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TwilightRating:
Release Date: 01 April, 2003 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $9.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: Complete Cast (16 total) |
Twilight Reviews
A Pleasure Movie
Twilight drips atmosphere. Even though it's a contemporary tale, it has the feel of something set forty or fifty years ago. But stylistic photography and solid acting are so good and Twilight is a good movie.Twilight comes as a relief. Set in contemporary Los Angeles, it's a noir, plain and simple, not a twist on the genre or a dissertation.A collaboration between Benton and novelist Richard Russo the screenplay uses a detective story as a pretext for a film about aging and death.Twilight hums with the pleasure the actors take in their work. Time and again, they come up with gestures or line readings that seem to contain the entirety of their characters.
Nostalgic, melancholy mystery saved by good performances
Retired policeman, former P.I., and recovering drunk Harry Ross (Paul Newman), lives above the garage on the sequestered Los Angeles estate of his one-time employers - movie stars Jack and Catherine Ames (Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon). Jack Ames is gravely ill, and Harry is strongly attracted to Jack's immensely sympathetic wife. But matters take a dark turn when Jack asks Harry to deliver a package. Jack is being blackmailed, and Harry soon discovers that his friends' past may be darker than anyone suspects ... This rather melancholy mystery feels like an exercise in nostalgia. There's nothing wrong with that, per se - and it does suit the mortality theme - but it doesn't exactly make for enthralling viewing. Benton relies on power casting, noirish touches and good old-fashioned sensibilities to make this film exude an aura of class it doesn't quite deserve. The plot is thoroughly predictable, so it's really more a tissue of nostalgic suggestions than good storytelling. Similarly, Elmer Bernstein's languorous score deftly evokes Old Hollywood, but it isn't what the film needs (stirring music is used in the trailer to much better effect). What it lacks in narrative gusto, however, it more than makes up for in performances. Newman and Hackman are always good, and are capably supported by James Garner and Stockard Channing in solid minor roles. But Susan Sarandon is the standout as Jack's elegantly manipulative femme-fatale of a wife. She shows that if someone is ever dumb enough to mount a remake of "Sunset Boulevard", she's a shoo-in for the Norma Desmond part.
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