[REVIEW] Three Movies
I found Martin Scorsese's 1995 film Casino to be one of those films so compelling that I had to watch, even knowing that there would be a catastrophic end. Robert DeNiro's mob manager and Joe Pesci's brutal enforcer are both well-acted, but Sharon Stone surely deserved her Golden Globe for her portrayal of the desperate and conniving Ginger.
The script of the late great Robert Altman's 1993 Short Cuts assembled from nine short stories and one poem by the equally great (and, sadly, also late) Raymond Carver, whose short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" ranks as one of my favourites. Altman certainly fulfilled the promise of Carver's stories, his successful interweaving of the different plot threads not distracting at all from the individual stories. As always Julianne Moore gives a standout performance, though Lily Tomlin's worn down and borderline-alcoholic middle aged waitress anmd Robert Downey Jr's lecherous make-up artist are also compelling.
Helen Mirren's preternaturally convincing performance anchors The Queen. The recycling in the film of old news footage taken in the months and days before that fatal car accident in the Pont de l'Alma helped create a sense of the here-and-now that's remarkable for an event that occurred nearly a decade ago. Mirren convincingly portrays Queen Elizabeth II as a woman so caught up in tradition that she was unable to recognize that her country's personality had changed so.