The Caveman's Valentine (film)
From AwardAnnals
| Film: | The Caveman's Valentine |
|---|---|
| Director: | Kasi Lemmons |
| Genres: | |
| Distributor: | Universal Studios |
| Find it: |
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Samuel L. Jackson gives a virtuoso performance in this intensely visual suspense film. Jackson stars as Romulus Ledbetter, a brilliant musician whose mental demons have driven him onto the streets. When Ledbetter finds a murdered man outside the cave he calls home one morning, he is compelled to find the real killer. While interesting enough to hold the viewer’s attention, the mystery of The Caveman’s Valentine is a distant third to Jackson’s performance and the film’s sumptuous visuals. The film is gorgeously shot, and lights and abstract images are effectively used to show Romulus’s beautiful but tormented inner world. While the plot does take a silly leap of logic or two, Romulus’s illness and the strain it puts on his family are sensitively and realistically handled. His all-too-real run-ins with his policewoman daughter are nicely contrasted with his visions of his ex-wife, who serves as a combination of Greek chorus and muse. If one is willing to suspend a little disbelief here and there, this picture is well worth a look. —Ali Davis
Related works
The Caveman's Valentine: Music From The Motion Picture
With the encouragement of director Spike Lee, modern-jazz trumpeter-composer Terence Blanchard branched out into films, first as an actor and musician (including work in Do the Right Thing, School Daze, and Mo’ Better Blues) then full-time scoring with Jungle Fever and Malcolm X. Lee’s good judgment has paid off again with the score to this murder mystery revolving around a mentally ill classical musician (Samuel L. Jackson) and his efforts to unravel the crime. Blanchard’s score is a true revelation, a sophisticated musical…
There has never been a hero quite like Romulus Ledbetter, a Juilliard-trained pianist who makes his home in a cave in New York’s Inwood Park. There has never been a debut novelist quite like George Dawes Green with his singular gift for marrying malevolence with poetry, tragedy with uproariousness, and madness with lucidity. And there has never been a novel quite like The Caveman’s Valentine, a rich, idiosyncratic achievement that is by turns suspenseful, deeply moving, and hilarious.
Romulus Ledbetter wasn’t always homeless. He once was a devoted husband, father, and musician with a bright future. He now forages for food in the trash cans of the city’s better neighborhoods and wages a strenuous one-man war against Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant, an evil—and imaginary—power broker who is responsible for society’s ills, as well as the sinister Y- and Z-rays that are corrupting humankind. Then one wintry night, Rom finds a corpse at the mouth of his cave that rouses his well-defined sense of ethics and lauches him on an obsessive quest for anwers. Forced to reconnect with…
