In this review I'll refrain from saying anything bad about the film.
- Gong Li is quite easy on the eyes. This cannot be overstated.
- Certain parts of China photograph beautifully.
- Shots of fast moving trains tickle my inner child.
2/5
16 November 2004
Garden State (Zach Braff, 2004)
I hate how many movies today are about the emptimess and plasticity of contemporary life. I hate that, in contemporary American indie cinema, 'quirky' has replaced intellligent and well made. I hate movies where, because the director can't illustrate a mood with dialogue, montage, or mise en scene, he does so by relying on a blaring soundtrack. I hate good actors who are wasted with bad scripts.And I hated Zach Braff's Garden State.
This was, in almost every possible way I can consider, just an awful, terrible movie. The sets were bad. The dialogue was terrible. The lighting and photography were sub par. Really, just about the only thing I enjoyed was the soundtrack, and I enjoyed that begrudgingly, because the (admittedly good) music was used so, so badly...
Andrew Largeman (writer/director/star Zach Braff) is an out of work TV actor waiting tables in a Vietnamese restaurant in LA. The single scene of the restaurant is our sole look at Southern California, from which we can assume that LA is populated primarily by Ketel One and Red Bull drinking assholes. Andrew gets a call from his father telling him his mother has died, and his presence at the funeral is requested. So, 'Large', as he's known by his friends back home, travels unwillingly back to New Jersey, where the rest of the movie takes place.
You could probably write the rest of the movie by yourself, and do at least as good a job as Braff. At the funeral we see how empty and fake his relatives lives are, and how disassociated Andrew is from his past. He runs into some friends, and goes to a party, where we learn much backstory. Then, of course, he meets a girl. Since this is a current American indie/romantic/comedy, the girl is cute, intelligent, yet somehow flawed. Played by Natalie Portman, Sam's flaw is nothing that actually gets in the way of the story, unlike Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Through Sam, Andrew learns some major life lessons, falls in love, and has his life changed forever.
There were a couple of nice moments in Garden State, but they were few and far between. One scene in an implausibly placed quarry was generally wonderful, and the scene wehere Andrew and Sam meet (at a barren and oddly decrepit Neurologist's office) was also fairly nice. That was pretty much it.
2/5
I hate how many movies today are about the emptimess and plasticity of contemporary life. I hate that, in contemporary American indie cinema, 'quirky' has replaced intellligent and well made. I hate movies where, because the director can't illustrate a mood with dialogue, montage, or mise en scene, he does so by relying on a blaring soundtrack. I hate good actors who are wasted with bad scripts.And I hated Zach Braff's Garden State.
This was, in almost every possible way I can consider, just an awful, terrible movie. The sets were bad. The dialogue was terrible. The lighting and photography were sub par. Really, just about the only thing I enjoyed was the soundtrack, and I enjoyed that begrudgingly, because the (admittedly good) music was used so, so badly...
Andrew Largeman (writer/director/star Zach Braff) is an out of work TV actor waiting tables in a Vietnamese restaurant in LA. The single scene of the restaurant is our sole look at Southern California, from which we can assume that LA is populated primarily by Ketel One and Red Bull drinking assholes. Andrew gets a call from his father telling him his mother has died, and his presence at the funeral is requested. So, 'Large', as he's known by his friends back home, travels unwillingly back to New Jersey, where the rest of the movie takes place.
You could probably write the rest of the movie by yourself, and do at least as good a job as Braff. At the funeral we see how empty and fake his relatives lives are, and how disassociated Andrew is from his past. He runs into some friends, and goes to a party, where we learn much backstory. Then, of course, he meets a girl. Since this is a current American indie/romantic/comedy, the girl is cute, intelligent, yet somehow flawed. Played by Natalie Portman, Sam's flaw is nothing that actually gets in the way of the story, unlike Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Through Sam, Andrew learns some major life lessons, falls in love, and has his life changed forever.
There were a couple of nice moments in Garden State, but they were few and far between. One scene in an implausibly placed quarry was generally wonderful, and the scene wehere Andrew and Sam meet (at a barren and oddly decrepit Neurologist's office) was also fairly nice. That was pretty much it.
2/5
15 November 2004
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1947)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a slightly unusual movie, as it's genre could best be described as "romantic horror". The main problem with this is that, at least for this viewer, the horror element was merely a put-on. At no time did I feel that any "genuine" horror was coming. So, basically this film is a slightly odd romance, where the protagonists are a recently widowed woman (Tierney), and the ghost of a former sea captain (Harrison), into whose house Tierney's character moves.
Most of the plot is a contrivance to get these two characters into some wonderful scenes. Essentially, in order to afford living in the house, Mrs. Muir ghostwrites (heh heh) the life story of the caption, as he dictates it to her. The book is a success, and in the course of events, Mrs. Muir meets and becomes involved with another writer, played with gleeful caddishness by George Sanders, who is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. Thankfully, the good widow eventually sees through his duplicity (he's married with children, you know), and retreats back into the solitude of her sea shore home. The ending is somewhat predictable, but honestly, no other ending would probably have worked. All in all, quite an enjoyable film. I though the script was a bit weak, and the accents the actors employed (some were English, some, like Tierney, from the USA) ranged from silly to bizarre.
My man problem with the film is that, good as it was, it simply could not withstand the fact that two things overshadow everything else about it. The first is, well, Gene Tierney is a total babe. Maybe I've got a thing for overbites, but I think she has to be one of the half-dozen hottest actresses of all time. Even in the costumes of turn-of the-(last)century England, you could tell, as her captain put it, she has a "fine figure". The other thing that overshadows the film is Bernard Hermann's score. This is one of his finest, ranking up there with the scores he did for Hitchcock's films like Vertigo and Psycho. Hermann's menacing score, along with some very expressionistic lighting and camerawork, give the film, especially in the first half hour or so, a feeling of dread that is nicely juxtaposed by the burgeoning romance between the two leads.
I heartily recommend The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is available in an excellent release as part of the Fox Studio Classics series.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a slightly unusual movie, as it's genre could best be described as "romantic horror". The main problem with this is that, at least for this viewer, the horror element was merely a put-on. At no time did I feel that any "genuine" horror was coming. So, basically this film is a slightly odd romance, where the protagonists are a recently widowed woman (Tierney), and the ghost of a former sea captain (Harrison), into whose house Tierney's character moves.
Most of the plot is a contrivance to get these two characters into some wonderful scenes. Essentially, in order to afford living in the house, Mrs. Muir ghostwrites (heh heh) the life story of the caption, as he dictates it to her. The book is a success, and in the course of events, Mrs. Muir meets and becomes involved with another writer, played with gleeful caddishness by George Sanders, who is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. Thankfully, the good widow eventually sees through his duplicity (he's married with children, you know), and retreats back into the solitude of her sea shore home. The ending is somewhat predictable, but honestly, no other ending would probably have worked. All in all, quite an enjoyable film. I though the script was a bit weak, and the accents the actors employed (some were English, some, like Tierney, from the USA) ranged from silly to bizarre.
My man problem with the film is that, good as it was, it simply could not withstand the fact that two things overshadow everything else about it. The first is, well, Gene Tierney is a total babe. Maybe I've got a thing for overbites, but I think she has to be one of the half-dozen hottest actresses of all time. Even in the costumes of turn-of the-(last)century England, you could tell, as her captain put it, she has a "fine figure". The other thing that overshadows the film is Bernard Hermann's score. This is one of his finest, ranking up there with the scores he did for Hitchcock's films like Vertigo and Psycho. Hermann's menacing score, along with some very expressionistic lighting and camerawork, give the film, especially in the first half hour or so, a feeling of dread that is nicely juxtaposed by the burgeoning romance between the two leads.
I heartily recommend The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is available in an excellent release as part of the Fox Studio Classics series.
Since Otar Left (Julie Bertuccelli, 2003)
The basic plot of Julie Bertuccelli's Since Otar Left is quite ordinary and formulaic – three Georgian women, an elderly grandmother (Eka), a middle-aged mother (Marina), and a twentyish daughter (Ada) all live together in a large flat in Tbilisi. Missing is Otar, the matron’s only son, who has gone off to seek his fortune in Paris (the family is universally both Francophilic and Francophonic), and his absence is conspicuous at all times. Naturally, word comes of his death through a work accident, and the mother and daughter decide to spare the elderly grandmother this horrible news, and continue to keep up Otar’s correspondence with his mother. Complications set in when Eka decides to pawn off all of the family’s French language books in order to buy the three women tickets to visit Otar in France.
Obviously, nothing I’ve told you about Since Otar Left makes it in any way special. What does make it special are the performances of the actresses in the three leading roles, especially Esther Gorintin, who played Eka. Particularly impressive since Gorintin didn’t even begin her acting career until age 85.
However for me, the most impressive thing about Since Otar Left was the way it dealt with, albeit subtly, the generational differences between the three women, especially as it pertains to Georgia’s status as a former Soviet Republic, and most particularly, their attitudes towards Josef Stalin. Eka remains a devoted Stalinist (“This wouldn’t happen if Stalin were in charge”, she says during a power outage), Marina hated Stalin, and Ada can’t understand why the two women are still arguing about a guy who’s been dead for decades. There was one moment in the film, when Marina was talking to her long-suffering man friend Tenguiz, that I realized that theirs was the generation that lost the Cold War. This collective knowledge weighs on and liberates their generation equally, causing a sort of resigned, anarchic cynicism that informs all their words and actions.
While I cannot state that Since Otar Left is a great film, it was two hours well spent, and marks a fairly auspicious feature film debut for Julie Bertuccelli.
3/5
The basic plot of Julie Bertuccelli's Since Otar Left is quite ordinary and formulaic – three Georgian women, an elderly grandmother (Eka), a middle-aged mother (Marina), and a twentyish daughter (Ada) all live together in a large flat in Tbilisi. Missing is Otar, the matron’s only son, who has gone off to seek his fortune in Paris (the family is universally both Francophilic and Francophonic), and his absence is conspicuous at all times. Naturally, word comes of his death through a work accident, and the mother and daughter decide to spare the elderly grandmother this horrible news, and continue to keep up Otar’s correspondence with his mother. Complications set in when Eka decides to pawn off all of the family’s French language books in order to buy the three women tickets to visit Otar in France.
Obviously, nothing I’ve told you about Since Otar Left makes it in any way special. What does make it special are the performances of the actresses in the three leading roles, especially Esther Gorintin, who played Eka. Particularly impressive since Gorintin didn’t even begin her acting career until age 85.
However for me, the most impressive thing about Since Otar Left was the way it dealt with, albeit subtly, the generational differences between the three women, especially as it pertains to Georgia’s status as a former Soviet Republic, and most particularly, their attitudes towards Josef Stalin. Eka remains a devoted Stalinist (“This wouldn’t happen if Stalin were in charge”, she says during a power outage), Marina hated Stalin, and Ada can’t understand why the two women are still arguing about a guy who’s been dead for decades. There was one moment in the film, when Marina was talking to her long-suffering man friend Tenguiz, that I realized that theirs was the generation that lost the Cold War. This collective knowledge weighs on and liberates their generation equally, causing a sort of resigned, anarchic cynicism that informs all their words and actions.
While I cannot state that Since Otar Left is a great film, it was two hours well spent, and marks a fairly auspicious feature film debut for Julie Bertuccelli.
3/5
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