I have been bouncing around for weeks in anticipation of this movie. As a huge fan of the first two movies, I was sure this one would not disappoint. But, oh, how wrong I was! While not as bad as many a film out there, this installment is yet a sad shadow of its series.
And it tries, it really did try. To its credit, there were several very clever scenes. The typical Snow White's gift with animals takes an awesome turn, and I can guarantee that you will never laugh harder at a death scene than the one of this movie. The animation? Top-notch.
I just guess effort doesn't always beat out sheer inspiration. A film with a few moments does not win against a good, simple movie.
The desire to produce a film merely ended up as a plot device to get Shrek and Fiona back to their beloved swamp. A long, boring plot device. With the passing of King Harold, Shrek and Fiona are heirs to the throne of Far, Far Away. Unfortunately, that does not interest them, so Shrek goes on a journey to bring back the next guy, a young Arthur "Artie" Pendragon. Heck, why not? Everyone loves a good Camelot infusion, and Artie is as flawed and as likable as you could want. Unfortunately, he is only one character in a cheesy madhouse of minor characters and cameos. In the effort to get everyone their screen time, that whole plot gets lost in the background.
Which normally wouldn't be a problem. After all, the original movie did not have the most complex of plots. What it had was a few incredible characters. The second movie added a few more, but still kept it delightfully manageable. This time, it seemed that the powers that be assumed we already knew everything about Shrek, Donkey, Puss, and the rest of the bunch that we really didn't need to see them. Hey, let's bring in one more characters for the audience, but refuse to give them time to get to know them! Poor, pathetic lack of character development.
So back to the plot. The few times that came around, it was pretty much a tacky, forced attempt to create some pseudo father/son relationship between Shrek and Artie. Good intentions, but no cigar. Maybe if we had more time... But we don't, so let's just wrap it up with a few corny lines about understanding and rising to the occasion. Yeah, we got that the first time around, and without any of the verbal commentary.
On top of that, this film misses that inexplicable spark of the first two installments. I'm sorry, but I just didn't feel it. Just as a lukewarm attempt of continuing the series and aiming at a five-year old audience.
Sorry. Not my favorite of the series by any means, leaving me to wonder how a sequel to films of such genius as "Shrek" and "Shrek 2" could make something so average?
6/10
Friday, June 8, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Primeval - A horrible movie
Television producer Tim Manfrey (Dominic Purcell) leads a team down to the Burundi section of Africa to investigate and try to capture a large killer crocodile dubbed Gustave, who has been killing and eating hundreds of natives.
After reading the plot synopsis, I was expecting something similar to Anaconda which was a cheesy, entertaining movie that didn't take itself too seriously. The preview did scare me in the sense that they didn't mention the alligator aspect at all. I don't get why the studio would hide that fact since it would be the movie's main draw. Also, the preview looked very underwhelming. However, my friend wanted to see it which we did and now I wish we had seen something else. Primeval is neither scary nor entertaining. Instead, it is dull, wooden and it doesn't have an ounce of personality.
Director Michael Katleman should get the blame for this. He kept the movie way too serious and the pacing was very slow which made the whole thing tedious. He added unnecessary social commentary and he didn't do a good job at mixing it with entertainment. He also didn't take advantage of shooting in Africa, failing to capture the beauty of the location. I thought it was impossible but he made Africa look ordinary. Also, everything was very dark and annoying. I don't mean the film was actually a dark comedy but everything seemed to be shot at night and it was hard to follow the action. I guess this was done to lower budget costs but it didn't help when it came to actually view the movie. The screenwriters (Michael Ferris (III) and John D. Brancato) were equally useless although this should not be surprisingly since this pair wrote Catwoman. The one good thing about the movie was the alligator and all of his attack scenes. They were somewhat entertaining even if they did look fake.
The acting was just as bad as the writing and directing. Dominic Purcell was horrible as Tim. He was very wooden and he showed no emotion. This was clearly a paycheck movie for him since he appeared to be reading his lines. Brooke Langton was enormously bland and just useless. Orlando Jones was surprisingly bad and I say surprisingly because he's usually pretty reliable in supporting roles. Here, he was wooden and bland, just like his co-stars. Overall, Primeval is simply terrible and it's not worth checking out unless you love bad films.
2/10 for this crap.
After reading the plot synopsis, I was expecting something similar to Anaconda which was a cheesy, entertaining movie that didn't take itself too seriously. The preview did scare me in the sense that they didn't mention the alligator aspect at all. I don't get why the studio would hide that fact since it would be the movie's main draw. Also, the preview looked very underwhelming. However, my friend wanted to see it which we did and now I wish we had seen something else. Primeval is neither scary nor entertaining. Instead, it is dull, wooden and it doesn't have an ounce of personality.
Director Michael Katleman should get the blame for this. He kept the movie way too serious and the pacing was very slow which made the whole thing tedious. He added unnecessary social commentary and he didn't do a good job at mixing it with entertainment. He also didn't take advantage of shooting in Africa, failing to capture the beauty of the location. I thought it was impossible but he made Africa look ordinary. Also, everything was very dark and annoying. I don't mean the film was actually a dark comedy but everything seemed to be shot at night and it was hard to follow the action. I guess this was done to lower budget costs but it didn't help when it came to actually view the movie. The screenwriters (Michael Ferris (III) and John D. Brancato) were equally useless although this should not be surprisingly since this pair wrote Catwoman. The one good thing about the movie was the alligator and all of his attack scenes. They were somewhat entertaining even if they did look fake.
The acting was just as bad as the writing and directing. Dominic Purcell was horrible as Tim. He was very wooden and he showed no emotion. This was clearly a paycheck movie for him since he appeared to be reading his lines. Brooke Langton was enormously bland and just useless. Orlando Jones was surprisingly bad and I say surprisingly because he's usually pretty reliable in supporting roles. Here, he was wooden and bland, just like his co-stars. Overall, Primeval is simply terrible and it's not worth checking out unless you love bad films.
2/10 for this crap.
Mome - Marion is spectacular but the film is needlessly melodramatic
I'm glad I went to see LA MOME, or LA VIE EN ROSE. I had a good time at the movies. After seeing it, I realized what a good life I have. But seriously, Marion Cotillard's performance is nothing short of spectacular. Even if her performance borders on caricature, I realized that whatever Cotillard and the director were attempting to do, it was worth it and that includes the borderline caricatural acting. The only thing I thought went overboard was the melodrama. Edith Piaf's life is filled with tragedy. We are well aware of this but the filmmaker didn't need to dwell on it ad nauseam. Practically every scene in LA VIE EN ROSE is taken from the big catalog of melodrama.
It's hard to believe Edith didn't have one happy moment during her days as either a kid or a young adult. After 45 minutes of non-stop sadness, the film was laying it pretty thick. The best example of this was when Edith and her friend were eating at a restaurant. It was the first time we saw Edith eating a meal in a restaurant as a young woman. Just showing her enjoying her meal and chatting with her friend would have been fun to see but then Edith's estranged mother walks in, begging for food and money from her daughter and well, here we go again, more melodrama. The film needed more quiet moments to balance out Edith's albeit tragic life. The constant melo was at times off putting. Edith's life is remarkable enough without having to rely on easy melodrama to tell it. The end effect was like the director wanted to impress young generations, who are unfamiliar with Edith, by showing her life as being more edgy than Courtney Love's life could ever be.
At the theater were I saw it, an old couple in front of me walked out halfway into the picture, not pleased with the bleak representation of the beloved chanteuse. The director was obviously in love with the concept that great art emerges from tragedy/pain/suffering but he carried this concept to an unfortunate level.
My other critique of LA VIE EN ROSE is that the script forgot major aspects about her life. Of course they couldn't cover every aspect of her legendary life but forgetting to mention that Edith was the one who discovered Yves Montand or that she played a major part of the French Resistance was inexcusable. I understand that they wanted to create a specific portrait of her life. Making a biography is not easy thing to do. It can easily fall into two categories: it can be an exact "academic" portrayal of her life, which many find tedious and dull or it could have been a wildly inaccurate portrayal, made with many dramatic licenses, in order to be more entertaining. But in either case, an accurate, truthful portrayal of anyone's life is an impossibility and the director of LA VIE EN ROSE is conscious of this and deliberately avoided some things about Edith which would have conflicted with this portrait he wanted to create but the fact that Yves Montand didn't even figure somewhere in this portrait was, imo, very bizarre.
This brings another point: the film is so focused on Edith that all other characters are pushed in the background and we hardly know who they are. Edith's star is so bright that she eclipses everyone around her. This part didn't bother me that much because I realized the director wanted to focus only on Edith but it would have been nice to have known who was who.
But even with these weak points, I still recommend LA VIE EN ROSE. It's the type of film we rarely see these days: big, showy and remarkably depressing. Marion Cotillard should win awards after awards for her stunning portrayal. It's truly something to witness and worth the price of admission. And the music, of course, is great.
7/10
It's hard to believe Edith didn't have one happy moment during her days as either a kid or a young adult. After 45 minutes of non-stop sadness, the film was laying it pretty thick. The best example of this was when Edith and her friend were eating at a restaurant. It was the first time we saw Edith eating a meal in a restaurant as a young woman. Just showing her enjoying her meal and chatting with her friend would have been fun to see but then Edith's estranged mother walks in, begging for food and money from her daughter and well, here we go again, more melodrama. The film needed more quiet moments to balance out Edith's albeit tragic life. The constant melo was at times off putting. Edith's life is remarkable enough without having to rely on easy melodrama to tell it. The end effect was like the director wanted to impress young generations, who are unfamiliar with Edith, by showing her life as being more edgy than Courtney Love's life could ever be.
At the theater were I saw it, an old couple in front of me walked out halfway into the picture, not pleased with the bleak representation of the beloved chanteuse. The director was obviously in love with the concept that great art emerges from tragedy/pain/suffering but he carried this concept to an unfortunate level.
My other critique of LA VIE EN ROSE is that the script forgot major aspects about her life. Of course they couldn't cover every aspect of her legendary life but forgetting to mention that Edith was the one who discovered Yves Montand or that she played a major part of the French Resistance was inexcusable. I understand that they wanted to create a specific portrait of her life. Making a biography is not easy thing to do. It can easily fall into two categories: it can be an exact "academic" portrayal of her life, which many find tedious and dull or it could have been a wildly inaccurate portrayal, made with many dramatic licenses, in order to be more entertaining. But in either case, an accurate, truthful portrayal of anyone's life is an impossibility and the director of LA VIE EN ROSE is conscious of this and deliberately avoided some things about Edith which would have conflicted with this portrait he wanted to create but the fact that Yves Montand didn't even figure somewhere in this portrait was, imo, very bizarre.
This brings another point: the film is so focused on Edith that all other characters are pushed in the background and we hardly know who they are. Edith's star is so bright that she eclipses everyone around her. This part didn't bother me that much because I realized the director wanted to focus only on Edith but it would have been nice to have known who was who.
But even with these weak points, I still recommend LA VIE EN ROSE. It's the type of film we rarely see these days: big, showy and remarkably depressing. Marion Cotillard should win awards after awards for her stunning portrayal. It's truly something to witness and worth the price of admission. And the music, of course, is great.
7/10
Spider-man 3 - Could be better
This film had the hallmarkings of a great! After the first two films literally set the character scenes and the hopeful return of the goblin this film could have been fantastic!
Sadly however by slipping in some terrible and cheesy dialogue, an over-abundance of new characters and then trying to take on one of the greatest characters from the comics and cartoons the film comes out with an average marking!
Firstly I have to say I enjoyed this film, it was fun, the special effects were fantastic and the fight scenes therefore played out very well.
This film did however destroyed any character building made by the previous two and results in a serious lack of cohesion to the other two and because of this cannot be placed within the same league.
Sandmand and the new goblin both admirable foes and both shown well, however venom could have been so much more and came across far too weak as far as I am concerned and seemed to be slipped on the back of an average film to try and boost ratings. I am not one for cliffhangers in large franchises, I mean the only reason I didn't see the 3rd matrix film was because the cliffhanger was pointless and the second film killed off any point of a third, however a full venom film would have made sense due to its sheer fantastic reasoning and design, even introducing the character carnage would have been fantastic, but he seems rushed in this film, and thats not the way to win over die hard fans and new fans the like!
Anyway, I appear to be ranting, I would recommend you watch this film, its fun, its got great action and the Bruce Campbell cameo was fantastic, however do not watch this thinking you are going to get the same quality and attention to detail as the first two films, watch it like X-Men 3, as this is just what it is, a good trilogy spoilt by the lack of development and the need to force as many characters in at once. Oh and by the way, if you love over the top American patriotism, then this is definitely the film for you!
6/10
Sadly however by slipping in some terrible and cheesy dialogue, an over-abundance of new characters and then trying to take on one of the greatest characters from the comics and cartoons the film comes out with an average marking!
Firstly I have to say I enjoyed this film, it was fun, the special effects were fantastic and the fight scenes therefore played out very well.
This film did however destroyed any character building made by the previous two and results in a serious lack of cohesion to the other two and because of this cannot be placed within the same league.
Sandmand and the new goblin both admirable foes and both shown well, however venom could have been so much more and came across far too weak as far as I am concerned and seemed to be slipped on the back of an average film to try and boost ratings. I am not one for cliffhangers in large franchises, I mean the only reason I didn't see the 3rd matrix film was because the cliffhanger was pointless and the second film killed off any point of a third, however a full venom film would have made sense due to its sheer fantastic reasoning and design, even introducing the character carnage would have been fantastic, but he seems rushed in this film, and thats not the way to win over die hard fans and new fans the like!
Anyway, I appear to be ranting, I would recommend you watch this film, its fun, its got great action and the Bruce Campbell cameo was fantastic, however do not watch this thinking you are going to get the same quality and attention to detail as the first two films, watch it like X-Men 3, as this is just what it is, a good trilogy spoilt by the lack of development and the need to force as many characters in at once. Oh and by the way, if you love over the top American patriotism, then this is definitely the film for you!
6/10
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Dead Silence - Not bad
I had no interest in seeing this movie, but my buddy wanted to see it so we went to go and see it. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn't so much scared, but it was indeed very creepy. This movie almost reminds me of Pennsylvania legend "Bloody Mary". Donnie Walberg definitely plays the guy you love to hate, and of course the ending is good. So hey if you want a good thriller, then I say check it out. If you know you're seeing a girl that's VERY jumpy, then guys definitely take her so she can jump into your arms because this is a good type of movie for that. Not as much gore as I would have liked, but it was definitely fun to see. And of course check out the Jigsaw Puppet.
Yes this is short, yes it's sweet but hey isn't less more? 7/10
Yes this is short, yes it's sweet but hey isn't less more? 7/10
Everything's Gone Green
As JOEY TV series lover, I cound't not watch this one because of Paulo Costanzo (Joey's brother in "Joey").
Saw it at the TIFF. Loved it. Want the soundtrack... Don't know where to get it. During question period asked the director and cast if the pot seen in the movie was real. They declined to comment after the director went purple in the face. Whimsically funny, with dark undertones on west coast society, and the seemingly impossibility of getting ahead in the 9-5 world. This movie will most likely appeal to those who have struggled with the concept of selling out to make a buck.... Cheers. Still unable to find the soundtrack. Wonder if this gem will ever make it out to theatres in any substantial release. Pity its a Canadian film. They never seem to see the light of day unless its stamped by weird aliens making love to crashed cars.
But still... 8/10
Saw it at the TIFF. Loved it. Want the soundtrack... Don't know where to get it. During question period asked the director and cast if the pot seen in the movie was real. They declined to comment after the director went purple in the face. Whimsically funny, with dark undertones on west coast society, and the seemingly impossibility of getting ahead in the 9-5 world. This movie will most likely appeal to those who have struggled with the concept of selling out to make a buck.... Cheers. Still unable to find the soundtrack. Wonder if this gem will ever make it out to theatres in any substantial release. Pity its a Canadian film. They never seem to see the light of day unless its stamped by weird aliens making love to crashed cars.
But still... 8/10
Home of the brave was touching
Really touching and... Fantastic. And about lives of people we hear about on TV, radio and read about on the net. For me, its one of those movies, that change your point of view - it is NOT a classical movie, but a very good position referring about war, broken families and the possible consequences of the ongoing chain of Hatred. It makes people think about ones situation - at least it had in my case. Awesome. And almost a must-see for people before being taken to the army. Some situations you come across while watching this movie can make tears fall. And from my point of view, the story contained in this film is original, moving and real-life, in opposition to many dull positions we are bound to see. I really enjoyed watching this story.
Wars start when you will, but end not when you please... 7/10
Wars start when you will, but end not when you please... 7/10
Little Children - Fine sexual drama with a small uncertainty of tone
OK, now this one is older, but I remembered it watching and writing an article for it. Read the rest below.
Todd Field's Little Children's screenplay was written in collaboration with Tom Perrotta, on whose eponymous novel it's based. Perrotta wrote Election's, Bad Haircut's, and Joe College's funny, ironic screenplays before this. But though mildly satirical at times in its vision of middle-class white infidelity, this second film (at last) from the director of the powerful 2000 In the Bedroom, with its themes out of Cheever or Updike, also moves toward the solemn and the shocking.
One big reason for that is a second plot about a just-released sex offender and a troubled ex-cop who turns into a self-appointed protector of public morality campaigning to drive the ex-prisoner out of town.
Brad (Patrick Wilson) is a househusband caring for his little boy while feebly preparing for his previously failed bar exams. He has a gorgeous but emasculating wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) who's a successful PBS-style documentary filmmaker. Sarah (Kate Winslet), with an MA in English, in charge of a recalcitrant little girl with whom she has little patience at times, has a well-off distant husband (Gregg Edelman) who's a pretentious adman who gets off on Web porn. Sarah and Brad meet in a park where moms take their kids, in East Wyndham, Massachusetts. They wind up kissing when they first meet, mainly to shock the other moms.
Brad and Sarah spend a lot of the summer minding their kids together at the municipal pool. This turns into a torrid affair with frequent sex at Sarah's husband's large house. They're attractive, and attracted, and their general dissatisfaction with their spouses and with where they are now heightens their need to throw themselves at each other with the utmost abandon.
Meanwhile Ronnie (former child actor Jackie Earle Haley, vividly remembered from Bad News Bears and Breaking Away and strong in a new way here) has come into town: he's the sex offender, a painfully self-aware one, and he lives with the one person who loves him, his aging mother Ruth (a convincing Phyllis Somerville), while the ex-cop, Larry (Noah Emmerich) wages his war as a one-man "committee." Larry and Brad have met and Larry persuades Brad, who already wastes time watching boys skateboarding when he's supposed to be boning up for the bar exam, to join a night touch football league team made up of cops – and thus the infidelity and the sex offender elements are linked. But they would be anyway, because this is a small community. And one particularly hot day Ronnie comes to the municipal swimming pool and causes an outcry when he's spotted ogling young girls under water.
The other moms from the park, who were afraid of Brad and called him "the Prom King," are gently satirized by a voice-over narration spoken by Will Lyman, of Frontline on PBS, which sounds like a high school educational film. Perrotta is, after all, a comic writer. But more of that later.
The movie has a bright, intense, clear visual style, sometimes making use of extreme close-ups. Since the acting and directing are fine, this gives things a feeling of authority. It's also effective in underlining both the satirical and the sensual aspects of the story, and heightens the emotional effect when the narrative lines move toward crisis.
Brad's development (the novel-based voice-over tells us) may have been arrested by his mother's dying when he was in his early teens, and this explains why he watches the skateboarding boys with such longing: they're having the playtime that was stolen from him.
Another theme is that of Cheryl (Marsha Dietlein), Sarah's friend and neighbor who baby-sits with her daughter when she's having sex with Brad, speed-walks with her, and gets her into a book-discussion group leading to a pointed scene in which Madame Bovary is discussed and Sarah defends the adulterous heroine as someone who revolted in search of freedom. The older women nod approvingly, while one of the park moms doesn't get it at all.
Partly because it's hard to juggle all these elements from a 350-page novel, the ironic narrative voice disappears throughout the film's midsection.
At the end matters all come to a head, with Brad and Sarah, with Ronnie, and with his erstwhile nemesis, Larry, and a lot of tension is created through Hitchcockian cross-cutting between these climaxing threads.
Field has avoided the extreme finale of his first film -- this one shares such heavy concerns as families, infidelity, crime, and confronting death, but by contrast, this ending, though breathless and troubling, is ultimately sweet and marked by reconciliation and acceptance. One may wonder if underlying issues have really been resolved. The film feels somewhat overlong, but the nuanced characterizations and fine acting and the attractiveness of the central couple entertain and interest us mightily.
Perhaps the one weakness overall is a slight uncertainty of tone, which explains why some viewers are troubled by the voice-over (and also by its long disappearance midway). If situations are seen primarily as highly serious or even horrifying, it's hard to see how the satirical feel fits in, and at the end we seem to have lost touch with where we started out. Ultimately as with so many American stories on film, the writers seem to have tried to tackle too much material. Nothing wrong with that, but they haven't quite got the world-view to encompass it all. Technically though Field has achieved more polish and shown more confidence, even compared to his already admirable and powerful first film of five years ago. The cast is wonderful, well chosen and well used. Field is an experienced actor: he knows the craft. This has got to be a film to think about at year's end when best lists are made up.
Todd Field's Little Children's screenplay was written in collaboration with Tom Perrotta, on whose eponymous novel it's based. Perrotta wrote Election's, Bad Haircut's, and Joe College's funny, ironic screenplays before this. But though mildly satirical at times in its vision of middle-class white infidelity, this second film (at last) from the director of the powerful 2000 In the Bedroom, with its themes out of Cheever or Updike, also moves toward the solemn and the shocking.
One big reason for that is a second plot about a just-released sex offender and a troubled ex-cop who turns into a self-appointed protector of public morality campaigning to drive the ex-prisoner out of town.
Brad (Patrick Wilson) is a househusband caring for his little boy while feebly preparing for his previously failed bar exams. He has a gorgeous but emasculating wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) who's a successful PBS-style documentary filmmaker. Sarah (Kate Winslet), with an MA in English, in charge of a recalcitrant little girl with whom she has little patience at times, has a well-off distant husband (Gregg Edelman) who's a pretentious adman who gets off on Web porn. Sarah and Brad meet in a park where moms take their kids, in East Wyndham, Massachusetts. They wind up kissing when they first meet, mainly to shock the other moms.
Brad and Sarah spend a lot of the summer minding their kids together at the municipal pool. This turns into a torrid affair with frequent sex at Sarah's husband's large house. They're attractive, and attracted, and their general dissatisfaction with their spouses and with where they are now heightens their need to throw themselves at each other with the utmost abandon.
Meanwhile Ronnie (former child actor Jackie Earle Haley, vividly remembered from Bad News Bears and Breaking Away and strong in a new way here) has come into town: he's the sex offender, a painfully self-aware one, and he lives with the one person who loves him, his aging mother Ruth (a convincing Phyllis Somerville), while the ex-cop, Larry (Noah Emmerich) wages his war as a one-man "committee." Larry and Brad have met and Larry persuades Brad, who already wastes time watching boys skateboarding when he's supposed to be boning up for the bar exam, to join a night touch football league team made up of cops – and thus the infidelity and the sex offender elements are linked. But they would be anyway, because this is a small community. And one particularly hot day Ronnie comes to the municipal swimming pool and causes an outcry when he's spotted ogling young girls under water.
The other moms from the park, who were afraid of Brad and called him "the Prom King," are gently satirized by a voice-over narration spoken by Will Lyman, of Frontline on PBS, which sounds like a high school educational film. Perrotta is, after all, a comic writer. But more of that later.
The movie has a bright, intense, clear visual style, sometimes making use of extreme close-ups. Since the acting and directing are fine, this gives things a feeling of authority. It's also effective in underlining both the satirical and the sensual aspects of the story, and heightens the emotional effect when the narrative lines move toward crisis.
Brad's development (the novel-based voice-over tells us) may have been arrested by his mother's dying when he was in his early teens, and this explains why he watches the skateboarding boys with such longing: they're having the playtime that was stolen from him.
Another theme is that of Cheryl (Marsha Dietlein), Sarah's friend and neighbor who baby-sits with her daughter when she's having sex with Brad, speed-walks with her, and gets her into a book-discussion group leading to a pointed scene in which Madame Bovary is discussed and Sarah defends the adulterous heroine as someone who revolted in search of freedom. The older women nod approvingly, while one of the park moms doesn't get it at all.
Partly because it's hard to juggle all these elements from a 350-page novel, the ironic narrative voice disappears throughout the film's midsection.
At the end matters all come to a head, with Brad and Sarah, with Ronnie, and with his erstwhile nemesis, Larry, and a lot of tension is created through Hitchcockian cross-cutting between these climaxing threads.
Field has avoided the extreme finale of his first film -- this one shares such heavy concerns as families, infidelity, crime, and confronting death, but by contrast, this ending, though breathless and troubling, is ultimately sweet and marked by reconciliation and acceptance. One may wonder if underlying issues have really been resolved. The film feels somewhat overlong, but the nuanced characterizations and fine acting and the attractiveness of the central couple entertain and interest us mightily.
Perhaps the one weakness overall is a slight uncertainty of tone, which explains why some viewers are troubled by the voice-over (and also by its long disappearance midway). If situations are seen primarily as highly serious or even horrifying, it's hard to see how the satirical feel fits in, and at the end we seem to have lost touch with where we started out. Ultimately as with so many American stories on film, the writers seem to have tried to tackle too much material. Nothing wrong with that, but they haven't quite got the world-view to encompass it all. Technically though Field has achieved more polish and shown more confidence, even compared to his already admirable and powerful first film of five years ago. The cast is wonderful, well chosen and well used. Field is an experienced actor: he knows the craft. This has got to be a film to think about at year's end when best lists are made up.
Another drama - Partition
The whole theater broke into applause at the end. Partition is spectacular, intense and well made all 'round. The actors all shine, the photography is excellent and the story is well told. It gives great insight into the creation of Pakistan and it's break from India in the late 40's.
While Canadians have made some great movies of late and a lot of talent comes out of Canada, many of their movies are small stories (with the exception of Atom Agoyan's films) but as a movie, this for us is probably the best move ever made in Canada, and one of the best we've seen from anywhere this year. I hope it gets wide distribution.
8/10 for this one.
While Canadians have made some great movies of late and a lot of talent comes out of Canada, many of their movies are small stories (with the exception of Atom Agoyan's films) but as a movie, this for us is probably the best move ever made in Canada, and one of the best we've seen from anywhere this year. I hope it gets wide distribution.
8/10 for this one.
My Bollywood Bride
Sometimes I'm watching movies at home, and those are some older or recent, but not the newest. Today I chosed My Bollywood Bride romantic comedy.
This film wasn't ponderous enough to whet my appetite for a bollywood drama, but it does have a tasty balance of music, romance and unforgettable characters. It's never laugh out loud funny, but is frequently amusing. I was giddy with delight in the film's capture of India's sights, colors, tastes and sounds. Old world meets new is the theme for the film's soundtrack. The humorous ensemble cast guides the audience to discover that while being immersed in a foreign culture, human nature stays pretty much the same world over. A joyful infusion of disco, bollywood and lamental melodies that sent my spirit soaring. I had to remind myself - this is after all an American film! It's done with enough bollywood flair to leave me satiated. :)
7/10
This film wasn't ponderous enough to whet my appetite for a bollywood drama, but it does have a tasty balance of music, romance and unforgettable characters. It's never laugh out loud funny, but is frequently amusing. I was giddy with delight in the film's capture of India's sights, colors, tastes and sounds. Old world meets new is the theme for the film's soundtrack. The humorous ensemble cast guides the audience to discover that while being immersed in a foreign culture, human nature stays pretty much the same world over. A joyful infusion of disco, bollywood and lamental melodies that sent my spirit soaring. I had to remind myself - this is after all an American film! It's done with enough bollywood flair to leave me satiated. :)
7/10
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