Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving, here's this week's RANDOM WEEKLY MOVIE REVIEWS! starting with the OSCAR-NOMINATED documentary, "The Square".
THE SQUARE (2013) Director: Jehame Noujaim
✰✰✰✰1/2
Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi. If you don't know that name, you should. He was a fruit vendor on the street of Ben Arous, Tunisia, when a female government worker, took away his $200 scale, which determined how much to charge for his fruit, and slapped him publicly. It was one of dozens of times he was humiliated by the Ben Ali dictator government in Tunisia, and when the government refused to give him back his scale, he set himself on fire in the street in front of the government building. He eventually died from the injuries, a few weeks later in January 4, 2011, ten days later, after protests took to the street, Ali left the country, and the 20+ year was overthrown. When that happened, it started happening in numerous countries throughout the middle east, there's still a Civil War going on in Syria over it, and most notably, it happened in Egypt. "The Square" focuses on numerous parts of the aftermath of Mubarek's resignation. During which time, the military took temporary control before the Muslim Brotherhood, which was technically an illegal political party under Mubarek, but was quickly organized and won the election of the country, and then after the original screening of "The Square" at Sundance, Noujaim, went back to Egypt to follow his subjects some more as the Muslim Brotherhood started dividing the nation again, and eventually the army overthrew them. The movie earned a Best Documentary Oscar Nomination, before Netflix picked up the rights and started streaming it, and the movie would then win three Emmys. Netflix might have been onto something, 'cause in hindsight, I think "The Square" is incomplete, and that's my big complaint, but it's not one that's easily fixed. The films follows six figures in the Egyptian democracy movement, which started during that Arab Spring that all began over a fruit vendor's scale, but had been building for decades earlier. The title comes from Tahir Square, the site of those incredible protests and demonstrations of thousands in the streets, and really in the streets. Noujaim, she has a way of seeming to know exactly the right places to be at the right time, and she's always at that street-level view of everything, where you're the famous actor interviewed over Skype by Anderson Cooper, or a protest singer, or even a conflicted member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are among her subjects, it's still street level. It begins with the joy of Mubarek's resignation and the feeling of revolution, as it continues the disenfranchisement, confusion and anarchy that disappoints the people. They struggle with the shocking and slow growing pains of democracy and sudden revolution which they realize will not simply be a sudden event that would change everything, and how freedom, has to be fought and died for. One of them observes near the end, as he heads towards Tahir Square for yet another protest, how the culture of protest was introduced into the society as the new way of achieving goals, and that's the big change, the change, and that change in culture will ultimately win out. "The Square" shows us the battleground of the revolution, and it's continuing and ongoing struggles. Like I said, the biggest problem with the film, is that it's not finished, but maybe one day it will be.
NOAH (2014) Director: Darren Aronofsky
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(Prolongued groan) Darren Aronofsky's "Noah". Hmm. Well, it'd definitely his version of "Noah"; there's no denying that. That said, the thing I've noticed with Aronofsky is that, is that, he much stronger and his perspective is much more clear the smaller his movies are. He struggles much more mightily when is aiming for these much higher ideas and plains. For instance, the mess that was "The Fountain", the last time he had such a big budget projects as well as a high-concept, and it really was riddled with way too many ideas, and here, he's got a little bit of the same problems going on. I'm fairly familiar with both the Book of Genesis and the Qu'ran story of Noah, actually, and there's a bit of a mixing of a few different versions of the story, and then there's a bit of creative license as well, like how the watcher angels, seem like,- well, I haven't seen "Galaxy Quest" yet, (I know it's on my Netflix), but I seem to remember a scene involving a monsterous creature in that film that's made out of rocks and canyon-esque earth that's come to life, somebody correct me if I'm confusing with something, but they feel like that, only, they can talk, and battle if needed probably, (Or at least show up suddenly after hiding in plain sight and appear as quite a formidable army) but they're mostly, made out of, some sort magma or, some kind of really dark stone here. Noah (Russell Crowe) is a complicated man. Ten generations from the son of Seth, and his father, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) is some sort of mystical presence as well as a physical one. Noah, gets told through dreams and through the angels to build the arc,- well, I guess I don't have to go over the entire story, it's the story of Noah; it's literally one of the oldest stories in the book. But, there's much focus, on the very two-sided nature of Noah, the believer, who very confidently builds the arc in preparation for the great flood, and the father who's conflicted about his trust that they're indeed the end of the line about civilization, while his wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connolly, who would probably be a great casting for Mary btw, if anybody thinking about that in the future. Or Mary Magdalene, come to think of it, if they want to do her gospel in the Apocrypha [Which is a good idea for a film btw, hint, hint].) is determined to make sure the line continues despite neither of their sons, Ham (Logan Lerman), Shem (Douglas Booth), or Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) being married, although Shem and Ila (Emma Watson) end up coming together. Ila, the only other girl human on board the ship, was an adopted daughter the took in when they were young, who's barren, until she isn't, and this causes Noah, more internal conflict, as this perpetuates his struggles with his belief of life being destroyed with the struggle of life being born, here. There's some amazing sequences, like of Noah retelling the complete story of Genesis (Up 'til,- well, you know where) being intercut with an amazing sequence of evolution starting with the big bang, but those moments, were few and far between in terms of really having a substantial impact on the audience. Most of the film, it just wasn't something that we were able to sink our teeth into. Aronofsky's best films, "Requiem for a Dream", "The Wrestler", eh, "Black Swan", are mostly character profiles, and they're very narrow in their points of view, and that's a good things, he allows us to seep into the world and characters he creates, and when he goes for something scale, he loses that, intimate nature of his other works that make those seem so much grander than they are. I think he's capable of evolving out of that, he's clearly talented beyond belief, but the story gets, the more he loses what so great about his other work. That's probably why he so associates this conflict with the conflicts of Noah, but it doesn't transfer completely to the audience. It's an interesting film, from a great filmmaker, but I can't find myself recommending "Noah".
THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) Director: George Clooney
✰✰1/2
I kinda get what George Clooney was after with "The Monuments Men", and I don't think, it necessarily came across as well as he could've done it, or that it was the best approach to the subject matter either, but he's definitely arching back to those, classic military movies, where the team of scruffy outcasts and renegades are put together for some kind of obscure mission. Something like, "Kelly's Heroes", or "The Dirty Dozen" or even, the tomfoolery of "Gunga Din" perhaps. It's a classic, and a bit outdated, and at certain points it's even cliche, like the foreigner being the ones that die on the mission, but overall, I was entertained. There's already plenty of fiction stories based around Hitler's attempts during World War II to collect and even destroy some of the great pieces of art over the years, and let's face it, eh, while I do this blog, I'm a filmmaker as well, many of you readers work in the film world, we're all deeply concerned with film and art preservation of all kinds, it's a fascination with us, so I'm not at all someone like Clooney would find this story interesting. He's basically a somewhat more serious Danny Ocean in front of the camera, rounding around the best and coincidentally some of the most eccentric art experts around, who have some, or can quickly pick up some military experience as post D-Day, when all, or most of the battles are done with, hopefully, they seek out, and try to find and collect much of the stolen artwork that the Nazis have confiscated. Much of which, they're using in hopes of preparing a museum in Hitler's home of Austria. It was actually a personal pet project of his, and he was an artist, with ideas about how art should be, and that was a great factor in why he looted the museums of the world, as well, robbing the Jews of their possessions. (I think he did some other pretty lousy things too, so I've heard.) The film is an all-star cast, Bob Balaban teamed with Bill Murray was great, Cate Blanchett as a German spy, is good, there's nobody bad actually, you got great actors like Damon, Dujardin, Goodman, etc., you can't really go wrong or ask for anything else. The film, feels like one of those old-time absurd-bordering on-real life comedies from the past, with rousing score and all those things, and I think, we were expecting more frankly out of the story. It is based on a real-life group of men, and Clooney's almost always had a fascination with period pieces, but overall, the issues with "The Monuments Men", are just, a little too unfortunate to really recommend wholeheartedly. In of itself, while you're watching it, it's probably an okay movie, I enjoyed, I was usually entertained, but their is a little too much going on, and frankly, the style and the approach to the material, is a little outdated; it might not have been the smartest approach. (I also would say, this is one of those movies, where the advertising didn't help) For Clooney, as a director, it's a lesser effort, down with like, "Leatherleads" really, even with this style- Eh, it could've been sharper, and more focused, even a little less hokey at times. There's an opening where, that score I mentioned is underused badly, and it's over a fairly poorly written speech that Clooney's giving, it's really not good. The movie recovers from it, but you just are looking for something, fresher, really, even in this callback to other types of films, just a slightly different approach, would've drastically improved the movie. I really do want to recommend it, but it's all these little nit-picky issues and it just sorta ruins the film the more you think about it, and it's a shame, in another light, this is a worthy subject matter for a film.
ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2014) Director: Jim Jarmusch
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An intoxicating vampire tale from one of the great poet-laureates of cinema, Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch at his worst is always interesting, at his best, he's created some of the greatest in American independent cinema like, "Stranger than Fiction", "Down By Law", "Night on Earth", "Broken Flowers," etc. "Only Lovers Left Alive", is a bit of an oxymoronic title, since the couple are vampires although that's never outwardly said, but it's the way they talk fondly about how Mary Shelley was delicious, or how Adam (Tom Hiddleston) recollects fondly about having seen Eddie Cochran play live, before correcting himself with his musician friend Ian (Anton Yelchin) that he saw him on Youtube. (I saw him on Youtube as well, that was pretty amazing. Ian is often referred to as a zombie, although he's really just an underground musician, as is Adam really. In fact Adam and his longtime partner Eve (Tilda Swinton), have spent the last hundreds of years engrossing themselves in the arts, which is really what most vampire would probably do if they were around for that long, so that's made perfect sense. They even still hang around with Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), yes, that Marlowe, who hides out these days splitting time around the Spain and Morocco area. Adam buys off blood from the hospitals for them to stay barely alive, a hematologist named Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright) supplies them in Detroit, where they're hanging out now, and appropriate decrepit dying town full of soul and music for creatures of the night, and they don't want to suffer the fates of bad blood that causes some less careful vampires grave illnesses, and at nights, they collect objects from the famous artists, and old records players and systems and stuff like that. They mostly sip their blood and spend most of their daze laid out in an endless laze. The kind that's romantic, and ethereal. Having to save their abilities and preserve their blood supply to survive. This only real plot, if somebody would call it that, involves Eve's sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) who's an unexpected visitor who's been out drinking up the Sunset Strip in L.A., and is looking for a new place to crash. Naturally, she's younger, more sexual and outgoing, talks of Adam's music being a hit in the L.A. underground club scene, which displeases Adam as he'd rather his music not be tainted with the faint of success. She comes in, mainly only to cause enough havoc that Adam and Eve have to leave town. "Only Lovers Left Alive", is like a really succulent intoxicating drink, the kind you want to slip slowly so that it doesn't end too soon, but when it does end, it's all gone, and there's nothing much left. Perhaps that's how a vampire feels when he's drinking somebody. Hmm. I'll have to ask one of my vampire friends that one, but if you're gonna be a vampire with a rather purposefully empty life, this is probably the one you'd like to have, so I enjoyed it, despite it being more poetry and not enough prose, but I can let that slide with Jarmusch.
THE RAID 2 (2014) Director: Gareth Evans
✰✰1/2
I got a lot of criticism recently when I finally go around to around to watching "The Raid: Redemption" and I gave it a negative review. I called it a video game, in a derogatory sense, and said it was, quote: "...a confusing mess of gunfire, hand-to-hand combat and numerous deaths." Well, "The Raid 2", which is something subtitle, "Berandal", well, honostly, if I really was a hack, I might just cut-and-paste that whole damn review and call it a day, 'cause it wouldn't that different. It seemed like it might be for awhile. It wasn't really a building this time, and actually they pretended the movie had some form of a plot, as Rama (Iko Uwais) the hero from the last film, (Shrugs) apparently,- well, it was a bunch of action, who the hell remember who anybody was? Anyway, since the raid, and he's not exactly anonymous per se, and gangsters are all looking for him, so his next assignment is to go undercover, either in a jail, or an organized crime syndicate, or whatever or wherever he has to go, until he's suddenly under attack by everyone, and then just as suddenly, he begins going through them, smashing their skulls into toilets, smashing bricks and other heavy things into their skulls, breaking and twisting, arms, legs, throats, burning a few people's faces off. Maybe he wasn't doing the burning but what did that really matter. That's the thing, essentially, it's the same damn movie, with a slightly better plot, and the original was just a bunch of violence, and somebody gonna read this and retort, "But the action scenes were fucking amazing!" Well, the action scenes were fucking amazing, but so fucking what? Evans can direct actions, he likes this Indonesian-based form of martial arts, that's fine, I like martial arts too, but there's better stories in an episode of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," or watch the UFC, and if I just want to beat the living hell out of a lot of people, there's about a hundred video games that'll let me do that. Evans is overly talented, and there is way to make this movie, with all this unbelievably in a way that could actually give a shit, and he's a helluva a lot closer to doing that, than he was before, but it's not that much closer to a movie. It's not enough for us to say, our guy is going into this, seven circuits of hell or whatever, and we're just gonna watch him go through the whole thing, you still need a character, you still reason to give a shit that he has to go through all this, or it's else it's rage and fury signifying nothing. It doesn't have to be innovative or complex plot, but best action sequences and scenes wasn't because the filmmaking was spectacular it was because we were caught up in the drama and tension and the story, and I had a rooting interest,- great choreography and camera work, isn't enough. and he's gotta learn that at some point, and now frankly, I'm just pissed off at the waste these movies, which could or should be great, You got criminal, undercover cops, corrupt cops, nagging naked chicks in strap-ons, bad kareoke even, but every ten minutes there's a indecipherable action sequence. Fine, whatever, do your own thing, Mr Evans, and when you want to make a movie someday, let me know; I can't wait to see it.
IDA (2014) Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
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I really struggled with "Ida". I was reluctant to write and discuss that at first, because the movie had gotten such praise and rave reviews, and there's clearly a certain ability and perspective in the film that's worth noting, but I went through it twice, and still found myself more baffled than entertained. No, wait-a-minute, baffled's not the right word, eh, puzzled probably. Not to say that the movie is a puzzle per se, actually it's fairly straight-forward for the director, Pawel Pawlikowski. I knew the name but it wasn't until after I looked him up that I realized that I've struggled with each of his films frankly. "My Summer of Love", I needed multiple viewings of, and "The Woman in the Fifth," I thought was pretty lousy, actually, so obviously there's something to his style that makes his work very difficult for me to get through. I think it's the same problem that I have with Wong Kar-Wai's films, where, he Wong gets so obsessed with these beautiful magnificent shots, that do convey emotion, but they don't actually tell the story. Strangely, Pawelikowski, I think has story down, but I think he uses the shots to convey the emotions, and he pushes them, well beyond when they actually convey the emotional depth of the scene, and then they instead just sit there, and we're supposed to get something more from it, when frankly, most of the time, all it really does is stop the movie. I mean, it looks and feels a bit like "Ashes and Diamonds", or some other great Polish film from that era, which is around when the movie takes place, and he took pride in that. Pawlikowski is native to Poland, but he actually spent most of his adult life abroad in England and this is his first movie in Poland, but it's still this same style of filmmaking, done with a better story though, if you can find it. Ida is, the real name of Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), an eighteen-year-old, who grew up in a convent after being orphaned as a child. She's about to take her vows, and that's when she's told by the Mother Superior (Halina Skocynska) that she's got a lone surviving family member, Wanda (Agata Kulesza). Wanda is a former Communist Party prosecutor on one hand, although mostly just drinks, smokes, and has one-night stands the rest of the time, and while Ida does, for the first time get introduced to this world of bars and jazz halls for the first time as the possibility of romance, she also finds out that she's Jewish, and that her parents were killed during the war, and she and Wanda go back to her birth town to see if she can find out what happen, as well as confront her aunt as to why she was dropped off at a seminary. Like I mentioned, I still have this aching feeling about how their was this huge disconnecting feeling about his work, and for once I felt that Pawlikowski was working towards something, but I couldn't help this feeling that this story had other ways of being told, that would've been more interesting than it actually was, and it really did frustrate me. I'm actually tempted to give the movie a straight negative review but there is enough here to make it worth a viewing but-, maybe I'll watch it again some other time and see something different, but these attempts at stimulating our emotions, there was something that struck me as disingenuous in how it so relies on these long takes, and long period of little to no sound, it didn't come off as naturally effective storytelling to me, and that was something that I found troubling. Very conflicted on "Ida".
SNOWPIERCER (2014) Director: Joon-Ho Bong
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"Snowpiercer" is kind of a darker more twisted and symbollic version of "WALL-E", but without the robots or hope and joy, and filtered a bit through some kind of Ayn Rand nightmare near future. As global warming encompasses the world, a failed attempt by the rest of the world to save Earth has ended up in the planet becoming uninhabitable and the death of humanity. The only surviving people were those on board this incredibly long supertrain that was built by a mysterious train enthusiast named Wilford ([NAME DELETED]) that's connected a train that travels all around the world, taking one year to do so, and connecting numerous tracks and newly built ones. It's somehow continually running, despite the extinction of certain parts, and after over seventeen years, but the train is segregated between the front end and tail end, and the tailenders are stuffed into the back, worst of conditions, forced to eat proteins bars that they don't want to know what they're made of (Although they would indeed be filled with protein, while somehow, probably through cloning I imagine, things that were once thought extinct like steak and eggs, are still thrived in other cars. Every so often, there's a revolt in the tailend, and this one, is led by Curtis (Chris Evans), who's recruited a worried mother who's son, Timmy, (Marcanthonee Jon Reis) has been taken to the front of the train, Tanya, an old-timer, with the determination to open up the separating doors named Gilliam (John Hurt), a name that's definitely a reference to Terry Gilliam as director Joon-Ho Bong is definitely referencing some of his sci-fi ideas like "12 Monkeys" and especially "Brazil". They also get the help of one of the original train's engineers, Nangoong Minsoo (Kang-ho Song) as well as his daughter Yona (Ah-sung Ko) who are both addicted to this inhalant called Kronole which they are willing to trade receive in trade in order to bust down the gates between cars, which turn into this maze of- well, it's really, what you would think when the ideas are mostly metaphorical like this, the closer to the front you get the more lavish and exuberant the cars become. Bong's an incredibly talented South Korean filmmaker who's created a masterpiece film in the frightening murder-mystery, "Mother", but then, made his way into the over-the-top cartoonish horror with "The Host". "Snowpiercer" is somewhere in-between. I'm definitely recommending it, but some have praised it a little heavily, and it's frankly a little cold in my eyes. it doesn't really connect with me, and it gets more and more comically ridiculous the setting of the train cars with the- you know, it's the same old train, first class in the front, nicer cars, nicer rooms, better food, and coach and standby are crowded in a tin can in the back. The good news is, it's still entertaining, and at times, very intense. I think it loses something after you sit and think about it a bit, but there's a high level of skill still for this picture, the storytelling exceeds the quality of the story itself, so it's a definite recommendation. I think it could've been, a little more creative but, it's still so strong as a visual experience, that that doesn't matter as much.
OCULUS (2014) Director: Mike Flanagan
✰✰✰1/2
"Oculus" is one of the more interesting twists on the horror genre there's been in a while, although than it probably says the film, but still.... It's an effective psychological horror, even if it does get spun into it's own web one or two times too many. The story revolves are some kind antiqued cursed mirror. Tim (Brendon Thwaites) has just 21-years-old, and has gotten released from a mental institution finally, after years of therapy, having killed his father, Alan (Rory Cochrane) after he had murdered their mother Marie (Katee Sackhoff). His older sister Kaylee (Karen Gillam) thinks that the sudden strange and twisted behavior of her father, and her mother in the weeks prior to their deaths, was all caused by this antique mirror, which, probably not so intelligently, has brought back into the house, and rigged the mirror with numerous cameras and backup systems as apart of an experiment to record the supernatural forces that Tim now believes after years of therapy, are just a story they made up, in order to compartmentalize the deaths. The movie does something interesting with the time we're that Marie is basically kidnapping Tim into stay in the house while she tries to record the strange shifts and changes that the mirror may cause, by going back and forth between the modern day, and to the past, as we see Young Kaylie and Tim (Annalise Basson and Garrett Ryan) as recall those precious few weeks before their lives changed forever. Sometimes the memories don't necessarily add up, and their disputed, and other times the two separates worlds seem to collide, as well as another third universe as the mirror seems to often make it seem like you're doing one thing, while you're indeed doing another, and this can lead to some freaky and scary moments. Surprising this builds tension, and it doesn't use any really cheap scares to get there. The psychological game is far more interesting anyway, as multiple versions of the same moments from the past and the present, are both equally challenged. Sometimes it goes a little far, and we get so far down the rabbit that we're not sure how or if it's even possible to get back up, but the ghost in this ghost story, being, really just a mirror, it's used to great effect. Writer/Director Mike Flanagan takes what could've been a really absurd concept, especially for a horror film, and takes and different approach to the material, at least most of the time, but by the time we get tired of the gimmick, he's more than invested us in the story. I have a hard time ranking it among some of the great horrors as some have tried arguing, but for what it is, and for what it could have been, this is about as good as I could've expected.
ILO ILO (2014) Director: Anthony Chen
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Writer/Director Anthony Chen's first feature, "Ilo Ilo", was Singapore's submission for the Foreign Language Oscar last year, and it's a beautifully debut film about a troubled kid in a troubled home. Jiale (Jialer Koh), is one of those angry ten-year-olds who's simply rebut who's unpredictable behavior causes too much trouble for his family, under normal circumstances, and it's already caused him numerous problems at school, which causing even more distress for his parents, Hwee Lang (Yann Yann Yeo) who's struggling keeping her job partly 'cause of the constant calls from his school about his latest antics, and that was before finding out she was pregnant again. and Teck (Tianwen Chen) Jiale's father, who's as passive-aggressive as Jiale's mother is abrupt, having hidden first that he lost his job, second that he's losing more money on the stock market.. He's been fired from his sales job, and hasn't told his wife, this is around the time that, unable to handle Jaile on their own, and with two jobs to force through, they hire a nanny from The Philippines, Teresa (Angeli Bayani), it's through this relationship that Jiale starts to finally find an adult who's actually more available as a parent. I've been struggled to figure out exactly how to discuss the family dynamic. They're not mean parents, but they aren't good ones. Jiale acts out, partly out of lacking that ability to process how to behave correctly. Teresa treats him more tenderly, although he won't let him just simply get away with anything. Really though, the film is about the whole family and the ways they personalities conflict and interact with each other, and how it's lead to the situation their in, and how their natures make it harder to truly nurture someone who so desperately needs nurturing. I'm reluctant to talk about those ways, 'cause the events are so nuanced that, describing them accurately just won't be possible. It might help to say that the film takes place in the mid-'90s, when Singapore and much of southwest Asia was going through a money crisis during that era, and many middle and lower class households were struggling and going through transitions, although I felt that was more secondary than the family dynamic themselves, and not necessarily how Teresa effects it, although she does in numerous ways, it's not necessarily the point of the movie. The title, "Ilo Ilo" comes from the territory in the Panay Penisula in The Philippines where Teresa is from, and where she herself has left a young kid with relatives in order to take this job, and that's something that fascinates Jaile about Teresa. "Ilo Ilo" is an intriguing slice of life look at a family of good people, but in a situation that they're not naturally a fitted for, and yet that's the life they must live anyway, and suffer through all the consequences of their actions, however painful they may be.
BAD WORDS (2014) Director: Jason Bateman
✰✰1/2
Every once in a while, I myself, can even be swayed by another's thoughts and review of a film. I was prepared to give Jason Bateman's directorial debut, "Bad Words", a mildly positive review, but after Christy Lemire's post, she made some points that frankly I was thinking about myself. The lack of nuance, in a film like "Bad Words", struck with me, the insistence we be shocked by the extent of the so-called humor in some of these lackluster gross-out films. You know, when there's just way too many of those scenes, where you just hit the mute button and keep the close captions on while you wait for it to end, as oppose to just sitting through them, like in this movie, the scenes revolving around Kathryn Hahn's panties, and especially the one with the ketchup packets, which, when you really think about it, not only weren't really that funny, but frankly, they weren't even really necessary, especially since they involved kids. They also weren't set up terribly well to make them funny, which would involve giving us slightly more of a reason to, not necessarily endorse or cheer for Guy Thirlby (Bateman) but at least give us more of a rooting interest in building the tension at least. Guy has found a loophole in a national spelling bee, something called "The Golden Quill" in the movie, although the only national spelling bee that I know of with any validity to it is done by Scripps, although I'm sure they wouldn't participate in the film-. Sorry, I'm a drove offtrack there. Anyway, according to the rules, Guy is eligible because he never graduated 8th grade, even though he's actually a genius with a photographic memory. (The photographic memory part has more to do with spelling ability than the genius part btw, but whatever.) He also has a sponsored from a nationally-recognized news-source, represented by the online publication that Jenny Widgeon (Hahn) works for, who's only sponsoring him for the story, and despite her reluctance, they occasionally have sex, despite her better judgment. Oh, the contest is nationally televised for the first time this year, despite it's supposed 100-plus years of prestige (Supposedly four future presidents have won the Bee, which would mean it was getting national television exposure twenty years later than when ESPN starting airing the Scipps National Bee, despite supposedly having far more prestige, and name recognition of former competitors and champions than Scripps does.[Although Scripps does have quite the resume of past champions becoming successful in life] and they've only been around for less than ninety years. Anyway, there's a decent twist to the arbitrary relationship that Guy forms with a fellow strong competitor, Chaitanya (Rohan Chand), and a lot of their segments, were funny themselves, and there's some really good work from Allison Janney and Philip Baker Hall, as people who are in charge of the spelling bee, and there's a few cute things where I'm tempted to recommend "Bad Words", but yeah, the more I did think about it, I wondered if A. there was enough here to recommend, and B. the comedy that's more on the squint and squirm side, was it funny, did it really need to be there, and after those answers became no, are those few minutes where the movie's stopped completely because of them, really worth the rest of the movie. (Sigh.) Nope, it wasn't. And I would've spelled antidisestablishmentarianism correctly btw. I would not have gotten pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, that I had to look up.
LAST PASSENGER (2014) Director: Omid Nooshim
✰✰1/2
"Last Passenger" is, fine. Just fine, the worst word a critic can use to describe your film really, it's fine. There's nothing great or special, or memorable, but there's nothing particularly wrong either, it's just fine. It's okay- actually, "Okay", is worst than "Fine"; it's okay. That's a more accurate description, it's okay. It's the feature-length directorial debut for Omid Nooshim, who's last short film or project of any kind was last century, back in '99. the movie takes place almost entirely on board a London train that's suddenly starts to behave erratically. Basically it's a haunted house movie, but on the train at the end of "Speed". The main passenger were following is Lewis Shaler (Dougray Scott), a doctor who's traveling with his son Max (Joshua Kaynama) to the site of a car accident. At first, the train's full of passengers, but soon, the farther down the tracks it goes, it gets more and more whittled down to about six passengers on board, but then Lewis thinks he sees somebody hurt out on the tracks. He gets talked out of stopping the train by a magician Jan (Iddo Goldberg), but when he's flirting with a pretty bureaucrat, Sarah (Kara Tointon) they realize that the train completely bypasses it's next stop, and connecting to the conductor and engineer gets harder and harder, as they fail to get control of the runaway train. Phones die out, people start dying, dangerous risks need to be taken in order for the chance of survival to occur. It all sounds very thrilling, in some cases it is, but it's also nothing we haven't seen before, and nothing we haven't seen done better. Done better this week, for me, after seeing "Snowpiercer" also a movie about being stuck on a runaway train that won't stop, there's just not enough to really say that "Last Passenger" is really worth your time, and that's unfortunate.
THE PAST (2013) Director: Asghar Farhadi
✰✰✰✰1/2
Almost every film could believably have a title like "The Past" but in Asghar Farhadi's first film shot outside of his native Iran, and his first since his masterful "A Separation", what we really get that's great are the complex subtleties of life, that lead good people to do bad things, and show how simple misunderstandings can evolve to unexpected emotional and physical consequences. First, we're introduced to a couple characters, Marie (Berenice Bejo) is picking up Ahmed (Ali Mosaffa) at the airport, and we can already sense the disconnection from them struggling to talk to each other through a glass window. They're husband and wife, but they've been separated for four years now, but Marie's called Ahmed back from Iran she claims for the purpose of finalizing their divorce. Why the rush? Well, first she's engaged to Samir (Tahar Rahim), a laundromat owner, and then later, in what seems like at a rather peculiar time, she tells Ahmed that she's pregnant, although she's also constantly smoking and drinking. She already has two kids, not with Ahmed, but from a previous marriage. Lucie, (Pauline Burlet) is the older daughter who has been abrupt with both her mother and Samir, and frought with....- actually, that's better left unsaid. Her younger daughter Lea (Jeanne Jestin) is friends with Samir's son Fouad (Elyes Aguis), who's often at home because his mother, and Samir's wife is currently in a coma after a suicide attempt. She's been in that coma for almost a year, and there's no note to why she drank that detergent, and there's some mysterious marks on her stomach. There's more characters at play here as well, but that's the scene in the beginning of the film, and what we find out, and a lot of it has to do with, eh, people making sudden revelations, and people finding new things out that make "The Past" continually get more intriguing as we watch it, and see how and why everybody behaves as they do. There's a theatrical aspect to the film, and Farhadi has a theatrical background, who's studies the great of western theater, so he knows how to tell this kind of story, and tell it well, and how choices, misunderstanding, emotions and motives play such a huge part in peoples' lives, and how drastically things that, may in some ways lives can be changes forever by the actions of others with absolutely no ability to realize that they can or could cause such emotional chaos. "The Past" begins and ends, with a shot of a couple who are now not together, and who now are unable to communicate with each other, all because of things that happened in the past. "The Past" is a good film from a great filmmaker and it's incredibly unfortunate that I have only seen "A Separation" in Farhadi's filmography to compare "The Past" too, 'cause films like falter in comparison to that film, but "The Past" is also incredibly intricate and special as well. There's something universal and classic about his movies, I mentioned in my review that "A Separation" could've been made fifty years in America, and it really could've been made anywhere, and here, he sets a film in France, and proves beyond a doubt that he is capable of such universality.
LABOR DAY (2013) Director: Jason Reitman
✰
"We'll always have, Labor Day; I guess?" "Labor Day"'s first problem is in the structure. It's basically one of those films where you don't know and/or don't understand why characters are behaving as they do, until it's explained, either in a monologue/soliloquy, or later a flashback, or both in this case. Well, here's the thing, if you're gonna do that to the audience, there better be a point, and it better be worth it, and there's neither of that in "Labor Day". This film was so strange, especially coming from Jason Reitman, who until now, I hadn't even seen him make an average movie, much less this horrible train wreck. It takes place in New Hampshire in the mid-eighties, Adele (Kate Winslet) is a divorcee, who's mostly become rather helpless since her husband, Gerald (Clark Gregg) left, and possibly beforehand. Her son Henry (Gaitlin Griffin) tries desperately to help her out in any way possible, get her out of the house and whatnot, do chores, it's all very touching, ethereal, whimsical. Then, while they're at a store, Frank (Josh Brolin) who we learn is a convicted felon who's escaped from prison comes up to Henry. He doesn't kidnap, or torture. He's injured clearly, and apparently he's really violent, although he also seems like an angel who fell from heaven. It's a long Labor day weekend, and what was intended as one day or two to hide out, and play kidnapper, turns into a full five days, where Adele and Frank, have a tender but steamy relationship, although since it's mostly seen from Henry's point of view, he doesn't quite understand why his mother would suddenly be so willing to jump up, and especially so willing to possibly get up and leave the country for this stranger that she just met and why Henry's being sent to the library to look up a book on Prince Edward Island. Mostly he sees the tenderness with which he ties his mother to the chair, and how, when a nosy neighbor (Arbitrary J.K. Simmons appearance in a Reitman film) brings over a bushel of peaches, that we see Frank gather the family together to make a luscious peach pie, in a way that's confusingly both reminiscent of a family ideal, and signifies a sensual erotic experience. Somehow, it really does do that, I don't know quite how, but it does. Maybe it wasn't supposed to but it does. The story's told in numerous forms of flashback, First there's the flashback nature in which this story is told, from a grown-up Henry's (Tobey Maguire) perspective, plus, there's a story of why Frank was in jail in the first, and supposedly why his escape has lead to this all-out search, which, frankly it doesn't completely validate and neither does it become some kind of crime that's 100% understandable, nor 100% his fault, so we have a little trouble understanding why Adele has become so taken with him. I kinda get this old-fashioned "Mrs. Miniver" meets Douglas Sirk kinda tale, tone and essence of this film, but it's so outdated, and even worst, it's so inconsistent. Christy Lemire's review is dead on, in fact she's being a bit nice actually; there were moments where I though "Is this supposed to be a parody, a satire, it's a bit Nicholas Sparks at his worst. I mean, I know like, "Romeo & Juliet" takes place in like, a week, tops, the entire story,and it's a lot of shit going on, but it works, but "Labor Day", takes place over five days, and there's really when you think about it, a lot of shit going on, very quickly, these aren't teenagers, they adults, supposedly, who haven't met or known each other until this moment- I mean, you put all this together, it just doesn't add up, to a believable romance or a story. The few moments Henry has with an intriguing new girl his own age, Mandy (Maika Monroe) are nice, but, this movie, couldn't made worst decisions if it tried. I guess Jason Reitman was due for such a disastrous misstep, hopefully it'll be the anomoly in his otherwise incredible resume so far. Kate Winslet got of a surprising Golden Globe nomination for the film, (Shrugs) There's nobody bad in this movie, it's just a lousy story to begin with and, frankly, it was all downhill from there and it was a struggle to get anything good out of it; that's my guess, anyway, and for all we know, Reitman, liked the Joyce Maynard novel, took a direction with the adaptation, and-, it didn't work, simple as that. It's so unfortunate, but even the best filmmakers are capable of a horrible movie once in a while, let's just hope this isn't a habit.
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN (2013) Director: Deepa Mehta
✰✰1/2
I guess on the surface it made sense, but now that I thought back upon it, Deepa Mehta was probably not the greatest natural choice of filmmakers to adapt Salman Rushdie's sprawling novel that's part magical realism and part epic family drama, over the backdrop of the first 30 years of India independence. You'd think it would work better, but Mehta's work has always been more intimate to me; she takes on big themes and projects, but they're always from a more grounded perspective, she's a master of social realism. Her "India Trilogy" of "Fire," "Earth" and "Water", are remarkable looks at the places and times of their characters caught in a middle ground between the ways of their country and the world of their existence and feelings in them. "Midnight's Children", which is narrated by the famed author, is centered around two children who happen to both be born in the same Bombay hospital, and at the very minute of the independence, right at the stroke of midnight, one born to rich parents, while the other, born to a poor single parent. Unbeknownst to both family, a nurse Mary (Seema Biswas) switches both kids at birth, with Shiva (Siddharth as an adult) going to the poor begger, while Saleem (Satya Bhabha as an adult), goes to the rich family. Mary would continue to keep an eye on each kid over the years, even working as a nanny for Saleem, but the movie is a brightly colored mess after that. A look into each of the two kids growing up, living each other's lives, in this reverse "The Prince and the Pauper" tale, but it gets so convoluted, the struggles with the parents, the reveal about the kids, the political turmoil, the growing pains of a new country trying to govern itself. It's weird, it goes through so much, and yet it all feels like it's at the corners of the screen. One of Rushdie's lines as the voiceover, is "Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence," and that's a great line, that very well may be true in the philosophical, but as a technique for telling a two-hour movie, you kinda need to be in the middle of the action, even if it's just from your own perspective. The movie is strongest when it does deal with those moments, like the fractured relationships between father and son, but overall, this movie feels distinctively like it's trying to do so much, that it ends up doing nothing. Maybe it would've worked better as a miniseries, but I suspect the problem lies more in Rushdie and Mehta, who should know better, not being able to zone in and more narrowly on a very specific part of the story, and really focus on that. This is another disappointment for me, having been looking forward to Mehta's latest work, and especially with something so ambitious, but the sum of it's parts, just don't add up to enough of a whole.
STILL MINE (2013) Director: Donald Liebensen
✰
"Still Mine", is, one of those movies where we get the cranky, crusty but lovable old man, who's got some determination to succeed no matter what. It's also one of those horrible flashback movies that starts in a courtroom, then has a flashback, but then, when you think about it, you wonder what exactly the flashback was about in hindsight. I know what it was going for, but the film is mostly a lot of scenes of Cromwell being told not to do something, and then him doing it anyway. The old man is Craig Morrison (James Cromwell). His wife, Irene (Genevieve Bujold) is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. Craig's not interested in finding a place for her, but more importantly, he's determined to build a house on their land. He owns a farm, and has been growing berries for most of his life, although he doesn't have updated refrigeration for the berries, so they're harder to sell now, as standards and operations of certain places continued to be updated with modern technology and business practices. And also, he's continuing to build his home, first without plans, then without registering them to the city, then, without.... there's about ten or twelve things that happen and he keeps continuing to build the home, all the while dealing with pressure from his family, and pressure the local governments and city and the stress of his wife, who's constantly deteriorating. It sounds more, "Amour" than it actually is, it's really bad Hallmark movie more than anything, and it was both, frustrating and painful to sit through; it really was. I hate seeing great actors like Cromwell and Bujold in such pretentious and manipulative films. Everything about this, "Still Mine", feels like, "Let's feel for this old guy," and that's what this movie really shouldn't be. It's old-fashioned, it's an old croggy protagonist who's most prize possession is a baseball autographed by both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (Which btw, is in fact, unbelievably rare; Gehrig and Ruth hated each other and it's incredibly unusual to see both their signatures on anything.). It's one of those movies where "Based on a True Story" is used as an excuse to not allow the film to be entertaining. Well, you know, some really good true stories, just shouldn't be films. This might've actually happened, but, for a movie like this to work, it's really gotta be so good, that we don't care that we're being manipulated. That, the most cliched "movie" parts of the movie, eh, become so empathetic to us that, anything can happen essentially, and we'll run with it. You almost have to run into Capraesque just to pull it off, and this movie is just nowhere, it really is unwatchable.
STAR WARS: EPISODE I--THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999) Director: George Lucas
✰✰✰
Well, apparently it's a major thing that I never got around to watching "...The Phantom Menace" until now; I thought, "Well, "Star Wars", so it's clearly not important. Well, it's still not important, sorry fanboys, they're good, but they aren't that damn great-, well maybe "Empire..." is, but anyway, I'm finally getting around to this 2nd trilogy of films, which is the first time that,- that I remember at least, first hearing the term "Prequel" thrown around, although, since it has been, about twenty years or so that I sat down to watch any of the original films, I was actually surprised at just how much I do really remember from the original films. (And btw, pet peeve of mine, it's called "Star Wars", not "Episode IV--A New Hope"; I hate people calling it that. I don't care that there's these other films; that's so beyond stupid. And it's also just "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi"; if you think these three should only be called by their entire name, eh, I guess I understand that position.) Anyway, I have a feeling that, after hearing all the hullabaloo over the faults in "Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace", and the jadedness of fifteen years having passed that, I've probably dulled my sense of wonder, but I also always thought part of the charm-, see this is why I hate the ideas of prequels-, the look and feel of the original "Star Wars" films, while top of the line technology at that time, to see, them, back in time, when Darth Vader was a young slave on a remote planet named Anakin (Jake Scott) but with such advanced technology, it seems like a complete disconnect really, they don't really seem to belong together. Anyway, there's- (frustrated sigh) I'm not gonna remember every damn detail, there's a dispute over trade routes that can lead to war, destruction, and young Jedi Obi-Wan (Ewan MacGregor) and his mentor, Qui-gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) are consulting with Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), who occasionally goes by Padme when she's on the streets, are working on how to strategizes as Darth Maul (Ray Park) who's what I guess goes as the villain in the film, although there's plenty of senators and "Julius Caesar"-like conniving going on, as people realize a little too late that they may have made deals with the wrong people. There's also a much-derided character named Jar Jar Binks (voiced by Ahmed Best) who's one of the first completely computer-animated characters to populate the same world with live action performers. He's a bit out of place frankly; shows that, in some ways George Lucas felt more obligated to do these films, and I've often remember hearing things from him about "Wanting to appeal to the kids who are fans"-, and honestly, I don't know too many kids who were huge "Star Wars" fans, not by '99, anyway, not off-the-top-of-my-head, it was 22 years since the first "Star Wars", the fans were all grown up, and I actually would've probably preferred the film to be taken a little more seriously, but I do get what Lucas is doing. "Star Wars" has always been rooting in this adventure sense of mythology; taking place in the heavens of outer space, like the wars of the angels or something of that sort, and that's fine, and I thing, with the humble beginnings, to go from young slave, who can race with the power of the force, to the creation of Darth Vader, it makes sense, but some things we're a little too on-the-nose exposition-wise, and while I actually like, the idea of Jar Jar, and his underground people, who the Queen eventually makes a deal with, using him as a transport, he does seem like he's from the wrong movie or something. The idea makes sense, but it is a bit awkward. Um, still, I get it's deridable, it's not a "Star Wars" I would ever really want to revisit, but I still kinda prefer to leave the original three as they were, and leave it at that, although now with the last three films coming,- well, at least Disney's smart enough to know that you should look into the future, even with these space operas.
HOSTEL (2006) Director: Eli Roth
✰✰✰✰
(Relieved grunt). I guess it's torture porn at it's finest, if there is such a thing, and I guess I shouldn't be watching something like "Hostel" right when I wake up in the morning, although I don't really understand watching these kinds of films much at night either. I caught up on quite a bit of horror this week, and more than most. Eli Roth's "Hostel" was one of the first major original American horror films that took this sorta, Asia Extreme influence into the film as a way to recreate the genre. And very similar to the best horror, the movie's surprisingly smart in how it really builds the story slowly. It still starts unfortunately with mostly idiots, just out-of-college mid 20something, Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) from the U.S. and a bulky Icelandic Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) are spending a little too much time in their European tour, in Amsterdam, cruising the hash bars and discotechques and trying to get laid, usually successfully, but eventually, acting on a tip, they decide to head off, to Slovakia, and btw, there is some truth to that, there's an unusually high percentages supermodels that seem to come out former Czechoslavakia for some reason, and while there's gangs of kids, running through the streets like they walked out of a Dickens novel, and while there's partying and yes, truly gorgeous women, who literally just seem to be in their hotel room the whole time, there's also some strange front desk clerks who claim people have suddenly left early, and speaking of leaving early, first the foreigners, Oli and later a couple of Asian girls are suddenly missing, from the hotel and everywhere else. Police, aren't that interested it seems in looking, and still, there's partying to be done. It takes them just a little too long to realize that human life is cheap there,- actually it's very to some, as near the hostel, is a labyrinthian,old, decrepit building where rich people pay thousands of dollars to travel to this middle of nowhere to pay in order to sadistically kill and torture people without consequence, people who won't be missed, or tourists, or whomever or however they manage to bring in people gullable enough.... I always think stuff like this and think about-eh, that episode of "Taxicab Confessions" with the young African-American who occasionally performed in snuff porn films, and talk about some were real, and some weren't, and all these really disturbing parts of this subculture- it feels weird to call it a subculture, that almost seems to legitimize it, it really doesn't, but there are certain places like these that exist and certain people who can afford these things, and participate, and show the videos to their friends in this Mitt Romney world. It's just sickening, and disturbing, and Roth, he finds a way to really how sickening the human being can be, and how horrendous the things we do to each other, and just how the rich get away with it, by exploited the people. There's something enjoyable about this perversity that makes it spectacular when somebody can undercut it, no pun intended. Eli Roth, really had a great idea about for the setting and he really successfully combined the surrealistic touches, with this truly grosteque and brutal, and while he shows a lot of the gore, he uses though moments selectively, and mostly to great effect, and he manages to find ways of topping himself, with real genuine tension and drama. He gets that, using these gory scenes, isn't simply, the scare, it's this more intense-visceral experience that visual, but still creeps the emotions into the mind. Very impressive for the genre, and in general. I like "Hostel" the more I think about it.
VARIETY LIGHTS (1950) Directors: Federico Fellini & Alberto Lattuada
✰✰✰✰
"Variety Lights" is noted for being Fellini's directorial debut, co-directing with another future great Italian director Alberto Lattuada who the landmark film, "Mafioso", among others. although it's rather clear to me anyway that this is definitely more of an example of Fellini's early vision. The film follows a group of touring performers, led by Checco (Peppino de Filippo), who leads his gang of misfits from one town to town,- if he can. One day he gets help with the travel by a young fan, Lily (Carla Del Poggio) who soon becomes apart of the troupe, and then later, she finds herself getting onstage and then, becoming the show's huge hit attraction, going from barely-filled theaters of drunkards and hooligans to extra sold out shows, and gaining in reputation around the towns. This causes distress with his mistress Melina (Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina), especially when he starts to become attracted to his new up-and-coming, and soon-to-be-leaving-for-better-things starlet. It's very traditional, well- traditional now, but it's a classic look at the inside behind-the-scenes world of these traveling entertainers. It's also a great early look at one of the truly great filmmakers of the twentieth century in this very raw basic form, and it's clear that the talent is there. Is it a great film, no, but definitely good, definitely a key film for all Fellini scholars.
NURSE BETTY (2000) Director: Neil Labute
✰✰✰
Catching up on a few other films I missed when I was younger, "Nurse Betty" is arguably the moment when Renee Zellweger would really start to be considered one of the big actresses and leading stars in Hollywood. She won the first of three Golden Globe nominations in four years with the film, during a streak that would also include three straight years of Oscar nominations, including a Supporting Actress win for "Cold Mountain". She plays, the titular Betty, although when we first meet her, she's a Kansas waitress, who's obsessed with a particular soap opera called "A Reason to Love". She watches it at work at the diner, and even tapes episodes to watch later at night. Her husband Del (Aaron Eckhart) is a car salesman who's screwing around with his secretary and doesn't realize it's Betty's birthday, as he's eating her birthday cake. He's also involved in a drug dealer with a father-and-son team of criminals, Wesley (Chris Rock) and Charlie (Morgan Freeman), who attempt to rob him, but during that time, Wesley accidentally scalps him, and after that happens, Charlie kills him, figuring there's not much you can do now. Fairly logical thinking, and Charlie often thinks logically from his years of experience, but he doesn't know Betty. Betty witnessed the whole incident, but has blocked it out of her mind, and is heading off to L.A., not only under the delusion that her favorite soap opera is real, but she now thinks she's part of the cast, and that Dr. David Ravell, a character on the soap played by George McCord (Greg Kinnear) is her husband, or long-lost love, or something. Anyway, like Dorothy, she's heading out of Kansas and into a whole new world, with Wesley and Charlie close in toe, left with only a picture, and a few scattered clues that she's heading out west. This is sort of an old reference nowadays, and even then frankly, the idea of fans getting so hooked into their soap operas, but actually they took polls on this a few times in the past, and you'd be shocked at the number of people who think soap operas were real and don't realize that it's a television show. Still, the movie could've been a little bit sharper with this character to me; I had trouble buying just how much delusional Betty was in believing that she was, although when she approaches the actor and many of the cast at a charity auction, she manages to accidentally convince them that she's in the middle of a great method acting performance, and this leads to numerous pieces of humor and trouble, but Betty still seemed a little too aware for this to really work for me, although is really about how two characters are in love with images, as Charlie becomes a great admirer of Betty as he's traveling across country to try and find her, idolizes and giving her personalities and presumptions of her that he knows are probably not accurate, but his desires outranks his other thoughts. Overall though, "Nurse Betty" is a pretty good comedy. There's some good work on the side as well by Tia Texada, Crispin Glover and Allison Janney among others in strong supporting work, and it's observant and smart enough. I think it could've gone farther, but on the other hand, it has other places before, and this idea is pretty strong itself. Neil Labute was the director, and he's always interesting when he directs, although he's best when he writes for either the stage or the screen, and I wonder if he would taken material in a different direction had he wrote it; that might have been interesting, but no more hypothesizing. "Nurse Betty" is a good film, and the more I think about it, the more I realize it's better to just leave it at that.
HOW DO YOU KNOW (2010) Director: James L. Brooks
ZERO STARS
I watched "How Do You Know," what seemed like a week ago, gave it half a star, had a horrid time, just trying to get through the damn movie, and now, I barely remember much about it all; it was just awful. Forgettable, unremarkable,... I mean I can really just go through a thesaurus right now, there's no negative adjective that doesn't apply to this movie, and it was such vapor. It was such vapor that it would go right through you without even being noticed, and then, it was also, just a pain to watch this movie, to trudge through it; it was remarkably difficult. And from James L. Brooks, of all people, who really should know better- this is the kind of movie, where literally nobody had a career or a job, and they all had interesting jobs, and they're never doing it; this from the guy who made "Broadcast News"? First you have Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) who's an Olympic level 3rd baseman at softball (This was back their was softball in the Olympics, I guess, so the movie's half-outdated) who's cut because she lost half a step, which is not a good enough reason to have them not be a national team as any expert will tell you, and with free time in New York City, an unsure of where to go with her career, she then ends up in a love triangle. First, with another athlete, Matty (Owen Wilson), who's a Major League relief pitcher, which means that he has a huge Manhattan apartment that's perfectly prepared for his bachelor lifestyle, with numerous extra toothbrushes and a closet full of women's clothes, to prevent walks of shames for his latest houseguests. He's also a little more famous, and apparently, when it's the middle of the season, he's able to be home constantly. Then, with George (Paul Rudd) who's some kind of business stock trader, who's being investigated by the government, and could face decades in jail for his actions, most of which, big shock here, were things his father, Charles (Jack Nicholson) was the architect of, but until that gets pointed out, he's banned from his job, he's under investigation, everything taken away from him, but he's fascinated with this girl he happened to meet-cute, but she's going out with-, he's not an asshole, but with somebody's who's in love with her, but it's not really a good pairing, so we're waiting for them not to get together. (Annoyed sigh) There was barely anything that was remotely funny; it was way too long, it was too obvious, these were four great actors, and the closest thing to a character was probably the pregnant Kathryn Hahn part that's Paul Rudd's loyal assistant, who is just, basically there for exposition, which isn't even good exposition, and then, to eventually give birth at a bad time. This movie made me frustrated and angry; it's really shit. There's nothing more I can really say; I don't even know why I wrote down half a star a week ago on my notes, just- Fuck it, this movie sucked, and it deserves zero stars, so it's getting zero stars.
MOSQUITA Y MARI (2012) Director: Aurora Guerrero
✰✰✰✰
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I actually started watching "Mosquita y Mari", months ago, but I didn't finish it after my original viewing after I only realized it was on HBOGO on literally the last day they had the movie available and at that point, I was already pretty tired and couldn't finish it, but I was liking it when it died on me, and finally getting around to it now, I liked it even more. It's the debut feature from Aurora Guerrero, and it takes place in Huntington Park, a very Mexican neighborhood area of L.A., and details the unusual and touching friendship between Yolanda (Fenessa Pineda) and Mari (Venecia Troncuso). Both are around fifteen years old , Yolanda is a straight A's student, who's uninterested in the activities of her more outgoing girlfriends who mostly bring her along almost by force to their more immature adventures, Mari, is an illegal immigrant who struggles with schoolwork, but is more of a hustler who works passing out flyers and working angles on the street. Yolanda starts to tutor Mari, who nicknames the shy Yolanda, Mosquita, which is Spanish, for fly, I believe, and it's not the most imaginative tale about how a reluctant teenage friendship turns into much more, but what is original is the approach to the material. It's a very unique and original perspective; there's a real sense of community and culture here that's very predominate in the film. More than that, it shows this very natural way in which these characters come together and how they're friendship and love really evolves; in a way this is the first friendship for both of them, and the exploration of these emotions and how tenderly they approach this material, and how they grow into this friendship, which itself is filled with these very complicated emotions. Very realistic in feeling and tone, and I think it is autobiographical from Guerrero, this is a really enjoyable and impressive first feature from her. The movie shows just how complex these thoughts are, and it's subtle and smart about it, too. So often, with teenage friendship or romances in movies, and this is essentially a romance, it's the story arc, and there is this hint of sexuality involved, they're so simple, and one-note, they're not really full of depth, they don't explore the these tricky issues that teenagers or even adults frankly, have, everything is simplified, they don't portray this on film with any kind of depth at all, and here we go, with a very good film that does, does it in a little bit in a new way, more importantly, it's done incredibly well. It's a little "Mosquita y Mari", but it's quite an impressive film.
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