The Wings of the Dove (1997)
Directed by Iain Softley
Kate is secretly betrothed to a struggling journalist, Merton Densher. But she knows her Aunt Maude will never approve of the match, since Kate's deceased mother has lost all her money in a marriage to a degenerate opium addict. When Kate meets a terminally ill American heiress named Millie traveling through Europe, she comes up with a conniving plan to have both love and wealth.
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What critics compared The Wings of the Dove to
Each frame is an exquisite composition by Portuguese cinematographer Eduardo Serra, who made the 2004 Oscar ballot for this movie and was nominated previously for "The Wings of the Dove."
Delft, Holland never looked so luxurious, even on a frosty wintry day, as it does in Girl With a Pearl Earring, one of the most beautifully mounted films of the year, thanks in large part to the stunning cinematography by Eduardo (The Wings of the Dove and What Dreams May Come) Serra and vibrant production design by Ben Van Os, who helped create the cold-to-the touch look of last year's Max, Menno Meyjes's debut that created a disturbing portrait of a pre-dictator Hitler as a young artist.
By reproducing Vermeer's own aesthetic, with its odd combination of close, compassionate detail and rigid, highly deterministic, and sometimes surreptitious sightlines, Webber and his brilliant cinematographer Eduardo Serra ( The Wings of the Dove , Unbreakable ) are able to communicate all of these shifting balances and advantages without much recourse to dialogue.
Every shot in the film looks like it was taken right out of a painting from Delft, Holland circa 1665 thanks to Director of Photography Eduardo Serra (“The Wings of the Dove”) and Production Designer Ben Van Os (“The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover”).
It's sort of like "The Wings of the Dove," if Henry James had had the urge to spice up his story with scenes of sushi-spewing, jokes about transvestites, a sidetrip to the sperm bank and a riveting subplot about the search for an amputated testicle.
The helmer of Backbeat, Hackers, and The Wings of the Dove paints Charles Leavitt's overly sentimental study of the human condition (based on a book by Gene Brewer) with broad references to The Fisher King (also borrowing that film's co-star Jeff Bridges), another compassionate, humorous glimpse of the thin line between sanity and insanity.
Director Iain Softley (The Wings of the Dove) takes it slow -- too slow at times.
Director Iain Softley (who created such Jamesian beauty in ''The Wings of the Dove'') and screenwriter Charles Leavitt (who did what he could with ''The Mighty'') work hard to blur the answers, sometimes literally blurring focus.
His debut, the Beatle bio "Backbeat," as well as the more recent "The Wings of the Dove" also showcased the value of keeping potentially overwrought situations in check.
It's also somewhat fun how director Iain Softley ("The Wings of the Dove," "Hackers") and screenwriter Charles Leavitt ("The Mighty") manipulate the viewer into thinking and then wishing that the subject at hand - Prot - is really from another world, and then seemingly pull the rug out from under their feet.
Director Iain Softley ("The Wings of the Dove") takes two of America's finest actors and guides them through this amalgamation of "Awakenings" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with top notch technical competence.
Eduardo Serra, the cinematographer who made 1997's The Wings of the Dove so haunting, works similar wonders with his compositions here.
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While the women in the film are less represented (Jesse's wife is merely background mother and astonished, hysterical widow), Alison Elliott ("Wyatt Earp," "The Wings of the Dove") makes an impression as a tough as nails boarding house owner and Zooey Deschanel ("All the Real Girls," "Elf") performs a lovely saloon song as Ford's later life girl friend Dorothy Evans.
If director Iain Softley ("The Wings of the Dove," "K-Pax") was following his pattern, we were due for a good film this time around and while he doesn't exactly knock one out of the park, "The Skeleton Key," while not actually scary, features terrific Southern Gothic production design (John Beard, "The Wings of the Dove"), credible acting and a fairly effective twist ending.
Director Iain Softley ("The Wings of the Dove," "K-Pax") and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (who wrote "The Ring" and the unfortunate "The Ring Two," based on a pair of Japanese films) have fashioned a tremulously lush occult mousetrap for Caroline, unabashedly milking every convention of the genre to deliciously melodramatic effect.
He and director Iain Softley ("The Wings of the Dove") don't resort to overblown special effects to galvanize the visuals, instead selecting old-fashioned techniques such as contorted camera angles and moody lighting.
Adapted by Hossein Amini (best known for “The Wings of the Dove” and other highbrow literary fare) from James Sallis’ Los Angeles-set novel, “Drive” doesn’t quite know how to handle the character vacuum at its core, but compensates by surrounding its protag with a colorful supporting ensemble.
Instead, Refn -- working from the novel by James Sallis [ Amazon U.S. ] [ Amazon Canada ] [ Amazon U.K. ], adapted for the screen by Hossein Amini ( The Wings of the Dove ) -- seems intent on teasing us with the prospect that a Hollywood action movie might break out at any moment.
Refn's love of kinetic skullduggery meshes quite well with Drive's screenplay by Hossein Amini (The Four Feathers, The Wings of the Dove).
The screenplay, taken from a 2005 novel by the multi-talented crime writer, poet, and musician James Sallis, was written by Hossein Amini, who is better known for adapting classic tragic novels, including James Hardy’s Jude (directed by Michael Winterbottom in 1996) and Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove (directed by Iain Softley in 1997).
Adapted from James Sallis’ novel by Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove), the movie balances the pulpy action of pictures such as Point Blank with the sleek style of vintage Michael Mann (especially Thief and Miami Vice).
Refn and writer Hossein Amini (The Wings Of The Dove) deserve praise for the audacious way in which they’ve mixed genres.