In this quirky summer romantic comedy, written by lead actress Zoe
Kazan, acclaimed novelist Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) finds himself unable to write.
His shrink (Elliott Gould) suggests that Calvin write about someone who totally
accepts his toy dog, and that night Calvin begins writing about a woman he had dreamed about. He names her Ruby Sparks.
His brother Harry (Chris Messina)
reads his work, but he says she is totally unreal. Then one day Calvin wakes up
and finds that Ruby is quite real and living with him. Calvin thinks he is hallucinating,
but he discovers that other people can also see her. He decides to accept this
miracle as a godsend. Only later does he begin to realize it might be a curse.
Although Ruby is totally devoted to him, Calvin discovers he
can also make her do whatever he wants by typing it into his novel.
The film plays was lots of speculations. What would happen if you could create your
perfect mate? What kind of responsibility does the writer have toward his
creation? Do you want someone in your life who you control or is it better to have someone who thinks
and acts for themselves? Do we want people in our lives who are unpredictable?
The actors are fun to watch. Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan have good chemistry and make
offbeat romantic leads, with their non-Hollywood looks and eccentric personalities. When
Calvin takes Ruby to meet his free spirit mother (Annette Bening) and his
furniture-maker step-father (Antonio Banderas), Calvin questions whether he
wants to share Ruby at all.
As the film meanders through the aspects of the couple’s
relationship, it gets dark. Happily, the resolution feels
sensible, and although I felt like I had seen the ending before, it fits.
I liked seeing True Blood’s vampire Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) play Calvin former girl-friend.
Chauvet Cave was discovered in Southern France by three men
in 1994. Inside are some of the earliest human cave paintings, dating from some
32,000 years ago. Back in the distant past, the side of the mountain caved in
and the cave was sealed into a time capsule. Only by chance did the three men
find the cave, which was then named for one of the explorers.
Access to the cave has been limited to protect the site, but
film maker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Aquire: The Wrath of God) was allowed in
to make a documentary of them. Since those in the cave have to stay on a metal path, the film
crew of four are often in the sights of the cameras.
The site is fascinating. Not only are there depictions of
cave lions and bears, horses, rhinoceros, but the site includes the carbon
remains of the torches used to light the cave, footprints of animals and bone
fragments.
The water has calcified much
of the surfaces so that they often glitter on film. A stalagmite rises from on
top of a porcelanized looking bear skull. What appears to be a waving flounced cloth
scarf has been formed from dripping water, creating a beautiful alternating
pattern of orches and browns. This is a dream-world free from the constrains of
time.
Scientists do not believe humans lived in the cave, but they
certainly decorated and explored it.
In the rear of the cave are the footprints of a wolf and an
8 year old boy. Are these from the same time period or separated by millennium?
The palm paintings of one individual show he is 6 foot tall with a crooked
little finger and he has done paintings in several places. On one rock pedestal
is a bear head placed facing the cave and on the ground around are carbon
fragments from torches. Ceremonial? Probably.
The film was done in 3D, although I saw it on Netflix so I
can’t speak for that aspect.
At times the ninety-minute film at times feels a little
long, but when Herzog lets the cave speak for itself, it is fascinating.
When I first saw Certified Copy last year, I found myself totally
confused.
British art critic, James Miller (William Shimell) is in Tuscany speaking on his book
about copies vs. originals. During his lecture, a woman (Elle, whose last name
is never given, played by Juliette Binoche) enters and sits in the front row in a chair which has a reserved sign on
it. She is greeted with a nod by James’ publicist, and she is followed in by her 15 year
old son, who stand bored at the side playing a video game on his cellphone. The son insists
he’s hungry and they leave. Before leaving,
Elle gives the publicist a note to give to James. In the next scene the son
trails behind the mother as they go to a restaurant. In their ensuing
conversation, he asks her why she bought so many copies of the author's book and she doesn’t like him (her son) to use his surname. She is
obviously raising him alone. James appears at Elle's antique shop (which is filled
with expensive copies of statuary) and the two go off on a sight-seeing tour of
Tuscany before he returns at nine to leave. Is she a fan stalking her favorite? Is this their first time together? Or is there a history
here we don’t yet understand? The director/author throws hints but doesn't give full answers.
Elle takes James to a museum where there are wedding
couples. He asks for a coffee and they go to get it. James says the inspiration
of his book was watching a woman in Florence with her son who tags along behind her. Elle begins crying as he describes watching her explain about the David to her son and how it inspired him to write the book on originals
and copies. When he goes out to take a cellphone call, the female owner of the
shop begins talking about James as “your husband.” Elle doesn’t correct her and
says they had been together for 15 years. This is the moment a year ago that
blew me away.
Since the two spend the rest of the film discussing their
marriage, his absence, the difficulty she has living a life alone, shared
memories of the locations she takes him, I realized perhaps I was wrong
about my view the first time.
This viewing I made a conscious decision. This IS a couple who are together. They have made their
compromises and see each other periodically. As she tells the hostess, he is
obsessed with his job. But “he loves you,” insists the hostess. Later a
tourists tells James all Elle wants is for him to put his arm on her shoulder.
And he does.
Am I wrong? Perhaps. But for me the movie takes on a whole new shape is you accept
from the beginning that these are two people in love, in an extended
relationship, with two who have chosen the life they live.
Stylistically the film is quite interesting. As the trip
into the countryside begins, the director places the camera dead center on the car. A
typical shot, right? Untypical is that we see the city and the countryside reflecting in the windshield
encompassing the image of the two.
Later, as the couple sits and talks, the
director places the actors squarely in the center of the screen where they talk
directly to the camera. We have medium reaction shots, but the unrelenting camera’s
eye doesn’t allow the actor to hide.
Juliette Binoche and William Shimell are wonderful in their
roles and allow us to wonder and speculate what is really going on between the
two. For me, that mystery enriches the whole film. It's definitely a see-it for me.
Before Sunset and Before Sunrise are two of my favorite
French films, with two very attractive lovers talking philosophy into the night
and then into the morning. The films have a feel of inspired improvisation,
which Delpy later claimed was true. Julie Delpy is wonderful in both films.
With that as a inspiration, I watched Delpy’s comedy Two Days in Paris. What
a disappointing difference.
Two Day in Paris plays like Woody Allen’s neuroses meets the Fockers in Paris.
An New York based
couple, French Marion (a photographer) and Jack (an American interior designer)
return from an unsatisfying trip to
Venice to stay two days with her parents in Paris before heading back home.
Both characters are incredibly whiny. Jack (Adam Goldberg) can’t speak French and complains about the
city, Marion's parents, his whole experience. He whines like bad Woody Allen New
York Shtick and does the same Allen asides to the audience. Even though Marion is the photographer, Jack has the need to take all the pictures on the trip--perhaps a way to separate himself from the experience or a competition with Marion. One of his early
bits is to tell a group of American tourists who are waiting in line for a taxi
that they are within a couple of blocks of the Louvre. He sends them off in the
wrong direction (he doesn’t know) and is pleased that he has reduced the taxi
line.
Marion is the type of person who shares a picture of naked
Jack holding balloons with her entire family. Later he finds another exactly posed picture of an
earlier boyfriend. She proclaims her fidelity to Jack, but has at least two
former boyfriends making advances.
Marion’s parents (played by her real life parents) are played
for laughs. They shout at each other, her father says rude things about Jack in
French which he doesn’t understand and serves rabbit, including the head and ears. The father
runs an art gallery with sex pictures and his eccentricity is that he constantly keys cars which are
parked on the sidewalk. Marion's mother has an obsession with laundry and proclaims
to Jack that in 1969 she had an affair with Jim Morrison (Jack had gone to see
his grave because that is something a tourist is supposed to do) and then proudly tells him she was
among the 343 Bitches (who signed a pledge that they had had an abortion).
The film is loaded with adult language which seems intended
to shock and be funny but which I found rather grating.
I’m afraid I wouldn’t recommend this film. See Before Sunset
of Before Sunrise instead.
When was the last time a
film took the time to really allow you to know a character? [The Intouchables.]
Name a film about a tetraplegic
and his helper which makes you feel good about life and all it has to offer. [The
Intouchables.]
When was the last time you
felt two characters learn to love each other, and you felt it too? [The
Intouchables.]
When was the last time
characters laughed on the screen, truly enjoying themselves, and you laughed
with them? [The Intouchables.]
Driss (Omar Sy) is tall, handsome street-wise, a
thief, with limited education, from Senegal, and with a laugh and a smile that
lights up the screen. He also is willing to learn, willing to grow. He cares
about family and feels protective about the people he loves.
Philipe (François Cluzet), a wealthy tetraplegic
who has no feeling from the neck down because of a paragliding accident, hires
Driss as his caretaker. He is trapped in a wheel chair existence. He can move
his head but that is all. A widower, he wants the life he had--fast speed,
great thoughts, even a female companion.
The two men start as unlikely companions, but over
the course of the film we watch their relationship grow into a kind of love.
Can two men love each other in a non-sexual way? Uniquivocally, yes.
Driss drives Phllipe fast. Philipe teaches Driss
about art and Driss responds by painting for which he eventually makes 11,000
euros. They paraglide even though Driss is against it. Phillipe teaches Driss
about classical music, while Driss teaches Philipe to appreciate dancing and
pop music.
Two of the most joyful scenes in the film are, first, after Philipe is thrown a birthday party. After the other guests leave, Philipe has the
chamber orchestra play classical music for Driss. He recognizes some of the
pieces because of pop culture and advertising. Driss then plays his music (Earth,
Wind & Fire) and does a dance--one of the most memorable and joyful dances
I've seen on the screen. The actor Sy brings charm and laughter to his
character. The second scene is later when the two are going paragliding. Their laughter and enthusiasm is totally contagious and the audience responded in kind.
“This is a based on a true
story” says the advertising and the real life inspirations are shown at the end,
and was according to Wikipedia inspired by a documentary the two directors had
seen in 2004 and from the book You Changed My Life, by Abdel Sellou. within 9 weeks after its premiere in France, it became the second most successful French film of all time.
I felt a
definite high as I walked out of the theatre.
The House of Mirth, directed by Terence Davies, is a
sumptuous Edwardian morality tale of a beautiful but penniless young woman on
the prowl for a husband but unwilling to lose her own sense of morality. In this case, it is not all’s fair in love
and war.
Gillian Anderson, stunning in 1906 wasp waist dresses, plays the tightly corseted and restrained American Lily Bart, who loves working lawyer Lawrence Selden (the handsome and
reserved Eric Stoltz). They flirt, they talk of love, they kiss, they pretend indifference, but they both
realize that what Lily wants will only come from a rich man who offers marriage.
When a servant from Selden's hotel mistakes Lily for her friend Bertha, Lily buys the letters, the key to
make her fortune. Instead, her sense of love for Selden (I assume) stops her from using
them.
Bertha and her husband invite Lily to join them on their yacht for a Mediterranean cruise. Bertha conducts an affair, but Lily refuses to acknowledge it. In a surprising reversal of fortune, Bertha throws Lily off the yacht, and she becomes a social
pariah to her friends.
One friend's husband proposes that he will help her invest money in return to an alliance. She refuses. The wealthiest man of the film proposes to her, is rejected,
and then rejects her when her situation changes for the worse and she says she would marry him. Eventually
forced to work like the middle class Lily abhors, she reaches the end of her
rope and must beg for charity from those few who could help.
The House of Mirth feels often highly stilted—the dialogue
carries the sense of an upper class comedy of manners, but there is no laughter in the tragedy. Edith Wharton shares much with Henry
James in her sense of what the high society does to the outcast. Being an
outcast means remaining one to the end--even if one have lived one's life with a
sense of morality. This is a story also of thwarted love--reminds me strongly of James' short story, The Beast in the Jungle.
The film uses lavish locations but often feels like a limited budget Masterpiece Theatre production.
The acting is the key here. Anderson is quiet
moving in her portrayal, and she and Stoltz offer some wonderful love scenes. As
Lily suffers, the depth of Anderson’s performance also grows. Numerous times we watch her hide her defeats from others but each becomes more devastating than the last. Only a couple of times, does the script allow her to show the pain she feels.
Laura Linney does
a great turn as Bertha Dorset, the best friend turned enemy. Elizabeth McGovern
brings the same sensibilities she shows in Downton Abbey. Dan Aykroyd is
passable as the lecherous husband, but Anthony LaPaglia imbibes his wealthy
Rosedale with a range of emotional reactions to Lily and her situation.
According to Wikipedia, the Carry On comedy series is the
longest running British film series, producing 31 films from 1958 through 1992. The
humor of the series follows the tradition of the Music Hall skits and “seaside
postcards.” I used to enjoy the Carry On series in the 1960s while in college
and then later when television would carry them.
The entire series was produced by Peter Rogers and directed
by Gerald Thomas, always on a strict budget and employing the same crew and “the
Carry On Team” of actors.
Carry On Cleo (1964) parodies the 1963 Taylor/Burton Cleopatra. In one of her first scenes, Cleopatra is seen in her bath wearing a terry-towel cotton bathing cap similar to a bizarre one Taylor wore in her film. Another costume is obviously based on one of her film costumes. At another point, for example, when Cleopatra is brought bundled in a rug, Caesar unrolls her into a table covered with fruit and she ends up with grapes draped on her costume for the rest of the scene. Later, a
Soothsayer looks in a fire to show what will transpire (Cleopatra Taylor does a
similar scene to see the death of Caesar).
Some commentators says that the lavish sets and costumes were
left over from the Taylor/Burton production, but I think they mean the earlier
aborted attempt to film Cleopatra in Britain when Taylor was to star Peter
Finch and Stephen Boyd. A note on IMDB says that “some interior sets in this
film were from the play Caligula, and had been supplied by Victor Maddern, who
bought them for £155 when the play closed and loaned them for the film for £800.
The cast of this film stars Sidney James (Mark Antony), Kenneth Williams (Julius
Caesar), Joan Sims (Calpurnia), Kenneth Connor (Hengist Pod), Jim Dale (Horsa),
Charles Hawtrey (Seneca), and Amanda Barrie (Cleopatra) whose specialty as her large Orphan Annie eyes.
The film begins with two primitive Britons captured by
Romans and taken to Rome as slaves. Briton jokes include Hengist’s having
invented a square wheel which won’t roll backwards and his mother-in-law having
been eaten by a brontosauros (even though this is supposed to by 44 BC).
Mark Antony is sent to Egypt where he kills Cleopatra's brother and agrees to kill Caesar.
When the slaves arrive in Rome, they escape from the slave market and
end up at the House of the Vestal Virgins. Horsa fights a group of soldiers and
knocks them out; Caesar mistakes Hengist for the hero and appoints him as head
of his guards.
Mark Antony convinces Caesar to go to Egypt to settle make a treaty with Cleopatra, in the meantime intending to kill
Caesar. They all (except Calpurnia) end up at Cleopatra’s palace where the
Britons get their freedom and return to happy marriages in Briton, Caesar
returns to Rome and is killed in the Senate, and Cleo and Tony end up in the
milk bath together.
The film is light and fairly funny and as parody makes no attempt at historical accuracy.
The acting is not very
memorable. Amanda Barrie plays a wide-eyed vacuous beauty. Tony if one of the
bumbling generals, Caesar is a fey, his wife is a harridan, and Hawtrey’s
Seneca (Caesar’s father-in-law) often reminds me of John Hurt.
I once took my students to an art exhibit where all the
paintings were white. It took them a long time to wrap themselves around the
idea that chosing to paint white was actually using all the colors of the
spectrum.
I felt much like my students trying to wrap my head around
Director/Author Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Symour
Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samatha Morton, Michelle Williams, and Dianne Wiest.
The actors were brilliant, but I was totally thrown by things being out of
kilter. Things happened I couldn't figure out: a character goes to look at a house for sale which is on fire. She buys the house and whenever we see the house there are flames seen burning. The
script makes a big point it is Halloween and a doctor, supposedly the next day,
has a calendar on his wall which states it is March. One of the characters says that she has twins, and then gives then gives three names.
Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a theatre director who gets hit in
the head, and from then on we move into a world that we think we understand but
don’t. Eventually Caden wins a MacArthur grant and uses his money to construct
a growing, huge set of New York, peopled with actors preparing the individual scenes
for the audience that will someday come.
Reality bends even more when he hires actors to play himself
and others to play the people in his lives.
Caden fears death throughout the film. He sees himself, however, director of his universe. He at one point expresses surprise that there are 13 billion people in the world and that none of them are extras in their own stories.
When Caden feels the need for a replacement of his original double, the actress Millicent Weems (played by Dianne Wiest) who had been hired to play a cleaning woman (Ellen) asks to take over the part. When asked what she knows of the character, she gives us the real clue to
the film:
(Millicent) Caden Cotard is a man already dead. He lives in a half world
between stasis and anti-stasus. Time is concentrated, chronology confused. Up
until recently he strived valiantly to make sense of his situation. Now he’s
turned to stone.
Near the end, she becomes Caden’s director—speaking to him
through an ear-mike. Her monogue becomes the most beautiful part of the film
and speaks to all of us of a certain age facing an uncertain future. Let me
quote Millicent/Ellen’s brilliant speech written by Kaufman:
Stand up. Now it is waiting and nobody cares. And when your
wait is over, this room will still exist. And it will continue to hold shoes
and dresses and boxes and maybe someday another waiting person. And maybe not.
The room doesn’t care either.
What was once before you an exciting mysterious future is
now behind you, lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not
special. You have struggled into existence and now are slipping silently out of
it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly
matter. Everyone is everyone. So you are Adelle, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are
Ellen, all her meager sadnesses are
yours. All her loneliness. The gray strawlike hair, her red raw hands. It’s
yours. It is time for you to
understand this.
Walk.
As the people who adore you stop adoring you, as they die, as they move on, as you shed them, as you shed your beauty, your youth, as the world forgets you, as you recognize your transience, as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one, as you learn there is no one watching and there never was, you think only about driving. Not coming from any place. Not
arriving any place. Just driving. Counting off time:
Now you are here. It’s 7:43. Now you are here. It’s 7:44. Now you are gone.
I think of many of the elderly friends that I have seen age and I realize how clearly they would understand this metaphor of life.
When I started this review, I thought I would write about how much the film confused me,
but writing about it, I realize how brilliant it is.
Batman is a man of his time period. In fact, as the movie
says, the point of Batman is he could be anyone—there is a hero in all of us.
Each incarnation of Batman since his creation in 1939 by
artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger has reflected the views and concerns of
the world in which he was lives. He has reflected the pop culture of the 1960s
and gone into “dark mode” with the graphic novels of the 1980s and 1990s. This
latest incarnation reflects our present struggle of today’s wealthy versus “the
rest of us”—with Bruce Wayne losing his wealth in a revolution that comes out
of nowhere.
One of the delights of Nolan’s intelligent script is his “quoting”
Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities
plot. As in Dickens, the people rise up in revolt and the world of the wealthy
vs the poor is turned upside down. Catwoman Silena Kyle (Hathaway) even warns Bruce
Wayne: “You think this can last? There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and
your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all
gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little
for the rest of us."
One friend’s capsule view of the film was “lots of bang
boom.” Ironic, isn't it, since Batman wants to do it all without guns. Certainly there are some loud and spectacular special effects, such as the
bombing of Gotham’s bridges and subway, leading to an entire football field
disappearing as a player runs for a touch-down. [Was that an intention or
unintentional quote of the football stadium scene in The Sum of All Fears (2002),
also starring Morgan Freeman?] But the sweep of all the various fight scenes
was mesmerizing.
Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) is one of my favorite
films. He peoples his scripts with talented actors who seem to be part of a
Christopher Nolan repertory company: Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Michael
Caine, and Cillian Murphy (acting as Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow, the judge
giving the choice of exile or death). Added to these actors are Christian Bale,
Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Morgan Freeman, Matthew Modine, and Liam Neeson
(briefly).
While Christian Bale makes an admirable Batman/Bruce Wayne,
I found myself drawn to Anne Hathaway who remained often the person I watched.
Her intelligent and likeable performance gives depth to the usual Catwoman
character. Plus, being a fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I also found him growing
as adventure hero.
The strength of the acting and the intelligence of the
script can be seen by the response many of my friends had to the ending—tears and
smiles. When everyone raves about a film, it has to be a great communal
experience. Should you see? Today.
The film, a rather mindless piece soufflee, uses an Agatha Christie work as its basis.
Five guests visit a rich widow in her palatial sea-side estate: her nephew, his wife, his ex-wife, a female employee, a gigolo friend of the nephew's current wife, and a male friend of the family, concerned about the ex-wife. A prominent elderly detective friend of the family joins them for dinner and tantalizes them with a story of child [sex undisclosed] who had killed another child [sex undisclosed] with a bow and arrow. "I would recognize the child [who murdered but was never charged] by a physical trait." Of course, each of the people in the room have a unique physical trait.
When the detective returns to his hotel, he finds the elevator out of order and must climb to the top floor where he is staying. He dies of a heart attack. Is it murder or just bad luck?
During the night of the next evening, the elderly wealthy lady is murdered and all the evidence points to the nephew. A Columbo-type detective on vacation is called in to help solve the case. As usual with Christie, there are several red-herrings and twists and turns.
The entire film plays like an artificial stage French farce. There is even comic relief from a short butler and his amorous housekeeper who overhear an incriminating argument while they have sex in a doorway. The housekeeper is called to act nervous, drop things, and scream.
The more I have thought about this film, the more I wanted
to tell its story. If you don’t want spoilers, jump down to reaction.
The Plot [Spoilers
alert]
Daniel Coulombe, a thin handsome French actor, returning to Montréal from somewhere unspecified, is hired to update
a 35 year old passion play that has been presented at a shrine dedicated to
Jésus for 35 years. The priest in charge
wants the script updated with some of the new archeological and technical
advances in the translations. As Daniel begins his research, a librarian asks
if he is searching for Jésus. When he says he is, she says, "Jésus will
find you."
Pulling together a team consisting of two male voice-over
artists, a fashion model (Mireille who is to be the Virgin Mary), and Constance
(Mary Magdalene), a female friend who serves soup in a homeless kitchen. She
invites Daniel to stay with her and he discovers she has a long running affair
with the priest. As he finds one of the voice-over artists, we are supposed to
be shocked by the dubbing that he and two women do with a very adult sex scene.
The group update the play, which is built around the
stations of the cross. We see them move
from a rehearsal to an actual performance.
During the production, the audience physically moves from
station to station--the surprise for me was that myself emotionally involved.
Explaining Jésus' background, the women, dressed as
archealogists, say that research shows the first mosaic renderings of Jésus were
of a smooth-faced youth and only during the Byzantine period was the beard
added. Jésus ‘ full name, Yeshu Ben
Panthera, suggests that he was actually the son of a Roman soldier, a soldier named
Panthera being documented in Year 6. Stressing that Jésus was similar to one of
many magicians of the period (one suddenly appears, one flies), they then show Jésus
performing his miracles: walking on water, healing a blind woman, raising the
dead. During the updated sermon on the
mount, a spectator breaks through the crowd declaring she believes in Jésus.
She is held back by shrine security and told not to bother the actors.
At the third station, the crucifixion, Jésus is hung on the
cross naked with his legs in a side crouching position (based on research we
had seen Daniel finding earlier).
The final station, performed in a huge tunnel, shows Jésus'
resurrection. We are told it is perhaps 5 years after Jésus ' death, and one of
his followers runs in with the news that
she has seen Christ. He looks different but she recognizes him nonetheless. The
message ends with the idea that we all must find our own path to salvation.
The film spectators rave about the play and the actors. Some
immediately begin to find hidden messages. One makes the amazing 1980s
statement that she believes AIDS is actually being added to Coke classic.
The priest is outraged that the script has gone too far. The actors tell him, "Tonight we're happy. That's all
that matters."
As the performances continue, Daniel becomes more and more
caught up in his part. Going with the model to a sleazy beer ad audition where Mireille
is asked to strip nude, Daniel drives the advertisers from their audition
space, breaking their equipment. Later, as he is on the cross at a performance,
he is arrested by police. After a court shrink declares he is more sane than
the judge, a lawyer friend of Miereille, tempts Jésus with all the fame and
wealth he could want. He refuses.
The clergy associated with the shrine decide the play will
be cancelled but the actors want one last performance. After a last sharing of
pizza, they decide to present the play anyway. During the performance, while on
the cross, Jésus receives a head injury and is rushed to a hospital. The
hospital scene becomes pure farce with the place so crowded that Jésus can't
even be admitted.
When Jésus seems to recover, the two women walk him to the
subway. In the subway tunnel, he begins preaching to the people around and collapses.
Taken to a Jewish Hospital, they learn he is brain dead. Daniel’s organs are
donated (resurrection and rebirth). The lawyer convinces the group they should still
capitalize on their fame and found a theatre in Daniel's name. They vow only to
teach his ideas.
Reaction: While I
found parts of the film a stretch to accept and somewhat locked in the 1980s,
the passion story and some of the messages were very moving and
thought-provoking. At one point, Rene is doing a voice-over about the creation
of the universe which ends with the idea that when the universe finally ends,
we will be long gone and there will be no evidence of our existence at all--something
definitely to ponder.
For me, it was an often powerful performance that I'm glad I saw.
Sidonie Laborde would not even rate much
of a footnote in history. She lives at Versailles in the days just prior to the
French Revolution and acts as Queen Marie Antoinette’s reader. She is on
intimate terms with the queen (whom she loves). When itching from numerous
mesquito bites, the queen personally applies rose water to sooth her--a very
intimate moment. But queen has scandalized court by loving too indiscretely
Gabrielle de Polignac.
Living among the hundreds of backstairs
servants, courtiers and hangers-on, Sidonie’s life remains a puzzle, filled
with gossip, innuendo, and whispers heard outside doorways. Early on in the
film, Sidonie pumps on of the court clerks for information and learns that the
Bastille has been stormed.
Sidonie begins to realize no one is
safe. When one of the courtiers reads from a list the rebels have prepared of the 250 some whose heads will fall first, Marie Antoinette is second. The courtier is 25th.
The fear of all the “others” living at
Versailles is palable. As the country crumbles, Marie Antoinette plans a new
summer frock, frets about saving her lover, considers fleeing to the country,
and begins taking her jewelry apart so the gems could pack more easily. The
court and their servants begin packing for a trip which might never occur, some
run off, one even commits suicide. At the same time Sidonie embroiders a dahlia
for her mistress’ new dress, has a dalliance with one of Versailles’ gondoliers,
and tries to understand what is happening.
Not a lot of action
happens in the film, but the film never fails to interest, a superb history
lesson.
Diane Kruger as Marie
Antoinette is beautiful, fascinating and an enigma. Her sumptuous wardrobe and
rather fragile beauty illuminate the rich décor of Versailles. Léa Seydoux as Sidonie makes a good guide through her
backstairs world. She shows us her ultimate devotion to the queen, even to
allowing herself to act as a decoy to save her beloved’s lover. Noémie Lvovsky as Mme Campan is also a fascinating study.
Lady in waiting to the queen, she confides at one point to Sidonie that in all
her years at court, she never made a friend. Her own moment of revolution comes when she tells Sidonie not to do
something the queen is going to ask her to do. The
yellow/green gown worn by the queen’s lover becomes a symbol of the defiance
and cluelessness of the aristocracy and takes on a rich meaning by the end of
the film.
Ultimately the film asks the question, What would you do for the person you love?
I went to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter with great
expectations. Three times I have taught the book (the last in a course called
Myth and Modern Fiction) and my kids consistently picked the book as their
favorite. Well drawn historical fiction, combining the vampire culture with the
real history of Lincoln and wit and humor made for an engrossing story—all things that my students
responded to.
I was even more pleased that Seth Grahame-Smith was
scriptwriter to his own movie.
At this point, you might ask, "How could it have gone so far wrong?"
Let’s start with the positives:
Benjamin Walker as Lincoln is wonderful. He
exudes a personal charm and intelligence. Loved watching him.
Dominic Cooper is the perfect choice for Henry,
although he isn’t given much to do here.
The period costumes and mise en scene were
great. The look of Springfield and Washington and the Civil War battles were very
pleasing.
The biggest negative? Seth Grahame’Smith’s own script. I kept imaging Grahame-Smith’s conversation with the director Timur Bekmanbetov regarding the changes with the book:
Cut all that true history about Lincoln. Nobody
cares or will even know if it’s accurate.
So in the book Lincoln has two buddies who help
him fight the vampires, but you’ve got too many characters… the audience won’t
be able to keep them straight and we don’t have the budget for more. So Lincoln actually had four sons, we only
need the one who dies while Lincoln is in the White House. Who’s going to know?
Listen about those friends, Lincoln freed the
slaves; make one of those friends of his African American… then you can just
telegraph to the audience why he “loves” the slaves.
Look we’ve hired a very pretty girl for Mary Todd.
Even though Mary was rather plump, the audience will like her if she stays thin
throughout the movie. And speaking of Todd, make her more important in the
film.
Now the movie needs action--big drama special
effects climax. Let’s have Lincoln bring silver to the soldiers and the
vampires can attack the train and the vampires set the tressel bridge on fire
and Lincoln and make the audience believe that one of his buddies is betraying
him. We’ll kill that one off. And let’s have Mary lead the slaves into bringing
the silver through the “underground railroad”!! Brilliant!!
We need a female vampire—one who can wear pants
and look very modern who Mary gets a chance to shoot, so we know she’s a
fighter like her husband.
Remember we're making 3D so make sure almost every frame in the picture shows something in closeup so the audience knows they're watching 3D.
And the end, let’s make the audience figure out
it’s Lincoln at the bar so they’ll think they are bright.
When the credits rolled at the end, all I could think of was
Tallulah Bankhead’s comment to Tennessee Williams after the opening of Orpheus
Descending: “Darling, they’ve absolutely ruined your perfectly dreadful play.”
Jonathan Foer (Elijah Wood) sees the world through thick glasses, which one could see as a major metaphor. He sees the world with big eyes and bigger glasses, magnifying his experience.
Director Liev Schreiber tells the story of Jonathan, a collector of all kinds of family minutia--photos, clothing, jewelry, false teeth, dirt, even condoms--bagging in ziplock bags all the items as cataloger of his family's past. When he receives a photo of his grandfather "and the woman who saved him from the Nazis," Jonathan flies to the Ukraine to find what he can learn about his grandfather's earlier life there and the woman in the picture.
In Odessa, Jonathan begins his journey to the past by booking a "Heritage Tour" with the Perchov family. Grandfather Baruch Perchov (who has only disdain for Jews) drives the car even though he thinks he is blind, his grandson Alex Perchov (who has limited English but acts as translator), and Sammy Davis, Jr. Jr. (Baruch's seeing eye dog). The guides assume that the purpose of the trip will be to "take the Jew to see where all his relatives are dead," find nothing, and collect the money. Instead, for us, the trip takes us through the modern Ukraine as the four travelers come to terms with their own lives.
Ultimately the trip becomes very funny, totally memorable, and incredibly moving.
One of the memorable visions of the film is a house in a vast field of sunflowers where Jonathan finds some of his answers from a woman who is also a collector. Is it just irony that the Greek story of Clytie tells of a young woman who waits for Apollo to return her love and when he doesn't and she begins to starve herself, the gods turn her into a sunflower which turns its head always to follow the sun forever.
I used to teach Maus, which deals with Art Speigelman's coming to terms with his father's experiences in a concentration camp and his personal growth as he learns of his father's past. This work would be a great companion piece about how memory and the past exists beside us always.
Christopher Guest and his “repertorie” actors from A MightyWind and Best in Show take on the movie industry in For Your Consideration.
While making a small Indie film, Home for Purim, the lead
actors Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer and Parker Posey learn they may be in
the running for Oscar nominations. Rumor takes on a life of its own and begins
to affect all aspects of the film they are making.“The Suits,” for example, decide the script is too ethnic
and in order to tone down the film’s obvious Jewishness suggest a name-change; so the film becomes Home for Thanksgiving.
There is a sense of poignancy watching Catherine O'Hara's character being sucked up into her own ego. Her character even tries changing her image in a Barbara Hershey way , a moment as grotesque as seeing Faye Dunniway in Mommy Dearest.
Besides stellar O'Hara's lead, outstanding performances include Ed Begley,
Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, and Fred
Willard.
As usual, Guest’s and Levy’s script feels delightfully
improvised, and the actors seem to have fun with their quirky characters.
I wanted to remind myself that I like Woody Allen after seeing To Rome with Love, so I watched Shadows and Fog (1991) which I had never seen. At first I thought I was going to dislike the movie, but the longer I watched the more I liked it.
The film uses as its dramatic gimmick a serial strangler being loose in an unnamed European town. No one knows who the killer is and he kills only in the fog. Max Kleinman (Allen) is awoken by a group of vigilantes and told he must join them. In Kleinman's Kafkaesque world, he is never told what his job is or where he is to meet the others, so much of the film he is wandering around trying to discover his purpose, which everyone but him seems to know. Metaphor about life? Of course.
In his travels, Max meets Irmy, Mia Farrow, a sword-swallower with the circus who has left her clown lover (John Malkovich) and ends up in a brothel. She makes $700 from Jack (John Cusack) a rich student who is enamoured with her. She gets caught in a police raid and at the police station Max and Irmy meet. We follow them through the rest of the night.
Many of the early Allen obsessions are evident in the film: discussions of reality vs. illusion, whether there is a God, what death involves, how one lives in this world where one has no idea why one is there, what is the importance of illusion. Discussing philosophy is one of Allen's strong points and here it becomes engrossing.
The film can often be maddening. During one long discussion between the prostitutes, the camera pans 360 degrees twice, at a speed slow enough that one can register the faces, but fast enough that one could be dizzy from the movement. Perhaps the purpose is to disorient the viewer because that is what it does. Allen also, a couple of times, has a character talking, but he focuses the camera on a person listening (who stands stock still not really reacting to what is being said).
As the title suggests, most of the film (which is black and white) is done with lots of shadows and fog.
There are lots of good supporting actors: Lily Tomlin, Jody Foster, Kathy Bates, Madonna, Julie Kavner, William H. Macy, Fred Gwynne, Kenneth Mars.
I recommend the film. It's not one of Allen's masterpieces, but it makes for good viewing.
I went to Rome last summer. It was beautiful. Everything people had said about it seemed true.
I can't say Woody Allen in To Rome with Love did the same magic he did last year with Paris. In fact, as lightweight as the entire "plot" of unrelated ideas seems, Rome would be the last place I'd want to visit.
At one point in the film, Allen's character shouts at another character and says, "Why am I shouting? We're two feet away from each other." I wondered the same thing. I also wondered why all the characters had adopted a stage voice which lacked any real sense of believablity. And why the audience is constantly required to suspend disbelief. One character is "movie lover" but looks like a New Jersey baker? A hooker goes to a party and finds that all the men there have been her clients? Allen's character finds an Italian with a great voice who can only sing well in the shower--so he launches him in performances with a shower. Pagliacci performed with a shower onstage? And the audience loves the concept?
If you want to see Rome, I'd stick to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday or Marcello Mastroianni in 8-1/2.
Nigel Slater has a mother who can’t cook and a verbally abusive father who doesn’t know how to relate to his son. All Nigel wants to do is learn to cook something other than toast (his mother’s speciality).
When his mother dies, his dad hires Mrs. Potter, a married cleaning woman, Helena Bonham Carter, who wears 1960s tight dresses and an unattractive frumpy blonde hairdo. She sets out to win Nigel's father through her cooking in hopes that he will rescue her from the bleak life she lives.
Eventually Nigel and Miss Potter begin a competition that changes the course of each of their lives.
Made for BBC, the film is told with lovingly attention to 1960s detail. The young Nigel is wonderful and Miss Carter creates another memorable character.
Melodrama transcends cultures, and poignant stories about the human condition are a reminder of how similar we all are. Aftershock tells the story of a mother and her fraternal twins who survive the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, China. As her children lie pinned under a concrete slab, the mother is told only one child can be saved and she must make the choice. She chooses the son. The daughter, who ultimately survives, carries the burden of hearing her mother make her choice.
The film follows the three and the daughter’s foster parents through 32 years until the three finally are able to be reconciled.
One of the strongest sections of the film is the 1976 earthquake told in uncomfortable realism. Don't be confused by the trailer which takes the earthquake section and reverses it.
If you choose to watch this well-told story, have Kleenex by your side.
One of the great cult films of the 1990s is this Coen brothers' classic. Jeff Bridges is at his best as a stoner named "Dude" Lebowski. When two thugs break into his house assuming he is the millionaire Lebowski and pee on his rug, the Dude sets out on an adventure that is peopled with quirky characters and centers around a kidnapping that may or may not have happened.
Circular dialog and quirky personalities make for a very funny movie. There's even a great Busby Berkley dance number built around bowling. John Goodman and Steve Buscemi become delightful side-kicks and such characters as John Turturro's bowler, Jesus Quintana, make for memorable quotes and moments.
If you haven't seen it, check it out on Netflix today.
Three magazine employees set out to cover a story about a man who has advertised for someone to join him in time travel. [Yes, I seem to have found a time travel theme in the last couple of movies.] The film’s view is that those of us who would welcome time travel have regrets (often about love) that we would like to make right.
Leads Aubrey Plaza [Parks & Recreation], Mark Duplass, and Jake M. Johnson [New Girl] are wonderfully quirky and totally likeable.
The script is funny and sometimes touching and made for a great experience.
I felt totally satisfied at the end. It’s what I'd hoped yesterday’s film, Donnie Darko, would be and wasn’t. I wish I could take you to see this film.
Donnie Darko, a deeply disturbed young man, walks in his sleep, defies parental and school authority, thinks of time travel, and has a prophetic invisible friend dressed in a demented rabbit costume, who foretells the end of world. The film tries very hard to reach cult film status with bizarre happenings and equally bizarre characters, but doesn't quite make it for me. Perhaps the teenage angst is just too predictable as is ultimately the ending. Maybe also the film feels fairly dated.
Jake Gyllenhaal gives an interesting performance, but the performances of Drew Barrymore and Patrick Swayze seem merely caricatures and wasted.
