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Rating:  -
Sorry Polish bros. The Coens already exist and they're a lot more talented. The reviewer from Texas who said this was boring is unfortunately telling the truth. This movie is one of those films that is just trying so hard to be quirky, strange, interesting, avant garde, whatever the hell you want to call it that it ends up being the most pretentious piece of crap I've seen in recent and long term memory. What a waste of this cast. The angel sequences with Daryl Hannah and Anthony Edwards after a few scenes were just painfully awful to watch. The pace was unecessarily slow and this may have made a good short film on HBO or a similar cable channel. As beautiful as the cinematography is of the surrounding countryside it just can't hold up this film which has as much resonance and interest as a cloud of dust. I HATED this movie. I would rather have to continuously watch The Fast and the Furious clockwork orange style that even glance at this gold plated turd again. Sorry, that was an insult to good hard working turd.
Rating:  -
Over NORTHFORK's 103-minute run time, certainties are few and far between.
1. A dam has been built that will flood the town of Northfork; 2. Three 2-man teams dressed in black are sent out by the state to evacuate the few residents that have refused to leave the inundation area; 3. Each team member gets 1.5 acres of lakeside property if the team's evacuation quota is met; 4. A dying orphan, Irwin (Duel Farnes), is in the care of a priest (Nick Nolte); 5. One of the evacuation teams, Walter (James Woods) and son Willis (Mark Polish), must disinter the coffin of Walter's wife and move it to higher ground; 6. Four angels inhabit a deserted house waiting for a lost angel to appear.
Filmed in Montana, there are some beautifully photographed images in muted tones that the viewer may find entrancing. Beyond that, however, the pervasive and heavily applied symbolism make the overall storyline virtually incoherent. Year 2001's MULHOLLAND DRIVE was positively lucid in comparison.
Filmmakers Michael and Mark Polish obviously had a vision to share. Too bad it wasn't with the viewer that's expected to pay good money to see it. (Gee, what a concept!)
Rating:  -
Northfork is a very personal film. This is a very important fact to know before viewing or reviewing the film. The Polish brothers, Michael and Mark have invested a lot of their efforts, thoughts and experiences in their film, and as such like most personal films, it has a certain originality and a particular identity that might not be to everyone's tastes, but nevertheless it does not take any of its beauty.
You know it is a personal film due to the fact that it is an ode to Middle America,most specifically to Montana the home of the Polish brothers, the vastness, the big skies, the progress of the age that was creeping slowly all over America(set in the middle 50s) and the decay and death that goes hand in hand with time of incredible change.
Moreover, the difficulty that the brothers found financing their film, shows that the studios still lack the nerve and creative impulse when a script does not contain sex and digital action.
I was interested to watch Northfork mainly because of the brilliant cast, James Woods, Nick Nolte, Peter Coyote, and Daryl Hannah, without knowing what to expect, being the first Polish brother film I see.
And I was totally captivated by the whole experience, from the very first scene, with the floating coffin, up to the last with the gorgeous and forboding emptiness of the Montana plains (that have inspired many artists, most notably George Winston).
With the last days of a town about to be flooded by the construction of a new dam, and the few remaining inhabitants who refuse to leave, fantasy and reality collide effortelssly:
the evacuation teams, a cross between door to door evangelists and mob enforcers trying to persuade the last of the Northfork living to leave by reason or force, and save them and the dead people of the town in the cemetry from doom, not unlike Noah's biblical flood,
the priest (played by Nick Nolte, and giving in my opinion his best performance since Affliction) who somehow is resigned to his fate,
the group of eccentric angels who are looking for a lost and unknown angel,
and the dying sick child, who has visions of being one and has his amputated 'wings' to prove it..
these characters all move on the fringes of the great incoming catastrophe.
There are many unforgettable scenes in Northfork,
ordering food in an empty diner, persuading a religious zealot with two wives of leaving by showing him angel's wings as a sign from God,the bargaining between the little boy and the angels regarding the number of miles he wants to travel,and when he finally goes with them,he boards a plane that will take him away from the all sufferings he endured.This is all very touching and superior stuff.
But what strikes you the most in Northfork is the scenery. It is simply breathtaking! A beauty that you know is about to disappear very soon, one that you will visually as well as mentally be lost in.
Northfork admittedly, as I said above is not a film for everyone, but I think we have been given so much commercial films lately that the tastes of the new generation of moviegoers, brought up by the MTV-few seconds attention span-culture, have changed and find such personal little gems very alien, pretentious or even 'boring'(exactly like listening to commercial pop and garbage for years and when you hear Beethoven's music it will sound alien and boring too).
Northfork is a poetic and personal film,that deals with life, decay, death, hope and rebirth,with limited choices and distant horizons and devouring yet beautiful vastness ,a creative and original film that should apprecaited and assessed as such.
Rating:  -
I rented this movie tonight because it seemed interesting---and it was. However, I watched some scenes numerous times thinking that I must have missed something, but no, it's just really weird. You know how sometimes it takes a while into a movie for everything to come together? Well that never happens here. The whole concept deals with death, but the scenes change so often that you can't really tell what's real or what's a dream. What was that weird monster thing that got shot by the tranquilizer gun? Anyway, I'd recommed watching it, just for the sake that it is different, but when you start to get a little confused, don't expect to get any answers.
Rating: -
This is a film I wanted to like but couldn't. As it turns out, there was nothing there to like, so I don't feel so bad.
I knew I was in trouble when the preacher, in the begining of the film, misread the Bible when retelling the flood story (the "bow" God sets in the air is a rainbow, not a bow (rhymes with wow) as in ship.) And why do they call the preacher "Father?" There is nothing at all to indicate that he or his followers are Catholic (nor would they likely be in that area). And nobody builds an outhouse with a cross on it--particularly in the Bible Belt. The Christianity in this film is like a pastiche written by somebody who has no inkling of what Christianity is about. The writer must also be young-- men back then didn't wear hats indoors! I also suspect the writer is from NYC or California because 1.5 acres of property would not have been a sizeable award in that era--let alone that locale--even if it were lakefront!
This film has more loose ends than a pair of worn out socks. Why does the child have a foreign accent? What is that strange creature (a.k.a. man on stilts)? Who are the "angels"? Why does one of them have a head full of safety pins? Why does another have interchangable hands? Why is another dressed as a drag queen? What was that scene in the diner all about? Why do the men in black give out wings?
And then there is the bad Foley--the plague of movies nowadays. Why does everything have to make a sound? Somebody touches a feather, and you hear crinkling noises. Somebody touches skin and you hear "shhhhhippp." Footsteps on open ground can be heard from 50 feet away. Too bad the sound people didn't pay more attention to reality (that musical door chime would have sounded like crazy when the door was open and closed).
The score? It was lovely until they brought in cheap Casio synthesizer sonorities. And enough with the digital-synth-as-music-box!
Far from "A Masterpiece! A Visionary Epic!" as the sell-out critic Roger Ebert squeals, Northfork is a classic exercise in pretension. Characters are cardboard, scenes go nowhere, there is no real plot, and if you look very carefully, you'll notice that most of the "artsy" editing is done in the first 20 minutes and then abandoned--as though they wanted you to know the movie was "art," then got it over with.
This silly, puffed-up piece of trash ranks among the worst movies of recent memory. Flood the town already!
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