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It's sweet as all get out with great affection for its characters and for those reasons I REALLY wanted to like it but I just could not shake off the cloak of boredom that enveloped me from the film's first scene. The characters, while occasionally touching and even at times charming, are just not very interesting and director/co writer Nancy Savoca doesn't give them much to do beyond being generically Italian. There is also in the dialogue and cinematography an annoying ersatz Fellini by way of "Marty" vibe that makes you wish you were watching the real thing rather than this second hand stuff. After about an hour I pulled the plug. Solid C.

This is a wonderful Dylan music video (including great but lesser known works like "Farewell Angelina" and "When My Ship Comes In") and a passionate love story (Dylan's romance with himself) that is, alas, wrapped around a rather standard biopic. Unlike director and co writer James Mangold's much better musical biopic of Johnny Cash (who makes an arresting cameo in this film courtesy of a fine turn by an actor I'd not known before named Boyd Holbrook) there is no inner conflict that the subject must resolve. Dylan is pretty much sure of himself and his artistic course throughout the film and thus Mangold and his co scenarist Jay Cocks have the burden of coming up with a dramatically compelling outer conflict. And their choice of Dylan versus The Folk Establishment, as personified by Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax, is, to put it kindly, a bit on the bland side. Better is the admiration/dislike relationship between Dylan and Joan Baez, mainly because Monica Barbaro, in my opinion, gives the best performance in the film, by turns sensual, scornful, and sad. Unfortunately, Mangold and Cocks soft peddle Dylan/Baez and instead promote the extremely dull pairing of Dylan and Suze Rotolo which wastes Elle Fanning's considerable talent by constantly having her look either hurt or wistful or both. Still, the. Performance of Barbaro and the excellent work of Edward Norton as a slightly priggish but still likable Pete Seeger, to mention nothing of Timothee Chalamet's ability to channel the voice and self centered persona of Dylan, lift this film above the mediocrity line. B minus.

A rather unremarkable neo noir. Aside from the great cinematographer Robert Burks, of "Vertigo" fame, revisiting his favorite city and this time providing a grimier, if less disturbing, more down at heel, night time look there is nothing that grips you or even mildly grabs your interest aside, of course, from how incredibly hot Ann Margaret is. Director Ralph Nelson's mood and pacing tells me he'd much rather be with Sidney P and the nuns down in Arizona. The action scenes are on the lackluster side as are the performances. Of the cast only Zekial Marko, (who also adapted his novel), playing an emotionally checked out junkie killer with un-nerving realism, stands out. Jack Palance, Van Heflin and Ms. Margaret are merely ok, Tony Musante and John Davis Chandler try too hard as psycho villains and Alain Delon, as the previous reviewer noted, is on the dull side. C plus.