Part of the fun of the Star Trek franchise is to see the twists and reimaginings necessary to make another prequel of the original series. This episode felt even more satisfying than the last: mind-boggling special effects, great action sequences, strong and well realized characters.
By now, Chris Pine has become blended into my concept of the early Kirk and Zachary Quinto has merged with Spock. Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Karl Urban (Bones), and Jon Cho (Sulu) remind us of the predecessors/future beings. Simon Pegg doesn't so much as channel Scotty as create his own parallel being who offers much needed humor to his character. Benedict Cumberbatch makes a worthy villain.
I went to see The Great Gatsby with great trepidation. I was not one of the fans of the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version, but I am a great fan of Leonardo DiCaprio and Carrie Mulligan. While I liked Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, I couldn't picture that style as the framework for Gatsby.
Well, I totally bought into the film.
Whereas Redford and Farrow only convinced me that their acting range was actually quite limited, DiCaprio gave a very nuanced role that brought out both Gatsby's mystique and his hidden lower class origins. Mulligan's Daisy was funny, blissfully unaware of the damage she did in others lives.
In previous versions, the character of Nick has been nondescript at best. Here I found Toby McGuire's character interesting in his own right.
In Moulin Rouge, some of the magic of the film were the panoramas of Paris and the famous windmill. Here, the early part of the film gradually clarifies images from 1920s New York into the modern film. The party becomes one of the memorable moments in the film, showing outlandish expense lavishly spent on Gatsby's attempt to seduce Daisy and her husband to come across from the bay and join him on his Long Island estate.
Gatsby's pink suit from the book is beautifully rendered in a subtle pink/mauve tone with sets off DiCaprio's blonde hair.
I worried that I would hate the music since it sounds very modern. Actually it was felt to have reinterpreted the 1920s jazz sound and never felt discordantly modern.
Also called The Emperor and the White Snake or "Bai she chuan shuo"
I like Chinese fantasy films with elaborate fights and lots of special effects. Seeing the trailer on YouTube, I found this fun film online.
Here a master monk searches out evil demons to destroy. His assistant gets kidnapped by a demon and eventually changes into one. White and green serpent demon sisters see a handsome young doctor gathering herbs and the white serpent falls in love with him. She makes an attempt to keep their love forever.
The effects are pretty good and the eventual battle between good and evil allos for philosophical musings along with good special effects.
Iron Man 3 was the most fun I've had with any of the Iron Man films. Robert Downey Jr. is a highly personable actor and makes the perfect comic book hero here: witty, charming, intelligent. He keeps our interest in every scene. Gwyneth Paltrow becomes his perfect foil. The Drew Pierce and Shane Black plot is highly convoluted, but filled with action, special effects and humor.
The film was obviously intended for a Christmas release: there are constant references to the holiday, sets are decorated for it, and at one climatic moment Christmas fireworks are talked about and Tony Stark says of the bad guys, "Let's send these guys to church." I'm glad to they hold release so the film could stand on its own rather than being compared to the other holidays films of 2012.
I would not be surprised to see this on the list of Christmas through Hollywood's eyes.
The Gatekeepers is a sobering documentary interviewing six former heads of the Israeli Shin Bet. One of the points the filmmaker makes is that many people who might be viewed as terrorists are actually viewed as "Freedom Fighters" by their side. The filmmaker uses straight news footage paired with dramatic recreations.
A beautiful film to look at--beautiful actress, great scenery in the south of France, interesting storyline about the infirm painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his family in shambles. Set in 1915, as the First World War depletes the men from the area, Renoir lives in a house of only women--except for his sons--Renoir is stricken with rhumatoid arthritis and has to be carried everywhere. His hands are so crippled that the paint brushes must be tied to his hands so he doesn't drop them. His eyesight is going as his pictures become more and more impressionistic. One son has lost an arm and lives away, his second son Jean has lost part of his leg bone, and youngest son Coco lives at home, considering himself an orphan--"my mother died and my father might as well have."
Into this environment comes Andree Heuschling (stunning Christa Theret), a beautiful model with a questionable background who seeks to be Renior's new model (who she says was sent by Renoir's dead wife). She quickly falls in love with son Jean when he returns from war. Jean's fascination with movies is shown in various early silent showings. In real life, Jean Renoir became a renowned director with Andree as his wife and leading lady. He eventually ended up doing films in Hollywood. One very humorous scene between Jean and his older brother (who is a stage actor) has the brother saying, "There will never be a great French film director. We are not made for it."
The scenes of the countryside, the Mediterranean in the distance, the flood of light, the beautiful women who pose for Renoir or become the servants who carry him to enjoy a painting moment sitting in the river. All of these are a joy to watch.
Discovered quite by accident on YouTube, I watched Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best on Amazon Prime. Now I want to help it find the audience it deserves.
The film is a paean to those who consider themselves society's "scraps," the ones who don't quite fit into their nine to five jobs and suburban life. Alex, the main character is infectingly played by Ryan O'Nan (who wrote the screenplay and directed the film). O'Nan looks like the love-child of John Hurt and Ryan Gossling. He can't find the life he wants. He plays music for handicapped school children while wearing a ridiculous pink moose outfit and is totally unable to handle his job of selling real estate. All he really wants is that half hour playing and singing to an audience of five or six.
Alex's girlfriend dumps him, his musical partner does the same and he is accosted by Jack, a quirky musician who plays children's toy instruments and who wants to start a band with him. When Alex agrees, we begin a delightful road picture as Alex and Jack try to find their place in a world that sees them as life's scraps. Michael Weston's Jack is quirky and loveable.
As they go On the Road, they pick up a female groupie named Cassidy (On the Road, think Cassady... get it? If not, you don't deserve Kerouac.) Cassidy looks a lot like Jennifer Lawrence. But the three play off well with each other.
The writing, by O'Nan is powerful. In one scene, as a dejected Alex and optimistic Jim sit in some forsaken country town by a grain elevator, having been deserted, with no money for gas, and no prospects for what’s coming, Jim does a magical riff on their situation that summarizes a philosophy that Jack Kerouac would have understood:
Have you ever thought for a second that this is it? ... Maybe this is all it’s ever going to be. I mean, you sing songs about moths. ... I f**king love moths because they're ugly, ugly little worm creatures that crawl into their cocoons with promises of metamorphosizing into like these beautiful butterflies, but when they come out, they’re still f**king ugly, and now they're blind and they fly into the lights and shit. Those little dudes, they keep on trucking. ... There are no free rides, man, if we can’t handle roughing it a little and carving our way out here like f**king old Apache warriors, then what are we doing? I mean, what the f**k. Cause to me, we’re doing something most people will not do in their entire lives. ... I mean people that sit at the same desk every day for eight to ten hours a day and then they sleep for nine hours a day, and then they truly live their life for maybe, I don't know five hours at the most. I bet those people would love being here. They would f**king love it. Not knowing what’s coming around the corner; not knowing what’s coming next. They’d love it!
By the end of the film, I found the message powerful and the music charming.
I love quirky Indie films and this brought me a lot of smiles. See it and tell others I sent you to it.
Grimm's fairy tale Snow White is retold in 1920s Spain in a rich mocha black and white homage to the films of the 1920s. Like The Actor, this is a silent film told with a sense of magic.
The story begins in Seville where famous matador Antonio Villalta (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) fights honoring his pregnant wife Carmen de Triana. When he is severely wounded, she goes into labor and ends up dying. The baby is raised by Carmen's mother and paralyzed father eventually marries his nurse (all glorified evil by Maribel Verdu). Sofia Oria, the young actress who plays Carmenchita (Snow White) looks like a young Anne Hathaway. She misses knowing her father, and when her grandmother dies she ends up being brought to his estate where La Madrastra (Verdu) makes her life miserable. Eventually her pet rooster Pepe wanders into the bedroom where her father is and the two develop a rewarding relationship. Her father is eventually murdered by his wife.
Carmencita grows into Carmen, Macarena Garcia, an actress who looks like a dark haired Ellen Degeneres. Surviving her stepmother's attempt on her life, she ends up becoming part of the Seven Matador Dwarfs (although there are really only six). Eventually Carmen's bullfighting skills are shown and La Madrastra makes one final attempt at revenge.
The ending, based on Grimm's, becomes both poignant and powerful.
Surprisingly engrossing and magical, the film pulls you in throughout.
The Place Between the Pines is the translation for the Mohawk word for Schenectady (New York), where the film takes place. The film tells three separate but related stories, each dealing with the responsibility fathers have toward their sons. The film is divided into three distinct stories: the crook, the cop, the sons.
Ryan Gosling plays Luke Glanton, a carnival motorcycle stuntman, obsessed with his motorcycle. When he learns that he is the father of Jason, a baby he didn't know he had, his world changes. His sense of rage at the world that has created him is hinted at by the tattoo knife/tear at his eye. His scenes with his baby's mother, Robin (Eva Mendes), are superbly written and acted. Unable to find the money he needs to woo Robin away from the man she currently lives with, Luke eventually is convinced that bank robbing will provide him all he needs. Things do not go well.
Bradley Cooper as Avery Cross, at the top of his acting game, plays a rookie cop confronting life and death for the first time. In his story, he confronts the corruption of the police department around him while feeling responsible for Jason, who is the same age as his son. AJ The acting is outstanding. The script plays with the parallels between the two men's failures at relationships with family and women.
The third story jumps fifteen years and deals with Jason and AJ beginning a tenuous friendship fraught with violence and drugs. There are subtle ironies in the lives of these young men and the fathers who have tried to help raise them.
While the film was beautifully filmed and compellingly acted, Oblivion proved a more satisfying experience for me. Both had high adrenaline scenes but I didn't find myself fully vested in the characters.
I should begin with the caveat that I generally avoid all Tom Cruise films. The blending of his personal life and film career has put me off. The trailer for Oblivion intrigued me and I was soothed by the fact that Morgan Freeman was in the film.
Based on an unpublished graphic novel, the film focuses on a post planetary-war world some 40 years after the human race has been sent off to a new life on Titan. The final two human beings have been left to oversee the final mining of the earth's resources. The two have had their memories wiped clean, but look forward to leaving earth and joining the surviving humans in a couple of days.
Jack (Cruise) dreams of images of an earth he can't explain from before the war. He and his partner talk about their memories having been wiped so they can function as the final survivors of mankind on earth. His job is to provide maintenance for the droids which kill any remaining life forms. As Jack investigates a remaining building, he discovers a library and is drawn to the world the books describe. We recognize the rubble among the unfamiliar terrain as being New York City. Jack's encounters suggest that there may be other remants of the human race left. Unbeknownst to his partner, Jack has a small cabin near a lake all set up with his books and it becomes his refuge when he want to recapture his memories of earth.
From the remains of the Empire State building, Jack realizes a beacon impulse is being sent into space. When an earth-made rocket ship crashes on earth, he saves the only survivor from the droids which kill all other survivors. Later he recognizes the survivor as the woman he has been remembering ...his wife, thus creating jealousy of the partner as she sees Jack's affections recentered.
Later as Jack and his wife find other humans living in the seeming rubble of the earth, Jack also discovers the world he knows may not be at all the world that really exists. The film poses many intriguing questions: What makes us who we are? Do memories define us? If we could duplicate people, what happens to the concept of self.
What more can be said about a film that references the Lays of Ancient Rome and A Tale of Cities. Filled with high energy action and many special effects, I found myself totally caught up in the story and highly satisfied with the ending and the questions the film poses.
