reasonformirrors Reviews

My Blueberry Nights (2007)

Pointless

[3/10 · 29 September 2009]

Norah Jones plays...um...oh yeah, Elizabeth. It's hard to remember the name of such a forgettable character. She's the star of the movie, this is her story and yet we know as much about her as we do by the time we reach the final scene as we did when the film first started. There's no character development at all. Nothing is explicitly stated nor subtly implied about her--subtly implied of course being the preferred method, but I would still take explicitly stated over nothing at all. After 90 minutes of following her around on a pointless, for both audience and fictional characters, cross-country journey (more on this later), Elizabeth still meant nothing to me. Elizabeth meets Jeremy (Jude Law) in a New York café, spends the first ten minutes of the film with him, travels across the country, comes back and spends the last ten minutes of the film with him, and the audience knows just as much about Jeremy as we do Elizabeth.

What do we know about Elizabeth? Well, she likes blueberry pie. Her ex-boyfriend likes meat loaf. She calls a New York City café and asks if anyone has seen a man eating meat loaf. Surely, if any man was in there eating meat loaf, it must be him. After not receiving what she thought to be a sufficient amount of information, she goes into the café to hound Jeremy some more. Jeremy entertains Elizabeth and her completely insane request, and reveals to her that her boyfriend was in the café...but there were two orders of meat loaf. Yes, Elizabeth's boyfriend has been cheating on her.

Elizabeth gives her keys--apparently a set of keys to her boyfriend's home--to Jeremy and tells him to give them to "Meat Loaf" if he shows up. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Leaving house keys at a café. But it's not weird. We soon learn that a lot of people leave their former lover's keys at this café. Jeremy has a jar full of sets of keys. It's like a Magical Broken Hearts Cafe where lovers leave their keys as symbolic gestures.

Soon after, Elizabeth decides to leave NY. She plans to just travel across the country without any plans or any reason at all.

First stop: Memphis, Tennessee. By night she's a bartender, by day she's a waitress. She meets an alcoholic cop who frequents her bar by night and her diner by day. Rachel Weisz plays the cop's wife from whom he's separated. The two have a big fight at the bar and the cop dies in a car accident. The day after Elizabeth consoles Sue Lynne, the cop's wife, Sue Lynne decides to pay off her husband's tab of 800 dollars. Elizabeth moves away to another city, leaving behind her two jobs and these characters to whom we were introduced. What happened to Elizabeth in Memphis? Nothing at all. She just watched. All of that stuff happened to Sue Lynne and her husband. This pit-stop didn't propel the plot, develop character, or reveal anything about Elizabeth. All that we find out is that Elizabeth is saving up for a car.

Elizabeth reaches her next stop and gets a job as a waitress at a casino. Here she meets Leslie, played by Natalie Portman. Leslie plays poker while Elizabeth serves drinks. After Leslie loses all of her money, Leslie and Elizabeth have a chat, and Elizabeth loans Leslie all of the money that she was saving up for her car so that she can get back into the poker game. Long story short, the two embark on their own little journey, and Elizabeth buys a used car for 3000 dollars and goes back to NY. What did Elizabeth get out of this? Like we did with Sue Lynne in the previous "vignette", we learn about Leslie in this "vignette" while Elizabeth sits around watching. The only distinction between Elizabeth in the opening of the film and Elizabeth 80 minutes in: she now has a car. Apparently, now that she has a 3000 dollar car, she wants to drive back to NY. So what was the point of traveling across the country, taking horrible job after horrible job? So that she could drive back to where she started? Could her journey be any more pointless? During the time that Elizabeth was on the road, she did send Jeremy letters. How Elizabeth Bennett of her. However, all of these letters are just as shallow and unrevealing as she is, and so they come back and start talking about blueberry pie again.

The film ends with Elizabeth and Jeremy kissing for the first time. Just when you thought that the road-trip couldn't be anymore pointless, it becomes more-so in the context of the film. Elizabeth was completely static as a character. All of the events in the film served no purpose, and the long journey culminated in a make-out session. That was the big payoff. That's what the audience sits through the 90 minute story for.

I love Cat Power just as much as the next man, but apparently not as much as Kar-Wai. Cat Power's "The Greatest" was used at about five or six different points in the film. During the first fifteen minutes of the film, it was literally: scene, Cat Power song, scene, Cat Power song, scene, Cat Power song. It's like Kar-Wai used the first fifteen minutes of the film to say to the world, "hey, have you heard of this artist named Cat Power? She's so awesome. I love her. Listen to this song. Really, you have to listen to this song!"

La Vie En Rose (2007)

Not Just a Cotillard Vehicle

[9/10 · 8 July 2008]

Let's get the obvious out of the way early: Marion Cotillard gives an amazing performance. I'm sure you've heard about it, and it's probably the reason why anyone other than Piaf fans would be interested in the movie. Every review of the film you will ever read, whether positive or negative, will probably tell you the same thing about her amazing performance, and rightfully so.

Cotillard made this movie. This will always be Cotillard's movie. However, director Olivier Dahan (so that's the director's name) is far from passive, and he doesn't just sit back and let this become the Marion Cotillard show. Dahan does a lot of interesting things visually. There's one scene in which Piaf grabs tea for her lover, goes from room to room searching for his lost watch, has a mental breakdown, and steps on to the stage- all in one shot.

Dahan, along with editor Richard Marizy, rely heavily on montage sequences, which are very effective for the most part; maybe one or two sequences didn't necessarily need a montage.

We don't simply follow Piaf from birth to death. The film routinely jumps back and forth from past to present, recent to more recent. This is the aspect of the film which may divide the audience. The non-linear narrative is effective in that it shows how the past influences the present, and reveals information about her past when the reveal would be the most effective. We learn about Piaf's daughter, Marcelle, who died at the age of two when Piaf was only nineteen years old, while Piaf is on her deathbed. This is done in a final montage that includes the death of Marcelle, Edith's memories of staying in a brothel as a young girl, living with her father as a pre-teen, and her 1959 concert at the Olympia; this montage is juxtaposed with Piaf giving an interview on a beach.

Some audiences may find the non-linear narrative and use of montage to be confusing, even though subtitles informing the audience of time and place are provided in most cases.

Although Cotillard makes this movie, it's the narrative style that makes this a great movie and not just a vehicle for a very talented actress.

Be Kind Rewind (2008)

Wow! Really Bad

[2/10 · 2 July 2008]

Oh, Michel Gondry. During that two-year period between "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "The Science of Sleep", I would have proudly stood up to anyone who would dare say that Gondry wasn't the best new (as far as feature-length films are ...(read more)concerned) director of the decade. I wouldn't even have mentioned the awesome music video work he did in the 90s, or how the video for Bjork's "Bachelorette" is one of the greatest music videos ever. I would have vouched for Gondry solely based on "Eternal Sunshine".

Then "The Science of Sleep" came out. Visually, the film was undoubtedly creative. However, the script was too quirky for its own good, and lacked the depth and dramatic interest of "Eternal Sunshine". It made me realize that Charlie Kaufman's script was much more essential to the success of "Eternal Sunshine" and maybe I was giving Gondry too much credit for creating such an amazing movie. After "The Science of Sleep", I wasn't as quick to defend Gondry.

Now Gondry is dead to me. Okay, maybe that's taking it a little too far. I will say that visually he continues to be one of the most innovative and charmingly idiosyncratic filmmakers working today. But after watching "Be Kind Rewind", Gondry's second crack at screen writing, it's clear that he needs to stay away from writing screenplays.

"Be Kind Rewind" is trite (Corporate Bad-Guys vs. Small Business Good-Guys). Small Business needs to make an enormous amount of money in a specified period of time or be taken over by heartless developers who want to take the soul out of the neighborhood. This storyline has been rehashed countless times. The film is contrived and full of characters, motivations, and events that exist only to facilitate plot points. The all-VHS store I can accept. But then, at one point in the film, after the dynamic duo makes their first 20 dollars from one of their "sweded films", Mos Def's character mentions to Jack Black's character that 20 bucks is more than the store ever made in a day. Obviously hyperbole, but there must be more truth behind that statement than one would think possible for it to even warrant such a hyperbole. Taking into consideration that the store, with an inventory of only about 200 VHS, which people are charged only one dollar per rental, you start to question how hyperbolic Mos Def's statement really is. Logically speaking, this store would have gone out of business long before the Corporate Bad-Guys came into the picture.

Yet even more contrivances: Jack Black's power plant paranoia conveniently reaches it peak while Danny Glover's character goes away on a trip to pay homage to an old Jazz musician who was born where the store now stands(another subplot that goes nowhere and serves only to facilitate plot points). Also, their unbelievably successful business-venture falls into their laps right around the time when need an enormous amount of money to keep from being run out of business. Then there's the Dry-Cleaner girl who just happens to want to be an actress more than anything in the world. With this little amount of spurious motivation, we're meant to just accept the idea that she would instantly and passionately dedicate herself to the plight of these strangers. This contrivance leads to another subplot which goes nowhere; the "romance" between Melonie Diaz's character and Mos Def's character isn't 1/100 as effective as any of the many "romances" in "Eternal Sunshine", even that of Carrie (Jane Adams) and Rob (David Cross).

Let's say that you're able to suspend your disbelief to a miraculous extent, and throw out any regard for logic, which is hard to do since everything in the film is too present to ignore and too arbitrary to matter. Still, even if you can get past the overbearingly stale narrative, when it comes down to it, the film just isn't funny. Even the "sweded" films, the remakes which Mos Def and Jack Black create, were not clever, charming or funny at all. Not in a million years would people flock to the store (forming a line outside, how original!) to pay $20 to watch these crappy films that they were making. This is just another contrivance that it too hard to overlook.

The good news is that Gondry is not writing the screenplay for his next movie. The screenplay is being written by Daniel Clowes, co-writer of "Ghost World", one of the best films of the decade, so far. I expect this movie to be great as long as Gondry stays behind the camera and away from the script.

The Way We Were (1973)

Streisand is Amazing

[7/10 · 2 July 2008]

We all remember the Paula Abdul song, "Opposites Attract", from her debut album, 'Forever Your Girl' (Yes, you are, Paula). Well, if you don't remember the song, you surely remember the music video.

The music video begins with a spotlight guiding our eyes towards a poster that reads, "MC Skat Kat and Posse". Seconds later, MC Skat Kat begins the song by proudly proclaiming:

I'm MC Kat on the rap, so mic it Here's a little story and you're sure to like it Swift and sly and I'm playing it cool With my homegirl, Paula Abdul

Abdul then spends the next three and a half minutes flirting, dancing, and having some good old-fashioned fun with the animated cat.

Is there really much truth to the phrase "opposites attract", or is it just a cliché that people use to try to justify idiotic people making irrational choices for shallow reasons? Hubbell Gardiner's(Redford) short-story begins with the line "Like his country, things had come too easily to him". Katie Morosky(Streisand) later on tells Gardiner that the line in the story is true of his own life. Maybe that's it. Maybe opposites attract because people want a challenge, and to get the guy/girl who they shouldn't be with on paper, is what attracts a man/woman to his/her opposite. Who would want, or need, a challenge more than someone like Hubbell Gardiner: All-American, popular, handsome college-athlete for whom things always came too easily.

Hubbell's attraction to Katie (Jewish, ultra left-wing, political activist) can be rationalized, but what about Katie's attraction to Hubbell? Maybe Hubbell is right when he says's to Katie, "When you love someone, from Roosevelt to me, you go deaf, dumb and blind." Maybe we shouldn't even bother to try to rationalize an emotion like love. See, the "opposites attract" idea is not strong enough to make me believe that MC Skat Kat would ever have a chance with Paula Abdul, and it's not strong enough to make me believe that these two characters, on paper, would even get into a conversation with each other, let alone have such a passionate romance.

The romance, on paper and at moments in the film, seems a little forced. However, it does work. It's not a naively romantic movie. It's definitely realistic, and it does not use the "opposites attract" idea as a tool to turn the concept of love into a force stronger than it is, as if it can conquer every and anything. In fact, the movie shows how their differences, despite their undeniable love for each other, are what drive them apart and prevent from being with each other. The movie should be titled "The Way We Were, Are, and Will Always Be" because they are ultimately static characters. The two leads also have a significant amount of chemistry truly needed for this story to work.

Streisand's performance, especially, is what makes this movie work. Streisand has always played the down-to-earth, very human, very warm, funny young girl, and we all love her for it. This role was a challenge because the character of Katie Morosky is such a strong, stubborn, idealist (which can be very admirable, up to a point) and only Streisand's charisma can keep the audience from not being as tortured by her personality as Redford's character is throughout the story.

The main problem with the film is that the plot seems to just be a way to past the time until the two break-up.The plot goes one way then inexplicably abandons that path without any sort of resolution. The Hollywood Ten protests were used as a way to get these two to suddenly fall out of love. The pregnancy plot point amounted to nothing more than the film ending, pointlessly, with Hubbell being an unapologetic deadbeat dad and nothing being or implied about it.

This is one of Streisand's best performances and she really makes this film. Even with its flaws, it's intellectually engaging enough to enjoy.

Vagabond (1985)

The Ultimate Character Study

[10/10 · 2 July 2008]

This is what every character study should be; not speaking in terms of form but in terms of what it accomplishes. More than just being an opportunity for the audience to examine the protagonist, this film is also, and mainly, about the way the people...(read more) around her are affected.

So the protagonist isn't likable. So what? I've never understood this need that most people have; the need to be always be best friends with the main character. Of course, some films depend on that. Some narratives depend entirely on getting the audience to root for the main character. If Andy Dufrense wasn't wrongly convicted but did indeed kill his wife and her lover, the audience would not acknowledge his being sent to prison as a conflict because he would be there rightfully so. If he and Red were not the poster-boys for integrity and morality amongst a sea of 'real criminals', the audience would not distinguish the main characters from any other of the thousands of inmates, no matter how much the focus was on those two. If the warden wasn't an evil prick and Andy the good guy, etc. Most important, when Andy crawls through feces, booming soundtrack, pouring rain, that moment which the filmmaker obviously intended to be triumphant, well...people couldn't have cared less if that were to happen, and the filmmaker's attempt to make a connection would not have worked. I severely digress, and about a film which I don't even care that much for. Point being is that "Vagabond" is not plot-driven, it's a character study and it does not rely on whether you would prefer to hug and kiss the protagonist or punch and kick the protagonist.

While the majority of film audiences need a character to be good or bad, I just need a character to be interesting or uninteresting. If the film tells you who's good and bad, and bases its story on that, the audience is reduced to a crowd at a tennis match, mindlessly turning their heads left to right, hoping their favorite Williams sister wins the match. While entertaining for some (I personally get nothing out of watching sports, but I guess I understand how it can be "fun"), at what point do I start using my braincells? Should film and art only be there to entertain us just as much as watching a group of pituitary cases trying to stuff a ball through a hoop?

While a character study, like this one, would probably be wrongfully described as a film where nothing happens, due to lack of straightforward plot and goal, much more is "happening" in this 105 min film than in an entire season of "24". The only problem: it doesn't happen in the form of actual events, it happens through the exploration of themes, raising of questions, and the offering of commentary.

Mona is a vagabond. No, this is not a mix between Vagisil and Gold Bond, although I'm sure that would be an awesome product. Basically, a vagabond is a hobo. She drifts from village to village, eating what she can and sleeping where she can. The film begins with her death, and through a cleverly crafted series of flashbacks and "interviews" with the people who met her along the way, the audience slowly learns more and more about her as the film progresses. Varda opens the film with a brief narration, but is never heard from again, in any sense. Varda is completely objective (not urging us to root for Mona). The audience only knows who Mona is according the people who've met her. Rarely is Mona on-screen by herself; mainly towards the end, leading up to the point where she tragically dies alone in a ditch, is the only time we see her by herself. The filmmaker, every other character in the film, and the audience are all in the same boat. If you're one of these people who needs someone to connect with, there you go. Instead of manipulating the audience in order to have us connect with the main character, Varda puts the audience in the shoes of everyone else, especially the police who find her body at the beginning of the film and are trying to find out more about her. This enhances the story and creates interest in the character. Also, it gives the audience, if you really need that emotional connection, the opportunity to briefly connect emotionally with the people around her because the two of you interact and have these experiences with Mona simultaneously.

In a movie in which much doesn't happen, it gives the audience a lot to wrap their minds around. Human nature, the constraints and benefits of society, conformity, reckless rebellion, are some of the many themes that the film presents and allows the audience to ponder. As not to rob you of such an intellectually stimulating experience, I won't go into to detail about the points the film the raises.

Varda does this in such a effectively subtle way that even things as seemingly uneventfully as Mona petting a dog early on in the movie, then later on telling another dog to "fuck off and die"; and having a glass of Brandi and laughing with a senile woman simultaneously develop character and expand on the many themes presented in the film.

Needless to say but I'll say it anyway, the film is visually flawless. A photography student before she became a filmmaker, Varda has an eye unlike anyone in cinema. While "Cleo From 5 to 7" seems to be the most talked about and well-known of her films, and undoubtedly a masterpiece, "Vagabond" is my favorite of her films.

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)

Joanne Woodward is Great, but That's All...

[5/10 · 11 June 2008]

Joanne Woodward gives a really great performance. One could even say that she gives three great performances. However, it's not enough to make this a good film.

Before the film begins, Alistair Cooke addresses the audience, assuring them that the film is based on a true story, and all events depicted in the film were taken straight from the book.

What Cooke doesn't tell the audience is that the book, now considered outdated, was rushed into publication, as was the film; the doctors involved were, as we see in the film, not too familiar with DID themselves, and therefore their handling of the case was flawed, and account unreliable. Years later, from books written by the real "Eve", Christine Costner-Sizemore, we learn that there was much more to this case than the doctors reported. The filmmakers were reliable to an unreliable source. So, Alistair's introduction amounts to nothing more than "if you don't buy it, don't blame the film, blame the book".

The film is reliable to the book, but also emphasizes what it chooses to. The cause of her illness, according to the film, amounts to nothing more than unconvincing, untrue, hokey, shorthand Freudianism that Hollywood infamously spoonfeeds to its audiences.

The film is shot in Cinemascope, but for no reason at all, since not one frame in the film seems to be motivated. It consists of shot after shot of actors spread out in flat composition, and makes for completely uninspired visuals.

Skip this one and check out "Sybil" (1976) for a film that handles similar subject matter more effectively. Don't worry about missing out on any Joanne Woodward action. She stars in the film, playing Dr. to Sally Field's Sybil. And if you ask me, Joanne Woodward has only gotten better with time.

Mommie Dearest (1981)

It's So Bad It's Gone Past Good and Back to Bad Again

[2/10 · 10 June 2008]

I turned it off after an hour of torture. I got halfway through the famous "no more wire hangers!" scene, and turned it off at the point when Joan Crawford, played by Faye Dunaway, starts beating her daughter with a can of scouring powder; the most over-the-top portrayal of child abuse I've ever seen. And, trust me, I've seen my share of Lifetime Movies.

I'm aware that this a "so bad it's good" movie, and that's the reason why I actually was interested in seeing it. I wanted to check my brain at the door, have some fun, and not feel guilty about it, like I did with "Silent Night, Deadly Night 2". I thought that I would actually enjoy it, unlike all of the critics who completely took a dump on it when it first came out (it "won" six Razzies). But even as unintentional comedy, this movie doesn't work. It's not "so bad it's good". It's so bad it goes past good and back to bad again.

I did get a chuckle out of the scene where Crawford cuts off her eight-year-old daughter's hair and tells her "I'd rather you go bald to school than looking like a tramp!". Even the "my babies! Someone stole both my babies!" line made me snicker a little. However, the camp-factor loses it novelty very quickly once you realize that the movie is nothing more than Joan Crawford yelling at people and going crazy.

About 90% of the dialogue was delivered by screaming people. Crawford screams at her boyfriend, an adoption agency official, movie producers, her maids, her daughter, even the flowers ("Tina! Bring me the axe!"). There are only two people in the film: 1. Joan Crawford, 2. People for Joan Crawford to yell at.

Melodrama at its most absurd, but not in a funny way. In an annoying way.

My Night at Maud's (1969)

Rohmer takes his "Moral Tales" to the Next Level

[8/10 · 10 June 2008]

The third of Rohmer's Moral Tales, and quite unlike the previous two. The first two clocked in at approximately 23 minutes and 54 minutes, respectively. "My Night at Maud's", almost two hours. While the first two Moral Tales were basically first-person narration accompanied by visuals, which were secondary but stimulating nonetheless, "My Night at Maud's" is a dialogue-driven piece in which character's exchange personal philosophies and trade the ideas of their favorite philosophers like baseball cards. Although I'm not sure of which films are in Richard Linklater's (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset) DVD collection, it would probably be safe to assume that this is one of them.

Because it is a dialogue-driven piece, much more happens in the 54-minute-long "Suzanne's Career", Rohmer's second moral tale, than in "My Night at Maud's", which is about an hour longer. It can seem meandering at times, especially the first-half of the film, but put your trust in Rohmer. We're being bored to death for a reason. Listening to two Frenchmen discuss Pascal's Wager isn't very entertaining, but the payoff comes when, later on in the film, the characters are put into situations in which they have to make their own Pascal's wager, metaphorically speaking. The reward comes when we see these philosophies which they discussed tested in real-life situations, and we see how true, or untrue, to their ideals these characters are.

During the first fifty minutes, you may be bored out of your skull, but the way the film unfolds, you'll probably want to go back and watch the first fifty minutes again after it's over.