CANON OF FILM: "SOME LIKE IT HOT"

SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

Director: Billy Wilder

Screenplay: Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond based on the story by R. Thoeren and M. Logan

Would this film work if Marilyn Monroe wasn’t in it? The answer is probably yes, but whether Billy Wilder “Some Like it Hot” would work as well as it does, probably not. You don’t just need the acting abilities of Monroe, you need her for the iconography. Half of the jokes are twice as funny because they get the added joke that the girl is Marilyn Monroe. Oh, the acting is important though.  She’s been teasing men with her innocence for decades now through the lens of the camera, and probably in real life too, and nobody would be able to sing “I Want to Be Loved By You” the way she does. It’s hard to realize how often actors, are constantly looking for the subtext in the dialogue, to make it sound for realistic, but Monroe could do the impossible, read the line, without any subtext; she reads the lines, and sing the songs as though it’s literal and do so without irony. This is perfect for comedic fodder, but we can believe that she doesn’t quite get the subtext. 

Except, she does get it, and that’s what makes her such a conundrum. Like the scene where Curtis is attempting to seduce her, and she’s holding serve with every pun and innuendo. It’s so difficult to tell where Monroe, the person ends and where Monroe the actress begins, and who knows if Monroe herself is just a put on from Norma Jean, but let’s not try to dive into the sadder aspects of Monroe, especially for this film of pure fun and titillation.  

“Some Like It Hot” has aspects of a few genres, but all of them are just fodder to support the ridiculous screwball plot; this movie is purely and single-mindedly about sex. The film involves two jazz musicians during prohibition-era Chicago, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Oscar-nominee Jack Lemmon) who, through a series of unfortunate events, witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and have to hide out in Florida. Oh, and they have to pretend they’re women, long story.... On the train, they join Monroe’s band which is all heading to perform in a resort to Florida, and in one of the funniest series of moments in film history, Monroe goes to Daphne’s (Lemmon in Drag) bed to thank her for something, and somehow this turns into a booze party that’s seemingly situated inside Lemmon’s top train bunk. I still am not sure just how many legs are actually hanging out of his bed. Anyway, when they get to Florida, Joe (Tony Curtis, who’s already pretending to be “Josephine,”) decides to try court Sugar Kane (Monroe) by pretending to be the heir to Shell Oil fortune named Junior. Tony Curtis said that when he acted as ‘Junior,’ he decided to do it as though he was Cary Grant. He then somehow gets Monroe convinced that he’s…- Well, I mentioned that seduction scene, but it’s probably best I let you guys watch that part, but let’s just say that he has a “problem” that if Marilyn Monroe can’t fix it, then probably no one can.

Meanwhile, Jerry, as Josephine has caught the eye of a billionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown) a man who changes wives as often as he changes his socks but, has the money to do so. This would be what Sugar calls getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, but soon, Jerry becomes somewhat enamored anyway, despite the obvious problems. This leads to the arguably the best ending line in cinematic history.

The other that’s spectacular in the film, is the cinematography; never has great use and placement of shadows been more frustrating to the viewer, as they perfectly cover the parts of Monroe’s infamous white see-through dress that probably would’ve given the censuring board a seizure. The rest of the film is sharply lit and Wilder and legendary co-writer I.A.L. Diamond pepper the script with intriguing visual gags everywhere, that are just as funny as the dialogue.

The American Film Institute named “Some Like it Hot” the funniest American movie ever made, and watching it now, it’s just as racy, sexually suggestive, and funny as ever, and maybe even moreso. The film received six Oscar nominations and won for Best Costume Design. There’s also great supporting work, from one of the few actors of that era who might’ve been harder to work with than Monroe, George Raft, one famously waited out his contract when he didn’t want to be cast in the film that would become “The Maltese Falcon”. Monroe’s difficulties on set, are notorious, but strangely, you’d be hard-pressed to find them in the film, and after “The Seven Year Itch”, she had respect for Wilder; she even signed off on the film being shot in black and white, which was odd, her contract has a clause that required her films to be shot in color unless otherwise stated, and I suspect that she strived to do her best work in this film, even if it was a pain to get it out of her.   

THE TEN GREATEST MOVIES OF 2004! Man, that was a decade ago? Ugh! I wish these lists would stop making me feel so old.

2004 is very memorable to me. I was arms deep into what almost became a minor in Sociology and taking community college classes that were incredibly enriching mentally and knowledgeably engrossing, but basically was only immediately useful for becoming a hippie, something that, according to many people, was either a skill I already had, or at least already had the hair for it. That was the first and only year my Eagles went to the Super Bowl in my lifetime anyway; we loss, and we're still having trouble keeping the most talented wide receivers, or at least convincing them to not join a division rival after we release them. (Ugh, sorry Chip Kelly; I still trust you, but I'm really missing Andy Reid right now.) And that was the '04 Election; the first one I voted in and participated with a few PACs and groups like MoveOn.org; the election which I'm still convinced John Kerry could've won on an Ohio recount (I'm still convinced the math never added up there for me) and we were doomed to four more years of Bush cutting taxes and doubling down on the war, and my family living in that temporary apartment for another five years. Well, things have definitely gotten better in some ways. Now, we have youtube for instance. I never trusted the American people again, but other than that.... Curiously the best films that year, seemed to have very little to do with the events of the time, and all seemed to be personal artistic pieces instead. Well, there were a few exceptions. The Oscars were interesting, but the People Choice Awards probably said more about the tone of the country at the time. "Fahrenheit 9/11" won Best Film, while the Best Dramatic Film, went to "The Passion of the Christ" (Neither made this list.); I strongly suspect that neither choice was voted on much out of quality of the films available (Something that's rare with those awards anyway) but out of an relentless and determined insistence on the continuously polarized views of the country, which reached it's zenith that year. No wonder, the best films, chose, probably wisely to avoid such nonsense, and instead, just tell great stories that most all of us can emotionally relate to, or at least be entertained by, but in any case, movies/filmmakers turned more inwardly artistically, and that's why so many of the really good films that came out that year, seem to exist in their own vacuums, and not try to make larger points of the world, and really dealt with the personal struggles of it's characters and tell a great story.

For those new to this, we've been doing this for a while, going back through the naughts decade and looking back each year, and determining the TEN GREATEST MOVIES of that year. For those who missed the previous lists, here's those lists, as well as links to their corresponding blogposts:

2003
1. Lost in Translation
2. City of God
3. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
4. Love, Actually
5. Monster
6. The Fog of War
7. Dirty Pretty Things
8. The Twilight Samurai
9. The Barbarian Invasions
10. The Shape of Things
http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-ten-greatest-movies-of-2003-year.html

2002  
1. Adaptation.
2. Minority Report
3. 25th Hour
4. Spirited Away
5. Y Tu Mama Tambien
6. Bowling for Columbine
7. Frida
8. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
9. Lovely & Amazing
10. Far From Heaven
http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-ten-greatest-movies-of-year-2002.html

2001
1. Mulholland Dr.
2. Dinner Rush
3. Waking Life
4. The Royal Tenenbaums
5. Gosford Park
6. Monsters, Inc.
7. Amelie
8. Audition
9. Ghost World
10. Memento
http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-ten-greatest-movies-of-year-2001.html

2000
1. Almost Famous
2. Amores Perros
3. Traffic
4. Requiem for a Dream
5. Chocolat
6. Best in Show
7. Wonder Boys
8. High Fidelity
9. 6ixtynin9
10. Cast Away
http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-5-obstructions-blogathon-objective.html

Well, that's where we've been, we're about to hit the halfway point now; let's take a look now, at the best of 2004!

TEN GREATEST FILMS OF 2004

10. HOTEL RWANDA



This is the first time since I started making these for each year of the decade that I didn't add any movies to my Top Ten, which is a bit of a shame 'cause my 11th choice "Saved!" was a film I really wanted an excuse to showcase, but while I couldn't find a spot for that or many other films,  I did end up switching a few around. "Hotel Rwanda" at the time, I probably would've been in my Top 5 of that year, and frankly if you really go back, it's still strange how the film was oddly snubbed at Oscar time, only getting three nominations, and I was convinced it was gonna get the Best Picture nomination that ended up going to "Finding Neverland". Don Cheadle's performance, is surprisingly still his only Oscar nomination, and I still thought it was the best of the year. He plays Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager at the only 4-star hotel in Rwanda, back in '94, right at the time of the notorious genocide that killed a million people in literally, months. Paul was a Hutu, although  his wife Tatiana (Oscar-nominee Sophie Okonedo) is Tutsi, and head off to a UN refugee camp, while Paul, begins using his skills as a hotel manager to hide refugees in the hotel. At the time. What are the Hutu and Tutsi, they're competing tribes in the very small country, and once the Hutu took power, they slowly began the abomination. Machetes from the thousands are shown being shipped in from China in one memorable scene. In another, through a series of intense phone calls and letters, Paul purposefully tries to strike the correct emotional cord to help get out the 800+ refugees he's hiding, by convinces foreign nations and families to send help and money to fight back, and also to help the rest escape. The movie the film is most-often compared to is "Schindler's List", it's not at that level, but based on a true story, the way Paul continually maneuvers through the systems, political and managerial is quite inventive, and was how he managed to keep the refugees alive before there was total genocide. There's some strong performances as well from people like Nick Nolte, Tilda Swinton and Joaquin Phoenix in supporting roles. In hindsight, some of the flaws of the movie are more apparent. The cinematic nature of the narrative, staying a little too true to the three-act structure and the dialogue at times, especially the ones that scream "Symbolic line" don't exactly hold up, although in the moment, they still come off as right, but perhaps director Terry George, could've taken a more neorealist approach to the material, and possibly have come off with a better film, but this still remains the Northern Ireland-born director's best work, despite some previously good films like "In the Name of the Father" and "The Boxer". It also hits all the emotional notes it's trying to correctly, so, for being as well-made and well-acted, for what it is; it helps it remain powerful, and it still holds up very well. Still one of the best documents about the Rwandan genocide in a theatrical film as well. A lot of people died and a lot more people did nothing about it either, until it was too late, and this was the one story about the guy who did all that he could.


9. MILLION DOLLAR BABY



Strangely, this is the first time one of the decades Best Picture Oscar winners has appeared on any of  these lists. That said though, I think there were two directors American directors who I think you can firmly say were the premiere filmmakers of the decade, in terms of both consistent amount of quality and a consistent amount of quality. One of them was Steven Soderbergh, who won the 2000 Directing Oscar, and the other, somewhat more surprisingly is Clint Eastwood. He was in his 70s when he earned his 2nd directing Oscar for "Million Dollar Baby". Based off of a short story from former boxing trainer Jerry Boyd, written under the alias F.X. Toole, Eastwood, seemed to make the film suddenly, and on whim, purposefully leaving in obviously errs and inconsistencies in the Paul Haggis script (which was memorable for not having any colored pages in it, meaning nothing in the script ever changed at any point of production, something that's unbelievably rare), like the voice over and P.O.V. of Scrap (Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman), who narrates the film. Eastwood never cared about making a film perfectly, as he instead, would rather focus on the emotional cords of a film. This film, about a rugged old boxing trainer, Frankie Dunn (Oscar-nominee Eastwood) who's become too conservative in his training methods over the years, missing numerous opportunities to train/manage a champion. He's not inspired by the young untrained power-punching girl Maggie (Oscar-winner Hilary Swank) who's hanging around his gym, insisting on Frankie teaching her to fight. These three lost souls, eventually end up together, as Maggie's natural gift and Frankie's training earns her fame and even fortune, despite all three coming to terms with their own baggage, past and present. The film is pure classical filmmaking. This movie could've been made in the '40s, and fit in perfectly on a double-bill with "Mildred Pierce" perhaps. Boxing is the motif, but the story is about the three people, and the journeys they all go through, and how they effect each other, and the decisions they end up making or asking, and insisting upon of each other. Even supporting characters at the edges of the screen, have interesting backstories, and play more crucial roles then we think. The biggest choice, at the end, 'caused controversy and debate at the time, it still does, although curiously, I never thought that was the intention of the film. I always interpreted it, as simply, a part of the actions between these three specific characters, and what they would do, and how they'd react to them, and despite the fact that film, could've used an extra draft, that's the part that still holds true. Swank, won her second Best Actress Oscar, in a particularly weak year, and once again, we're reminded of how great a physical and transformative actress she can be, having trained for months as a boxer just for the role. It's definitely one of Eastwood's masterpieces, as both a director, actor, producer, he even did a memorably beautiful score for the film. All his best films, have emotional complicated relationships between complex characters at their core, and it takes some good actors to make those parts stand out. "Million Dollar baby", might be a little too simple, but it's still pretty powerful, and that's really a tougher trick that it looks, especially with this film, that really could've gone wrong 100 different ways; this was really a force of will to get this made by Eastwood, and a masterful directing achievement. And the fact that's he's only become more ambitious over the years as a director; this might be the film that separates Eastwood actor with Eastwood as a director, but also Eastwood, as the artist.


8. A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD



If you've ever doubted Colin Farrell's acting range; I'd bet money that you probably haven't seen the least-known film on this list, the wonderful "A Home at the End of the World". It's somewhat curious actually that the movie didn't seem to connect with most people at the time or since really. The movie was written by Michael Cunningham, and based on his novel, and this came out shortly after his more well-known book "The Hours" was adapted to an Oscar-winning feature, and while that's a good movie, I actually prefer this transcendent and beautiful film, about three lifelong friends who form a makeshift family. That's a very simple description of what's going on though, and this movie could've really gone horribly wrong without Farrell hitting the right notes as Bobby. Bobby's seen more than his fair share of tragedy in his life. He saw he brother die after a disastrous accident, and watched over his father fall to illness as a teenager. With his mother long passed, he moves in with his friend Jonathan's (Dallas Roberts, as an adult) family. Jonathan is a shy kid, often picked on and teased. Bobby, befriends Jonathan because, he needs a friend, and he has a strange, inate way of feeling exactly what it is that everyone around him needs, and is very persuasive. When they get caught with pot, by Bobby's mother, Alice, (Sissy Spacek) Bobby convinces her to join in, and get enchanted with the experience as Laura Nyro's "It's Gonna Take a Miracle", opening up her housewife perspective, and inevitably, freeing her up. Even after Jonathan leaves for New York, Bobby stays with the family  'til his mid-twenties, and works as a baker, when he moves to New York where a more flamboyant Jonathan's living with an older adventurous roommate Clare (Robin Wright), who becomes entranced with Bobby, and eventually decides to sleep with him, a tougher conquest than normal for her, since Bobby is a shy virgin. It's hard to describe why this movie is so great without really showing Bobby, and Farrell's performance. Horrible life experiences happen to him, but he's forever going out of his way, to be, whatever that person particularly needs him to be. It's almost an angelic performance, and a character, that, 99% of most actors, would've gotten completely the wrong notes. He's not gay, straight, or seemingly anything in particular, and he only seems to be able to feel the needs of others. If we didn't know his backstory, he might not have been a believable character. Instead, not only does he some believable, he is the heart of the movie. Jonathan's in love with him, but since Bobby's not really anybody's he starts sleeping around. He's not really Clare's boyfriend, but she wants him too, she even has a child with him eventually, after they all move up to Woodstock to live together, as a three-person family unit. This was the debut feature for director Michael Mayer; he's mostly directed and produced television since, but he created a heartbreaking and touching film about a character who, not only puts his own emotions aside, it's sometimes hard to tell whether he has any, other than the need to make sure everyone else is happy. When he makes a final choice, he makes it based on, who needs him to be around more. Taking place from the '60 to the '80s, the movie chronicles three decades of Americana life through these eccentric but loveable characters, who have tough decisions to make as life and love unfolds for all of them. It's a must-watch, 'cause there isn't a movie quick like it that's as good as it is, and trust me, you'll understand exactly why the movie is so difficult to describe if you've seen it.


7. THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS



From one movie that's like no other film emotionally ever made, to a movie that's unlike any other cinematically ever made. From the cruel twisted mind of Lars von Trier, "The Five Obstructions" is the filmmaking equivalent to reality TV. I added this film already to the Canon of Film, link below:

http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2012/04/canon-of-film-five-obstructions.html

and there are the long-rumored remakes of the film in some sort of development, the latest one being that Von Trier would be challenging Martin Scorsese to "The Five Obstructions" challenge. (My initial though would've been to have Werner Herzog do it but that might be too easy.) The film documents Von Trier challenging his hero and friend, director Jorgen Leth to recreate his famous short film "The Perfect Human", five different times, each time, under strict new guidelines and conditions. It's hard to make one movie, and usually when it's done, it's such an undertaking that the last thing a filmmaker would want to do is remake it, much less, five more times. It's intriguing, challenging, sadistic in many ways, and utterly fascinating. A called it a demonic science experiment, yet it also reveals the ways in which the artist creates and is inspired to do so, even under the most treacherous of circumstances, as we see how a filmmaker can reexamine and reanalyze his work in ways that he haven't seen before. . I could hardly believe it when Von Trier, out of nowhere tells Jorgen to make it a cartoon after everything that's happened so far. Until there's another one, if there's another one, there's no real equivalent to this film, even among documentaries about filmmaking, they're usually just behind-the-scenes stuff, here's a way to turn filmmaking into this socioanthropological study, and Von Trier, of all people, pulling the strings of his hero, no less, and being the ultimate puppet master. It's a unique experience, one that, I hope we do get to see recreated again, from other directors, to even get a more elaborate perspective on the art of filmmaking, and the way the mind of an artist works and struggles to creates.


6. KILL BILL: VOL. 2



I had a few queries and complaints about my 20003 list, one of the ones that was observed more than once was that I didn't have "Kill Bill Vol. 1" on that list. Well, it was certainly a great film, worthy of such a list, but 2003 was a great year for film, and therefore, it didn't make my list. The next year, "Kill Bill: Volume 2" came out, was a better movie than Volume 1, and sure enough, it shows up here in my Top Ten of '04. This Quentin Tarantino film, is not a sequel, but one of the first examples of a film, being broken into two parts for release, so this was essentially just, the second half of the story more than anything else; it was originally supposed to be apart of a long 3+ hour epic, and is his great revenge crime story, a la, a martial arts film. Separated into ten chapters, like a book, free from linear three-act structure, "Kill Bill" follows The Bride (Uma Thurman) as she seeks revenge on Bill (David Carradine) and his cohorts who tried to kill her, after she got pregnant and decided to escape the hitman life. We see the wedding events, pre-the wedding massacre, shot in black and white, and the first time we see the notorious Bill Driver, her former boss, and lover. Both films, were Quentin Tarantino's first features after a six-year hiatus after making "Jackie Brown", and "...Vol. 2", is arguably his greatest directing work, channeling everybody from Sergio Leone to Kurosawa to Brian De Palma, during a really well-done two-shot, with a great fight scene between the Bride and her arch rival  Elle (Daryl Hannah). The "Kill Bill" movies are probably the most entertaining and fun of Tarantino's career, and that's saying something, consider how fun his movies usually are. This film eye candy for the ultimate cinephile. Great Tarantino dialogue, the best actions scenes, not as much blood and violence as the first one, but more tension and more pure filmmaking. It's over-the-top and ridiculous, but utterly fascinating as well. It's pure Tarantinian pulp. Every character and performance is memorable and eccentric, and every shot, is filled with ideas. This is Tarantino pop art, and it's enjoyable on every viewing, with the first part, without the first part. Just watching a couple scenes here and there, between while waiting for something else to get on, even the '70s style credits, just light up the screen, and just give you that great feeling, that you know you're in for a lot of fun.


5. THE AVIATOR



I actually have a few good Howard Hughes stories, not only did a few members of my family work for the Hughes Corporations from time to time, one of them arrested him. Yes, my grandfather's brother was Andy Baruffi, and he at one of point, was the head of the Las Vegas bureau of the IRS, and he arrested Hughes for tax evasion. He, loved "The Aviator", and said that, DiCaprio really nailed his performance. Now, the Martin Scorsese film, doesn't document his Vegas years that made him legendary here, like my favorite story of him buying the Desert Inn, so he wouldn't have to get kicked out of his hotel room, but we do get a great biopic, that starts from his days, taking his father's drillbit money to Hollywood to make "Hell's Angels", then, the most expensive movie ever made, taking three years, numerous months to shoot, and then reshoot entirely to record sound. It's there we see his interest in airplanes, and his quests to fly around the world, designing and building planes and buying TWA, competing with Juan Trippe at PanAm over the rights to fly the international skies. For a guy, known for his excessive OCD as well as his excessive fortune, he lived one of the greatest of young lives before seeming to retreat completely away from life entirely. He dated Harlow, Hepburn, Gardner, among other starlets, made movies, flew the world, became the richest man alive, and couldn't get out of a public bathroom until someone new came in, and he could sneak out without touching the doorknob. Scorsese loves stories with a rise and a fall of a great character, Hughes was certainly a character. There's been numerous good movies made about him, like Jonathan Demme's "Melvin and Howard" and Lasse Hallstrom's "The Hoax", but they were just stories about fringe characters in Hughes's life, very fringe in fact. I think there's about ten or twelve other films you can make on Hughes and still only scratch the surface of him. There's never a dull moment but even Scorsese outdoes himself in matching his exuberant life with an audacious spectacle of a film to give us a glance at both Hughes, the rich neurotic playboy who could build toys for himself, others or the U.S. government upon request, including the infamous Spruce Goose, which despite much ridicule, he did manage to get in the air, to the more reclusive and mad soul, tortured in his own mind and unable to escape or live in the outside world anymore. Scorsese uses every classic and new tool at his disposal to tell this story, and in many ways, he probably used more of his skillset than any other film of his previous and since. A sequence involving Jude Law, in a cameo as Errol Flynn, could be in a film book of shot analysis, right next to Eisenstein's "The Battleship Potemkin" Moscow steps sequence and Hitchcock's cropduster sequence in "North By Northwest", it was so elaborate, and brilliant, and in the same movie some amazing special effect sequences as a plane crash through numerous homes in Beverly Hills, to the great zoom-in shot of DiCaprio flying the Spruce Goose, sequences like that, he can then show us how to make a great sequence, at a dinner table, and involving a pea, probably a sequence that was incredibly more difficult than the special effects to pull off, and he absolutely mastered it. It's a great combination of classic Hollywood filmmaking, mastery of the modern CGI filmmaking, and of Scorsese's signature style. The sad thing is that, Scorsese's made so many good movie, that "The Aviator" might rank, 9th or 10th maybe on a list of Scorsese films, and legitimately so, but almost any other director, this would be their grand achievement.


4. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND



Titled after a line from a poem by Alexander Pope, curiously, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" has become the most accessible and beloved of the film scripts from the great Charlie Kaufman. He won his Oscar for this film, along with director Michel Gondry and performance artist Pierre Bismuth, who worked on the idea of the film in it's early stages, but they both let Kaufman and Kaufman only, speak after winning the award. In 2002, he wrote two of the films that made my Top Ten of that year, including "Adaptation.", which I ranked number one. Yet somehow "Eternal Sunshine..." seems to transcend even those who weren't as inspired by his previous voyages into the inner workings of the mind like "Being John Malkovich" and his first collaboration with Gondry, "Human Nature", and have embraced this one, I think because it's not so much a philosophical or anthropological dissection as it is, as it deals with something, much more simple. Love. Losing love, heartbreak, the torturous one goes through after a breakup, and how that kind of symbolic pain can't hurt more than any physical one. Joel (Jim Carrey) is figuring that out, as he's unable to get over Clementine (Oscar-nominee Kate Winslet), his now-ex-girlfriend, who he then finds out, has erased her from her memory through a process developed by Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), where he is able to break into the mind of a patient and find all the memories he has associated with someone, and inevitably, he erases them. Joel is currently going through the process of losing these memories, we find out soon enough, of Clementine as a matter of revenge of sorts, but as he's having the procedure which involves Mierzwiak's underlings Patrick, Stan and Mary (Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst) breaking into Joel's house at night, inserting a strange helmet on him which connects through a laptop, and essentially deletes his memories. He, however, is fighting back against the process while it's happening. Hiding those memories in other memory banks, even going back into those supposedly erased memories, until they have to bring in Mierzwiak to finish the job, and have other secrets and revelations get revealed. The movie is a film that challenges out appreciation of the love and pain in relationships, and how we perceive them. One painful moments seems to be able to erased numerous good ones in the moment, but is it possible that true love, or does the need to feel remain so strong that it can trump anything, including a couple erasing their own memories of each other? Kaufman seems to conceive of his movies through long transcendental games of "what if..." and makes his movies around the logic scenarios that build up in his mind, like what would happen when a man enters his own portal into his mind, what would he see? It's the coolest looking of his films, with the gorgeous cinematography from Ellen Curas makes the movie both cold and soft with the gorgeous blues she tints much of the film with. It's Gondry's best film as a director by far, but it's really Kaufman's work that's the centerpiece of the film as he manages to use numerous strange flashbacks and flash forwards and whatever the hell you'd call such scenes to as he dives deeper into the mind of Joel. It's a film that requires one or two  viewings to make sure you catch everything, but they're definitely worth it. Essentially, it's a love story at it's core, and that's why it's his most popular film, and it succeeds well at that, as some people might not be able to fully appreciate the disdains and tribulations of having to write a movie about orchids, everyone can appreciate the pains of love, and with "Eternal Sunshine..." it gives us a hopeful view that reveals that a spotless mind, might not be preferable to having loved and lost before.


3. BEFORE SUNSET



While "Before Sunrise" had become a minor hit, and earned a cult following, there wasn't exactly what you'd call a popular groundswell for a sequel. Hypothetically, we would've been okay not knowing whether or not Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who received Oscar nominations along with Director Richard Linklater for Writing) were to have met on that day at that train, six months after that famous day and night they spent talking about....- well, just general pontificating on life and falling in love on that summer day in Vienna. So when they made a second (and then later, a third), it was a bit of a surprise, but it was also clearly a labor of love. I've written on the film already as a Canon of Film post, link is below:

http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2013/06/canon-of-film-before-sunset.html

It is a better film than "...Sunrise", and in many ways, it's a much more riskier film. Taking place nine years after their first meeting, in Paris this time, and  using lots of long takes, many of them tracking shots, that almost make it seem like real time as opposed to the magical dreamlike night before, that seemed to never end. It's a riskier more adult conversation, and requires some incredible acting. People think most of the scripts for these films have a lot of improvisation, they don't, and they require the great of acting, to accomplish, and with "...Sunset" in particular, probably the greatest directing job as it had to remain so tightly constructed. Yet, a lot goes on in the film, more than many people might realize at first. I wrote in that Canon entry that more happens in the final two words of "Before Sunset" than in most movies, and just isn't too many movies that can make that kind of claim; that's a kind of skill, that, frankly can't be matched.


2. THE INCREDIBLES



I've yet to find anybody who didn't at least like this film. This was Director Brad Bird's second feature after "The Iron Giant", which was under-promoted from Warner Brothers, so much so that according to legend, they sent him flowers and an apology note after the film flopped and would later go on to be a cult classic. Moving to Pixar for his next project, he made a conscious choice that he was gonna tell the story he wanted to make, and he wanted to make a superhero film, and "The Incredibles" is a really fun one. (The Oscar-nominated screenplay from Bird, was the first time a Pixar project had only one credited screenwriter; a feat that's especially rare for animated features.)  I don't know if the idea of a family of superheroes is new, but I can't think of it done better. Bird took great care in creating the characters, matching the family unit to appropriately symbolic heroes and abilities. He also toys with the genres cliches, the rich villain with his own island, for instance, and maybe the best creation of the film, voiced by Bird himself, the costume designer to the superheroes, Edna E. Mode, who's short bob hair and glasses, evokes the great costume designer Edith Head. The sharp twist on the superhero genres, is that, after too many lawsuits against superhero who accidentally saved people who didn't want to be saved, like foiling many suicides, they have to go into hiding. This is just as Bob and Helen Parr, aka Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl (Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter) have gotten married, and now have three kids, who are developing their own super abilities. When Mr. Incredible finds possible secret work for his powers again, he hides it from his family, as begins doing some superhero work on the side, landing him into hot water, as he finds Syndrome (Jason Lee) a millionaire inventor who's made it his life's mission to begin finding and taking out the old superheroes, who are now hiding in regular menial jobs, or motherhood in Elastigirl's case. It's a fun premise, and it's a fun film overall. It wouldn't this high if it wasn't consistently entertaining, and this film ranks, really high among the very best of Pixar's work, and in a decade where animation really broke out and turned into an art form as legitimate and accepted as film the way live-action always has been, "The Incredibles" stands out as one of the very best, and Brad Bird, in particular, one of the very best storytellers of animation. Best writers too, this is an incredibly well-written screenplay as well.

1. SIDEWAYS




If there's a flaw at all in "Sideways", I've yet to find it, and there aren't too many movies I've watched more from this decade than this one. Alexander Payne had already made some wonderful films like "Election" and "About Schmidt", but "Sideways", is another league completely. I've written on it before as well, the Canon of Film post is below:

http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2012/01/canon-of-film-sideways.html

I think it's one of the rare "perfect movies" where no shot or cut or angle was even wrong. It's introduced terms into the lexicon, like "Drink-and-dial", it singlehandedly increased the sales of pinot noirs, and more than that, it's one of the best comedies of the decade, and a script that is brilliantly subtle in the ways that things get revealed. That's the great twist of the movie, how even the smallest details add so much more to the film. To just recite the plot that two guys head up to California Wine Country for a week, and have a misadventures with a couple of waitresses they pick up, that's way too misleading, considering how much else is going on. Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) is a struggling novelist and an oenophile, who tries to take his best friend Jack (Oscar-nominee Thomas Haden Church) an out-of-work actor to wine country for his lack week, before his wedding, hoping that he'd soon appreciate the subtleties of wine like he does. He's still getting over his divorce, and his novel's on it's last rights in terms of publication, and Jack's idea of cheering him up is to finally get him laid during the holiday, whatever the cost. The two women they find are Maya (Oscar-nominee Virginia Madsen) a beautiful divorcee who's seen enough of the worst of men like Jack to give Miles a chance, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), Maya's friend and a flirtatious wine pourer who puts her heart too much on her sleeve for others. The ways things play out for these four separately is one story, together, it's another, at the deepest levels, are the characters themselves, particularly Miles, whose life of quiet desperation has more emotional pitfalls than he can handle. "Sideways" works every time, and ages better on every viewing; the Oscar-winning script, I'd argue as one of the best adapted scripts of all-time, and it's the best film of 2004.

"HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER": DESTINY, TRUE LOVE AND THE STRUGGLES OF SEARCHING FOR BOTH: A STORY SO LEGEND-WAIT FOR IT...- DARY, THAT IT'LL LAST FOREVER!

I think a lot of the people who don't really like/understand sitcoms don't realize that, you really just need, one little twist, something slightly different than what came before, and then, you can pretty much borrow and steal from everyone else, (Well, everything good if you can) and suddenly, a sitcom can become truly special, even a classic. "How I Met Your Mother" borrowed from a lot of places. "Friends", for the relationships among the characters, "Seinfeld", for the comedic freedom in a 3-camera structure, "The Wonder Years", for the flashback voiceover. But, they had that, one little twist that no other show had before, and it's that clever twist that's kept us waiting and wondering for all nine seasons of show.

The conceit of the show, even I laughed at originally, that the entire series was a part of a long story being told to the future kids of Ted, telling them about how he met their mother, seemed strange and ridiculous and, daring at the time. This came on during a period where a lot of shows, dramas mostly, "Lost" in particular comes to mind, where a lot of the show was the finding out of some big reveal about the show. That said, the show was a much bigger undertaking than simply having a gimmick reason to keep watching the show until the bitter end. (Some would say, very bitter end, we'll get to that.) TV series have something called a bible. It's not what it sounds like, it's actually a crucial tool for most series, and what it is, is a book that you write in that basically gives a detailed history of the show. The backgrounds and major events in character's lives, bios, stuff like that, and they're constantly updated as a show goes on, and in some series that may last a long time, (Think those really long-running soap operas that predate television, some of them.) there could be multiple bibles just on the characters, much less the events. They tell everything about the content of the show, and they also keep track of everything. For instance, if a character gets a Christmas gift from his mother, yet, in an earlier episode we learn that that character's mother had passed away, (That's a famous "M*A*S*H" faux pas that I'm referencing) then, that means somebody didn't read into their bible well enough. (And numerous people screwed up in not catching it.) Now, that said, it's not terribly uncommon that there's an occasional error or an anomaly on any series if you're paying attention, but a few shows occasionally, have to live and die by it's accuracy. I always think of one other sitcom in regards to a show really making sure that the bible is kept to the letter to such a degree, and that was "Soap". That show only lasted four years, for various reasons, but that was the first sitcom to use the soap opera format, and more importantly with that show, but it wasn't just, what was on the show that had to be documented; they had to have an explanation for the condition of the characters on that show. It was a rich side and a poor side of the family, despite them being linked by two sisters, as the opening of the show famously points out, but only late in series did we find out why the disparity. A crucial flashback episode revealed the scenario where Chester married Jessica and not Mary, despite Chester having just slept with Mary, in order for Chester to protect his family from going to prison after they were stealing money from the sisters' father. This was a huge, "Oh!" moment for that show, as suddenly, everything was explained, and I would argue that the show, strangely went downhill from there, almost as though we had finally found the key, and now that we've opened the chest, and found what's inside and taken it in, now it's empty.

"How I Met Your Mother" probably learned from this, and decided that, if that's the moment that will explain a series, than maybe that should be at the end, the final explanation. That way, they have something to build up to, and the unique hook that so many sitcoms desperately need. (And it was planned ahead, Josh Radnor has admitted that he's known since season one what the reveals at the end would be.) And since that core of the show, was so strong and so ingrained, strangely it allowed for them to then, play with the structure of the sitcom, and even reinvent the format in other ways. The big obvious way this is done is with the visual format of the show. Technically, it's a three-camera show, and shot on a set like one, but it doesn't have a studio audience, and it takes full advantage of it. A lot of shows used this technique before to some extent, "The Partridge Family" comes to mind, but not, recently, and not the way "How I Met Your Mother" did. They used it to their full advantage, doing all kinds of comedy that usually can't be constrained by the 3-walls of a set, as well as musicals and dramatic moments  that most shows don't. Weird angles, and a certain freedom with set design, quick-cut flashback, and forwards, and interjecting in them and playing with the structure and forms of a sitcom, allowing to seemingly completely get rid of the Bob Saget voice over whenever they felt like, or abandon it's premise completely  to go on numerous divergents and running gags. Strangely, the limitation of the set-up of the show, provided, complete freedom for the show to explore pretty much anything else. They made characters as ridiculous or over-the-top and absurd as they wanted. They could break into songs as easily as they could punch you in the stomach with a sudden emotional cord that can destroy you, sometimes in the same episode. Yeah, sometimes they really caricatured Canada too much for my taste, but they had already set their own structure, they were correct to set their own rules. They're own catchphrases, inside jokes, moments, symbolic objects, etc.. It's already from a skewed point-of-view, so the comedy can come from one as well, or as many perspectives as it wanted to. From the traditional sitcom to the surreal and back again, as long as they can keep the stories straight, and the core premise alive, they were able to do anything. Dropping a hint here and there, and advancing a story, as we get closer and closer, and closer to the moment, that ironic beginning that would end the series. In many ways, while it might not have revolutionized the sitcom, it's definitely become an original and seminal one, not solely for the one little twist in the sitcom structure, but for the ways in which its also expanded the kinds of comedy possible in the 3-camera format (And expanded the format in general). Still, it's tough to put "How I Met Your Mother" on the same line of the really great sitcoms for some reason though, which might be a bit unfair, oddly enough. It really attempted something no other sitcom tried before, and it succeeded at it unusually well.

Alright, we've looked at why the show was successful and different, and looked at it's place in television history. Now, to discuss that controversial final episode. (SPOILER ALERTS READ AT OWN RISK) Actually, I've been discussing it for the last week, almost everywhere. I've seen it three times, and the last two times, I was crying, and the more I think about it, the better the episode gets. Yes, certain things get unresolved (Apparently the pineapple incident had more of an impact on others in the internet community than me; [Which is weird on my part actually, since I usually have an instant callback on anything decent involving Danica MacKeller]) and it didn't exactly end the way, that, maybe we wanted or hoped for. But since when did this show ever kowtow to our expectations anyway? Well, we can dissect this episode in dozens of ways. How tearful it is that, when he met Tracy we already had the knowledge that she wasn't gonna survive to see her daughter get married, (Which is partly why Ted's telling the story.) or the numerous real reasons, besides Robin's job that her marriage to Barney ultimately didn't work out, like the knowledge that she couldn't provide him the kid that he really wanted to ultimately settle his own paternal issues. Or to believe that Robin's cold feet was apart of a long realization that she should've been marrying Ted. Some have complained that the show, which used it's entire last season to cover a few days, suddenly decided to jump ahead and cover years in it's one hour finale; that's actually a dumb argument considering the whole structure of the show has played fast and loose with time lines from the very beginning, even in conception. And why wouldn't it by the way? He's telling a story to his kids, they pretty much know the rest of the story already; at this point, Ted's job is to just fill in the last few details The show literally jumped years into the future and past at will to begin with, so I don't understand that complaint per se. I also think, people aren't realizing the parables between Tracy's first love, having passed away years earlier, means that, this was the 2nd time she found the love of her life, but Ted's first, (or second depending on how/when we count Robin) so they both go through the same grieving period and changes before moving on to their next true loves, or attempt. (Something else that's barely mentioned is that, we don't actually get an answer to Ted's question to Robin at the end, nor, if that answer is yes, whether or not that relationship would was gonna work out either.) And that Ted, asking his kids for permission to date Robin, parallels Tracy's looking up to heaven and talking with Max, about whether to marry the guy she was dating before Ted. There's a lot of intricacies to the series finale than meets the eye actually. Callback jokes and references abound, there's quite a bit of emotional parallels in the episode, that only make the rest of the series grow more. Some are more obvious than others. The yellow umbrella, the bass guitar, the ukelele, the ducky tie. In fact, not since "Seinfeld" has a show made so many previously innocuous sayings or jokes or objects becomes such instantly noted references in the American lexicon. Most shows are lucky if just one thing is remembered from them. ("Seinfeld" was another show that constantly challenged the parameters of the three-camera series, and has just as big an influence on "...Mother" as "Friends" does.)

I can, and many have already write an entire blog or two to analyzing the episode, something which normally, I try not to do, and I also discourage it, since I think it best to analyze a series as a whole rather than the parts, and if ever a network show has made us do that more, it might be this show. Strangely, I have half-broken that rule with "How I Met Your Mother," before, I devoted half a blogpost to discussing it's episode titled "The Symphony of Illumination", an episode that ended with such an emotional punch that I felt compelled to discuss it's technique compared to other famous similar episodes once, most specifically the "Scrubs" episode "My Occurance". That post is below:

http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2011/12/scrubs-secretly-one-of-most-influential.html

Now that we have the whole series, we realize how much of a personal and artistic story we've been told, and how rare it is that a comedy can have such an elaborate and carefully configured emotional thread. Drama series make us care about every little reference and point all the time now, but in a comedy, in many ways, especially when it's done this well, it has more relevance. More realistic strangely, more down to Earth, as opposed to up in the stratosphere with Goliath National Bank. For the moment, fans will be split on the final episode, the emotional strain and seeming deception of the central conceit of the show, but the more they, and I think about it, it's a beautiful and perfect last chapter to a landmark show that gave us a lot of what we've seen before, done a lot of it better than before, and showed us a lot of new approaches to the sitcom genre that's gonna be imitated and copied now more than simply borrowed. The series will probably never get the credit it really deserves; it never did win the Awards, only once getting a Best Comedy Series Emmy nomination, and an occasional nomination for Neil Patrick Harris and a few techincal Emmys here and there. When I conducted a poll on the "TEN GREATEST TV SHOWS OF ALL-TIME!", "How I Met Your Mother" got only one vote out of 100 ballots. I bet if the show was made thirty years earlier, it would've shown up on more, as then, we could've really seen just how different and unique it really is. Still, though, it, like many great sitcoms of today, often playback on what's come before and a lifetime or two of great sitcoms that came before and that they've engrossed. So many shows before have been about love, relationships, sex, the emotional struggles of them, even a few have touched on destiny and true love, and marriage and hope, and the search for the one, but how many have fully embraced these ideas and treated them as though they were the literal most important things in the universe? And do it seriously, and not just say they do for a laugh? Not enough frankly. That's the ultimate legacy of "How I Met Your Mother"; it takes that kind of seriousness to that subject matter, that makes a blue french horn, be something so much more than simply, a blue french horn.

MOVIE REVIEWS #84: "THE GRANDMASTER", "THE HEAT", "THE CANYONS", "JOBS", "CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915", "MORE THAN HONEY", "THE ATTACK", "STARBUCK", "KILLING THEM SOFTLY", and MORE!

It's a bit of a small week for me in terms of film imput you'll notice, compared to my usual over-excessive film reviews which sometimes have about twice as many movies reviewed, but actually, I've been catching on television lately more than movies. I can't always control the timings of when I get things from the library and Netflix according to my Josh Nashian-level elaborate list-makings, and lately, Some DVDs have been coming in. I've already caught up on the first season of "Hell on Wheels", and the BBC series "New Tricks" this week, and I've also been watching the Showtime show "Huff", which finally reached the top of my Netflix queue after, apprarently about ten years or so. (I swear, 500 slots on my queue, is way too low.) And, lest you all think I'm only catching one on seasons past, I of course was counting down to the series finale of "How I Met Your Mother" earlier this week. (Oh, there a blog coming up on that, don't worry, I will have the last word as always on that.) Also, earlier, I finally got caught up on the last season of "Hung", another short-lived but critically-acclaimed cable series. I had plans to discuss the series in it's own separate blogpost; I even had a good opening written out about a great show about a teacher who's struggling for money that begins turning to a life of crime, only to reveal that I wasn't talking about "Breaking Bad", but I decided against it eventually. These were all very good shows by the way, although I understand why none of them really broke through with the public or with the awards, and that's just shows you how good TV is, and how difficult it is, to keep up with all of it. I think it would be hard even with cable frankly, to keep up on all the good television over the years. (Oh, I always found a copy of the first season of "Treme", and I haven't even gotten to that yet.) It also helps remind us that Emmy season is around the corner and getting interesting all of a sudden. So with all that catching up to do, movies have taken a bit of a back burner recently for me, but I'm still watching as much of everything as I can, but don't be too surprised by a lot more TV posts in the immediate future, and a few less movie reviews on these weekly posts.

Other than that, and the news this morning that David Letterman's announced his retirement, there hasn't been too much else going on lately. Remember to follow my Facebook page, I'd like to get more followers there. The link is on the top right corner along with links to my Twitter and to the LAMBs, which I really should pay more attention to, but- Anyway, let's get right to this week's edition of my RANDOM WEEKLY MOVIE REVIEWS! Starting with the Oscar-nominated film, "The Grandmaster"!


THE GRANDMASTER (2013) Director: Wong Kar-Wai

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Ip Man, (Tony Chui Wai Leung) has been the subject of numerous films lately in recent years, most of them based on his actual life, some are considerably more based on his life than others. For those who aren't initiated in him, than Wong Kar-Wai's "The Grandmaster" is probably your best bet into fully understanding and explaining his importance, and it's not simply that he's the one who taught kung fu to Bruce Lee. I've always had a certain trouble fully accepting Wong Kar-Wai's films. In fact, this is probably the highest I've rated a film of his at this point, and frankly, I'm still debating it myself. He's always the first filmmaker, outside of Hayao Miyazaki, who I would go see frames of his films in an art museum if they were hanging, but sometimes I think he let's the amazing visuals just stay there, as though they're telling the story themselves, which I don't think they usually does. That said, there's a lot to like about "The Grandmaster". The movie begins a little before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and this has caused some distress in the martial arts world. Kung Fu, is separated in China from the North and the South, and there's numerous different disciplines of Kung Fu. This gets a bit complicated, but Ip is a master at Wing Chung, which is a little more unusual a discipline but a particularly vicious one when mastered. Most of the techniques are variations on the 64 hand positions based on the way they're used to attack. Ip is very confident in his skills, never losing even in practice to other masters, as the current Grandmaster, Master Gong (Qingxiang Wang) is willing to pass on his title to the right artist. He'd rather his daughter Gong Er, (Ziyi Zhang) have the title, but during this tradition, even though she's trained, women aren't allowed to rise to the ranks. Master Gong was a master of two disciplines, but only one he taught because the other was lethal, and only Gong Er, would watch him practice outside her window growing up. This changeover is based in respect and tradition, glorious and exuberant ones at that, yet, when the Japanese attack is inevitable, it completely alters this world of masters and this more, religious and Buddhistic philosophical world of Kung Fu, an exclusive world, soon opens up, and Yip Man, is at the forefront of it, as he begin teaching Wing Chung in Hong Kong shortly after the war with Japan. He's lost two daughters in the war, and the world of Hong Kong look more like we'd recognize a glamorous Asian resort town in, an episode of "M*A*S*H", than the spring-lit beauty of the earlier worlds, and the masters become instructors and numerous pop-up martial arts places. Meanwhile, Gong Er, wants to regain her family name, and take out the traitor who replaced her father as master of his discipline, and went on to help the Japanese government place a puppet government in Manchuria. What I really liked about the film, is how it shows the end of this era of martial arts, and how it transformed into the modern-day practice of the disciplines. It's always confused me slightly how this study of a fighting skill, essentially brings with it, this philosophical touch that promotes inner peace of all things, and I always struggled with that conflict, but seeing this film, I think I get a better grasp on it then before. Plus, the look and the acting by the two leads Leung and Zhang were quite good. "The Grandmaster" is probably Wong's most commercial film to date, this one was presented by Martin Scorsese when it was in theaters. I still think there's issues, some erratic pacing at times, but, overall this is one of his better films. I still think there's a wall up that prevents it from being more than a great looking movie as oppose to a great movie that happens to look great, but this one, with the epic true-life tale to help him out to keep a linear plot, it helped a lot, and I have a new appreciation of that era and of kung fu. And the fight scenes are good too. A few too many people going through windows, but other than that, still very good.


THE HEAT (2013) Director: Paul Feig

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There's nothing inherently bad about "The Heat", and it's a funny at times.

(2 Days Later)

My editor has informed me that I should (Finger quotes) "Write more", about this film; she's probably right, although that doesn't mean that she's not BEING A COMPLETE BITCH TODAY! Well since that's apparently the case, let me pitch a hypothesis here, what if Bullock and McCarthy had switched roles? McCarthy was the tough-nosed FBI agent who's all by-the-book professional and hated by everyone, and Bullock was the Boston-accented over-bearing character who's cutting off McCarthy's spanks in the ladies room of a club to make her fit in, and she's the one, who everyone's afraid of but can let her sexuality flow through her movements? (Well, alright, in this scenario, she'd look like Sandra Bullock so the latter wouldn't be too hard actually but still...) Well, the film needs some kind of extra twist to it, like that, 'cause basically the movie is really about Bullock and McCarthy being a comedic duo together, and not much more than that. They're cops, so that gives them something to do I guess, and then they need a plot, so they're after a Boston drug kingpin, and whatnot, but even they seem bored by the predictable plot elements. Bullock is FBI Agent Sarah Ashburn. She's a workoholic that everyone in her department hates despite the fact that she's clearly the best cop on the force, even better at finding drugs than the dogs, but she needs to prove that she's good at playing well with others. Also incapable of that is McCarthy's Detective Mullins, who the Boston PD is afraid of and is a firecracker willing to do anything to catch a criminal. Soon, they're paired up, which they both hate, but they're after the same guy. From there, there's a few scenes that are funny, a few that are a little funny, some that are funny, but really aren't that funny, and yeah, a lot of boredom. I like the concept of the female buddy cop comedy movie, but I think this was the wrong pairing. Actually, scratch that, they were good together, but they took the wrong approach to the material Why couldn't they be funny believable cops in a "Lethal Weapon" sorta way? I don't know, after watching "The Heat", I felt like everything was okay, but bored by it. I was pointing out all the lines that were clearly improvised for far too long, and spotting most of the cameo appearances, and guessing which cop was the mole pretty quickly. I think I'd like to see Melissa McCarthy take a more serious role. Why couldn't she have had Brie Larson's part in "Short Term 12" for instance. I know how talented and funny she is; I thought she should've won that Oscar for "Bridesmaids" in fact, but she also had a very different role on "Gilmore Girls" for seven seasons, and she's capable of a lot more, and this feels like a retread of a role for her. It's a bit of a retread for Bullock too, who's played a few tough-nosed by-the-book cops in her days, granted this was probably the best of those films. I've seen these two is such better movies; I think I'd rather see them stretch a bit while they're together in this one, and apart as well. Bullock did with "Gravity" recently, McCarthy should look for another vehicle. "The Heat", god, even the title's forgettable, is a nice, decent but unremarkable comedy film, by and starring people who've all made better ones.


THE CANYONS (2013) Director: Paul Schraeder

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"The Canyons" ranked as one of the more controversial films of last year, for many reasons. The casting and the sex scenes being the big ones, although the pairing of Director Paul Schraeder working with Author/Screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis, was probably what got some people in more of a tizzy, although I would not be one of those people. I've never particularly understood the appeal that some give to Ellis's work. I've tried sitting through "Less than Zero" a few times and couldn't get through it, and while the cinematic strengths of "American Psycho" make the film intriguing, I thought the story didn't know whether it was a comedy or a drama, and that it didn't matter at the end, because he undercuts the entire story anyway. He deals with the emptiness of the rich, and frankly I think his work is just empty, or at least I thought it was until "The Canyons", which seems to have found a whole new level of emptiness. It takes place in that part of Los Angeles where everybody's a trust fund baby and seem to be at the edges, somehow loosely involved in the film industry, even though there's a bunch and abandoned movie theaters, the films that are made are in New Mexico and places like that, and nobody talks to each other without also doing something else on their phones. Christian (Porn star James Deen, and you know what they say, every time a porn star gets a SAG card, an angel get his wi-, wait, that's not right, that's a bell ringing. What happens when a porn star gets a SAG card then? NOTHING?! That seems wrong, something should happen.[Shrugs]) is a vacuum of emptiness. He's currently producing a horror movie that he hasn't even read the script to, and even he thinks his fetishes of making his girlfriend do anything/one he wants is boring. Well, that's a strong word, girlfriend. Tara (Lindsay Lohan, which also partly explains Deen's presence because casting her at this moment means no bonding from the Guilds, which in turn, opens up the casting a bit for a few more unusual choices.) is basically a beautiful unattached blonde who's job is to basically do whatever she wants as long as she's at home at night, waiting around for Christian to fuck her, or Christian and whatever guy/girl/couple/other that he finds that also comes around and fuck. (I don't know whether Christian, was an attempt to allude to Christian Grey, but to some extent, Tara basically more his submissive slave, than she is, a normal girlfriend.) That said, he does have issues, revolving around the star of his movie Ryan (Nolan Funk). He got the role on the suggestion of Tara, who was working with Gina (Amanda Brooks) on the movie. Gina was more or less producing and casting the film although she was probably technically Christian's assistant. Ryan is her boyfriend at the time, but Christian suspects that Tara must've gone out with Ryan as well. He's right, and they've been revising their old romance since he's been cast in the film, but Tara wants it to stop, but Ryan thinks he's in love with her. What is "love" in this world, exactly? I think "love" is really code for, any actual emotion, and is henceforth confused with love, but Christian's big deal, is that he has to be in control, as he tells his father-appointed shrink Dr. Campbell (Gus Van Sant, in an interesting cameo), so he concocts a few schemes. Never mind that he also is sleeping with someone else, his "yoga instructor", Cynthia (Tenille Houston) There's a few more games of- I don't want to call it chess, that's seems like it's giving these characters too much credit, but there's a lot of backdoor connections between characters and people saying things to cause others to do one thing, and other at-an-angle connections between everyone, one of those things where everybody in L.A. seems to know each other through an old acting class or something like that. Schraeder is a good filmmaker, his "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters" I think is one of the best films of the '80s, and one of the most underrated biopics of all-time, and of course, he wrote the script for "Taxi Driver", which is a similar kind of empty and lonely character to Christian, but that was also a movie with a point, and trying to find a more universal truth in the emotions. There's no emotions here, or anything real in Ellis's work, and even worse, there's not even a real point other than to say that these characters are empty because of their wealth. I mean, maybe he's looking down on them, but he's sure infatuated with them enough to keep writing about them. If these were real characters, it might have real effects for us to see them participating in orgies or murder, (Murderous being the only other supposed emotion besides "love") instead, these are placeholders more or less. The worst kinds of consumerism, really. Since I think that's what they're aiming for, ironically, the movie's well-cast, and well-performed. I hate making this comparison because I think it's unfair to him, but Deen is actually good here, and good for this role; I don't think he has the range that say Sasha Gray had in Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience"; this kind of character, might be about it for him, while Gray has emotional range and some intriguing takes on them actually so, I wouldn't look for him to crossover into other legitimate roles too much in the future, but he's definitely got a presence and can probably be good in different variations of this character. Lindsay Lohan's good here, but I wouldn't think of this as a breakout film for her in the future, but then again, I don't know if she was trusted with too much to do, although you can kinda see her struggling to give more dimensions to this characters. She does succeed in that, not as much as she probably could've or needed to, to really make the movie enjoyable, but I don't necessarily think that's her fault either. Obviously, some have noted some of the parallels to her life in the film, and you can tell that she's not exactly at her healthiest during this movie. I think really, the movie fails however from the script level mainly, and while, there's something compelling about what it is, I can't really recommend it. This film belongs in that, more-interesting-to-discuss-than-to-watch category.


JOBS (2013) Director: Joshua Michael Stern



One of my all-time favorite TV movies is "Pirates of Silicon Valley"; it wasn't the greatest film technically, but it's still the best document on the creation myths of both Apple and Microsoft and one of it's successes was how is took from others' perspectives of both Steve Jobs (and Bill Gates), which helped illustrate their legendary statuses more clearly, more magically, and help tell the story better. "Jobs" presumes that he's already this destined God-like figure, and then tries to revert to show the young Christ-like Jobs as he finds his way towards and begins creating his destiny.

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Now, I know you're wondering why I have chosen to post the star ratings in this spot, as oppose to at the beginning of my review. Well, a funny thing happened to me on the day I watched "Jobs", (Which is also the same day that I at least, am starting to write this review.) I had a long day to begin with, and I starting watching the movie on Netflix at the library, which I like to do on Saturdays, but, I got there late, and I only watched, about thirty minutes of the movie at that time, but, as writers do, I was already inspired, so I started writing and outlining that opening to this review above, as soon as I got home, which prompted one of the strangest reactions I ever had. After I wrote that opening, I read it and liked it a lot as a writer and as an appropriate opening to this review, and I then thought joyously, "I hope I hate the rest of this film!" I even unconsciously said that out loud at my computer; I wish it was an Apple to make it more ironic, but it's only an Intel. Obviously, I don't hope movies are bad, but as a writer-first,... well, this was an unusual and interesting dilemma for me. Anyway, I thought I'd share that piece of sausage-making with you. Uh, actually, the movie has it's moments, so I was worried for a bit, but then, "Jobs", just couldn't resist to inevitably use, every bad biopic cliche, from the sweeping music underneath a cheering crowd, who shouldn't be cheering as Jobs introduces them to the iPod, like they, already know how great it is; that's was bizarre, to the forced and terrible inspirational dialogue and directing. There's not a bad cliche gone unused here, and the biggest problem with the poorly executed "Jobs." Of course, Ashton Kutcher's performance as Steve Jobs has been the subject of some debate; if we're comparing back to "Pirates...", probably is a downgrade from Noah Wyle, but I actually think he did a good job here, and some of the supporting actors were particularly strong. Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, has a few good memorable speeches. The movie chronicles Jobs from the beginning as a Reed College dropout and of course, the beginning of starting Apple in his parents' basement, to the Apple II, to the money pit that became the Lisa, and then later the struggles he has with the Mackintosh. There's only a couple scenes devoted at all to Microsoft, and they don't even mention how Microsoft at one point how Gates's Microsoft eventually grew to have a huge percentage of Apple. The movie also skips awkwardly the transformation of Jobs as he would proceed to NeXT, and creating more limited and educational-based technology. Of course, this is the other problem with Steve Jobs, his life is worthy of literally lots of movies and maybe a full miniseries. (Another Steve Jobs biopic, based on more widely-regarded source material is still in the early phases of development.) I think that's the best approach to him, because trying to cram in everything seems hard to swallow to me. That's the real problem with "Jobs", it does it's best, but it's really just skimming the surface and going through the motions and we only get a really basic entry view into an unusually complex man.


CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 (2013) Director: Bruno Dumont

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I've been struggling more than normal to figure out exactly how many stars to give "Camille Claudel 1915". There's a certain power to the movie definitely and Juliette Binoche gives an exquisite performance, one of her best arguably, and yet,- well, in some ways, the movie seems to be daring us to force us through it, and yet, it really isn't doing that, it's really just giving us a sensory experience of the day-to-day life of living in a madhouse. In Camille Claudel (Binoche) is now highly regarded as one of the greatest sculptresses of all-time. She was the subject of one movie already, that won five Cesar Awards and earned two Oscar nominations, including a lead actress one for the great Isabelle Adjani, the actress who's won more Cesar's than any other, That movie ended where "Camille Claudel 1915" begins, but they're not together technically. The first film, was a biopic of an artist who's obsession with her teacher/mistress, Auguste Rodin, led to her erratic and crazed behavior and eventually, to the madhouse, where she spent the last thirty years of her life. When she entered, around this time, she had already been broken up with Rodin for 20 years, but was still obsessed with him, and what he did to her. The movie was actually shot in a church-run asylum that, although looks as though it's an abandoned period location, is still running, and some of the inmates were cast in the film, as well as the nurses and other staff, and the movie is based off of letter that Camille and her brother Paul Claudel (Jean-Luc Vincent) wrote to each at the time. He's visiting her in two days. She spends most of her time in quiet desperation and anguish. She's both alone, with herself, but alas, is never alone. She's unable to slam a door behind her she mentions, and someone's always around, whether a nurse or a doctor, often it's a patient or two, a particular one, who's unable to really communicate, is a woman with a severely-gapped front tooth, short hair, and seems to be trying to befriend Camille. She, like many of the patients, have nowhere else in society to be, and are incapable of expressing the kind of passionate remarks and thoughts that Camille is able to. She's able to walk around and help out the nurses when needed; she's even allowed to prepare her own food in the kitchen because she's convinced herself that Rodin is out to poison her to death, and doesn't trust anyone else to prepare her meals. It's impossible now to fully know what Camille suffered from exactly, and the medicine of the day probably couldn't help her much if they did, but she does have a mental illness of some kind, and whether it was caused by her relationship with Rodin or it was there all along is impossible to fully explain. In the meantime, there's a quiet world among the brick walls of the asylum. She's forced to take a bath everyday, which is matter-of-fact, but still humiliating. There's a scene where she walks into a rehearsal of the inmates, working on a subpar performance of "Don Juan", unfortunately for her. The sad thing is that, for an artist, it is probably the closest she can come to even experiencing. Her emotions run rabid throughout the days. She can be astute and okay one second, then freaking out and crying the next. It's not the crying that upsets her, it's that, she can't really cry in privacy, and nothing, not even her pain and emotion are hers anymore, as she viciously tells one patient to just get away from her. Paul's visit is undercut with the thought from both him, and the doctor that she may indeed be able to live on her own, and that she shouldn't be there. That said, Paul, who himself is a Christian mystic poet, when he does, clearly believes in the mystic connection between god and man, and only this connection can help her. There's two scenes of the two siblings praying, out loud, and yet they seem to be done in different worlds and for different reasons. The visit from Paul is the climax of the film, as the two seem to struggle to get their points of view across to each other. For 30 years, she stayed in this asylum, we get a 90 minute glimpse at just three days of it. There's no background music and no sounds outside of the natural sounds or lack thereof of the world. If Einstein's right and an empty desk is representative of an empty mind, what is this life of emptiness thrust upon someone who's mind is so cluttered really do to them? The movie was directed by Bruno Dumont, and it's the first of his films I've seen, although he's developed quite a reputation for his sense of detachment that he attaches to material that normally would take a true position, like art and religion in this film, as well as numerous others. Claudel, despite everything lived a memorable and entertaining life, but that movie's already been made, and here, Dumont decides to focus in, just this part, which can easily just be the afterword written before the end credits of most films, and has a sole goal of showing us, what it was like for her, to live here, like this, at this place, and at this exact moment. For that reason, the movie succeeds.

MORE THAN HONEY (2013) Director: Markus Imhoof

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I was more than a little reluctant going into "More than Honey", not because of the subject matter, but because I thought that it's impact wouldn't be felt on me 'cause I already saw another documentary recently on the current climate of bees and beekeepers called "Vanishing of the Bees", which focused on Colony-Collapse Disorder", where entire bee colonies have suddenly collapsed and abandoned their hives. You can read my review of that film in the link below:

http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2011/11/random-weekly-movie-reviews-edition-13.html

I recommended that movie, but other than the fact that both movies are about bees, the two movies couldn't really be more different. This documentary was actually Switzerland's official entry for the Foreign Language Oscar, and I can understand why. Shot in four different countries, and over a period of, at least a year, maybe two, and is quiet and laid back in tone, but is in many ways, nothing short of spectacular. Some of the scenes of bees in the hive, I don't know how they got them. Not since "Microcosmos" have I seen anything like the up-closeness of such a small yet frighteningly amazing segment of our world, and yet, unlike that movie, which I never cared for because of how plot-less it was, this one, seems to use these shots better than any film I've seen before. (And btw, I personally, can't stand bees. Afraid of them, don't like them, my mom's allergic to them; prefer to never see one again, despite, as how very glad I am that they do what they do) Occasionally they use animation to tell their story, and the story of what's happening with them, and the really careful ways in which these keepers take care of them. Director Markus Imhoff, comes from a family of beekeepers, shows how in different parts of the world, the ways in which bees have been taken care of, but also manipulated. It's expensive to bring in a hive to pollinate the flowers and trees, to make what, really is a significant percentage of our food substance. We see them in California where they populate almond trees, and where, like in Europe and the rest of North America, all bees are now unable to actually work without chemical and drugs, ironically, probably because of all the chemicals in the grounds already. In parts of China, where there aren't any bees anymore, people now pollinate flowers and we see them swab and impregnate the flowers by hand, in a touch that, seems almost Carroll-like surrealism. The movie takes place in the U.S., California, China and Australia, where they've found a way to keep unpolluted bees on an island in order to keep them growing and pollinating. Queens are sold and raised for big money, around the world, and yet still, hives seem to die out from the smallest of things. Seeing a collection of dead bees, collected, incinerated and buried, is really a major loss for one couple. Hives are rented out and collected at hundreds of dollars each, and some years and years in advance because of their rarity now. Ironically, in South America, and slowly up here, the Africanized "killer" bees that supposedly were going to attack us all through my childhood, might actually be the ones that save us, as one Arizona beekeeper found out; because they're both wild and immune to the chemicals in the land, and rabid and vicious, they actually not only work harder and more vigorously, but they're actually healthier and create more product. He talks to us, while filling what seems like, ended jars of rich gooey honey that he's collected. There's a poetic to the film, and the beauty of the hive, mixed with the unbelievable photography of some of these bees, ways inside the hive, and moving. We even see that they got microscopic camera, on bees, and see their flight path. They truly are unique creatures. I can't think of any other animals with a hive-like organizational structure. They even communicate through dance and other movements with each other. We see all the nuances of bees and beekeeping and all the modern day pitfalls and travails. This is one of those movies, that you're gonna have to trust me on. It's got 100% on rottentomatoes.com, if that helps. It isn't a political doc, or anything, it's transcendent, it's meditative, beautiful and transient movie about our relationship with bees, and I realize, that I can't make that sound more exciting, but it is exciting, it's amazing to watch and experience. There are things I knew, things I didn't, but the way this film works and is really special. This is one of those weird documentaries, all Terrence Malick-like, where you could walk out for five or ten minutes, and come back and become enthralled in the film periodically, and not really lose your space. It's not a linear story; it's a circular tale, that continue to grow, as we continue explore it, and you don't need to go back and see what you missed, you can just watch and catch back up with it, you're gonna go, "what are they doing now?" instead. It's and overlooked and very special film, and it is, like the bee, "More than Honey".


THE ATTACK (2013) Director: Ziad Doueiri

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The funny thing about suicide bombers is that, it's a fairly secret occupation. If done correctly, nobody knows you're doing it, until.... "The Attack", is a suicide bombing in Israel, something that is unfortunately, not uncommon. Amin (Ali Suliman) is a highly-regarded surgeon and one who's known for his resistance to the Arab-Israeli conflict, having seen too much damage on both sides, although he's an Arab. When the attack is heard, he's having lunch at work, and hardly anybody moves after the explosion. The bodies start to come in, and the hospital starts to turn into a M*A*S*H unit. In the moment, we only see the result of the explosion, and everybody's too busy to bother noticing the cause. To the doctor's surprise, his wife Siham (Raymond Amsalem) was also killed in the attack. he doesn't even realize that she's missing until long after he returns home to an empty dark apartment. Not only that however, but she seems to have been the bomber, or at least one of them. This is beyond impossible for him to believe. She's not even Arab or Jewish, she's a Catholic. Yet, understandably, the police, most-represented by Captain Moshe (Uri Gavriel) don't believe him. He can't fathom it himself, as he's up for interrogation for long hours, as the entire situation baffles him. She couldn't possibly be a terrorist who just killed 17 people, including 11 children. What would make her do such a thing, and how could I have never known?  He continues under interrogation to insist that she's innocent, and knows nothing. He does know nothing, but that mystical video tape he hopes will arrive, never does. This is the third feature film from one of the more intriguing directors out there,  Ziad Doueiri. He's mostly known as a camera operator for some of Quentin Tarantino's earlier works, but he's gone off to direct three features, all overseas. His last film "Lila Says", was one of the best films about teenagers and sex in the last decade, and was also based around an Arab family, although that film took place in France and was based on a novel by an author by Chimo. This film, takes place in Tel Aviv, and seems to insinuate about the greater undercurrent of fear and legitimate paranoia that the nation of Israel has become. Yet, that's a full-ranging view, and like "Lila Says", Douieri choose wisely, to stick to the core story of Amin's struggles, most of the time. He happened to by a little well-known publicly after winning a major award before the bombing, and the movie begins to falter when it focuses on that aspect of it. Still though, this is a powerful film from one of the more unique filmmakers around, and gives us a haunting look at both marriage and terrorism in the Middle East, and how living in a world where you're used to bombings going off, that it barely interrupts your lunch, can and does effect everyone.


STARBUCK (2013) Director: Ken Scott

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(Depressed sigh) Well, I'm not looking forward to this American remake. I usually make it a point to come into most movies with as little expectations as possible, but boy, this one's not gonna be easy. The French-Canadian film "Starbuck", was a big enough hit, that it was recently remade in America as "Delivery Man", and starring Vince Vaughn. That alone, is not the worst thing, as the story could be salvaged hypothetically if someone were to actually take a more realistic look at the material; it could still be a comedy of course..., unfortunately Writer/Director Ken Scott's second directorial attempt is also the director of the remake. It's somewhere on my Netflix, I think. I'm not gonna look it up to be sure, but I don't want to be depressed if it is like I think it is, in my queue somewhere, probably not near the top of it at least. The title of the first one, is the anonymous name of a constant sperm donor, David Wozniak (Patrick Huard). The name is not a reference to "Moby Dick" or coffee, but rather a famous Canadian bull that was well-known for it's fertility. Anyway, for a couple years it helped him earn some money. He's still a bit of a slacker, although he remains inspired and competitive in local soccer leagues, he's significantly uninspired. His girlfriend Valerie (Julie LeBreton) is pregnant, but she's not interested in him being a father for his unreliability. Then, those sperm donations catch up to him, and it turns out, through a few questionable practices by the sperm bank, he has father over 500 kids, and over 140 are suing him in order to find out his identity, insisting that this kind of reckless behavior needs to be explained. His lawyer friend Avocat (Antoine Bertrand) believe they can win the case, and he's looking for a big case to make his name on. This is the part of the movie that frustrates me, apart from the movie being unfunny and bad in general. The lawsuit that becomes, and worse, remains the catalyst for the film, is just stupid. Why wouldn't the kids have, maybe sued the sperm bank for gross negligence, or why would David do so as well? And you don't think that, maybe some of the kids who found out about this revelation of their father think it'd make sense that he might want to keep his identity secret? And this is a scenario that has happened before by the way, an excessive sperm donor having so many kids, so there's potential here for a nice story about a wayward soul finding himself through the kids he didn't know he had; we really don't even need the lawsuit angle hypothetically; even with just the ones who sued that's 142 character that should have enough material relatively to keep the movie interesting. The movie could've been "The Kids Are All Right" meets "Broken Flowers" perhaps if it was done a little more thoughtfully. This goes for bad laughs and takes the exact wrong approach to the material. I hope a remake corrects these issues, but I doubt it. In the meantime, after watching "Starbuck", not hopeful for this French comedy remake.


KILLING THEM SOFTLY (2012) Director: Andrew Dominick

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"Killing Them Softly", which really should've been a title saved for a Roberta Flack biopic, (Which is a good person to make a biopic about by the way) is a gangster movie that, isn't really a gangster movie as it is, a collection of random scenes between gangsters, and/or gangster wannabes. Set during the, I suppose 2008 Presidential Election, or around that time, the movie occasionally uses old Bush and Obama speeches to- I guess undercut the realities of the world. The world of the movie is the gangster underground, which apparently is so intertwined and combined, that it all revolves around a card game that they hold, where the money gets dropped off, played, exchanged, gambled, it's their NYSE, essentially. Everybody's on relatively friendly terms with each other, but a couple dumb guys on the bottom of the barrel of the criminal underworld, Russell and Franky (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) decide to hold it up. Normally, not a good plan to hold up a bunch of gangsters, especially for amateurs, but one of the gangsters, Markie (Ray Liotta) accidentally gave them an unusual advantage by having robbed the game once before. It was his own money technically, and since they liked Markie, they let it slide that time, but it stopped the games for awhile as the gangsters had to rebuild. The depressions hits the underworld hard too as is talked about a lot. A go-between known only as Driver (Richard Jenkins) helps bring in a couple of hitmen to try and take out everyone involved with the crime, which isn't too hard consider the criminals are idiots, but just to be safe, they also take a shot at Markie, afraid that this could be a repeat of his earlier crime. It isn't, but he gets destroyed anyway. The hitmen are Jackie (Brad Pitt), and later a New York hitmen, Mickey (James Gandolfini). Jackie, is the more professional of the two. Likes to work far away like a sniper, more to-the-point, able to analyze the angles, and is in it for the business. Mickey has a mess of a life, and is in it for the fun and money, and occasionally booze and women. While there's sudden outbursts of violence, the main tale revolves around these characters and their exchanges. Sometimes talking business, other times talking philosophies or politics, but mostly talking about the everyday grinds of the business of being a mafia hitman. The film was written and directed by Andrew Dominik, a man who's usually been reliable for good films until. His debut "Chopper", put Eric Bana on the international map and was one of the best and most unusual biopics in recent years. He then made "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", one of the better westerns in recent years, and he's so talented that stylistically, you wouldn't be able to tell that the same filmmaker made both films. He's got a lot of skill and range, going from the quick 90-minute kinetic, music video-like stylish film, to the slow-paced and ethereal western epic that clocked in at almost three hours. I think his inspiration is that both were movies about bad guys, and that both had other things to say about them, and they also involved the public reactions to them. Here, he's trying to switch it so that the bad guys are actually reacting to the public, and that's not as interesting, 'cause we're watching an effect, not a cause. "Killing Them Softly", tries to be, both about two much, and yet, about too little, and frankly neither work. Before, he was just telling a story, that happen to have impact on other things and effect us personally, but now, he's let the metaphor take over his vision, and, he almost skimped completely on the story. For somebody who takes an average of six years to make a new film, he has to do better than this strangely generic tale.


ZINDAGI NA MILEGI DOBARA (2011) Director: Zoya Ahktar

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I understand that with Bollywood films, you have to expect a certain amount of predictability and even feel-good cliches with the film. Sometimes, it's truly inevitable. That said, you and your closest friends are on a week-long road trip through Spain, going from town to town, participating in various death-defying activites that one of your buddies has planned out, and the group has agreed that, whatever activity the other has planned, they all must do it, no matter what, and the last destination of this trip, just happens to be Pamplona, could you, maybe guess, what activity extreme sport activity you might be participating in? Even if the activities themselves were kept secret from the rest of the group until they're about to them? I basically waited 2 1/2 hours, waiting for someone to turn to their friend and hopefully, "I knew you're gonna make me do this you son of a bitch," at least as an acknowledgment, but no, these characters have to be, selectively uninformed about the only damn thing the city of Pamplona is famous for, and other occasional questionable behaviors throughout the trip. If you don't know what I'm referring to, than perhaps, "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" is a film you might enjoy. The title, is a bit of an awkward direct translation, but I think the title is a Hindi slang equivalent to "You Only Live Once", which sometimes it seems like that can be an alternate title to half the films in Bollywood. Kabir (Abhay Deol) has organized this road trip for him, and his two old schoolmates, Imraan (Farhan Akhtar) and Arjun (Hrithik Roshan) with the aforementioned arrangement. Each has set up a secret extreme activity for the group to do, as they travel through Spain. The 3-week journey is in lieu of Kabir getting a bachelor party. He's about to marry his girlfriend Natascha (Kalki Koechlin) in a few weeks, and now, he coerced his buddies into this trip, which they originally were supposed to take a few years earlier, but his friends had a falling out with each other, and they haven't been around each other since. On the journey, they go deep sea diving, which is where they meet Laila (Katrina Kaif) an Anglo-Indian who advises them on more than just scuba diving, as she becomes the carpe diem catalyst for the movie, that makes everyone begin to re-analyze their life. One of them confronts his long-abandoned father, Kabir begins to seriously doubt his upcoming marriage, yada, yada, yada. They also go skydiving, and of course, the thing which everybody in the audience knew they were gonna do in Pamplona. To complete the Spanish travelouge, they also stop in Bunol for the annual tomato fight for a while too. I tried to get into it, but the movie just went over too much familiar ground, and it didn't really add anything new or interesting to it. There's a surprise visit from Natascha on the trip, but even that ends rather quickly and is of no real consequence other than as something that gets us to the intermission. The movie looks spectacular and is shot well, from Writer-director Zoya Ahktar, that's the good news, and the movie became one of the biggest-grossing Hindi films outside of India this year, but it's just too simple a story to fully embrace, and it drags on way too much. The three musketeers as the three friends were once known, aren't really interesting enough for most of the movie to be entertaining, and even after we learn more about them as we go on, those moments don't seem genuine or natural. "Zindagi..." has it's moments, a few decent musical numbers for instance, but it feels like you're in the back of a car being driven somewhere, and it's takes so long to arrive, that when we do, we're too exhausted to enjoy any of it.