Images
|
DVD Cover Information Actor: Cathryn Harrison, Hugh Millais, Marcel Bozzuffi, Rene Auberjonois, Susannah York Director: Greg Carson, Robert Altman Brand: Images DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen Picture Format: 2.35:1 Running Time: 101 minutes DVD Release Date: 2003-09-16 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: MGM (Video & DVD) |
| New | New Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $48.30 | ||
| Used | Used Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $35.86 |
Your purchase is protected by the A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee. Amazon.com automatically transfers your payment to the merchant so you'll never need to pay a merchant directly. Amazon.com A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee covers both the delivery of your item and its condition upon receipt.
Movie Reviews of Images
Movie Review: Ambitious thriller that fails due to heavy handedness.
Summary: 3 Stars
'Images' is one of those films with a big reputation that has always been quite difficult to get to see.
I read about this film in the excellent 'DVD Delerium Volume 2' book -and if you love real cult movies then you must get these books kids - and it sounded fascinating: a woman lapsing into schizophrenia keeps hallucinating (or does she), seeing and hearing people from her past who are/are not really there.
The seventies was a particularly great time for such films ('Blood Sisters' and 'Symptoms' are two classic examples), but despite its ambition, 'Images' does not quite hang together.
Susannah York is excellent and the photography (the film is mostly set in Ireland) is generally breathtaking, while the quality of the DVD itself varies, though this may be down to deliberate grain in some scenes. But the film itsel lacks tautness, being a good fifteen minutes too long and it is too heavily laden with intention - the music, by John Williams (before he became boring) and the brilliant Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta (whose best music features heavily in Roeg's 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'-and all of this music has never been issued on CD, which is a disgrace) is excellent but there is far too much of it and after a while its disturbing qualities become tedious. Together with the generally poor mono sound, fairytale voiceover monologues from York and the cardboard supporting characters ( a husband who cannot keep saying 'goddamn it' and 'son of a bitch' repeatedly while wearing driving gloves, a brutish Oliver Tobias type artist who gropes at York constantly and a largely indecipherable French ex-lover), the merits of the film become lost in its excessive carping on the same points without moving the story along. The mono sound is poor particularly during York's monologues and the French guys' inaudible mutterings (harden those consonants, man !)
Don't get me wrong, I like obsessive film- makers -Argento, Cronenberg, Roeg, Leone and Kubrick all fascinate me, no matter how overblown or repetitive they become, but against directors like these, Altman just does not cut it.
I can't say I'm an Altman fan (I have seen a few of his pictures and don't really see what the fuss is about him -unlike many auteurs who are at their best when repeatedly focussing on their personal obsessions, Altman has cast his net far and wide with the result that his directorial character is somewhat vague and undefinied -in other words, he could just be a superior Hollywood hack). Proof of this comes in his endless focussing on depending pendant-like baubles throughout the film, which seems to be the limit of his 'Images' imagination.
In short, with some judicious editing and improved sound, this could have been a great film. But Altman is not Roeg, (...). Otherwise, worth having only for the lovely photography.