THE ROOM NEXT DOOR** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 11

The anticipation of iconic writer-director Almodovar's first ever English language film starring two exceptional talented actresses in Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore was high. I am sad to report that while the film is handsomely produced and surface-glossy, it lacks any real depth. And without any crunchiness in the writing the actresses have little to do but be .... nice.  The result is a rather vanilla, unbrave film that skirts over the profound issue that it is tackling.

The film is based on a Spanish book and I wonder if the source material has more conflict within it.  In Almodovar's version all the big questions have been decided and all debate is shut down.  Tilda Swinton plays a war correspondent called Martha who has incurable cancer and decides to commit suicide.  She procures a tablet on the dark web and asks her friend Ingrid (Julianne Moore) to be in the room next door when she dies. That's it. That's the plot. (Although it's padded out with unnecessary flashbacks to her ex-partner's death). 

The decision has been made and Martha will not allow Ingrid to try and persuade her out of it.  And we are not going to see any of the unpleasantness and pain of actually killing yourself in this way. Don't get me wrong - I am in favour of euthanasia - but this film situates it in a beautifully designed house with a beautiful woman in a beautiful outfit lying on a deckchair in a beautiful garden with elegant pink snow failing. I find that rather disingenuous.

The real problem with this highly stylised depiction of the friendship and the decision is that there is no conflict and no depth to the conversations between the two friends, other than maybe a discussion about career vs motherhood that never really convinced me. Compare and contrast with Swinton's own discourse on this subject in WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN.  People have praised the performance - heck this film won the Golden Lion at Venice - but I really struggled to see what the fuss about.

I would suggest that if you are actually interested in this topic that you watch documentarian Ondi Timoner's desperately moving film LAST FLIGHT HOME.

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR has a running time of 110 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2024. It goes on release in the UK on October 25th and in the USA on December 20th.

GLORIA BELL

I absolutely loved everything about Sebastian Leilo's remake of his Chilean female-led drama, GLORIA. Julianne Moore give a characteristically strong, charismatic, nuanced performance in the titular role - playing a character rarely seen on screen - a middle-aged woman who is sex positive and living every inch of her life to its fullest. I applaud the messages of this film - that you can be a strong woman with a full life, who doesn't need but is open to a sexually and emotionally fulfilling relationship - and that it's better to walk away from something that is second best. And I am in admiration of both Moore and her lover, played by John Turturro, for being vulnerable enough to show what sex is actually like in one's middle-age, and the complications of relationships with grown children.  The talent behind the lens is just as impressive. Sebastian Leilo has a sure measure of pace, balancing lighter moments of expressive freedom with darker more intimate moments of sadness and self-doubt. The score, by Matthew Herbert, is stunning, combing traditionally orchestrated music with phenomenal electronic almost 80s sci-fi synth moments, let alone the wonderful disco music that Gloria loses herself too.  Finally, the cinematography from Natasha Braier is marvellous in capturing both with its use of colour, light and framing, the different moods that Gloria goes through - whether strong, suffering, free or constrained. This really is a tour de force and deserves to be seen as widely as possible. 

GLORIA BELL is rated R and has a running time of 102 minutes. The film played Toronto 2018 and was released earlier this year in the USA. It's just about still on release in the UK in cinemas and is available on streaming services. 

LANDLINE

LANDLINE is a laugh out loud relationship comedy set in the mid-90s from direct Gillian Robespierre starring stand-up comedian Jenny Slate (THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE).  It shows us a close knit family dealing with the fall out from two affairs, and focuses heavily on the female relationships and reactions with that.  

The parents are played by Edie Falco (THE SOPRANOS) and John Turturro (THE NIGHT OF).  He's a failed novelist having an affair with a woman who provides the praise his wife fails to.  And while the movie gives his crisis some time, the main focus is on the complicated and moving reaction of his wife.  Of the children, the eldest is Dana (Slate) - a quirky and bubbly girl who has just become engaged to her long-time boyfriend Ben (Jay Duplass) but has an affair with her old flame Nate (Finn Wittrock).  I love that the writers of the film dare to give us in Dana what could be, and for some will be, a fairly dislikable character.  Dana can come across as spoiled and unthinking in her actions.  The writers are trying to make the point that women who have affairs are typically portrayed less sympathetically than men who do - and I get that - but it felt to me as thought the pendulum may have swung too far the other way. After all, if the mother gets a psychologically complex and fully explored reaction to her husband's affair, why can't Ben get more than a montage?  The family is rounded out by simultaneously the wisest and dumbest member of the family - little sister Ali (newcomer Abby Quinn).  She's a bright high school student who often seems the most emotionally mature of all concerned, but she's also making dumb choices in the name of rebellion. I found this section of the film the most fascinating and authentic, and Quinn to be the true star of the film.

LANDLINE is beautifully observed and has a light touch in recreating the 1990s.  It's constantly laugh-out loud funny and has some fantastic sight gags. I had a fantastic time watching despite my reservations of its treatment of the male characters. As I said, I get the need for balance in portrayal of female and male characters, but it just felt as though it had moved too far in the other direction for my liking.

LANDLINE has a running time of 93 minutes and is not yet rated. The movie played Sundance and San Francisco 2017 and opens in the USA on July 21st.

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Listen to a ten-minute podcast review of the film here:

EXODUS: GOD AND KINGS isn't a good or a bad film but rather a collection of films that may or may not hang together as a sweeping biblical epic of the Charlton Heston kind.  It's long, uneven in pace, and takes too few chances to be really memorable. 

In its first act the movie feels like GLADIATOR.  The dying king is transposed from a Roman emperor to a Pharaoh played with surprising majesty by John Turturro. His jealous, power-hungry and paranoid son is transposed from Joaquin Phoenix to a shaven-headed and bejewelled Joel Edgerton.  And the rival for power who will lead a down-trodden people to freedom is transposed from Russell Crowe to Christian Bale.   This section is the most satisfying of the film - literally awesome in its lavish costumes, Egyptian cityscapes, jewels and vistas.  It feels like an old-fashioned big-budget epic of imperial power-politics, pitting two alpha males against each other.  Ben Mendelsohn is superb as the effete toady who reveals Moses' Jewish origin to both Moses and Ramses and I love the genuine conflict as Moses struggles to come to terms with his true identity. The only sadness was seeing Sigourney Weaver as Ramses mother use an anachronistic broad American accent and then become sidelined for the rest of the film.

Overlooked DVD of the month - WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

Over a decade after making the political satire WAG THE DOG, veteran Hollywood director Barry Levinson made a Hollywood satire, WHAT JUST HAPPENED? It features Robert de Niro in the thinly fictionalised role of producer Art Linson, upon whose memoirs the film is based. De Niro's character is trying to get a British auteur (Michael Wincott) to recut his movie so that the studio (Catherine Keener) will give it a Cannes premier. Meanwhile, he's trying to get Bruce Willis to shave off his beard and look the part of a leading man in his forthcoming picture. And then there's the wife he wants to reconcile with (Robin Wright Penn) despite the fact that she's sleeping with the screenwriter (Stanley Tucci); the daughter (Kristen Stewart) who's going off the rails; and the Hollywood groupies who'll do anything, any time, for an interview.

I really liked this film for exactly the reason that all the other reviewers seem to have skewered it. They complain that it isn't caustic enough - that the stakes aren't high enough. All that's at stake, they say, is the continuing functioning of the well-oiled Hollywood money-making machine. By contrast, in Altman's THE PLAYER, or indeed in Levinson's previous political satire, it was a matter of life and death. But surely the point is EXACTLY that the studios, the starlets, the directors and producers are prostituting themselves for worthless commercial dross. In SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS the movies were worth something and that partially excused the shameless behaviour. But this movie is all the more tragic because it shows just how meaningless the whole sharade is.

More superficially, this flick is great because of all the scabrous one-liners. It's eminently quotable in the way that GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS is eminently quotable. It also features a great performance from Michael Wincott as the auteur - a guy who last got a role as memorable when he played Guy of Gisbourne in the Kevin Costner's ROBIN HOOD. You also get to see Catherine Keener in one her most subtle performances as the quietly threatening studio boss who can turn on a dime if she gets a faint whiff of box-office success.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED played Sundance 2008 and Cannes, out of competition. It opened in the UK and US in winter 2008. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 (2009) - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

For all its hi-fi sets, frenetic chase scenes, shouted ultimatums and heavyweight cast, THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is a movie that fails to engage. It's like the TRANSFORMERS 2 of heist movies - so full of high-voltage action shots that plot, character and audience empathy are flushed down the toilet. Are we surprised? After all, the movie has been remade by the ultimate Lads Mag Director, Tony Scott, of TOP GUN fame and DOMINO and DEJA VU mediocrity. But maybe I am a bit surprised to find that this utterly predictable movie was written by the man who wrote LA CONFIDENTIAL. Essentially, the movie is about a psychopath (John Travolta chewing up the scenery) who boards a New York metro train, takes the passengers hostage and demands a bunch of money. He forms a weird relationship with a rail dispatcher with a shady past (Denzel Washington), and spurns the attentions of the cops (John Turturro) and the Mayor (James Gandolfini). The movie could've been so much better - a fracked up psychological cat-and-mouse game between hostage-taker and dispatcher - a discourse on the corruption of politicians and the police. On a technical level, it should've evoked the claustrophobia of the hijacked metro-cab and the wider menace of The City. In the end, it's all just a convenient hook to hang a chase scene on. Weak, weak, weak. Go watch INSIDE MAN instead.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is on release in the USA, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan and Argentina. It opens in the final week of July in the UK, Greece, Malaysia, Austria, Spain, Belgium, France, Morocco, Switzerland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Finland and Lithuania. It opens on August 6th in Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Romania. It opens on August 13th in the Czech Republic. It opens on September 4th in Slovakia, Brazil, Japan and Mexico. It opens on September 11th in Bulgaria; on September 17th in Cyprus, Portugal and Italy.

TRANSFORMERS - REVENGE OF THE FALLEN - Michael Bay on the illusory nature of plot

Michael Bay should be hung from crimes against cinema, so I am not planning to watch the new TRANSFORMERS flick, much less review it. That is, you see, the advantage of being a blogger rather than a respectable paid-up critic. I can bow to sheer prejudice. Clearly, I could be wrong. TRANSFORMERS 2 could be genius. If so, dear readers, do let me know. Till then, the following satire is, I am convinced, far more entertaining than watching unrelenting CGI bangs and crashes.....

Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot......

(Thanks to Andreas von Ohlsdorf for the tip.)

London Film Festival Catch-Up - MIRACLE AT ST ANNA

MIRACLE AT ST ANNA is a big, baggy war epic about the African-American experience in World War Two. Writer-director Spike Lee tackles big themes intelligently and just about keeps a hold of all the complex material in the movie.

The key question the movie asks is what stance African-American soldiers should have taken during the war. After all, in the US they were facing extreme racism - as shown in a pivotal scene in the centre of the film in which German POWs are treated better than African-American serving officers. And even when they were fighting, we see white commanding officers treat the African-American troops with disdain - actively putting their lives at risk because they fundamentally don't accord them the same value. So how far should the African-American soldiers identify with and support the war effort? The argument is played out in the conflict between Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy) and Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke). Bishop is in the war for what he can get - which is a good time where possible. He isn't going to try to get on with his white senior officers. By contrast, Stamps sees the war as a means to self-advancement. He wants to do well and get ahead, believing that the war will fundamentally change attitudes back home.

A second question the movie deals with is how far we should take direct action for a just cause when innocent people will be hurt by it. The Italian partisans in the movie are fighting against the Germans, but the villages they hide out in are subject to vicious retaliation. The partisan leader, Peppi Grotto (Pierfrancesco Favino) feels immense guilt for having indirectly caused the massacre of innocent villagers.

The third question the film deals with is the question of faith. Throughout the film, one of the most apparently dim-witted of the soliders, Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller) believes that the marble statue that he is carting around is a lucky charm. It's easy to mock train because he's such a dolt, but the statue does serially provide a sort of protection to whoever is holding it. It even allows one of the soldiers to survive the campaign and live to a ripe old age in New York when, in the movie's framing device, he finally takes revenge on the partisan who betrayed them.

The guts of this film are well executed and intelligently told. Spike Lee is at his best when he's confronting the subtle tensions in race politics. But there's too much romantic sentimental jibberish that muddies the movie. Most egregiously, the relationship between Train and a little Italian boy he's taking care of is sweet - and speaks to the mythology of the statue - but is deeply distracting. It's also weird that in a movie of subtle conflicts and flawed characters, Spike Lee has created a mythic simple-minded good guy. Train seems two-dimensional compared to everyone else in the film. The second major flaw is the denoument - which is pure unadulterated schmaltz that seems about as realistic as the final scene in Shawshank (which I think everyone agrees was unnecessary.)

MIRACLE AT ST ANNA played Toronto and London 2008 and was released last month in the US.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN - do you find the idea of Adam Sandler catching a fish in his butt-crack funny?

Do you like to see one-joke movies based on two-dimensional SNL characters?

Can you live without a plot so long as you see lots of comedy shagging?

If so, YOU DONT MESS WITH THE ZOHAN is the film for you.

In all seriousness, I almost admire Adam Sandler for the balls-out energy he throws at the screen and his chutzpah in making a gross-out comedy based on the Middle-Eastern conflict. OK - all those humus jokes fall flat, and I really don't find Sandler's character schtupping old age pensioners funny, but you can't deny that this movie means well. It tries so hard to make you laugh, I almost felt bad that I didn't like it more. But I really didn't like it. I hated the Zohan character - a deadly Mossad agent who just wants to be a hairdresser, love his Palestinian girlfriend, and live in peace. I've seen Sandler do the 80s hairdo schtick too many times before, and the accent just rips on Borat. There's nothing intrinsic in Zohan's predicament that requires that he shag older women - Sandler just sticks that in to pad out forty minutes before he can fall in love and protect the neighbourhood from a property developer. Weak. Very weak. And just because it's better than LITTLE NICKY doesn't mean it's good.

Whatever happened to the Adam Sandler who did PUNCH DRUNK LOVE?

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN is on release in Canada, Iceland, Mexico, the US, Australia, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Hungary, Panama, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Turkey and the UK. It opens this weekend in Belgium, Croatia, Colombia, Denmark, Finland and Spain. It opens on August 28th in France, Slovakia and Venezuela. The movie opens in Argentina and Norway on September 19th and in Italy on October 3rd. It is released on Region 1 DVD on October 10th.

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING - a step back from SQUID

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING is a film about a selfish, hateful novelist who arrives at her sister's house and proceeds to hurt everyone in her path, not least her own son. She is a rather savage figure, and despite the fact that writer/director Noah Baumbach creates a realistic, fully-fleshed portrait, I found it hard to have any empathy for her or to be interested in what she did. Some way through the film, another callous author (Ciaran Hinds) brutally exposes Margot (Nicole Kidman) at a public reading. I thought this might have been cathartic. Up until that point, I would have happily slapped Margot myself, so presumably I would have enjoyed seeing her skewered? But I felt neither happiness at, nor sympathy for, her downfall. Just mild irritation that I had to witness yet another selfish, hateful novelist inflicting pain on others.

So what is there to hold our interest in this film? Jennifer Jason-Leigh gives a wonderful performance as Margot's kind-hearted but weak-willed younger sister, Pauline. Despite all the punishment Margot deals her, Pauline still loves her and listens to her. Jack Black is also marvellous in a small role, playing it relatively straight. He seems all the more funny the more he is hemmed in by a stern script and director, and he plays one of the few love-able characters in the movie.

Other than that, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING is a pretty dismal affair. And that extends to the production design and the camera-work. DP Harry Savides has treated the negative to give the scenes a dull, mono-chrome look, and interior scenes in particular look murky and uninteresting.

The movie seems like a step backward from THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. That movie was far from perfect, but it did capture my interest and the cutting observations of human frailty were tempered by something like human warmth. By contrast, MARGOT feels misanthropic. And the little flaws that marred SQUID are magnified in MARGOT. The final scene is a case in point. Baumbach doesn't seem to be able to restrain himself from big dramatic flourishes at the end of his films. They feel stagey and heavy-handed.

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING played Telluride and Toronto 2007. It opened in the US last year and is currently on release in Australia. It opens in the UK on February 29th and in Belgium and the Netherlands in March. It opens in Denmark on April 11th and in Norway on May 9th. It opens in Spain on June 6th. MARGOT AT THE WEDDING is also available on Region 1 DVD.

Early review from Al - TRANSFORMERS

This review is by guest reviewer, Al, who can usually be found here....

I've never been a fan of TRANSFORMERS, but since the first trailer debuted couple months back I promised myself I would watch it. It comes out in Asia/Aus before anywhere else, so there haven't been any reviews to provide me anticipation of what the film would be like. Let's cut to the chase - TRANSFORMERS was just really disappointing. The special effects were predictably impressive and the larger-than-life robots left me gawking in awe like a child - but once the amazement and fascination wears out, I start wanting more Unfortunately beyond the robot huha and grandiose CGI, the movie just has little else to offer.

The biggest problem I had was with the script. Historically, one of the worst. Most of the lines/phrases are so ridiculously dumb and banal it's not even a laughing matter. You just have to witness it for yourself to truly experience the sheer nightmare that the script is. A couple of times one of the robots (usually Optimus Prime - is this misspelled Who gives a damn) launches into some preachy monologue that's so cheesy, cheap and Hallmark-ish, I feel like ripping my gums out.

Moreover, Megan Fox can't act for nuts - the whole way she was pouting with this bimbotic blank face like she was permanently stuck in a Revlon commercial. Shia LaBeouf fares a whole lot better, but once the focus shifts completely to the conflict between the two robot clans, Shia's character gradually phases out of significance and becomes ornamental (aside from having to run endlessly and protect the cube on which the fate of the planet rests on, but I can't hardly give a damn about). The final street battle scene starts off grea but quickly becomes unfocused and messy. It starts and ends repeatedly, to the point where it becomes anti-climactic and I'm just done with the damn thing. With the material, they had the potential to invent something imaginative, new and possibly groundbreaking, and it's obvious the special effects team worked their butts out to ensure things looked perfect on their part. But in the end, the mediocre, uninspired story and shit stain of a script brings the entire film down.

*Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% rating (although I'm sure the figure will go down as more reviews come in). What a joke.

**I know noone gives a shit, and even IMDB doesn't acknowledge this - but there's a part in Transformers that plays homage to Jet Li/Kill Bill.When Bumble Bee changes from the old Chevrolet to the new one, which is yellow and has two black stripes in the middle (the same pattern on The Bride's suit in Kill Bill Vol. 1/Jet Li's old movies), the song that comes on is the song used in Kill Bill Vol. 1 when Oren Ishii and the Crazy 88 is first introduced at the House of Blue Leaves.

TRANSFORMERS is on release in Australia, Italy, Malaysia and Singapore. It opens on July 4th weekend in New Zealand, Austria, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, the US, Israel, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Spain and Turkey. It opens on July 20th in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico; in Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the UK on July 27th. It opens in Estonia, Japan, Iceland and Slovakia in August.

Bina007 adds: I was really interested to read Al's review, because like him I'd been taken by surprise at how cool the ad campaign looked. I have to say, though, that I'm not entirely surprised it sucks. Apparently, like Pirates 3, this is a movie who's release date was set BEFORE they had a cast or script. So it's another case of getting a product - any product - to justify the marketing. Does anyone else think the PR goons have taken over the asylum?

THE GOOD SHEPHERD - the duracell bunny of spy flicks

Like the Duracell bunny, THE GOOD SHEPHERD goes on...and on....and on...with nary a emotional hook or surprising plot twist to keep you going. I swear if I hadn't been on a date I would have walked out. Over designed and directed, this ponderous three hour movie drags its heels through twenty years of the life of the American secret service like so much cement.

The story sees a young Matt Damon recruited into the prototype of the CIA - working for US Secret Ops from London and then Berlin. Married to a woman he does not love (Angelina Jolie) and father to a son he barely sees, he ascends the bureaucrat ladder until, twenty years later, he becomes involved in the Cuban invasion. Insofar as the story has an emotionally sterile man at its heart, it should come as no surprise that I felt so emotionally uninvolved in the film. Damon's performance does what it should, but with the minutes ticking on I felt strangely uninvolved in Jolie's emotional life.

As a spy thriller, the movie fares even worse. The writer tries to inject a little Smiley-Karla competition by pitting Damon's CIA man against a KGB counter-part codenamed Ulysses. The denouement is a weak mirror of the means by which Smiley finally ensnares Karla, for all you fans of the infinitely superior early spy-novels of John le Carre. The film-makers were unwise in bringing such a comparison to the viewers attention. Where le Carre used to be deft, economical, cynical but still a little romantic; where characters were quirky, fascinating, constantly evolving; Eric Roth gives us the most turgid screenplay I have seen filmed since MUNICH. It's no coincidence.

Other minor gripes: Billy Crudup makes a hash of an upper class English accent in his portrayal of a British spy; Alec Baldwin is wasted as a Fed; as is John Turturro as Damon's side-kick/heavy; the make-up do not make Damon look convincing as an older man; ditto Jolie as an older woman.....

THE GOOD SHEPHERD was released in the US in December 2006 and has since opened in Brazil, Australia, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Austria, Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Poland and the UK. It opens in Latvia and Sweden on March 2nd; in Turkey and Italy on March 9th; in France and Switzerland on March 21st and in Singapore on March 29th. It opens in Spain on April 4th and in Belgium on April 18th. THE GOOD SHEPHERD is released on Region 1 DVD at the end of March.

ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES - crazy beautiful

I have a feeling that ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is one of those films that you either find pretentious and indulgent or love to pieces. I am firmly in the latter camp. Written and directed by John Turturro (the actor featured in many a Coen Brothers movie) we are firmly in that kind of weird and wonderful world, populated by odd-ball characters and capers.

The movie focuses on a family headed up by a fat fireman called Nick (James Gandolfini.) He is married to a wedding dress-maker called Kitty (Susan Sarandon) and has three daughters. His wife pines for a former lover and his daughters are obsessed with a hilarious wannabe rock-star called Fryburg (the brilliant Bobby Canavale.) To add to the complication, Nick is attracted to a dirty-talking red-head (Kate Winslett) and is being egged on by his lewd best mate Angelo (Steve Buscemi). The subject matter of the movie is therefore all the messy stuff that happens in life - mid-life crises, weary marriages, obnoxious teenagers, first love. And the down-and-dirty texture is built up with brilliant suburban locales, costumes and a whole cast of eccentric supporting characters - notably Christopher Walken as the Elvis-loving vengeful friend of Kitty.

I've seen the movie described as a musical, not least by the producers. But I think that's a bit misleading. It's not a full on musical where the action periodically stops and the movie breaks into a staged musical number. Rather, at certain points in the story, the characters sing along to kitschy songs of the '60s - Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and the like. It's rather like the camera follows the characters into their little day-dreams before spinning back into the reality of the flick. I guess it really is a matter of taste, but I thought the music was used brilliantly to add to the sense of whimsy and wonder. Plus, any chance to see the crazy genius that is Christopher Walken doing his dance schtick is a bonus.

I can perfectly see how some will find the project indulgent or eccentric for the sake of it, but to my mind, ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is one of the most touching, funny and genuinely crazy movies I have ever seen and I would strongly urge you to give it a try.

ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES showed at Venice 2005 and is now playing in the UK. I don't know if it will get a US release.