Published Reviews -- Discuss

[jack]

lynn...

it looks like people are really "getting it" doesn't it?  the reviewers are tearing me up.

jack

[mountain boy]

Seattle Weekly reveals why it's the perfect flick for a straight guy to take his girl to.

A few possible whispering points:
"Wyoming! It's so beautiful. We should really take a trip there sometime."
"That Randy Quaid is so mean!"
"I am so glad Jack finally told off his awful father-in-law. It is so rude to watch TV during a family meal."
"At least Ennis is there for his daughters when it finally counts."
[img width= height=]http://www.seattleweekly.com/graphics//features/0601/060104_film_broke_250.jpg[/img]

[mountain boy]

This is one phrase I keep being reminded of:

As if love is being invented

"beautiful and gut-punched painful. Do not go to this movie thinking that Ang Lee has thoughtfully sprinkled in some magic movie dust that will leave you feeling good. You will walk out feeling emotionally drained and conflicted. The conflicted feeling will last for days."

[mountain boy]

DAYS

Understatement eh? I read the story six weeks ago and it ain't let go a me yet.

Like my best friend died and I never even met him.

[adamblast]

The film opens tomorrow in the UK, so expect lots of new British reviews Friday.  Here's the one from the Guardian, and it's terrific...

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,4267,1680094,00.html

[khyberny]

in case you missed this from the Independent, http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/reviews/article336696.ece:

Please do not miss a frame of these opening 45 or 50 minutes, because they are the most beautiful Lee has ever committed to film.....<p>
As Lee's aria of regret nudges past the two-hour mark I thought it was out for the count, but it picks itself up and delivers a surprise double bodyshot whose concerted force will possibly floor you. It got me, first in the casual reunion of Ennis with his teenage daughter (played with tenderness by Kate Mara) and then in an achingly elegiac shot of, no kidding, an old checked shirt, the memory of which tugs a thread from an earlier part of the story. In fact, thinking about it right now, my throat seems to have constricted and my eyes gone all blurry. No, I'll be fine... Just give me a minute, will you?

[canmark]

The film opens tomorrow in the UK, so expect lots of new British reviews Friday.  Here's the one from the Guardian, and it's terrific...

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,4267,1680094,00.html

I particularly like how the reviewer ended his review. I had always thought of Jack and Ennis' story as tragic, but this reviewer suggest that their struggle to resist all those forces that were driving them apart was in fact, heroic.

Further than this, Brokeback Mountain is the story of how most of our lives, gay and straight, are defined by one moment in which things go gloriously and naturally right, when everything falls into place, but which is then infected by the bacilli of wrongness. Ennis and Jack, flawed as they are, do their best to resist the encroachment of that infection; they fight not just against bigotry, but dullness and mediocrity. Their story is not tragic, but heroic.

[waynerman]

I haven't seen this mentioned here yet, though many of you have surely seen it: Owen Gleiberman's review in the December 9th issue of Entertainment Weekly. He's not afraid to point out that BBM, simply by existing in this place and at this time, has a political dimension to it:

It's far from being a message movie, but if you tear up in the magnificent, final scene, with its haunting slow waltz of comfort and regret, it's worth noting what, exactly, you're reacting to: a love that has been made to knuckle under to society's design. In an age where the fight over gay marriage still rages, Brokeback Mountain, the tale of two men who are scarcely even allowed to imagine being together, asks, through the very purity with which it touches us: When it comes to love, what sort of world do we really want?

Gleiberman's is still my favorite review, and I've read a good many of them.

[canmark]

Jim Emmerson, a former movie reviewer who writes the blog on Roger Ebert's website, has a big piece on the Brokeback backlash, "Who's Afraid of Riding 'Brokeback?'

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060103/SCANNERS/60104002

[Alijoon]

FINANCIAL TIMES REVIEW

 the finanical times had a GUSHING review of the movie in yesterday's paper... it was like, drop EVERYTHING and see this movie.

[adamblast]

I haven't seen this mentioned here yet, though many of you have surely seen it: Owen Gleiberman's review in the December 9th issue of Entertainment Weekly. He's not afraid to point out that BBM, simply by existing in this place and at this time, has a political dimension to it:

It's far from being a message movie, but if you tear up in the magnificent, final scene, with its haunting slow waltz of comfort and regret, it's worth noting what, exactly, you're reacting to: a love that has been made to knuckle under to society's design. In an age where the fight over gay marriage still rages, Brokeback Mountain, the tale of two men who are scarcely even allowed to imagine being together, asks, through the very purity with which it touches us: When it comes to love, what sort of world do we really want?

Gleiberman's is still my favorite review, and I've read a good many of them.

Thanks for bringing up that review again, waynerman, I had forgotten who had written that moving and marvelous paragraph, and hadn't found it again.

[Alijoon]

you have to check out the guardian review ... the guardian is a big U.K. broadsheet, its the most liberal paper in the U.K. a counter to the daily mail

[PetterG]

you have to check out the guardian review ... the guardian is a big U.K. broadsheet, its the most liberal paper in the U.K. a counter to the daily mail

You havn't a link to that site?

[bluemoon]

I am new to this wonderful forum.

Did you guys see Gene Shalit's review on BBM on Jan 5 on Today's show?  It is outrageous for Gene Shalit to say what he said.  We need to protest against him.

http://www.glaad.org/action/alerts_detail.php?id=3849#

On Jan. 5, NBC News' Today show featured Gene Shalit's review of Brokeback Mountain on his regular "Critic's Corner" segment. Rather than focus on the merits of the film, Shalit — who has been a Today show regular for 31 years — used the occasion to promote defamatory anti-gay prejudice to a national audience.

In the piece, Shalit refers to Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, as a "sexual predator" who "tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts." Shalit's bizarre characterization of Jack as a "predator" and Ennis (Heath Ledger) as a victim reflects a fundamental lack of understanding about the central relationship in the film and about gay relationships in general. It seems highly doubtful that Shalit would similarly claim that Titanic's Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) was a "sexual predator" because he was pursuing a romantic relationship with Rose (Kate Winslet).

Shalit does offer a kind word for Ledger's performance and says "Brokeback Mountain does have a few dramatic peaks" before calling the film "wildly overpraised, but not by me."

Shalit has every right as a film critic to criticize Brokeback Mountain. But his baseless branding of Jack as a "sexual predator" merely because he is romantically interested in someone of the same sex is defamatory, ignorant and irresponsible. And it is equally irresponsible for NBC News to have given Shalit a platform for his gratuitously offensive comments.

NBC's Today staffers have not returned GLAAD's calls to discuss our serious concerns about Shalit's remarks on the show.

TAKE ACTION NOW! CLICK ON "TAKE ACTION" AT THE TOP RIGHT OF THE PAGE.

Please watch the video at glaad.org and write or call the Today show, asking that both the Today show and Mr. Shalit apologize to viewers for his defamatory anti-gay remarks.

The Today Show
30 Rockefeller Plaza
Room 380 E
New York, NY 10112-0002.

Telephone:
212-664-4602 [If the viewer comment mailbox is full, ask to speak to someone else]
Fax 212-664-7209.

Email:
today@nbc.com

[Luckie Starchild]

^^ What a moron!  Gene Shalit needs to retire already.