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Kundun

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A further waste of Martin Scorsese's time and ours. This stuffy "prestige picture" on the life of the fourteenth Dalai Lama up through his flight from Tibet with the Red Chinese nipping at his heels (and through four different actors in the central role: an unnatural acceleration of the reincarnation cycle) drops the chew-your-ear-off narration on which Scorsese has recently relied. But it substitutes a sort of expository, instructional, reportorial dialogue that suggests the real movie is taking place somewhere off screen: "Your Holiness, the Chinese have invaded" or "Holiness, the Chinese have moved their camp. The oracle's route is safe for us now." The action, if that word does not mislead, is set in an ivory-tower arena from which we can gain no sense of the people of the country or their daily life outside the walls of the monastery. (It almost makes you willing to sit still and listen to the Communists' side of things.) And although there is an abundance of native dance, courtly pageantry, grand entrances, desert caravans, sand paintings of cake-frosting color and thickness, and so forth, there is a maddening absence of anything that might be called narrative incidents or events, anything that might be recalled afterwards as such. Scorsese's main mission here as a filmmaker would appear to be to find out whether or not his customarily restless, aggressive, muscle-flexing camerawork can all by itself manufacture an event, a happening, a scene, a John Ford cavalry adventure, an Anthony Mann sword-and-sandal epic, what-have-you. The answer is unequivocally and painfully not. And the audience's most logical option, just so the time does not go completely to waste, just so there is a feeling of something getting done, would be to match the camera's calisthenics with some isometric exercises of their own in their seats. It makes a kind of sense, in a movie already courting monotony, to have enlisted Philip Glass to underscore the mood with characteristic salvos of his recording-studio throb and wobble -- the sound of someone fiddling with the volume knob. The kind of sense it makes, to be more exact, is that of pouring salt on a wound. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd

Rated PG-13

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4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
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