Thursday's Reviews

your reviews are great, Thursday. i've added a couple to my Netflix. thanks!

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letterboxd

Good reviews, muchos kudos to ya!!!

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Hey Pepe, would you say I have a plethora of presents?


Toga, toga, toga......


Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour?

Where have you been young lady nice to see you

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

Finally saw it and I agree with your review word for word. I thought it got off to a slow start (the first part was a little lackluster I think), but as it progressed it sucked me in completely. I even got goosebumps in a couple of scenes in the final chapter. The direction was beautiful and the story works on so many levels I could hardly absorb them all in one sitting so this will definitely be worth revisiting. After the colossal disappointment Zvyagintsev delivered with Izgnanie, I was half expecting Akin to follow a masterpiece with absolute garbage. Thankfully, he's proved to be a much safer bet than the former. Great European cinema...

P.s. I can't believe what they were thinking with the English title, the German is absolutely essential to the story...:\

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http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

Vanilla Sky



Vanilla Sky is an exciting, original, intelligent film…oh wait, no, my mistake, that’s Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos). Vanilla Sky is a limp remake, like a cover version of a good song by an X-factor contestant. It hits the right notes, in more or less the right order, but there’s no soul and no subtlety.

In case you’ve never seen Vanilla Sky or the original, the film concerns a playboy millionaire, David Aames ( Tom Cruise) who is disfigured in a car crash caused by his jealous ex-lover (Cameron Diaz) and in future is trying to work out why he is in prison through discussions with a psychologist (Kurt Russell). Mystery, confusion and dream sequences abound.

Vanilla Sky is Tom Cruise’s fault. Apparently he was on the phone buying the rights for the remake before the credits had rolled when he watched Open Your Eyes. But is Vanilla Sky any more than a vanity vehicle for Cruise himself? His chance to cash in on someone else’s good idea, with himself in the starring role. He spends much of the film disfigured or behind a mask. The chance to do some ‘real acting’ he probably thought to himself. The trouble is, while Cruise does a fine job as the all-American hero in films like Mission Impossible and Minority Report, someone should tell him wearing a mask, laughing and SHOUTING A LOT does not make for ‘real acting’.

The direction is adequate. I’ve never been a big fan of Cameron Crowe, I’ll admit, and his ‘written for the screen and directed by’ credit annoyed me (how did he write it? I doubt he even translated it). Penelope Cruz somehow manages to play the exact same part, worse, and this sums up the film, really; it’s exactly the same, but not as good. The over-explanation ruins the ending. Some of the dialogue is excruciating, especially between Cruise and Cruz, in its attempts to be playful. Kurt Russell’s character, McCabe never rings true, either, but that is more excusable since

View Spoilers

WARNING: "Vanilla Sky" spoilers below

he is an imaginary construct of Cruise’s character’s subconscious

he is an imaginary construct of Cruise’s character’s subconscious

To its credit, it does have a reasonable sound track including radiohead. I do think music can make a movie, so I will resist the churlish impulse to say that anyone with a quid for the jukebox could have done as well.

In the end it is the pointlessness of the film which irks me. Why does the world need an English language remake of Open Your Eyes? Why does it need an English language remake of every half decent non-English film (or not-at-all-decent horror film)? The American film industry is one of the biggest in the world, with tons of good films from Casablanca to There Will Be Blood, it doesn’t need to poach from Spain or anywhere else, so why does it? I realise I’m about seven years too late with this little rant as it relates to Vanilla Sky, and the utter pointlessness of the remake was why I’d never seen it before, and I kind of wish I hadn’t bothered now.

2/5

Very much agree with you Thursday. I saw VS at the cinema when it came out, a few years after a Spanish friend had lend me the dvd of Open Your Eyes. The thing that struck me the most was that Penelope Cruz had gone from being beautiful natural looking girl in OYE, to being this glossy creature of a slightly unfocussed lens in VS - that is really annoying.

I actually enjoyed Vanilla Sky. Didn't love it, but enjoyed it enough to give it a positive rating.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Thanks Wednesday, I didn't know it is a remake Must try and track down the original

I think she looks like a constipated ferret but I guess some people get off on that sort of thing. Nice hair though.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

I knew it you have a hair fetish

Damn right! The more of mine I lose, the more I lust after it on women.

Somebody call Freud!

Just popping in to tell you good job on your reviews. I have three of the movies that you reviewed here at home to watch someday. Downfall, The Counterfitters and Taboo. One of these days I'll get to them and try to pop in and chat you up about them.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

A Ma Soeur!


A Ma Souer! is one of those films that is better when you are thinking about it afterwards than it was at the time. It is quite difficult to rate because while I found it tedious and unpleasant almost to the point of being unwatchable, it is at the same time undeniably thought provoking.

I believe that this film is known in the US as Fat Girl, so you won’t be surprised to find that it is about a fat girl, Anais, who is a spectator to her prettier, older (but still underage) sister’s holiday romance with a smooth-talking creep. Cue enough teenage nudity to make it very uncomfortable to watch. It’s all very French (perhaps I have been watching the wrong films, but it does seem to me that an unusually high proportion of French films feature underage sex, incest or rape. Or a combination of the three).

The biggest problem with A Ma Soeur is that despite being only 82 minutes long, it is quite boring. There are lots of very long takes of nothing much happening – Anais swimming, someone eating a sandwich, the sisters watching television – which become grating. Perhaps the intention is to convey Anais’s own boredom, perhaps a drive for realism. One (uncharacteristically symbolic) scene features Anais stood on a beach next to a particularly phallic looking lighthouse while her sister and her boyfriend canoodle in the sand. Subtle. The seduction of the older sister is excruciating to watch, partly because of how uncomfortable the whole situation is, partly because of how clichéd and obvious everything he says is. I don’t know how she falls for it – has she never read a teen magazine? It is the banality of the dialogue, the look of the film and (until the ending) the events which I didn’t like.


And yet, if the film is looking to be an exploration of boredom and sexual thoughts of a teenage girl, if it is looking to disturb you and make you feel uncomfortable, it succeeds. And the characters, from the unfulfilled fat girl to the distant, chain smoking mother are believable, if not people you would want to spend much time with. It is not a badly made film in that respect.

And then, of course, there is the ending. Which is a complete departure from and yet at the same time absolutely connected to all that has gone before. It is either an extreme illustration of ‘be careful what you wish for’

View Spoilers

WARNING: "A Ma Soeur" spoilers below

The sister wishes she would die and her mother would die and they are killed, while Anais wants to lose her virginity to a stranger and not to die, and she is raped and left alive

The sister wishes she would die and her mother would die and they are killed, while Anais wants to lose her virginity to a stranger and not to die, and she is raped and left alive

or a deranged fantasy. Either way, while watching this film is not a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half, it will stay with you.

Hmm, I had a similar experience a while ago with Jacques Nolot's Avant que j'oublie, I thought it was a dreadful film because I had a dreadful time while watching it (I actually gave up on it half way through, but it just wouldn't leave me alone so I finished it a few days later). But the more I thought about it the more credit I gave it for producing such a reaction from me. Curious effect I think. I'm still gonna skip that one though...

Reading this review reminded me to go out and rent A Ma Soeur. Thanks, I guess.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Australia



Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. Australia is a very silly film. If you don’t mind that, though, you may well enjoy it. Just don’t go in expecting anything insightful or profound. Take some popcorn. This is an old fashioned epic (note: for ‘epic’ read ‘three hour long’) romantic drama complete with sweeping score and moustache twirling bad guys. Realism and historical accuracy take a back seat to engineered situations to create drama for the main characters. But then who goes to see a Baz Luhrmann film expecting realism?

This is very much Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, just as William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was really Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. While marking a departure from his red curtain trilogy, the Luhrmann trademarks are visible throughout. The Australia of the film is a colourful, not-quite-real world where magic is possible and love makes all things possible. The names – The Drover, ‘King’ Carney (carne) the meat company owner, ‘Poor Fella’ whisky – are suggestive of a fairytale. The image of a Nicole Kidman in a red dress kissing a floppy-haired Hugh Jackman in the rain is reminiscent of Luhrmann’s earlier work – including that perfume ad. It has the recycling of old songs to new effect of Moulin Rouge in its use of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Australia lacks the pace of Luhrmann’s previous films. He was notoriously still editing the film hours before its premiere. Perhaps he should have given himself more time, because it is still about an hour too long.

Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, who arrives at the Australian ranch owned by her husband determined to sell up and get out quick, until an encounter with a mixed race child who reveals how her manager has been cheating her changes her mind. She determines to drive the cattle to town with an assorted bunch of characters including Hugh Jackman’s Drover. They initially don’t get on at all, but it’s hardly spoiling the surprise to say they soon change their minds. In the meantime, Sarah Ashley bonds with the orphaned boy and hopes to stop him being taken away to the mission. Kidman handles the later drama much better than the earlier comedy. Jackman is suitably laid back and rugged. And Brandon Walters as the boy Nullah is good enough to keep the sentimental drama from becoming too mawkish.

If you want a more genuine account of the tragedy of Australia’s ‘stolen generation, watch Rabbit Proof Fence. If you want an entertaining adventure/romance/drama, you could do worse than watch Australia.

3/5

Thanks For the interesting review I haven't seen it yet I have a lot of friends who have and their comments are varied some loved it some didn't like it at all and some felt it just so so so will have to make time so I can decide what I think of it

In My Father’s Den (2004)



Adapted from a book by Maurice Gee, In My Father’s Den is about a war journalist who returns to his native New Zealand after seventeen years for the funeral of his father. As he stays on to sort out his father’s property family tensions flare and there are awkward reunions with past acquaintances. He befriends a local teenage girl and then finds himself under suspicion when she subsequently disappears.

Matthew MacFadyen plays the main character, Paul, a ‘lone wolf’ who is haunted by his experiences as a war photographer and his past in the small town he returns to. MacFadyen has been accused of being dull in some of his roles, but I didn’t find that to be the case here. He is well cast as Paul, who is successful but lonely, trying to recreate happier times through his relationship with the girl who may or may not be his daughter.

The film explores the flawed relationships between parents and children and siblings. This is a quietly thoughtful drama which builds up the tension and mystery really quite successfully. There is an underlying sense of unease running throughout the film. Key facts are only gradually revealed and the use of flashbacks and the implication that some of the characters have repressed memories adds to the suspense. Small town New Zealand is shown to be as fraught and dangerous as a war zone.

The soundtrack, including opera and Patti Smith, is very good, and essential to the atmosphere of the film.

I find it quite difficult to review this film, but would like to recommend it.

4/5

I saw it a while back and liked it. Shame about the director dying...

Thanks Thursday, I have added it to my Bigpond list