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 Monday. 14.April.2008 | Comments? | Permalink 817

Funny thing, I've been wanting to write about There Will Be Blood for weeks now (in a nutshell: here's a movie worthy of the title Citizen Kane part II: The Deicide, and surely one of the 21st century top ten films). But I'll be dissing something instead. It's a lot more fun:

I really, really like Francis Ford Coppola. I mean, this is the guy that came from the Roger Corman B-movie heart of darkness (and 3D sexploitation!), and all of a sudden BAM! in less than ten years did four of the Top Ten Movies Ever in many people's lists (the first two Godfathers, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now). Beat that, Welles! However, time passed and then things such as this happened.

And now, after ten years of retirement, there's this. Youth Without Youth has a really terrible script. Why did he even consider this for his comeback? I'm all for unapologetic science fiction / fantasy, it's a lot more ballsy than having this C-grade sci-fi dementia coated in some sort of ugly pseudoliterarian/spiritual paint. And Francis Ford Coppola might still have a little of his master touch, but for most of the movie it feels as if he is someone else stealing from his own box of tricks (i.e. his signature vertical flips - such as in the opening of Apocalypse Now, here appear as forced at the very least, nauseating in parts). And what's with those crappy 'liquidify' effects - the kind that was already crappy in techno videos made in 1992?

And another thing: Is it just me, or is the whole premise of much of the latter part of the film disturbingly similar to Paul Auster's appaling The Inner Life of Martin Frost? Is there anything cornier than a Unless Writer Stops Muse Dies plot? Francis Ford Coppola the director deserves better material, or else he may end doing the kind of movies where in the end, it was all just a dream or something.

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