Jun 20, 2011
Technology and the subconscious together aren’t always a good thing. They’re often out of control. Ask anybody who’s ever had a crashed computer (moi, last week) or a jammed iPod or frozen TiVo. But what of a man, Cobb, (Leonardo DiCaprio) who travels around a world of sci-fi as a thief (think Catch Me If You Can) except he’s not stealing money, but instead stealing dreams from the most vulnerable. Leo can “search the mind and find one’s thinking.” His partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is skilled in understanding what’s needed, though he spends all of the movie dressed out-of-character from the others, looking more like Bugsy Siegel, ready to rob a bank instead of a brain. The film operates in several dream states, tricking the audience into wondering whether they’re awake or asleep during the murder, mayhem and even suicides. Its here we meet the one person who turns Leo the most vulnerable, his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard). But after a series of events, Leo must do the ultimate heist of all….plant the info into someone’s brain instead of remove it. The film is sophisticated, visually stunning – it really feels like a dream – and smart, but it’s straining for the audience who not only wants to connect to the characters, but just wants to plain understand what the heck is going on. Had Leo just had a common trade, like a plumber, we’d be okay. And while there’s a lot of exposition, for all their explaining of the next plan, we still don’t get it. Directed by Chris Nolan The Dark Knight/Memento, the better dream-director is Terry Gilliam (Twelve Monkeys or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus). For any movie buff, the coolest moments in the film are when a random Edith Piaf soundtrack plays,which ironically signals Marion Cottilard (in this film) who won the Oscar for La Vie En Rose. This movie will eat at audiences in the aftermath, prompting them to re-watch it on DVD or discuss it on blogs. And isn’t that just like in a dream? The desire to fall back asleep and see it again? Two and a half tiaras
Jun 20, 2011
It’s November 2004 and the phone rings on Tommy Lee Jones’s bedside table “Your son has gone AWOL,” are the only words Jones, a decorated veteran, hears. When he calls to check the base where his son Michael Deerfield (Jonathan Tucker) has just come home and doesn’t get answers, Jones heads to the base to find them, while Deerfield’s mother (Susan Sarandon) stays home and worries. Enter Charlize Theron, an investigator for the police department (who takes on a Jodie Foster “Silence of the Lambs” look) and is not taken too seriously by her peers. She wants to help Jones after she learns the brutal truth. Theron has a history of these movies with women/men/hatred (“Monster”) and this one is no different seemingly stepped out from the set of “North Country” into this role. By the movies, end you realize it isn’t about being for the war or against the war, but a big statement about the damage the war inflicts on our boys coming home (which explains why a politically outspoken Sarandon signed up to play the mother). Director Paul Haggis follows up his brilliant “Crash” – trading in a movie on racism for a movie on war. There is superior acting here (to be considered come Oscar time) but in a movie that moves slowly and finally gains our interest in the final half hour of discovery. Three tiaras
Jun 20, 2011
(rated PG-98 mins. )
Hong Kong 1962. The population is divided between Cantonese Chinese and immigrants from mainland China. Su Li-zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) works as a secretary to Mr. Ho (Lai Chin) the boss of a shipping company and possesses a silk dress wardrobe form-fitting enough to put a Madonna video or Vogue magazine to shame. One day she moves into an apartment alone because her husband is on a business trip. That same day, her new neighbor, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) a journalist, is also moving into an apartment next to hers. His wife is always away too. Coincidence? Not at all. At first they decide what they will say to their respective spouses about their affair with each other. Fed up with her husband’s philandering, Mrs. Chan scores Mr. Chow. And, so a slow movie begins with hard to follow sub-titles since the faces all look the same. Despite their charming shy behavior testing old-fashioned love-restraints, to Spanish Nat King Cole music, we are labored through their doubts, their unmet longings and finally an affair begging for them to run off together. Maybe their spouses found them as annoying as I did.
Jun 20, 2011
(Rated R, 118 mins.)
Opens Oct 31st wide/limited 24th
Based on the best selling novel by Susanna Moore, this psychological thriller is directed by Jane Campion and stars Meg Ryan as Fannie Avery, an English teacher by day and phrase voyeur by night. Her passion: Writing. When Malloy (Mark Ruffalo), a homicide detective finds body parts in Avery’s garden, Avery is encouraged by her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to develop a relationship with him. Soon after Frannie is attacked by a masked assailant, and suddenly everybody in her life seems suspicious including her student Cornelius (Sharrieff Pugh) and her wacky soap opera-doctor-ex-boyfriend (Kevin Bacon). When all is said and done, this attention grabbing throwback to “Looking For Mr. Goodbar” has a twisted ending that has been obviously tampered with by too many Hollywood execs. Ryan should be commended for taking on a role other than her usual button-faced-ringlet-haired romances. Here she’s a sophisticated auburn-haired pro – a Nicole Kidman knock-off, which would make sense since Kidman produces. First time re-teaming with Campion since “Portrait Of A Lady”.
Jun 20, 2011
(rated R, 138 mins.)
“In the Bedroom” takes its meaning from the place where days wind down and generations of values dictate secret decisions, peace, love and pain. A well-woven drama taking place in a small fish packing community in Camden, Maine with generations of fishermen where one family’s son Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) is torn between education, the high seas and the girl he loves. His father Matt Fowler (Tom Wilkinson) is the town physician while his wife Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek) is the school music teacher. All seems fine although Ruth doesn’t approve of her son Frank dating the town’s lovely divorced woman Natalie Strout, (Marisa Tomei), mother of two small children. Her soon to be ex-husband (William Mapother) doesn’t seem to handle the affair well either. When something goes terribly wrong everything unravels quickly, leaving mistakes to affect the remainder of the living’s own mortality. An intense yet harmonious weaving of characters, plot and cinematography with the perfect marriage of actor to role depicting drama at its best with an ending to make you cheer for justice and the aftermath that lasts a lifetime. While refreshing to see Tomei return to drama, it seems her role was not clearly utilized after the occurrence that rocks the movie. Look for Spacek and Wilkinson come Oscar time.
