Disclaimers: Degraded copy. Kind of an artsy movie, some will find it to be painfully slow but I did not find it to be pretentious at all. Don't expect things to "wrap themselves up", shots to change every 2 seconds, or to have a full understanding of the characters. Don't take it too seriously,
have fun. If the stock-broker looks familiar, that's Steve Lack!...there's a little movie called "Scanners" he was also in. He mostly paints now.
Probably the most maligned American Playhouse production ever aired, All the Vermeers in New York inspired unanimous contempt from TV reviewers. This 1990 anti-rhapsody in Manhattan landscapes forewarned its viewers of a tedious experience, and People magazine said it was "as exciting as watching a painting dry." What they objected to as
"arty" may have had something to do with Jost's static photography or minutes-long lyrical interludes. Composed in, on top of, and around steel and stone urban monuments--as opposed to the warm and unabashed human subjects of Vermeer--Jost's brash depiction of a post-Reagan-era Manhattan and its inhabitants (at various turns a usurious art dealership, a cutthroat Wall Street brokerage, and the superficialities of the New York dating scene) may make Woody Allen's Manhattan seem like a scenic flight in positive-thinking guru Tony Robbins's helicopter, but Jost's dramatic interest isn't in mere exposé. A stock trader's lust for the killer deal is juxtaposed with his obsessions for a rare painting and later for a homesick, unemployed French actress (Emannuelle Chaulet). He spies her in a room looking at the same painting--but what they are looking at becomes, in the psychological context of the film, as mysterious and elusive as what they are looking for. Jost's most expensive movie to date--a mere $250,000--turned out to be the most virulent of his unflinching critiques of the destructive powers of materialism in the American--or, by the romantic and historical associations he provides, European--psyche.
-Christopher Chase, Amazon.com
Quote:
"I hated VERMEERS. I found it to be self-indulgent, vacuous, irritating, boring, and pretentious. About a quarter of the audience disliked it enough to walk out before the end...This film won the L. A. Film Critics Award for Best Independent Film. I hate to think what the competition must have been like."
- George V. Reilly, Internet Movie Database
Last edited by bri on Sun May 20, 2012 11:27 pm; edited 4 times in total
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