Opera
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Movie Reviews of Opera
Movie Review: Swing'n'a Miss
Summary: 3 Stars
If there's one thing I look forward to in the mail, it's an Argento movie. I loved some of his other films and couldn't wait to grab this movie. In the end, the overall plot is wonderful, though poorly executed. All the characters' personalities seem a bit off, one way or another. Too stiff, too strange, etc. And then there are MANY loose ends that keep the viewer hoping they will be answered at the end, but they aren't (for example, the anniversary necklace/bracelet, what is its meaning?).
The actual plot itself, though, is superb. The twists and especially the final revelation of the killer himself are excellent, especially the manner in which they reveal him. The murders, or even the attacks (there are some where the people don't actually die), are just amazing and intense. I honestly wonder if I've seen such brutal murders anywhere else before.
I still like this movie and recommend it if you are a horror or Argento fan for at least the plot and murders, but the acting and characters may get you a tiny bit.
Also recommended: Suspiria, Deep Red, any other good slasher movie
***- 3 and a half stars -***
Movie Review: aka Terror at the Opera
Summary: 3 Stars
Murder scenes are very satisfying to gore fans. Not Argento's best but, if you are a fan of his I recommend you add this to your collection. Is entertaining but isn't a whole lot to ride home about, maybe a little to ride home about. It's overall a good film.Movie Review: Very pretty, but very lightweight.
Summary: 2 Stars
Opera (Dario Argento, 1987)
It is a matter of some debate where, exactly, Dario Argento's career began to go so horribly wrong. Pretty much every Argento fan I know is in agreement that he was consistently making fantastic films at least until 1977 (and his two finest, Profondo Rosso and Suspiria, are getting high-profile Hollywood reboots next year, with the latter directed by David Gordon Green and the former by no less a personage than Argento's pal George Romero). The fan base begins to drop around Inferno, which shares the cheesiness of Suspiria's ending but doesn't quite manage to pull it off as well as it was in that one. From there it's a gradual slide until you get to 1996 and The Stendahl Syndrome, which I've heard more than a few people say is his last good film. (There are still a few diehards who are willing to go to bat for Non Ho Sonno. I have yet to hear anyone try and defend anything he's done since The Card Player, with one exception: me. I thought Jenifer was a return to form, however short-lived. Otherwise, I'm in the camp that says the decline started in '80.) And thus we come to Opera (also known as Terror at the Opera), which sits right smack in the middle of the period of decline, and you'll hear quite a few Argento fans saying this was his last great one. There are also quite a few critics who say that Opera is the pinnacle of Argento's theatrical camerawork, that sort of oversaturated, cheesy, yet glorious style that defined Argento's movies starting right around Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). It was nominated for Best Film at Fantasporto 1990, which sounds prestigious until you realize that there were forty-nine other films nominated (and the nominees included such timeless gems as Clownhouse, Robot Jox, and The Toxic Avenger, Part II; the eventual winner, for the trivia-minded, was Mike Hodges' Black Rainbow). And the camera-work faction are right; there isn't a prettier Argento flick out there. But does it hold up as a film?
Co-written with longtime partner Franco Ferrini (who started working with Argento with Creepers), Opera is the tale of Betty (The Sea and the Weather's Cristina Marsillach), a young understudy who achieves success after a suspicious accident takes out the reigning diva. She soon realizes that there's a killer on the loose who seems tied to her in some way. This is confirmed when the killer forces Betty to watch some of his crimes using an ingenious device that will not allow her to close her eyes during the crimes. Eventually the police get close, but will they find the killer before he escalates things?
To me, the cheesiness starts overpowering the movie pretty soon after we start, and while it does let up on occasion, there never seems to be a point where the story could stand on its own without the gore scenes. That was the big thing that separated Argento from the giallo standard; earlier movies like Four Flies on Grey Velvet and Profondo Rosso had strong, well-written stories that could have easily stood without the gore (as opposed to more conventional giallo tales like Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling or Bido's The Bloodstained Shadow, where the thrill of watching is intimately tied to the violence). Here, the best scenes in the movie by far are the death scenes (at least one person in the film is said to have taken the role specifically because of its death scene, though telling you who would constitute a major spoiler), and the rest of it exists to build up to those. (Contrast, say, the comedic romance subplot between David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi in Profondo Rosso.) As well, the movie was plagued by problems (Argento has stated that Marsillach is the most difficult actress he'd ever worked with, and was himself convinced after a death on set that a Macbeth-style curse plagued the production), and whether enough of them were overcome to come up with a coherent, workable movie is another question for debate.
Opera is probably the Argento film that is most divisive among fans and critics alike. It has both its rabid defenders and its withering attackers. At the end of it all, I find myself in neither camp, and in all honesty I'd probably have rated it higher had it come from a director who I was less sure was capable of turning out masterpieces (seven Argento films are in my top thousand; two are in the top thirty alone). It's watchable if you're into that sort of thing, as are most giallo movies, but it's nothing special. **
Movie Review: Not really sure what to think of this one...
Summary: 2 Stars
I am giving this movie 2 stars merely for the fact that it confused the HELL out of me and managed to leave me with way too many minor issues to truly love it.
The movie is about a young Opera understudy who finally gets a shot as the lead in a rather dramatic stage production of Macbeth, when the prima-donna star is hit by a car.
Argento is a HIGHLY skilled director and his movies are extremely eerie and visually stunning. Even the dizzying, odd angles that make you feel sick are there for a reason. He is an amazingly morbid creator of the macabre. A talented visionary who knows how to extract fear from a viewer. A master of horror.
However, Opera had WAY too many weird character reactions for me to truly love it.
For one, if you were tied up and forced to watch people get butchered while you had needles taped to your eye balls, would your first instinct be to run off and take a walk in the rain? The main character was WAYYYYYYY too nonchalant about the terror that was unfolding. Wouldn't you run and get help? Wouldn't you be a little more disturbed about what had just happened in front of your own very eyes? But, alas, she just takes a leisurely stroll in the rain and goes home to rest-Like nothing happened!
And what was up with the weirdo costume maker who is getting attacked and acting like she's being tickled? I've never seen a victim in a horror movie LESS scared than this woman-it was kind of strange and I'm still not sure if it was the actress or the actual scene that left me baffled.
Then there was the weird little girl who had a passage to the main characters apartment where she would spy on her and listen to her sing...and when our heroine finds this out she merely chuckles and shrugs it off....UMMMMM, wouldn't you be a little more upset if you found out someone had been spying on your private life at home all the time??? She sure wasn't!
If there is one thing Dario does well it's GORE! You watch his films expecting the worst of death-scenes...and he almost always delivers! He uses it in such APPROPRIATE ways...He doesn't use it just to be gory or gross people out. He uses it as a means to freak you out and show you how brutal death can actually be. The goriest of the scenes would be a knife stabbing upwards into a man's neck and you can see the blade cutting up through his mouth-Reminiscent of the Heart slicing scene in Suspiria. It was brutal! But, I never view his gore scenes and question why he did it or complain that it was too much.
I will always wonder if actual ravens were killed in the "raven massacre" scene. Some of that looked oddly real and I couldn't help but remember the mouse-eating scene in Inferno-where a cat kills and eats a live mouse (which you can see struggling in the mouth of the cat until it dies)-which always bothered me. But, I was glad those screeching ravens got some revenge at the end!
I could go on and on about scenes that bothered me....but, I won't. This movie would have gotten 3 maybe even 4 stars if not for those strange character issues and inconsistancies.
The end scene reminded me of The Sound Of Music with a twisted sister soundtrack. I didn't understand the heroine's "I LOVE NATURE!" outlook after her final attack. It was just odd. It did bring me flashbacks of Jennifer Connelly in Phenomena though.
Overall, It was a really weird movie to me and it left me a little empty inside. Give it a try if you have seen other Argento films and are familiar with his filmmaking.
Movie Review: If you've seen one Argento giallo, you've seen them all
Summary: 1 Stars
Dario Argento's "Opera" is a skillful piece of filmmaking, as are the vast majority of his movies. The central problem with Argento's giallos (and most giallos in general) is this: I've seen it all before. Basically, Argento hit upon a certain style (both in terms of plot and technique) a long time ago, and he's spent three decades repeating himself. If you want to experience Argento, you should START with "Deep Red" -- and you should STOP with "Deep Red." "Opera" is tedious because it's just like all of Argento's other giallos. If I want to see the same movie over and over again, I'll watch "Deep Red" again; watching "Opera" is a waste of time.