Daily Archives: January 13, 2008
The Hoax (2006)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: After billing his “authorized autobiography” of eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes as the 20th century’s most important book, writer Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) begins to believe his own hype. But his shameless scam soon catches up with him. Julie Delpy, Marcia Gay Harden, Alfred Molina and Stanley Tucci provide support in Lasse Hallstrom‘s biographical drama that’s chock-full of 1970s hairdos and based on a true story — and that’s no lie.
REVIEW: The Hoax is another from the incredible but true biopics. This one centers on Clifford Irving, an author in desperate need of a hit novel in 1971. He then hits on the brilliant idea of conning McGraw-Hill and Life Magazine to finance his “biography” of reclusive millionaire nut Howard Hughes. This is an indie-film lover’s dream cast: Richard Gere has fine support from Alfred Molina, Stanley Tucci, Marcia Gay Harden, Julie Delpy. Indeed, all the performances are top-notch, it’s funny, has great dialogue and an added bonus for conspiracy buffs. After all, did Howard really conspire against this guy to get Nixon to prevent the Airwest merger? Hmm… It’s sad that this one is being overlooked in all the awards talk because Alfred Molina and Richard Gere are great. A fun film that will leave you shaking your head at just how gullible big-money publishers are to land an exclusive.
3.5 stars
Cheryl
Sicko (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Michael Moore sets his sights on the plight of the uninsured in this eye-opening documentary. In the world’s richest country, 45 million people have no health insurance, while HMOs grow in size and wealth. Moore also explores the widespread use of antidepressants and their possible link to violent behavior. With his trademark humor and confrontational style, Moore asks the difficult questions to get to the truth behind today’s health care.
REVIEW: Yes, folks it’s our friend Michael Moore again, but — love him or hate him — you have to give the dude credit for shining a BRIGHT light on the issues. Reviewing just from a film point of view, this is easily one of his best. Great interviews, his usual crazy stunts, but really the focus is off of him as a showman and more about the people. The writing is tight, the film holds your attention, and be ready to yell back at the screen more than once. Quite a few sarcastic laughs. I particularly loved George B talking about how the OB/GYNs aren’t able “to practice their love with their female patients.” Really shattering in some places and hey, it makes you think, and in the end forces you to start researching the subject for yourself, which is what a good doc should make you do. A really important film for all to see for themselves, I think.
5 stars
Cheryl
Atonement (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: In this drama based on the critically acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan, a childhood lie irrevocably changes the lives of several people forever. When 13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) misinterprets a moment of flirtation between her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and a servant’s son, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), her confusion causes her to finger Robbie as the perpetrator of a crime. Brenda Blethyn and Vanessa Redgrave co-star.
REVIEW: Brillant book, not quite a brilliant film. Definitely has the Miramax/Minghella look that Golden Globe and Oscar voters love, but still I don’t know that it’s worthy of all that love. Keira Knightley and James McAvoy certainly look scrumptious but no chemistry whatsoever. This book has one of the greatest sex scenes ever written, but on screen, frankly, you just keep thinking that Keira needs to eat a bit more at lunch. She is so skeletal it detracts in a big way. Still, she tries hard and you do feel for her character. McAvoy shows that his performance in The Last King of Scotland was no fluke – he’s sexy, brave and tragic, all you need from a romantic hero. Saorise Ronan is another great performer in this and she brings to life Briony as the obnoxious, drama-filled 13-year-old troublemaker from the novel.
The beginning is superb, moves well, nice erotic tension and then BAM! it just stops like it got hit by a freight train. The war scenes are certainly great visuals, including the long tracking shot on the beach at Dunkirk, but someone needed to bring Joe Wright aside and explain the aesthetics of story and editing to the director. Regardless, it’s a nice-looking film and it’s a decent adaptation, but the suckerpunch ending loses some of its power, and Briony comes off a bit more contrite and sympathetic than Ian McEwan describes her in the book.
3.5 stars
Cheryl
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***SPOILERS***
Set in 1932, the first act of Atonement opens in the room of 13-yr-old Briony Tallis w/a shot of a model of the Tallis home, then the camera tracks down and along the floor, following a procession of small toy animals that the girl has meticulously arranged in a parade, from largest to smallest, appearing to march towards Briony, whom we first see from behind and below, at her desk typing furiously away on a play. This opening shot gives Briony a kind of God-like presence in her own world, where she governs her toys and the characters in her stories and plays; later, when she and her cousins rehearse the play, Briony is both authoress and director, always in charge. This characterization of Briony as something of a manipulator comes to real-life fruition when, feeling hurt and betrayed, she tells a lie that destroys the lives of two of the people she loves most, her sister Cecilia and Robbie, the son of their housekeeper. That terrible lie, how it comes about and its consequences, is the centerpiece of the film and the theme of “atonement” that revolves around it.
Briony believes herself to be in love w/Robbie. There is an amazing, shocking shot when Briony walks in on Cecilia and Robbie having sex in the library, w/Cecilia up against the wall and Robbie standing in front of her. We see it from Briony’s pov and Cecilia appears to be impaled upon the wall in a Christ-on-the-cross-like pose – to the younger girl it appears an act of violence. This foreshadows and mirrors a later scene when Briony once again happens upon a couple in the act of sex and interprets it as rape. But this time it’s Lola and Paul, her cousin and a visiting friend. Caught in a shameful act, Lola goes along w/the rape charge by an unknown assailant and Briony, seeing an opportunity for revenge, asserts that she saw it was Robbie. There are multiple ironies in this scene, as both girls know it was Paul, but neither knows the other is lying; Lola is also lying about it being rape (and perhaps somewhere in her heart, Briony also know this?), while we in the audience know the truth of all that has actually occurred. Robbie is arrested and put in prison, and later he agrees to join up and fight in the war.
The second act follows Robbie in the war, who is wounded and trying to get home to Cecilia, and the two sisters, now estranged of course, who are both nurses in the aid of the war-wounded. Briony is full of remorse for her act and tries to contact her sister, who refuse to see her. During this sequence there is a deeply moving scene as Briony tries to comfort a wounded soldier; delirious, he talks to her as if she is his lover and Briony, this time in an act of kindness, plays along. When the soldier asks her to loosen the bandage around his head, she unwraps the gauze to reveal an horrific head-wound that surely must be fatal. Even with the best of intentions, Briony’s play-acting is fruitless and he dies, leaving her alone w/her futile fiction.
The final act of the film consists mostly of one long, extraordinary scene of attempted reconciliation, as Briony visits Cecilia and Robbie in their flat, together at last, as she attempts to apologize and set things right between them all. The brilliance of this scene only comes to light in the perspective of the last few minutes of the film, when a very old and dying Briony reveals what actually happened in the story. Even though I’ve put a spoiler warning for those who haven’t yet seen the film, I won’t reveal what occurs, because I think it’s one of the most shocking and profound “twists” that I’ve ever seen in a movie and should be experienced first-hand. I’ve read that some people hate the ending, but that is to miss the whole point of the film. W/o that ending it’s still a wonderful movie, but w/the incredible irony of that denouement I think it fully realizes its profound, heartbreaking themes. For Briony there is not, nor can there ever be, any kind of real atonement.
5 Stars
Harold
Adaptation (2002)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is a Los Angeles screenwriter battling enormous feelings of insecurity and impotence as he struggles to adapt The Orchid Thief, a book by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) whose main character, John Laroche (Chris Cooper), searches for love. Add to the mix Charlie’s twin brother, Donald (also played by Cage), and you have a surreal, Spike Jonze-directed gem about the search for passion.
REVIEW: Author Susan Orlean wrote herself into her own book “The Orchid Thief,” so screenwriter Charlie Kaufman goes along with the bit and writes himself into the screenplay, as a screenwriter who is struggling to adapt “The Orchid Thief” into a movie. Kaufman also creates a fictional brother for himself (both parts are played by Nicholas Cage) to represent the duality of the writer as both crowd-pleaser and aesthetician. It’s not a straightforward reading of the nonfiction book, but a comedy that can be interpreted on many levels, much like Kaufman’s earlier Being John Malkovich.
3.5 stars
HAWK
Arctic Tale (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Following the epic struggle of a tenacious young walrus and polar bear, this saga of survival amid the rapidly changing Arctic wilderness comes from the creators of March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth. Queen Latifah narrates the life journey of Seela the walrus and Nanu the polar bear, from birth through maturity and parenthood, where the cycle begins anew and they pass what they’ve learned to the next generation.
REVIEW: Real-life footage of Polar Bears and Walruses are combined into a story of sorts, not a documentary actually but a simplistic tale of what life might be like for a polar bear. The story leans a bit too hard on the topic of global warming for a children’s tale, but is otherwise entertaining. There are some interesting short features about how the amazing and beautiful animal footage was captured that are worth watching.
3.5 stars
HAWK
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Matt Damon returns as the amnesia-stricken trained assassin Jason Bourne in this third film based on Robert Ludlum’s best-selling novels. As Bourne travels from Moscow to Paris, Madrid, London, New York and Tangier, Morocco, in a quest to reconstruct his past (and thus clear the way for a future), he’s joined by returning cast members Julia Stiles and Joan Allen as well as new co-stars David Strathairn and Paddy Considine.
REVIEW: The Bourne series is the smartest action series around, a potential replacement for James Bond if the promise of Casino Royale goes unfulfilled. Damon, as Jason Bourne, continues to seek information about how he became a top hit-man for elements of our government, and the plot again bounces between European locations until the third act brings Bourne home to NYC. Director Greengrass continues to fill in well for original director Doug “Swingers” Liman. Not many will be surprised at the ending, but you will be satisfied.
4 stars
HAWK
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: In this final installment of the swashbuckler trilogy, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), long believed to be dead, has come back to life and is headed to the edge of the Earth with brave Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and feisty Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley). And what of Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp)? Nothing is as it seems. Just when he appears to be down, he proves he can’t be counted out. Bill Nighy and Yun-Fat Chow also star.
REVIEW: Many Hollywood films begin filming before the script is completed, but from the looks of things, the third POTC colossus wrapped before the script was even delivered. Yes, I know it’s meant to be a big dumb spectacle, but unlike the first film, the sequels never bothered to make a lick of sense. Scenes are randomly thrown together without rhyme or reason for an unwieldy three hours, the dialogue is incomprehensible and there aren’t even enough laughs to keep viewers interested. But
there is more Johnny Depp than I would have thought possible, if that floats your boat.
2 stars
HAWK
In Cold Blood (1967)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: This chilling tale based on Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel follows two drifters who murder an allegedly rich Kansas family and flee to Mexico. Filmed in the house where the real-life incident occurred, In Cold Blood paints a compassionate portrait of the Clutter family … and their killers (Robert Blake and Scott Wilson). Nominated for four Oscars, this disturbing movie was shot in black and white but implies that the meaning of justice is not.
REVIEW: A straightforward translation of the classic Truman Capote non-fiction account of a senseless heartland murder. The leads do a good job with the characters, and like the book you don’t find out what really happened that night until near the end. Robert Blake’s performance is especially chilling in light of his recent murder trial.
4 stars
HAWK
Netflix Cinemajig 