Shioka O
Kinda surreal. I need more explanation.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
10/14/22
Full Review
Audience Member
I can't let go off the lamp.
Absurd, touching, funny, crazy. It's a movie cut in many different sequences, and to my taste, not entirely finished. It bounces forth and back around the life of a character who, between psychoanalysis (very popular in the 70's) and dreams, questions why does he wants to kill himself. An interesting movie about the subject taken with a second degree (maybe the belgian side of the director Ulu ‘Grosbard' ).
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
steve d
About as easy to remember as its title.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Not entirely a success, but underrated. Hoffman plays Georgie Soloway, a Paul-Simonesque-but-more-of-a-hippie songwriter becoming disenchanted with his enormous popularity and wealth, and the film resolves itself into a series of vignettes in which he desperately seeks to break out of his penthouse isolation and find real companionship, only to discover that he has only servants, sycophants, leeches, and fans, no real friends. The film tries for something different in its trip, fragmented character study, and Hoffman is too good not to have some fine moments, but he never seems at him in the character, the dialogue has not aged well (very 1972 'trendy,' now apt to provoke laughs), and the frequent flashes back to his pre-success married days don't work in his character's favor (undermines our sympathy for him).
The one truly lasting, noteworthy aspect of the film is the all-too-brief appearance of Barbara Harris as an aspiring singer trying out for a part in a play to be based on Soloway's works, but who knows that she's already aged past these parts and doesn't sing well enough; her dream is not going to come true. Harris is heartbreaking, her tremulous voice conveying the uncertainty of dashed hopes and her eyes a watery ocean of youthful hope obscured by age and crow's feet. She blows Hoffman off the screen, and her appearance is all too short. She was nominated for Oscar for this role, and deservedly so.
All in all, a curious early '70's experiment; the experiment doesn't really work, but it leaves behind interesting nuggets and its motivations are to be admired.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
Full Review
Audience Member
My favourite film, despite the poor reviews of just about everyone else who has ever seen it. So many fantastic lines, wonderful, strange, surreal, stream-of-conscience plot line and good performances from just about everyone concerned. Well worth at least one viewing, especially by anyone interested in fringe cinema of the era.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Dusty, all of 33 when this was made, plays a middle age composer with a hideous curly perm going through a crisis of identity. Barbara Harris shows up late in the film and walks right off with it in a beautifully performed monologue. VERY much a product of its time.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
Read all reviews
>
