The Last Emperor Movie Review: 25 Years Ago

The Last Emperor was released in New York and Los Angeles 25 years ago last month, but received its wide release in December 1987. So I revisit the film in between the two months. Look for a new 25 Years Ago review later this month when I take a look at Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun.

What a strange film is Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. Twenty-five years later it still has a powerful resonance. It remains a gorgeous visual piece with remarkable costumes, art direction, and set decoration. It helps that the production was given unprecedented access by the Chinese government to film in the Forbidden City. I’m not sure any set could stand in as effectively for the real thing, which is imposing with its mammoth surrounding walls and impenetrable gates that keep the young emperor locked away for all of his youth. But here is a historical epic about a man who is not a hero. He made no great impact on a way of life, or any government, or even a great number of individuals for that matter. Although the story is about the man who happened to be the last imperial ruler of the old feudal China, it is really a historical view of a China in transition to a Republic and then a Communist state, with a passive hero at its center.

Movie Review: Gianni e le donne [The Salt of Life]

Gianni Di Gregorio’s second feature film The Salt of Life is billed as a comedy, but there’s an inherent sadness in this tale of a late middle aged Roman man taking a second stab in life at finding happiness through pleasures of the flesh. The film, written and directed by Di Gregorio, is a sequel to his 2010 comedy Mid-August Lunch. Not having seen the first film, I can attest that it’s hardly a prerequisite to enjoying the second.

I Am Love (Io sono l'amore) Movie Review: Italian Opera Imagined as 21st Century Drama

*This film made the festival circuit including Toronto in September and Sundance in January. It has opened commercially in several European countries and opens in limited release in the United States on 18 June.

Is there anything Tilda Swinton can’t do as an actress? She has graced the screen for more than two decades now (but with wide recognition only coming in the last ten years) with wonderful performances in roles as varied as an icy queen in The Chronicles of Narnia and a ruthless career lawyer in Michael Clayton for which she won an Oscar. Now she stars as Emma Recchi, a Russian émigré living in Milan, married into a wealthy family in the Italian film I Am Love (Io sono l’amore). But she out-streeps Meryl Streep by donning a Russian accent in a role that is spoken entirely in Italian with a smattering of Russian.