Archive for category: Reviews

This movie about troubled youths in…exactly what kind of facility?…exposed my lack of empathy, as I didn’t find myself caring about anyone on-screen. Brie Larson had a Cate Blanchett-type role, but as much as I enjoyed watching her I couldn’t believe her character. First, she was absurdly perfect and self-controlled as a counselor tending to very trying kids; then, of a sudden, we were told of her troubled youth and her struggles became the belated focus. The story itself was right up there with The Spectacular Now for absence of originality.

Woody Allen looks back, through Tennessee Williams to Shakespeare and the Greeks, to give us a classic tragical heroine. There is no story ‘arc,’ as is the Hollywood norm; instead, we are left to watch the inexorable, inevitable descent of Jasmine French from Hamptons high to homelessness. When she appears to have a chance to escape with an unsuspecting Peter Sarsgaard, the only question is who will expose her and when. We know her doom is ordained. Cate Blanchett is extraordinary and a shoo-in for an Oscar nod. Sallie Hawkins as her slightly goofy sister should get one, too. Then, unfortunately, there is Alec Baldwin, acting no different than in his credit card commercials. Blanchett/Jasmine stands out from her surroundings, good for her but bad for the movie. In sum, it’s a one-character tour de force, but not much more

A sick movie about sick people – specifically, Indonesian gangsters who killed wantonly in 1965 and are now willing to make a movie about it. It’s hard to feel bad for mass murderers, but it is fairly clear they are being manipulated by director Joshua Oppenheimer, who must know that his subjects are making fools of themselves. The fact that 90% of the people working on the film chose to list themselves as “Anonymous” in the credits gives you some idea of how they think the movie will be received in Indonesia, if it is shown there at all. The history the film recounts is shocking, but the shock comes from the superscripted information. The people on screen just come across as ignorant buffoons with a license to kill.

What I found incredible were Brad Pitt’s initially rejecting the request that he help save mankind and the Israelis’ letting all comers, including Palestinians, into their secure compound. By comparison, I found the zombies quite believable – frighteningly so – and the discovery of how to combat them quite brilliant. (Well, okay, maybe Brad’s successful injection of just the right amount of toxin gave me pause, as well.) Pitt, to my mind, is generally miscast, but here he carried the movie with ease. Our hearts raced along with the breakneck plot and our minds were kept engaged well after the film was over.

Not since My Dinner With Andre have I watched two such uninteresting characters talk so self-indulgently, often in complete paragraphs, to so little purpose. Julie Delpy came across as real, albeit neurotic, but Ethan Hawke was unconvincing as a novelist, as an expatriate, and certainly as a dad. When you watch a young couple courting, which is the subject of most movies as well as the excellent earlier installments of this saga, there is the easy payoff of consummation, with all that follows left to the imagination. Here, when we see similar exchanges – what, seven years into the marriage? – there is no payoff. This will go on forever, which is what it felt like watching.