Archive for December, 2006
de battre mon coeur s’est arrete »
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
The Beat my Heart Skipped
This is a French film recommended by my roommate. I was not disappointed. The film itself draws you in and holds your attention through neck-breaking changes of pace. The story is layered, but only one character develops. Obviously this is the protagonist and is played by Duris extremely well. The secondary and tertiary characters just orbit Duris, pulling his personality in different directions, but never changing themselves. This is fortunate because if more time had been spent on the secondary characters it would have been a long and drab film.
Duris plays a real estate broker who resorts willingly to underhanded activities in order to get deals through and make quick cash. His father is a thug in the same business. At first it appears he will be following in his paternal footsteps, but when chance leads him into a conversation with his late mother’s agent, he begins to fantasize about a life as a concert pianist. The movie follows his struggle to keep up with both paths.
The directing is spot-on. There are even humorous asides (such as his conversation with the Russian or his partner’s choice of instrument) that lighten the mood before the pace quickens again. It’s the changes of pace that make it a quality film. As it starts to slow action will break out. In this way the film avoids being boring and doesn’t desensitize with continuous intensity.
The transition of Duris’ character is well done and dense. It makes for a great film to watch in any mood.
****
ask the dust »
Monday, December 11th, 2006
This one was fairly unknown as far as i’m concerned. i had never heard of it until i was listening to KQRS and they mentioned the top ten nude scenes of the year. number one was salma hayek in ask the dust. this had me intrigued.
the film itself isn’t all that bad. i mean it doesn’t have much going for it and doesn’t impress, but it’s not horrible. it’s based on a book so i guess the story should be at least decent. colin farrell and hayek are never very good actors so i wasn’t disappointed. and tom cruise produced it so how could it be terrible?
ok. i’m kidding. it’s a shitty movie. the story is lofty and doesn’t translate to film. i hear good things about the book and i may look into it, but the movie itself doesn’t have any meat to it. i don’t feel a connection with either character and things are too painfully predictable to stay focused on it.
the only bright point is about a half hour in when hayek takes a skinny-dip in the ocean. she’s incredibly gorgeous and hides nothing. fantastic. the rest of the film reaks of forced emotion and over-dramatization.
* << only for hayek >>
i don’t hate christmas, BUT… »
Monday, December 4th, 2006
… i hate December. This month is hell. there are twenty-five days between the beginning of the month and that holiest of birthdays. The greediest nation feels the guilt of 11 months of consumption and gets all rosy in the face about dishing that greed off on trying to buy someone’s affection. The biggest piles of douche buy shiny objects to sway the opinions of their socially retarded and infant-minded significant others. Companies kick ad money into high gear and work the soft sell on whoever is unfortunate enough to misplace their remote.
Children bitch and cry and shit themselves over getting the best presents so they can shove it in other kids’ faces. Their parents fight each other like retarded dogs to get these toys so their sons or daughters won’t hate them for the twelve hours a week they’re not in daycare. Video game developers and console manufacturers fight for market share on their $400+ obesity-generators.
Toys become status symbols, diamonds become monetary indicators of love, cable stations create hour-long recaps of the year, and family members, normally shunned, are welcomed with open arms, into which are placed gifts bought out of guilt.
Trees by the millions are cut and left to die while being draped with pieces of shiny plastic, sitting in tap water to slow their decay, and wrapped in multi-colored lights.
Don’t get me wrong. Christmas is a great holiday. It has a way of forcing people to take a second look at their choices and see where they’ve been assholes or shitheads. It has a genuine facet of bringing families together and spurring a generosity in most everyone. Unfortunately, the Christmas season, in my mind five days, has been stretched thin in order to begin before Thanksgiving. Black Friday is just an example of how fucked our culture has become.
The only reason for the lengthened season is to add merchandising time to such a frail holiday. I mean if you think about it Jesus wasn’t born in December, no one gave a shit about Santa until Coca-Cola, and buying a diamond/lexus/video game will not make anyone love you more when you’re already a shitgobbler. You’re kid’s going to be just as big a pain in the ass a week after the first of January as he was two weeks ago and she won’t go down on you anymore with classy earrings than she would with a gift certificate to target.
Get together with the ones you love, go out and have a drink, have some amazing grub, take some pictures of genuine smiles and make some memories, because when it comes down to it that’s what Christmas is all about. And after the video game is obsolete, the diamonds end up in a box never to be worn again, and your new years resolutions are blown to shit at Krispy Kream, those are the things you’ll remember.
Happy Holidays.
10th and wolf »
Monday, December 4th, 2006
This one was better than i expected, but i didn’t have many expectations going in. I rented out because i was in the mood for some violence. I wasn’t disappointed. Marsden doesn’t do a bad job, Ribisi is the shit as always, and Perabo had a pretty sweet scene toward the end. It’s your basic mob movie complete with corruption and voice-over introduction, but it’s entertaining.
The story is simple: street kid goes to military to escape and then gets kicked out and returns home. Add a dash of FBI informant, love interest, and gun play and you have yourself a decent show. Add a substory with disillusion of authority and the movie steps it up a notch.
The film is fast paced and layered which brings some confusion at parts, but by the time the film reached the end i was right there. There aren’t many points that aren’t foreseen, but it’s still creative. The directing isn’t notably good, but it’s not bad either. Moresco’s directing inexperience is evident. I would expect more from the writer of crash. It does have the subtle << and i mean that as sarcastically as possible >> shots of racism though.
It won’t change your life. It won’t shock you. It won’t throw you for a loop and leave you spun. But it does resolve well. Oh, and Kilmer’s two minute cameo is as odd as I could have hoped. If you’re in the mood for some shooting, gangsters, and some random shots in a strip club this is your pick for the night.
***
The break-up »
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
so i knew this one would be a waste of money. every instinct i had for quality cinema screeched in disapproval as i added it to my queue. i was working off sheer curiosity. Could Aniston pull off a quasi-leading role? Would Vaughn disappoint? Could it possibly be as bad as everyone claimed?
No. Yes. And oh yeah.
The movie was beige. There was nothing to it that could possibly be considered edgy or even creative. Most of the action was predictable and skewed on an impressive scale. In fact, that’s the only impressive part of it. The movie held to reality for the overall storyline because the ending rang true to the real situation, but there was so much exaggeration throughout it was almost unbearable.
The worst part was Aniston playing a generic female character pulling strings, dropping hints, testing limits, and playing ridiculous games just to get her way. Her intentions are to bring Vaughn back to her through covert tactics that never work. Even though a typical female may lean toward the indirect route Aniston’s decisions are horrible and preposterous.
Vaughn fills his generic male role well. He tests the limits of whatever is thrown at him for no reason other than being a man. His typical conversational comedy is lost in this one. In a way they gave him too much freedom, because most of his tangents seem forced and don’t have the same strength to them that I’ve come to expect. Without his supporting cast << Ferrell, Wilson (either one), or Favreau (minuscule role in this one) >> he seems to falter.
The story doesn’t bring much to the table and is just a listing of one exaggerated butting of heads to another with a battle for a condo. The acting is at par or below across the board and the comedy is bland. The only bright point is Bateman, whose character is expectedly hilarious. Most of the character interaction is shallow and trite. The film lacks the levels that would make the comedy tolerable. Vaughn’s changes take too long to develop and by the time his character matured i was too bored to care either way.
The ending is obvious because there wouldn’t be a remote chance of making things tidy enough for anything different. The alternate ending isn’t much better, but adds a couple more stabs at humor before the credits. Because of the skewed perspective i can only imagine a woman finding this one funny. An easy comparison is drawn to gigli because of it’s shallow story and D-list acting, but at least Vaughn and Aniston seemed to have some chemistry that translated through the camera.
And as far as the DVD goes i don’t understand the navigation. there’s a screen to start that asks you to pick sides << his or hers >> and I didn’t see any difference between them. I guess i’ll have to check IMDB.com and see why that was done.
**