Brando.

"It's probably safe to say that Marlon Brando - a confounding, wildly talented movie star often tagged as the most influential film actor of the 20th century - would have detested Brando, the two-part tribute doc that Turner Classic Movies is running Tuesday and Wednesday," writes Robert Abele in the LA Weekly. "That doesn't mean Brando isn't entertaining for the rest of us, though. For starters, the package is anecdotal catnip for cinephiles, a greatest-hits parade of the Nebraska native's explosive stage beginnings, meteoric rise in film, on-set eccentricities, passion for political causes and mercenary approach to movie roles as he segued into a final act as a corpulent island poobah."

Updated through 5/2.

"Marlon Brando was simultaneously blessed and cursed, and, maybe worst of all, he also possessed a perversity that caused him to curse his blessings and embrace his curse," writes Mick Farren in the LA CityBeat. "When his power was flowing, Brando was mesmerizing - and Brando provides enough archival material, some previously unseen, to demonstrate it."

Update: "While his honest work in Bernarndo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris allowed autobiographical elements to seep into the frame, it's a wonder he never worked with more independent filmmakers, which leaves us to contemplate what could've been," writes Eric Kohn at the Reeler.

Update, 5/1: "Brando fans may watch this program, as we watch the Brando movies or read the Brando books, in hopes of deciding the question of whether the big man was mostly a genius or mostly a fat fool. A decisive clue is not here," writes Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times.

Updates, 5/2: "Brando is most original and inspiring when it looks at Brando's other work," writes Cynthia Fuchs at PopMatters. "As [Bobby] Seale remembers, 'If I said, 'Constitutional democratic civil human rights,' I mean, it lit him up.'"

"While Brando is a fine primer—running, with clarity and care, through Stanley Kowalski, Marc Antony, Terry Malloy, Sky Masterson, and onward to Don Vito, Col. Kurtz, and poor old Jor-El—it also gives pause to the long-standing fan," writes Troy Patterson in Slate.

Michael Guillén talks with David Thomson about the doc and its subject.

Posted by dwhudson at April 27, 2007 7:09 AM