An expression of a sensibility, best described as “Almodovar.” The plot intrigues, then fizzles to a ‘huh’ ending, leaving us with the many guises of Penelope Cruz – not so realistic or compelling as, say, in Volver. In a movie about a movie about a movie, artifice is inevitable and may be the point. It’s just not satisfying.
Perfectly charming divertissement set in Santa Barbara, with Meryl Streep acting up a storm opposite two cardboard comedians, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. Not that they aren’t funny, it’s just hard to take Jane’s dilemma or predicament or situation as seriously as Meryl does, with those two not-so-real gentlemen as her choices. The best comic role, in a recognizably human form, too, belonged to John Krasinski as son-in-law-to-be Harley. Streep’s home-in-the-Valley and Martha Stewart lifestyle provided plenty of eye candy, and most of the gags, while not deep, tickled the audience of seniors, including us.
A totally charmant film. I had tears of pleasure streaming down my face from the first TV impersonation of Julia Child by Meryl Streep until the end (Dan Ackroyd?). Contrary to most reviewers, I thought Amy Adams held her own, too (although her chaste persona does get to me a bit). I think having seen No Impact Man first made her role more credible. Both husbands were admirable anchors for their flighty spouses. How often do you see a film in which everyone is nice, everyone achieves their goal, and the audience just has fun all along the way?
There’s a scene where the party boat runs out of gas, the lights go off, and the guests enter the hotel, having waded ashore. It’s sort of cute, but what’s it got to do with the movie? It advances neither the plot nor the characters. A good editor would have cut it out, except that without such scenes, little would be left. Cute bits here and there, separated by much longeur, was the essence of this magic-less movie. Pleasant enough to watch, thanks to its two female stars, the film ultimately left a sour aftertaste, with George Clooney’s trademark insouciance jarring horribly with the plights of the real-world workers he was assigned to fire. The concept of outsourcing layoffs fell just as flat as Ryan Bingham’s “backpack” speech. Even the opening credits were the clunkiest I’ve seen this year.
Such a stylish film, shot in sepia, except for the scenes in color and the ones in black-and-white; told exclusively through the eyes of George Falconer (Colin Firth), except for the scene of Charly (Julianne Moore) applying her makeup; with so many lingering shots of beautiful young men you felt this was a gay director’s equivalent of a Penelope Cruz vehicle, except that her favorite director is gay, too. Even without Julianne Moore, you would have known the period was 1962, so perfect were the details, all stylish, too. I’m not sure we were ever shown why George had decided this was the day to take his life, but, as in Mrs. Dalloway, that wasn’t the point, really. Tom Ford, Christopher Isherwood and Colin Firth painted an interesting portrait, on celluloid this time instead of paper or canvas, and there was so much in each of our own lives we could bring to the act of watching.
As a lover of movies on sports and racial equality, I expected this to be an easy winner. Instead, I found the sports incomprehensible and the race relations so clichéd that I left wondering how a movie about Nelson Mandela could be so uninspiring. Morgan Freeman was impeccable, if boring, but Matt Damon was a white hole that sucked all the energy out of his scenes. The scriptwriters felt it necessary to have government advisers explain the World Cup draw to Mandela, but no one bothered to explain any rugby rules to us, leaving us to wonder when a team gets to kick a field goal, which was the only way, and a boring way at that, that any points got scored in the “climactic” match. Clint Eastwood has made good films and bad films, as the Iwo Jima duo showed; unfortunately, this one was on a par with Gran Torino.
Avatar the Experience was seamless: I never questioned whatever world it was the 3D glasses helped transport us to. Was it any more remarkable a cinematic experience than Lord of the Rings, though? Or, for that matter, The Wizard of Oz, which we watched on TV last week? (The flying enoks of Pandora seem to derive, in equal part, from African bee-eaters of the natural world and the Wicked Witch of the West’s monkey guard.) When it came down to other parts of the movie – i.e., plot and character – there was nothing novel, and director James Cameron almost seemed to embrace the cinematic clichés that abounded. As in so many movies, the intellectually interesting puzzles posed by the story devolved into a smash-mouth battle climax that reduced the value of human life to about zero and ended, as every such battle invariably does, with the superhero and the supervillain somehow finding each other, to face off mano-a-mano. I liked what I perceived as the anti-Iraq subtext (substitute “oil” for “unobtainium”), until my wife and other reviewers pointed out that almost every other war and territorial conquest fit the same bill. In the end, what will linger in my mind from Avatar the Experience is the haunting beauty of the Na’Vi, a blueskinned, 10-foot-tall, mink-like race, especially the one cloned from an actress with the appropriately exotic name of Zoe Soldana.
Absurd from start to finish, this disaster film contained not a single enjoyable scene, and it was barely kept afloat by its snippets of memorable, albeit too predictable, ‘60s music. It was especially disappointing coming from Richard Curtis, who contributed to such prior favorites as Love, Actually, Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. If it was meant as a spoof, for which there was no evidence, then the filmic allusions at the conclusion to the Titanic and Dunkirk were notably tasteless.
The Harvard Lampoon used to put out issues that struck its editors, but few others, as hilarious. I felt in the presence of similar “inside” humor as I watched Mr. Fox trot on down the hill in post-Roadrunner cartoon style. Obviously, when you hire George Clooney and Meryl Streep to voice your characters more is intended than a simple cartoon, but what was it? Scene after scene evoked deeper emotional relationship issues, but always in the briefest, most cliché-ridden terms; so nothing could be taken seriously. And whom were we supposed to root for – a chicken-stealing fox who betrays his wife and only child? The movie, however clever, conveyed little more than an attitude, a not terribly respectful one, at that.
A Rorschach blot of a movie: Is the depiction of Precious’s life courageous or demeaning? Is she a winner, for overcoming obstacles, or still a loser, facing life as a grotesquely overweight HIV-positive unwed mother of two (one with Down’s Syndrome)? Is her rescue by a special-ed teacher thrilling because it is so unique, or depressing, because it is so unique? Does the welfare system foster successes, like Precious, or utterly dependent failures, like her mother? The ambiguity it creates is a mark of how well-made the movie is. It wasn’t all that fun to watch, but I detected no false notes, and the acting was superb. Paula Patton was too good to be true, but the visual relief she provided was certainly welcome.
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