brokenimage227 Reviews

Away We Go (2009)

Solid "indie" romcom

[7/10 · 30 May 2009]

I think I can honestly say that I like Sam Mendes. His films seem to gun above all else for a place of timeless emotional resonance (even when that timelessness eludes the films themselves) and usually succeed, even within the more confined quarters of their respective settings, whether the war-gutted landscape of Jarhead or the 30s era noir of Road To Perdition. Although the critically loved American Beauty loses alarming shades of impact for me with each viewing due to its flawed philosophical stabs toward truth, Mendes still manages to provoke a contemplative mindset out of his audience. His films operate well on that level, even when they fall short in their personal declarations.

Away We Go is Mendes' warmest film to date, taking on a tone of humor and lightness that none of his other works approached without a biting irony to match. Bert (The Office's John Krasinsky) and Verona (SNL's Maya Rudolph) are a young couple expecting their first child. They occupy a ramshackle trailer in Colorado near where Bert's parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O' Hara) live. Bert and Verona's reasons to remain in the area fall apart quickly when his parents decide to immediately move to France for a couple years, despite hearing the news of their coming grandchild. With that incentive now gone, the couple embarks on a road trip around the continental U.S. to reunite with old friends and look for a new place to call home. With each stop, through each encounter with estranged family and past friends, they find unsurety in their future as well as deepening layers in their relationship.

I've read a couple accounts that criticize the clashes between the poignancy and humor in Away We Go, and to a certain extent I would have to agree. There is definitely a clumsily staggered rhythm at certain points in the story, but overall I'd say that the heart of the insights and conflict overcomes the erraticism of the pace. There is some great chemistry between Krasinsky and Rudolph, and the talent (the aforementioned Daniels and O' Hara, Jim Gaffigan, Allison Janney, Paul Schneider, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, among the rest of the supporting ensemble) create convincing foils and compliments to Bert and Verona's journey. The direction is solid, and the screenplay (by first time screenwriters, novelist husband-and-wife team Vandela Vida and Dave Eggers) is sharp, hilarious and mostly consistent with its narrative. There's really nothing to keep me from recommending Away We Go. It's got an infectious vibe to it, and while it may be incongruent at times, and perhaps ride the Juno/Little Miss Sunshine/Junebug wave a little hard, it still remains enjoyable and heartfelt.

The Science of Sleep (2006)

like a dream - vivid and unhinged

[7/10 · 30 September 2006]

I'm still trying to figure out, almost 24 hours after seeing it, if i liked The Science Of Sleep. Michel Gondry's a creative madman, that I can say with unhesitant conviction. His cinematic interpretations of dream and surreality are truly the stuff of... yeah. At any rate, this might have been his opportunity to really explore that world of subconscious experience unfiltered and in a way, I think he did. Just in a way I'm not convinced worked the way it was intended.

Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal from Amores Perros) moves to France from Mexico to live with his mother after his father dies. He is a naively earnest, self proclaimed inventor who creates absurd gadgets, the success of those devices almost purely dependant on the audience's interpretation. These creations are often inspired by the fact that he also lives in a perpetual waking dream it seems, having some mental abnormality that stunts his ability to distinguish waking perception from sleeping perception. His mom cons him into taking a job at a print shop where he expects to be able to channel his creative outbursts, only to find that he's stuck setting type in the company of a bigoted misogynistic supervisor, a couple of slow witted co-workers and an imposing boss. The real core of the story comes in the form of a young artist names Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg from My Wife Is An Actress) who moves in across the hall from his mother. They develop a cautious friendship that eventually breaks into a full on one-sided romance on the part of Stephane, resulting in his mad efforts to win her over.

The Science Of Sleep is Michel Gondry's first feature effort without Charlie Kaufman lurking somewhere in the background, and even though I want to think that that had something to do with my misgivings about the end result, I remember feeling similarly at the end of Human Nature. Gondry's nothing if not almost totally detached in his directorial style. It's definitely a strength in terms of his wonderfully imagined cinematic hallucinations, and it's why his music videos work so well. But with Gondry's films, it's the script that determines the resulting effectiveness. While he managed a beautiful marriage of the visually fantastical and emotional substance in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, it was Kaufman's script that reigned Gondry in. but since Gondry penned The Science Of Sleep himself, there was no counterbalance to his driven yet unfocused inventiveness. Michel Gondry's a genius, no question. But while there were aspects of The Science Of Sleep that I was absolutely taken by, the love story as a whole just did not engage with the weight that it needed but lacked.

Ending thought: it had more than enough heart behind it, but the story was too distorted by whimsy to be truly appreciated.

The Passenger (1975)

typical antonioni - aesthetic essence

[8/10 · 1 April 2006]

The Passenger has a deceptively complicated thread of an exterior story. jack nicholson plays David locke, a news reporter who travels to Africa to run a story on the rather volatile political climate in that area. at a local rundown hotel, he makes acquaintance with robertson, a British man claiming generic businessman status. after a couple hours of shop talk, they delve into ambiguous queries on the meaning of life, enjoying each other's company before retiring to their own rooms for the night. locke discovers robertson's body hours later, collapsed on the bed after a heart attack. after absorbing the man's death, locke calmly takes his possessions back to his own room and starts exchanging passports and clothing in an obvious play to switch their identities.

after those events set the rest of the story into motion, it turns out to be a quiet exploration of a man who's running away from life by assuming someone else's. i love antonioni, someone i consider one of the very epitomes of European film-making. his films are almost pure aesthetic, existing on an essence rather than narrative. there's very little dialogue and honestly, the movie doesn't really go anywhere in the conventional sense, even with the reveal that robertson was a businessman who happened to be a gun runner, which turned out to be a nothing subplot. the bulk of the story is two sided. 1. locke's relationship with a stranger, an unnamed girl who he glimpses in passing on a London square and later runs into in spain. 2. locke eluding his wife and television producer friend who are looking for robertson, under the impression that locke was the man who died in the dusty African hotel.

antonioni's films don't run, jog or walk. they plod. they are almost painfully deliberate in their storytelling from a narrative standpoint. but his films capitalize on what sets movies across from every other medium. they linger on expansive landscapes and locales. the camera drinks in lush ivy saturated cemeteries, stands and cringes in arid, wind whipped deserts, and fascinatedly explores architecturally elaborate manmade structures and buildings. everything seen on the screen is what an eye lingers on, scanning the visible plane, soaking in what there is to see. the environments are characters themselves, adding a visceral texture to the action of the people, enveloping them.

at the end of the film, you leave with the memory of a man, anonymous to everyone around him, a stranger being the only person he ever connects with. nicholson's acting is appropriately wooden yet sad. his eyes never lose that blank look of a lost man, and his actions are done out of a desperation to escape a life he never bothered to recognize. at the root of the film, it's existential pontification, and the subtext of it all is pretty powerful if you're willing to let it draw you in.

Inside Man (2006)

spike's version of the perfect heist

[8/10 · 1 April 2006]

Inside Man is a really good "popcorn" film by a great filmmaker. it's by far Spike Lee's most mainstream movie ever, and there were moments where i couldn't help but think the guy was slumming a little to clear his head and financially compensate for She Hate Me (though not a bad film in itself though). the upside when directors, writers and actors stoop a bit to do material they're more than capable of rising above is that there usually ends up being a new life breathed into conventional stories and plot lines, almost reinvigorating the cliché of it all, and i think that everyone involved succeeded in making Inside Man exactly that.

the whole "perfect heist" bit is played out for sure, and there hasn't been a whole lot of success in making it interesting again. De Niro and Norton couldn't make The Score anything more than barely average, and even Mamet's Heist was lacking. but spike injects character, exaggerated as it may be, into the well worn vein and directs a first timer's script with a comfortable echo of all the films that define the great parts of this sub genre while digging a few of his own tricks out of the bag. there's some startlingly dark and light moments contrasting competently throughout.

regardless of the material he's in, Denzel can't be bad (possible exception of The Mighty Quinn), and when he's rejoined with his old director partner Spike Lee, he shines. his street genius detective Keith Frazier plays on one of Denzel's best personas, the cocky bastard who chews his way through anything in his path. when Frazier's mind is really tested, you can hear the wheels getting ready to spin out of his head. it may seem like another version of the same performance you saw in Training Day and He Got Game, but he does it so deftly it's dazzling every time the rest of the cast varies a little in what they offer quality wise, but for the most part they're perfect for their parts. Jodie Foster and Chiwetel Ejiofor in particular, as a concise and ruthless stockbroker and Denzel's wry partner respectively, are aptly tuned to their characters, hamming it up in the best way. Clive Owen was a little inconsistent, but nailed it in all the right places.

i am a fan of Spike. i respect his headstrong tendency to create the works as he envisions them, even when they fall short of a coherent statement (Bamboozled, She Hate Me, Girl 6). aside from that though, i love the way his films capture NYC in such an intimate way. when a director is so devoted to a locale, his affection burns through the screen and infects the viewer. it feels like he doesn't dress the city up or down in a bogus way, but enhances, even romanticizes it where the moment is right. Inside Man isn't a masterpiece by any stretch, but it does hold a respectable place in the broad work of someone as accomplished and bold as Spike Lee.

Hostage (2005)

a solid suspense movie with some extra darkness

[8/10 · 12 March 2005]

this is definitely a film that you have to come into with a knowledge that it does pander to a mainstream audience, but not as much as you may think. it does take chances with sensitive subjects that most movies of its ilk usually avoid, resulting in an action flick that's a little more twisted, morbid, but also involving. it's not Seven, but there are similar disturbing touches.

i don't like writing full blown synopses because of my personal dislike of having too much information before i see the film. i like an honest opinion of whether someone loved or hated a movie, but when plot points start being handed off without warning, it irritates me. so here's the stuff:

the direction is more than competent (though nothing special). the writing, while allowing some rather cheap conveniences along the way, still delivers enough material for an exciting ride. the acting is above average, while it's not exactly the bruce willis comeback i was hoping for, this film doesn't insult his abilities either. he is able to showcase most of his dependable acting range in this, most of the time convincingly, though there is the occasional weak point. there are intentional cookie cutter characters who's sole function is to get the story past a certain point with no development, but that didn't bother me. the main characters accomplished their roles in carrying the story. especially ben foster.

after seeing this guy in last year's punisher, i was expecting a little more of the same in the dryly comedic, sidekick potential that shea lebouf turned out as. didn't exactly get that here. in Hostage, he's one of the most convincing psychotics i've seen in film in a long time. he is the devil in this movie, and it's a harrowing thing to watch. he earned his keep and then some.

the bottom line is that i enjoyed this movie. while it doesn't live up to it's full potential, it serves well as an engaging ride at the movies. that is, if you have a tolerance for a few sick twists along the way