A TWR ain't gonna cut it for this monster: a sprawling epic/soap opera that arguably could have planted the seeds for some of David Lynch's best ideas. The photography veers from lush to harsh, no doubt partially by the dubious provenance of various clips pulled into the "extended director's cut" restoration. The score is painful pop-schlock (e.g., an orchestral Beatles' "Yesterday"). Somehow it all just about works. My favourite part is a proto-Lynchian dressing room scene, with Elizabeth McGovern slowly removing her stage makeup, grotesquely shot full-screen, while asking our hero (De Niro) to kill his best friend (James Woods) -- and this is the characters' first encounter since he violently (and graphically) raped her thirty years earlier. The story is really complicated, going far into soap territory. Is this director Sergio Leone's pastiche of "The Godfather"? It's difficult to reconcile this uneven effort with his masterpiece, "The Good The Bad and The Ugly", but it is also a kind of masterpiece in its own right. “Florida Man Disguises Himself in Bull Costume as He Tries to Burn Down Former Lover’s House With Pasta Sauce” |