Michael Cowan
Occupation
Filmmaker
Head In The Clouds Review
Weak
Why anyone thought this title suitable for a complex romantic thriller I can only guess: The central character, the flighty, ravishing Gilda Bessé (Charlize Theron), has no concern for anything that limits her pleasures and, while her closest friends (and lovers) are making serious commitments in response to the threat of fascism, she maintains her socialite amusements and keeps her "head in the clouds." It seems a title borrowed from some Disney fantasy rather than applying to the wartime tragedy that is attempted here.
The daughter of a French aristocrat raised by an American mother, Cambridge University student Gilda has garnered a reputation for campus scandal. Irish born Guy (Stuart Townsend, Theron's real life squeeze), on the other hand, is a struggling student on scholarship and is of a more serious nature. So, when his Cambridge dorm door flies open one rainy night in 1933, and the notorious Gilda herself asks for shelter, his world is rocked. He sensibly makes no moves on her when she stays the night, giving her attraction to him a basis of credibility when the sex sparks fly later.
Continue reading: Head In The Clouds Review
The Statement Review
Bad
No matter how much leeway you want to give certain films - whether they star an actress you like or are about a worthy subject - it just isn't enough, and you will end up disliking them no matter how much you don't want to. With some of these films, like The Statement, you end up coming close to actually hating the thing and hoping bad things happen to it.
An ostensible Nazi-hunting thriller that's far too impressed with its supposed moral ambiguity, The Statement is about former Vichy militia Pierre Brossard (Michael Caine) who, back in 1944, helped the Nazis round up and execute seven Jews in a small French town. It's based on the true story of Paul Touvier, who ordered such an execution on June 29, 1944 in southwestern France, and was sentenced to life in prison in 1995.
Continue reading: The Statement Review