various ways he can surround it. He and all his friends are performers with at best b-list careers, and mostly less successful. They all have some talent and commitment but find themselves in a twilight of angst about performing. What to do? Make films about this. This is the last of Guest's that I have seen, supposedly the least successful. It follows the same formula: episodic so that skits can be pulled from the large amount of footage shot. I believe this may be least successful because it seems to have been the most developed script.We've had performing as rock stars, in a dog competition, in local theater, as a filmmaker and here most reflexively as performers waiting for some affirmation. As usual, Guest allows his actor-friends to just fill their characters however they like which presents us with a confusing set of worlds. They are all friends who believe they think alike. And they are all part of the same film, but the acting styles are all over the place. This isn't like a Mel Brooks movie where everyone is ridiculous in exactly the same way.You have to choose which of these is the anchor and which the parody. And it is hard work. Levy as co-writer keeps asserting himself as ground zero, but he has the least connective talent: ('connective' meaning connecting to us by connecting to the fabric of the film). The most colorful choice is Catherine O'Hara, who seems to genuinely be trying for an Oscar. She has a scene that is remarkable: the morning after learning she lost the Best Actress nomination, she is accosted while taking out the trash drunk by a gossip TeeVee journalist. The world she projects is complex and skilled, very impressive.But I keep coming back to Parker Posey. She has little to do here, and her character is a reduction of others she has done: dependent, highly wound partner. But since 'The House of Yes,' everything I see her in is an annotation of that. She has the kind of approach to acting that I recognize as the new wave: the Brando style of total commitment emotionally in the character and noticeably independent total commitment in a visible way to the art of acting. It helps that she plays a character that inserts herself in the weak chinks in our envelopes, because it helps her wink at how she can exploit it. Her friend Jennifer Jason Leigh made a whole film around this but never achieved the crystal perfection of passive dependence in acting.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

elshikh4 I know it's hard to find a movie with the 2 qualities, but this one has them both finely. It's a wonderful movie about living the false dream of just "nominating" for the Oscar. With 2 veteran has-been (or never-been) actors, and one newcomer, we follow the dream that nearly turns into nightmare. It succeeds in being not only a movie about bunch of actors, but also a movie about the backstage of shooting a movie, the agents, the scriptwriters, the producing, and the media as well. It does a good satirical job with all of them. So what's here to be satirized? A lot. The ignorance. The lack of opportunities for old actors in Hollywood. The fake glamour; where the botox and the plastic surgeries do the job to make the actors younger and freaky (the examples in Hollywood are endless nowadays !). The shallowness, the silliness, and the brazenness of the media, with great take on the tabloid shows that need nothing but sensationalism (at one point an announcer declares that the only thing he cares for in a movie is the nude scenes !). And yes, a sneer at the Oscar (the way the movie within the movie was acted was horrible to laughable extent) along with whoever dreams of it; notice well how the only one who didn't dream of it was the one who got nominated for it ! There is a perfect meaning thrown through the movie; because while these people, the movie's no star characters, try hard in an industry that stands on the star system, and leaves such actors in the bottom alone despite any talent they have, this movie comes to say that these people themselves, the movie's characters and their performers, CAN make a movie without The Star, and make it work, being together a big star apart. It's like (For Your Consideration) you the producers of Hollywood ! As for the shortcomings, it lacked the deep penetration into the characters; for instance we knew nothing about the special life of Marilyn Hack (the character played by Catherine O'Hara). Maybe most of the acting, in the movie within the movie, said how pathetic these actors are, while I thought that it would have been stronger if it told us how they are really good, being treated unfairly by always bad circumstances. As if the desperate way to make laughs disappointed a good issue there. Moreover, the end didn't click well. I couldn't understand the matter of the "mole" or the metaphor in it. Anyhow, that very scene didn't wind up things rightly. And finally, the character of the director (played by the movie's real director Christopher Guest) was the least interesting one in the movie, rather uninteresting. I don't know why he, as a co-writer, didn't make it at least funny. All in all, it is not a black comedy inasmuch as talking about black reality. However it leaves you with a powerful sense of bitterness just like a distinct black comedy. The face of (Catherine O'Hara), fine actress by the way, looking deformed by plastic surgeries during the last 20 minutes, sums up this movie's mix; as a comedy mixed with painful case of a human in a crises. Strange mix but highly effective.

ajs-10 I have been a fan of This Is Spinal Tap (1984) for many years, also co-written by Christopher Guest, and so I was intrigued to see this more recent effort. I wasn't disappointed, although I didn't find it as funny as Spinal Tap, the clever whit was still there and so a good time was had by all. The setting is a film set where a low budget film starring a couple of lesser known and slightly ageing actors is being produced.Marilyn Hack and Victor Allan Miller, a pair of ageing actors are starring in the low budget production, "Home for Purim". Also in the film are the young actors Corey Taft and Pam Campanella and the director is Jay Berman. Throw into the mix, Victor's agent, Morley Orfkin, and the producer, Whitney Taylor Brown and that's the main part of the ensemble. The production is going quite well until Marilyn hears a whisper that she may be up for an Oscar nomination. This gets the entire cast in a bit of a spin, especially when Victor is also mooted to be up for a nomination as well. Just to make it really crazy, we then hear that Pam is on the shortlist for a nomination too! We follow the cast as they totally transform, going on chat shows, making appearances and generally behaving like the stars they think they are. Then the guys at the top get involved, specifically the studio owner, Martin Gibb. He persuades them to change the film significantly before its release. And I'll leave this little synopsis on the morning of the nominations, who will get a nod from the academy? I found this a very enjoyable film to watch, the dialogue reminded me of some of the films of Woody Allen in parts. Some great performances, in particular, Catherine O'Hara as Marilyn Hack, Harry Shearer as Victor Allan Miller, John Michael Higgins as Corey Taft, Carrie Aizley as Pam Campanella and Eugene Levy as Morley Orfkin. Also a neat cameos from Christopher Guest as Jay Berman and Ricky Gervais as Martin Gibb.Over all, a nice gentle comedy with some clever dialogue and some totally bizarre characters. Not the greatest comedy ever made, but quite enjoyable none the less. One I can recommend.My score: 6.7/10

lor_ Having just searched through 137 IMDb comments (whew!) of Guest's film I was quite surprised that nobody noticed the central in-joke at work here, one that spoiled an otherwise mildly amusing effort for me. I guess you have to be a film industry insider, or at least have a working knowledge of film history, to analyze these seemingly transparent recent movies, and everyone struck out.The central character, played so winningly by Catherine O'Hara, is obviously based on a real-life actress and her Oscar campaign. The real Hollywood actors, namely the typical Academy members who make up the Oscar voting population that selects the nominees annually, will instantly recognize who I'm referring to, even though those intrepid IMDb addicts dropped the ball. The answer is plainly Sally Kirkland, a talented character actress who indeed was nominated for best actress in 1987 for her performance in the indie film ANNA. I knew Sally quite well at the time, and she was completely sincere in the campaign she launched, unsuccessfully, to try and win the coveted Oscar, losing out to Cher for MOONSTRUCK that year. Her campaigning predated what has become merely customary, as the Weinsteins later perfected the art of actively manipulating Academy voters to get annual nominations and wins for their various Miramax (subsequently TWC) films, right up through somehow managing a Penelope Cruz nom for "Nine".Sally's large breast implants are an easy target for O'Hara here, with Willard's funny line about her décolletage after interviewing her post-Oscar snub: "Now I've seen the Grand Canyon". For the uninitiated, if you click on Sally's IMDb page you will see how her face in the '80s/'90s closely resembles the look O'Hara captured in her impressive bit of "frozen visage" acting of the final reels of Guest's satire. I shudder to think of how Nicole Kidman, Jessica Lange and Meg Ryan will fare as potential future targets of the merciless Guest/O'Hara team.We all know from numerous lectures by the latter-day greats like Steve Martin that "comedy isn't pretty". But I was disappointed at Guest and company taking potshots at Ms. Kirkland. She is a sincere artist and while everyone in the entertainment world is out there available for ridicule I was taken aback by the somewhat underhanded, infra dig lampooning here. Knowing Sally I'm sure she took it in her stride when FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION was released, but no one likes to be mocked. Even masochists would prefer some old-fashioned corporal punishment to being humiliated in front of their peers.As an aside, I admire the talent of these comedy geniuses, including Levy and Guest. But I think a telling anecdote of an incident I witnessed long ago shows that many of them have feet of clay. As a film critic I was attending the press screening for about 50 people at Magno on Times Square in NYC in 1980 for the new film THE FIRST DEADLY SIN, starring Frank Sinatra and Faye Dunaway. The film when released soon after was not successful with critics or audiences and proved to be Frank's final big-screen role, in fact his only movie role after 1970. There is an etiquette at press screenings, but not just critics are invited. Sitting near me was Harry Shearer (a key member of Guest's stock company, and of course immortal from his THIS IS SPINAL TAP participation), whom I recognized immediately from his Saturday NIGHT LIVE appearances plus a friend who I couldn't place. Starting a few minutes into the Sinatra film, which was a gritty, NYC-set thriller, the two of them launched into a series of catcalls and shout-out jokey remarks at the expense of the movie that would have made the yet-to-be-invented stars of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000 proud, or fit well within the current drag queen-led mocking of movies that goes on weekly at my local Chelsea cinema. I even shushed them (!) to no avail. This uncouth behavior stuck with me, and always made me wonder about the sincerity of comics at the level of talent, which I readily concede, of a Shearer, or a Second City denizen. I know contemporary comedians famously study people they see on the street, subway, etc. in ordinary life to build material, but the disrespectful attitude of Shearer & bud toward Sinatra, Dunaway and their earnest (if not at the top of their game) movie collaborators appalled me no end. It's not surprising that poor Faye met a similar fate the following year with the release of MOMMIE DEAREST, which stands as perhaps the most-ridiculed and campy of modern Hollywood releases.