Of late, Hilary Swank gives only two kinds of performances, award-winning, and duds. AMELIA, a prestige effort from Mira Nair, alas, delivers the latter. To be fair, she and everyone else concerned are not working from a script, but rather from a scenario thrown together with broad strokes and characters conceived as cardboard cut-outs of… Read More »
VANITY FAIR
Mira Nair’s telling of Thackery’s classic, VANITY FAIR, is a lush, sprawling, sensual film that totters unevenly under the weight of its own ambition. It’s an apt metaphor considering that its heroine, Becky Sharpe, has the same Achilles Heel. Blithely skipping through so many decades of necessity leads to a feeling of sketchiness in some… Read More »
VANITY FAIR – DVD
It’s worth investing in the DVD of Mira Nair’s adaptation of Thackery’s VANITY FAIR just to be able to immerse oneself again in the lush visual feast that it offers. There’s also Reese Witherspoon’s passionate, intelligent performance as Becky Sharpe that marks a milestone in her career. To see her firmly leave behind the image and… Read More »