Check out the new Boyfriend of the Week write-up: http://megwood.com.
I almost went with someone old and bald, but I thought maybe this year for the holidays, I’d give you a guy with a fantastically lickable jaw. AND BOY, DID I.
Don’t forget to come back here for comments. You know the drill! Have a safe and happy holiday season and I’ll be back in a day or two to tell you all about the movie Avatar.
xoxo
meg
Have you ever seen a movie that was so amazingly put together — so thought-out, so intentional, so beautiful — that when it was over, you started to think everything you are doing with your entire life is a complete waste of time? I had that experience about four times this past weekend, and this is the movie that started it all off (the other three were Orson Welles movies, but I’ll get to that in my next post).
This Spanish film is absolutely — argh. I was completely stunned by it. It’s so quiet and simple, so planned, so thoughtful, and sometimes so intensely moving I could barely stand watching. Ana Torrent, who plays the main character (a six year-old girl also named Ana), is breathtakingly adept at using her face to express emotions and there were times in this movie when a simple look from her completely broke my heart. The minute I finished watching it, I immediately restarted it so I could watch it again. And I would’ve gone for a third round too if I hadn’t decided that was just too ridiculous even for me.
The story is, on the surface, fairly simple. It’s set in a small Spanish village in 1940, right after the end of the Spanish Civil War. The main character is the aforementioned Ana, who lives in an enormous, echoingly-empty house with her older sister Isabel, her father (a beekeeper and inventor/philosopher), and her mother (painfully distracted a good portion of the time by the agony of being separated from her lover by the war).
As the film opens, the 1931 film Frankenstein has just come to town and Ana and her sister both go see it. Instead of being terrified by the story, in particular the famous scene in which the monster kills the little girl, Ana seems enthralled by it. She asks her sister over and over why the monster killed the little girl and why he was then killed by the villagers. Why, why? Her sister eventually tells her the monster ISN’T dead. That he’s a spirit who lives in an empty — what was that, a farmhouse? — in the middle of a big field outside their village. Isabel tells Ana he’ll take human form if she calls to him, and Ana, enraptured by this idea, begins to go to the farmhouse each day, calling out to him, “Yo soy Ana, Yo soy Ana,” to try to bring him out.
At the same time, a Republican soldier on the lam from the victorious Francoists leaps off a train and injures his leg. He manages to make his way to that farmhouse, where he holes up for a few days. Of course, Ana finds him there and immediately assumes he’s the monster in human form. Unafraid, she begins to take care of him, bringing him food and clothes. A few days later, however, the Francoists find and kill him, leaving behind only a trace of bullets and blood for Ana to find.
What happens next is hard to explain — intentionally so, I think — and is open to vast amounts of interpretation. And I loved that about it. Because what happens next is essentially rooted in Ana’s own confusion about life, human nature, war, death, and monsters, and her confusion translates directly into OUR confusion in a way that somehow manages to be more profound than frustrating. But it wasn’t even really the story of this film that so pulled me in. It was the visuals and the quietness. It’s been a long time since I saw a movie that was this QUIET — I don’t even know exactly what I mean by that, because I don’t think I’m specifically talking about sound. That said, the sounds in this film are also completely mesmerizing. There’s almost no music — instead what we get is the gentle hum of bees and the constant low-level whoosh of wind rushing over an open field. The sounds of the world.
In a lot of ways, this movie reminded me of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, another movie about thoughtful children that moves deliberately and takes even the smallest of details seriously. There’s a scene in Beehive when Ana comes into her bedroom to find someone (I won’t say who) lying dead on the floor. What she does when she discovers the body — the way she talks to it, moves its arms, the way she hesitates, the look on her face — it was just so CORRECT. So exactly what a six year-old would do. So heartbreakingly spot-on. How does a six year-old actress have the self-awareness it would take to be able to make those expressions and halt in those hesitations so correctly? I had the same reaction to Kåre Hedebrant in Let the Right One In — you can’t pull those kinds of physical expressions off without a masterful grasp on the ramifications of human emotion. How do they do it, these little, little kids? I don’t have that kind of grasp now and I’ve lived six or seven times as long as they have. I just — I was floored.
The look of this film is also stunning: the lighting in the house that highlights its miserable emptiness, the broad shots of the vastness of the field surrounding the farmhouse, the look into the well as Ana drops a rock down it, the shots of outsides of buildings with handwritten signs and war-torn crumbles, the flush of heat on the face of Ana’s mother as she sits in front of a fire and systematically burns all the letters to (from?) her lost lover (which reminds me, oh argh, argh, Ana’s mother’s agony, it just so dug its way right into me). Then there are all the metaphors – the beehive-like aspect of both Ana’s house and the entire village, everyone’s emotions so subdued by the smoke of war. Ana’s ultimate buzzing flight. And the whole concept of what makes a monster, a challenging question at any time (a little To Kill a Mockingbird here, I’d say), but certainly twice as complicated in the aftermath of a war.
I think of myself as a creative person at times. I like to write. I play music. Sometimes I even do stuff like paint or take photographs. But when I see art like this, it never fails to put me in my place. I think, yes, I am leaving things behind that are meaningful and have a place. And then I see something like this and no. No, I am not. If I make something in my lifetime that is even a tenth as beautiful as this film, maybe then I will be able to say I made a mark.
Don’t hold your breath.
[Netflix me (available on Watch Now) | Buy me]
Genre: Foreign, Drama
Cast: Ana Torrent, Isabel Telleria, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Teresa Gimpera
I’m working on the next Boyfriend write-up, so I know the blog’s been a bit lazy this week. To keep you entertained, check out this hilarious MacGyver Cat video. Oh my god, I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard! Awesome!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/11/badass-cat-stars-in-macgy_n_388146.html
I saw the trailer for this film in the theater recently and was pretty intrigued by it. For one thing, I love a good scary movie set in a spooky house, and for another, if it stars Tom Noonan, I can be sure it’s going to give me the creeps. Because, and I mean no disrespect to you, Mr. Noonan, because you are an excellent actor and everything, sir, but dude, you are friggin’ creeparoo. Good god, y’all.
When I saw that this movie, which is in theaters now, could also be rented from Amazon via my much-beloved Roku box, I resisted at first. They’ve started to offer newly released (to theaters) movies periodically at Amazon and through other On Demand services, and while it’s a nice idea, they cost about the same as seeing the movie on the big screen. Given the equal option, I’d rather make the trek out.
But the other night I found myself home alone, in the mood, and without transportation, so I decided to give it a whirl. Big mistake.
As it turns out, I think this movie can probably only be appreciated on the big screen. In my opinion, the main character of this film is the house itself — it’s certainly not any of the actual people, who are just ridiculously dull horror flick clichés — and on the small screen, the house isn’t as great as I think maybe it could’ve been. Maaaaaybe it could’ve been. It’s big and spooky and full of interesting things, but they were hard to see on my small, dark screen. Blown up huge in a theater, I think the house would’ve created a better feeling of creepy enclosure. And had it pulled that off, it might’ve made the first 80 minutes of this 96-minute movie (during which almost nothing of any real import happens) effectively boring instead of excruciatingly boring.
The story is about a young woman named Samantha (Jocelin Donahue, an 8.5 on the Blah Scale for me, I’m afraid), who has taken a babysitting job for the evening in a big house in the middle of nowhere in the woods.
First mistake (on Samantha’s part): Location, location, location!
When she knocks on the door, who should answer but Tom Noonan! (And let me tell you this, if I ever go to a big spooky house in the middle of nowhere in the woods and Tom Friggin’ Noonan answers the door, I am running in the other direction without so much as a “Loved you in The Man with One Red Shoe!”). He explains that, sorry, he lied in the ad for the job — he doesn’t have any children. What he really needs is someone to watch his elderly mother for four hours. And he’s desperate. He’ll pay anything. How’s $400?
Second mistake: Sound insanely too good to be true? Then it is both of those things. Too good to be true. AND INSANE.
Third mistake: Creepy guy starts talking Mommy? Time. To. Go.
Samantha takes the job and we then join her for the next 70 minutes as she pokes around the house, completely bored. And while I could see the filmmakers were trying to use this quiet time with dramatic purpose — to lull us a bit, to let the dark walls of the house sort of slowly creep in around us — it was just way too much lulling for me, over all. I was practically lulled straight into a nap, frankly.
The only things keeping me awake were the many, many elements that made no sense. Let’s start with the fact the house seemed primarily lit by the coming-through-the-windows blast of one hell of a bright moon. Why is that an issue? Because the whole reason Samantha was needed as a babysitter in the first place was so the Noonans could go watch the impending total lunar eclipse. (Apparently, they needed to drive into the city for that, because everybody knows you can’t see astronomical phenomena from way out in the middle of nowhere in the woods. (Wait, what?))
Another thing that made me tip my head “Oh, really?”-style was when Samantha knocks over a vase and then dashes immediately to the very spot in the house where the broom and dustpan are kept. Nice trick! I can’t even find those two items in my own house, and I live there! And then, while sweeping up the broken glass, she’s suddenly drawn to a closet down the hall. Why? Because opening closets in spooky houses is SPOOOOOKY! Opening the door, creeeeeeeak, she finds, gasp! The fur coats Noonan’s wife had said were in the basement! OH MY GOD, SHE LIED ABOUT THE FUR COATS!
Wait, I’m sorry. Why is that. . . oh, nevermind.
When the action finally does start — it turns out Noonan and his family are religious wackos who want to sacrifice Samantha or knock her up with a devil baby or something — it simply doesn’t do a good enough job to make it feel like all that waiting was worth it. Samantha does get to run around in a white shift soaked completely in the blood they were trying to make her drink — that’s always good, creepy fun. But for the most part, the last 15 minutes are just a silly chase scene through the house featuring three idiot bad guys and their extremely dumb prey. It’s like an amalgam of every dumb horror-movie-character mistake ever made, and despite the fact it was clear this film was supposed to be an homage, of sorts, to 80’s horror flicks, I don’t think this was being done on purpose.
Examples: Samantha runs up the stairs instead of out the front door. She knocks out the guy with the gun, but doesn’t TAKE the gun. The bad lady turns her back on a subdued Sam without first disarming her. The bad guy talks first, plans to shoot later. Eighth mistake. Ninth mistake. Tenth. I would’ve been hoarse from yelling at every one of these characters for fifteen straight minutes, as they compounded incredibly stupid error upon incredibly stupid error, but to be honest, I just didn’t CARE.
This was the best you could do, Ti West? I don’t believe you. I just do not believe this is the best you could do.
Dude.
Is all.
Save yourselves.
(Except, of course, now I totally want to see it on the big screen to see if it really makes any difference in the mood. It might, you know. It might even be worth another $7.50 to find out. If I do, I’ll be sure to report back.)
Zee endingzee.
[Prequeue at Netflix | Watch trailer]
Genre: Horror
Cast: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Greta Gerwig, Mary Woronov, Dee Wallace
It took me almost a week to figure out what to say about this novel. And even now, I’m kind of at a loss as to how to begin. This is a strange one — strange and wonderful. And I don’t think any way I come up with to describe it is going to do it much justice. But let’s see how it goes here.
On the surface, this novel is about an old man, Jonathan Rebeck, who lives in a cemetery and spends his days playing chess and talking to ghosts. He’s lived at the cemetery for over twenty years, after going bankrupt as a pharmacist, and in all that time he’s never left the grounds, not even once. He sleeps in a mausoleum and is assisted by a talking raven (metaphor with Elijah here not lost upon me) who drops by daily to deliver pilfered sandwiches and other items, and to fill Rebeck in on the latest news of the world. It’s a simple life, in a fine and private place, and it has suited Rebeck very well.
When two new ghosts enter the scene, however, Rebeck’s life begins a gradual shift. He first becomes friends with newly buried teacher Michael Morgan, a man who believes his wife poisoned him and is extremely bitter about being dead. As it turns out, death is not an endless stream of ghostly walks, spying on the living, and regrets — it is instead simply a gradual forgetting. You begin by forgetting details: names, places, events. But gradually you forget everything else as well — how to make sounds, how to feel sensations, how to love someone. Michael strenuously resists this forgetting. Angrily resists it, in fact. But then Laura enters the scene. She’s the ghost of a young woman recently hit by a bus, and her take on death is a sigh of relief. Life was hard, why remember it? Why not just let go of all of this? Just let it go. Let go.
The more time they spend together, the more Michael and Laura begin to pull in from their two extremes (must not forget! can’t wait to forget!) to meet somewhere in the middle. And then they fall in love (“for as long as I remember love,” Laura says). Meanwhile, Rebeck has also begun to experience love, in his case for a woman about his age named Mrs. Klapper who has started visiting her dead husband’s grave a few times a week. Mrs. Klapper and Rebeck get to talking one afternoon, hit it off, and soon find themselves making more and more plans to meet, opening up to each other at last all the various pains and fears of their hearts.
And so it seems our characters are all headed towards happiness, until something happens that threatens to separate Michael and Laura for good (as if death weren’t bad enough!). It’s their love for each other that finally spurs Rebeck into action. But to save them, he’ll have to leave the cemetery for the first time in two decades. Can he do it? Yes. Yes, he can.
This is a strange, offbeat novel with a surprisingly sharp wit and an equally surprising tenderness for its characters. At times, it does feel just slightly first-novel-y (and it was, in fact, Beagle’s first novel — he later wrote The Last Unicorn, which, incidentally, was one of my favorite movies as a child); it can be a bit repetitive in places, for example. But you’ll hardly notice it in between all the truly delightful conversations between characters (I was especially fond of the exceedingly sardonic raven) and the thought-provoking ideas about the natures of both life and death. The title comes from a poem by Andrew Marvell: “The grave’s a fine and private place,/ But none, I think, do there embrace.” As it turns out, this is both true and untrue, and the various ways in which it is both, either, which, neither are an absolute delight to discover.
Definitely a book that will require another reading for me, and soon. Clever, gentle, funny, kind, patient, compassionate, and fascinating — I absolutely loved it. (p.s. Thank you, Rook darling.)
[FANTASY]
[Buy me
It’s been a really long time since I saw Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992), starring Harvey Keitel, and all I really remember about it is that it was viciously sexual and absolutely grim from start to finish. So, it’s no wonder, I’d say, that it took me nearly the entire two hours to accept the fact that this film, billed as a “remake” but anything but, is at times more comedy than drama. It’s a little more complicated than that, though, which may have been part of the problem. As the audience was laughing around me in the theater, I confess I frequently found myself sinking down into my seat, uncomfortable and uncertain. The next day, I’m still thinking about this film, completely unable to decide if it was good or not.
The plot was pretty much beside the point — as near as I could tell, its only purpose was to provide a stage for the rest of the movie to creep around on. It’s set in post-Katrina New Orleans and is about a detective, Terence McDonaugh (Nicolas Cage), investigating a drug dealer who has been killing African immigrants trying to move in on his territory. One of the things I liked immediately about the film was the fact it made absolutely no effort whatsoever to turn post-Katrina New Orleans into a character itself. It’s just scenery, really. The setting is almost an afterthought, or a convenience. It helps to color the movie in a tint of despair and provides the excuse for some unusual reptiles, but it’s nothing like the heavy-handed metaphor we’re used to seeing when it comes to post-Katrina NOLA in TV and films these days. I thought that was kind of interesting. Maybe even slightly refreshing, if that’s not an awful thing to say.
That said, the movie started off by annoying the bejesus out of me. It opens with McDonaugh and his partner Stevie (Val Kilmer) going into a jail to rescue a prisoner who’s been swimming up to his neck in water since the flooding started, and when McDonaugh dives in to save the guy, he somehow injures his back. Cut to the doctor’s office — here’s a prescription for Vicodin, your back pain will probably be chronic. Cut to six months later, and McDonaugh is now snorting cocaine, smoking crack, stealing and hustling as many drugs as he can from anywhere he can find them, and gradually working his way up to a full-blown heroin addiction.
Those of you who have heard me rail on about the TV show House know why that would’ve instantly made me purse my lips and arch an impatient brow (wait, can brows be impatient? I guess mine can do whatever they want). Did you know that chronic pain patients on opioid painkillers DON’T actually always become addicted to them? You wouldn’t know it from watching TV and movies, that’s for sure.
Nevertheless, though I was all set at that point to dismiss this movie as but another in a long line of frustratingly unoriginal drug addict films, it ended up being a rather fascinating study of a detective who is completely cracked (pun intended). It was weirdly mesmerizing to watch a man so obviously brilliant at his job completely unravel while still somehow managing to remain so obviously brilliant at his job. He wasn’t even bothering to compartmentalize. As he dips more and more into heroin, McDonaugh starts hallucinating — singing iguanas, dancing dead bodies – and begins acting astonishingly erratic (holding a gun to an old lady’s head, for example). And yet, not only does almost no one he works with even look twice at him for it (“There aren’t any iguanas in here”), but he still somehow manages to solve the crimes.
The crazier and higher he gets, the more effective he becomes, and his relationship with girlfriend/prostitute Frankie (Eva Mendes) was such a sad, believable combination of mutual enabling and comfort it made McDonaugh all the more real a character to me. Unlike with Keitel’s lieutenant, who was engineered only to inspire fear, I found myself oddly caring about McDonaugh. I felt actual compassion for him. And the different spin on this very similar character coming from the two actors and two directors is something I found pretty intriguing. I’m looking forward to rewatching the original soon so I can give it some more thought; will report back after I have.
I did have some issues with Nicolas Cage in this film, though. This is a weird, weird movie, and though Cage’s usual exaggerated mannerisms and pulled facial expressions seem like they’d be perfect for the part of a crazy cokehead, there were several moments for me in this film where I got bumped out of the experience because Cage missed a beat. But was he doing that on purpose, is the question. I can’t tell. And therefore, I can’t actually tell you if he was brilliant in this or terrible, that’s how befuddled about the whole thing I truly am. It was such a strange combination of both it’s almost unquantifiable. But I’ll tell you this much: it was definitely memorable.
All in all, I left the theater after this one sort of dazed and confused. Is this is a good film? I think it might not be, actually. In fact, I sort of felt like it was an absolute mess. But where my confusion comes in is the part where I start getting this little nagging feeling that director Werner Herzog, one weird dude himself, may have made it a complete mess on purpose. If that’s the case, he did a bang-up job.
Possibly even a brilliant one.
Man. I knew I should’ve gone to 2012 instead. Ow, my head.
[Prequeue at Netflix | View trailer]
Genre: Drama
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Fairuza Balk, Brad Dourif
Oh man, MAN, this show is great. After a summer/fall season of an amazing number of utterly awful new medical shows (Mercy, Trauma, HawthoRNe, Three Rivers – did I miss any?) it was absolutely thrilling to sit down and watch the entire first season of this brilliant show from start to finish. Directed by the great Paul Feig (of Freaks and Geeks), I had seen the pilot when the show first premiered on Showtime last year and had been really intrigued by it. But I wasn’t sure if it was going to be able to sustain its awesomeness for an entire season so I just parked the episodes and waited to see if it would make it through a whole season without being canceled.
Good news – it DID.
Jackie (the amazing Edie Falco) is an ER nurse in a big city hospital. As the series opens, she’s taken on a young protégé, a n00b straight out of nursing school named Zoey (Merritt Wever). Zoey is optimistic and chipper and sunny, which drives Jackie completely bananas. It’s kind of ironic, though, because despite Jackie’s no-nonsense nature, the more we get to know her, the more we begin to realize she’s one of the most caring, accepting, loving people on staff at the hospital. She’s amazing with the patients and their families, and her compassion for her friends – eventually even including Zoey – is intense and persistent and solid.
But Jackie’s not perfect, thank god. For one thing, she’s a drug addict, snorting and swallowing painkillers on the job and at home. She’s also carrying on an affair with a pharmacist at the hospital, who has no idea she’s married with children. I don’t judge on either thing, but I still found it fascinating to watch how both these vulnerabilities pull and tear at Jackie’s steely facade. At some point, Jackie is going to bust wide open, and not knowing when, how, or where is part of what makes this show impossible to stop watching.
There are obvious comparisons to be made between Nurse Jackie and the FOX series House – both feature main characters who are cantankerous drug addicts, after all. But the thing is, of the two characters, I found Jackie infinitely more interesting than House ever has been. One of my biggest complaints about House is that, while we occasionally catch a glimpse of something deeper, for the most part, he’s actually pretty boringly static and predictable. Jackie, on the other hand, is a disaster of much more intriguing complexity.
I have no idea if this show has been renewed for a second season, but if it has been, it might be the first time since Deadwood I’ve been tempted to pay for a premium channel just to watch a single TV series. Let’s do this thing, Jackie. You and me together, girl. Let’s break it all wide open. WIDE. OPEN.
[Netflix me | Buy me
Genre: Drama
Cast: Edie Falco, Eve Best, Peter Facinelli, Merritt Wever
As with Harry Connick Jr. from yesterday’s review of New in Town, it probably goes without saying that I’m an absolutely ridiculous fan of Paul Gross. Due South to start with, of course, and then Slings & Arrows to do me in completely. And even though I couldn’t get into Eastwick this season on TV, it wasn’t because of him. I love this man. I love him. I love him. I love him. If he asked me to get down on my knees and kiss his feet, I would do it and love it and only feel the tiniest bit like a schmuck later.
And that’s why, when I heard he’d made a WWI movie that had been released in Canada to fairly respectable reviews, I couldn’t wait to see it. I tried to wait, I failed. They kept not releasing it here in the U.S. and I kept wanting them to and they kept not, so I finally caved and made an end-run around the problem. I will make it up to the problem just as soon as the problem lets me, though, I swear.
Now let me tell you how absolutely gut-wrenching it’s going to be for me to write the rest of this review. Because, oh GOD, my gut is wrenched that I have to do this. Monkey wrenched, in fact. Socket wrenched. Because this film, which was written, directed, and stars Paul Gross, is pretty unbearably awful. And you know what the problem is? The problem is, it’s just exactly as self-indulgent as a film written, directed, and starring the same guy sounds like it would be. Goddamn it. Ow, my guts, I hate you.
Let me ’splain.
As the story opens, Gross’s character (Michael Dunne), is in Europe fighting in a battle in which he finds himself face-to-face with a German soldier who couldn’t possibly be older than about 17. Despite the fact the kid had surrendered, Dunne makes the decision to kill him, and before he even has a chance to process that, he’s blown up by a grenade.
He wakes up back in Canada in a hospital where he’s being tended to by a pretty nurse named Sarah Mann (the wonderful Caroline Dhavernas, who some of you might recognize from the series Wonderfalls). Of course, he falls in love with her, and she with him. After he’s recovered, he takes a job in town as a recruiter, ostensibly because he’s a hero, but everybody knows it’s actually because of a diagnosis of shell-shock — something they all translate internally as “cowardice.”
Long story short, Sarah’s younger brother, who has terrible asthma, decides he wants to enlist and go fight, and he gets someone to forge his paperwork for him so he can head off to war. Madly in love with his sister, Michael feels he has no choice but to follow her brother back into battle so he can protect him. And, of course, madly in love with Michael and terrified for her brother, Sarah feels she has no choice but to join the two of them as a nurse on the battlefront. So, the next thing we know, we’re all of us back in Europe with stuff exploding over our heads and a whole heck of a lot of misery and awfulness.
Now, quick — the things this movie does well:
I liked that so much of the movie was set in Canada instead of in battle, focusing more on some of the emotional complexities the war had both on returning soldiers and the men who were not allowed to fight in the first place. I knew the movie was going to have to move back to the actual war at some point (because the title refers to the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium in 1917, which you can read more about here), but I enjoyed the way this movie gives us a little time to get some insight on the many emotional elements of war for men, as well as, to a lesser degree, the politics of recruitment.
I also really liked the actual battle scenes themselves — in Passchendaele, Michael and his platoon find themselves forced to dig into trenches, as was typical during WWI. Only, it had been pouring down rain for months and their trenches end up being more like swampy swimming pools than holes. Shots of these men and boys literally waist-deep in mud brought home the horror of trench warfare in a way no other movie I’ve seen about that really has. My god. No wonder so many WWI soldiers died of diseases instead of bullets. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. I get cranky when it rains here in Seattle and I’ve forgotten my umbrella. At least I can still keep my socks (and matches) dry.
But now, and I hate this part, I really do, but here’s what this movie does really, really badly: ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE.
Put simply, the number one flaw of this movie is that it just tries WAY too hard. Gross obviously feels extremely passionate and proud about Canada’s involvement in WWI, and he’s also obviously seen just about every brilliant war movie ever made. He knows that brilliant, powerful war stories involve things like imagery, motivational speeches, love that may or may not be totally doomed, and the shock of the violence the Everyman is forced to take part in just to survive.
But in trying to incorporate every one of those elements into his own film, he just couldn’t pull it off. He didn’t seem to understand what makes each of those elements truly powerful — the emotions behind them, the meaning behind them. His imagery, for example, focused heavily on the concept of martyrdom (Jesus on the cross, especially) and birds, especially birds of prey. But there wasn’t any actual MEANING to those images. The martyrs were not martyrs. And the birds — the birds made no real sense at all. It was like he thought “imagery” simply means repetition of a visual. But the visuals have to be representative of something; they can’t just hang out and be all, hey, it’s me again, hi. Know what I mean?
And the speeches, oh man. They were just painfully vacuous, I’m sorry, Paul. Delivered with such poignant tone, and yet without any actual power whatsoever. I’m not even going to talk about the total lack of chemistry between Gross and Dhavernas, either. It just crushed me. It seriously did. It was that painful to watch. If only he’d cast me instead. Seriously. That would’ve been some third-year P-Chem, let me tell you.
In any case, are just SO many things about this movie that do not work. It struck me as disastrously amateurish and was ultimately completely without impact. There were some good ideas in there, but Gross needed to pass his script along to a pro when he was done with it and get some better thinkers involved. As it stands, it seemed like the kind of script I would’ve written in high school, when I tried to make all my writing sound “deep,” without any real comprehension of what “deep” truly was.
Lordy. This is what I get for pirating a video. And now I have to buy it when it comes out just to assuage my guilt. Damn. I am so not thankful for that. (But hey, to all my American readers: Happy Thanksgiving!)
[Netflix me | Buy me
Genre: War, Drama
Cast: Paul Gross, Caroline Dhavernas, Adam Harrington, Joe Dinicol, Michael Greyeyes
It’s obviously no big secret that I have a serious weakness for Harry Connick Jr. So, when Mom and I were scoping out vids for our pile the other weekend and stumbled across this one — added bonus of being set somewhere snowy, which we love — there was really no resisting it. Yes, I knew it was a romantic comedy. Yes, I don’t typically go for those (unless they also involve zombies, of course). But when you get a good one, they can be really fun. And you know what? This one is a good one.
The story is your fairly traditional “fish out of water” type thing — it reminded me a lot, actually, of another favorite of mine, Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard’s Baby Boom. In New in Town, Renee Zellwegger plays Miami businesswoman Lucy Hill, who, as the film opens, is living up her fast-paced lifestyle with a jog in the warm Florida morning before work. She then changes into a sexy skirt-suit with serious high heels and heads into work, where she’s promptly told the company is sending her to Minnesota — in the dead of winter — to oversee the downsizing of the corporation’s food processing plant in the tiny town of New Ulm.
Armed with eight suitcases of completely inappropriate clothing, Lucy gets off the plane in New Ulm to discover a whole new, thoroughly frozen world. There’s a great shot here, actually, set at the baggage claim in the airport, where the camera pans down to focus on everyone’s feet — boots, boots, boots, boots, what the HELL are you thinkin’, lady?!
New Ulm is different in other ways, too. Her new secretary, Blanche Gunderson (the always awesome Siobhan Fallon) is a frumpily-dressed, scrapbook-loving, tapioca maniac. The plant manager, Stu Kopenhafer (the also always awesome J. K. Simmons) keeps doing things to exploit her city-girl naiveté (closing the plant for the fictitious “Gopher Day,” e.g.). And then there’s the head of the union — truck-driving, beer-guzzling, unshaven, plaid-wearing Ted Mitchell. Only Ted — well, Ted is played by Harry Connick Jr. ‘Nuff said.
The story follows the standard trajectory for these sorts of films and there’s nothing all that original about it. But what makes this one stand out is that it is truly, authentically charming and funny. Zellwegger is great in this sort of role — think the opposite of Bridget Jones but played with the same sense of humor — and Harry Connick Jr., SAY NO MORE.
Mom and I both really enjoyed this one and I think any fan of the genre or any of the actors will love it too. Recommended, and a great one if you’re looking for something to watch with family of all ages over the holidays!
[Netflix me | Buy me
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Cast: Harry Connick Jr., Renee Zellweger, J.K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, Siobhan Fallon
It’s probably been five years or more since I saw the original Taking of Pelham 123, which I rented back when I was going through a massive Walter Matthau phase. And now that I’ve seen this film, the recent remake starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, I’m eager to see the original again because I can’t remember what the original bad guy’s motives were, and I have a feeling they weren’t the same as they were in this version (this version’s motives being somewhat timely).
I figured this would be an entertaining, but not brilliant, movie, and I was right. It’s not flawless, but it’s definitely a lot of fun to watch, especially if you’re a Denzel or/and Travolta fan, which I obviously am (hubba hubba x 2). The story opens on a regular day in New York City’s MTA offices, with Washington playing Walter Garber, a former bigwig in the MTA who has recently been demoted to dispatcher following a scandal involving a bribe. Unfortunately for Walter, he’s on duty the day a group of recent parolees, led by a man named Ryder (Travolta), hijack the Pelham 123 train.
It quickly becomes clear to Walter that the group knows a lot about the MTA subway system. They stop the train in exactly the most advantageous spot in one of the tunnels, and quickly release most of the cars and passengers to make it easier for them to handle the set of hostages, which they then announce they are holding for $10 million in ransom. But as the day goes on, it also becomes increasingly clear that Ryder has ulterior motives — that the ransom may not be his end game. Can Walter, the mayor (played by James Gandolfini), or the lieutenant in charge of the hostage negotiation team (played by John Turturro) figure out what’s really going on before Ryder kills the hostages and/or absconds with the $10 million?
You can probably guess the answer to that question. Go ahead, guess. Yep, you’re right!
As I said, this movie isn’t perfect. For one thing, I had the “ulterior motive” thing figured out way earlier than I should have and it was because of some heavy-handed hint dropping that could have been a lot more subtle. Despite that, though, I found the whole ulterior motive thing pretty clever, all things considered, and it was fun waiting to find out if my theory about it was going to be proven right.
I also thought Denzel was great in this — I completely believed his character and, what’s more, I was really rooting for him as well. Less convincing was Travolta, but only because I still think of him as more snuggly than bad-ass, even if the make-up department does kick down with a sinister goatee and neck tatt.
Overall, though, this is a pretty entertaining flick with some good acting, authentic suspense, and a fairly satisfying, if unbelievable, ending. Definitely recommended to anybody looking for a good thriller. And hey, gentlemen in the audience, they even somehow managed to throw in a couple of spectacular car wrecks for you, even though 95% of this movie takes place in an office and a tunnel. Now THAT’S movie-making magic, my friends.
Recommended!
[Netflix me | Buy me
Genre: Thriller
Cast: Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, Luis Guzman, Michael Rispoli, James Gandolfini
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