Category: trh movie

Well. I’m not even sure where to begin with this giant mess of a movie. That’s not to say that Spider-Man 3 isn’t enjoyable, because it is, nor is to to say that I didn’t like it, because I did. But overall, I felt like they just tried to do too much and it ended up sprawling all over the place, leaving the film feeling a bit watered-down and mashed together.

The RRHB and I were talking about it after we got home, and he made a very valid criticism. I’d hate it if a movie took my favourite book and changed all the story lines around just to make a ‘blockbuster.’ From his perspective, they’ve ruined a lot of what made the comic so great by trying to make the film so huge. They’ve brought together years and years worth of plots and tried to put them all in the film like a bunch of puzzle pieces that are either slightly too large or too small to actually fit with the overall scope of the life of the character.

All in all, it’s a summer of closing chapters, with third installments of so many blockbuster series bowing, from The Bourne Ultimatum to the non-stop Pirates films, I’m sure it’s not the first time I’m going to write a sentence that goes something like, ‘well, I enjoyed the movie…but.’

And there’s a small part of me that thinks the main characters are tired of making these movies, and that exhaustion certainly shows through, despite their obvious dedication to the project. Who knows. I’m not an actor. I have no idea what it’s like to be responsible for a franchise the size of Spider-Man, with this movie alone rumoured to have cost close to half a billion dollars.

The stunts are pretty wicked, and there’s a level of super villain that we haven’t really seen before, but I can’t help but wish they did more with the black-suited Spider-Man and his alter-ego, the emo-Peter Parker, but I know I’m looking for too much in a film that it truly just meant to entertain. I will say, however, that Topher Grace kicked ass; he was the most enjoyable part of the movie, even if he was totally underdeveloped and kind of tossed in at the last minute.

So. I’m going to preface this entire rant by saying that I have absolutely nothing against Hot Docs as a festival nor any of the films screening this year — I’m highly supportive.

BUT.

In order to review some of the Hot Docs screeners for Chart, I had to sign up for a press badge. Usually, I’m thrilled to bits to get a press pass, but because I have no time to actually go to the screenings, I feel bad that I won’t be able to make good use of it. There’s too much bookish stuff going on next week, plus exercise classes, yeah, you get it.

The real problem is that I have been receiving non-stop spam from festival participants for the last few days for screenings, for parties, for everything and anything. Had I been a REAL journalist, all of these emails might have been worthwhile, even helpful. But for the most part, they’re just frustrating.

Regardless, I did screen four of the multitude of movies that are playing until April 29th: Your Mommy Kills Animals, Without the King, Yoga, Inc., and Forever. Full reviews are posted here, should you care. If you are planning on seeing any of the Hot Docs this week, I’m not sure if my recommendations will help or hinder, but here they are anyway:

1. Your Mommy Kills Animals: The story behind radical animal rights activists as compared to their tamer cousins, the animal welfare groups, I found this documentary to be excellent. It’s hard not to get emotionally involved in terms of watching footage of dogs being beaten or seeing the poor minks in the cages on their farms, but the documentary goes well behind the issue to present a smart, articulate and fascinating look at many of the groups (like the now imprisoned SHAC 7) the US government considers the greatest homeland terrorist threat.

2. Without the King: A fairly stereotypical documentary about the only absolute monarchy left in Africa, Swaziland, Without the King was actually really disappointing. I’m not a fan of traditional-style documentaries, I think that the art form has evolved so much over the last 20 years that there’s no excuse for lazy storytelling. This documentary, more so than the other three, suffered from this — the subject matter is fascinating; the documentary? Poorly done.

3. Yoga, Inc.: As a practitioner myself, I found this documentary kind of interesting. Again, the traditional ‘oh look at this fascinating subject’ narrative style annoyed me, as did the little ‘chapter headings’ that preceded each section; however, there’s a lot here. Including a totally awesome bit with the fellow who owns f**k yoga, which I would totally buy a t-shirt from. Especially considering he said something totally awesome: f**k yoga essentially means “f**k Sting” and all of the other H-wood types suddenly into the practice, which made me chuckle. Like I said, I do yoga, and I am totally guilty of much of the commercialization as the next guy. Hell, I shop at Lululemon, but at least this documentary did a good job of exploring the trend from all sides. It was a little history-light, but that’s okay.

4. Forever: Quite easily the worst of the 4, it’s a meandering, puttering film about the fascinating Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Forever was supposed to be a meditation on the importance of art in life. Yawn. As told through the people who visit the gravestones of really famous artists within the cemetery. Double yawn. When you watch a documentary, not knowing what it’s about until 15 minutes in is a sure sign that it has narrative problems. Anyway, I loved all the shots of the cemetery though, and I especially loved a few of the characters she films. One, a group of lovely widows who fled Franco’s Spain, and two, a fascinating woman who takes it upon herself to maintain the graves of many of the cemetery’s writers. The RRHB and I spent a lovely morning at the cemetery the first time we went to Paris almost three years ago now. And that’s exactly what we did: wander around and muse over art, and life, and the dead guys and Edith Piaf, but it’s hard to translate that kind of whimsy into an entire documentary. Oh, and the interstitials of the terribly earnest Chopin-adorer playing the piano? Triple yawn.

But maybe I’m too cynical. That could also be the problem.

Anyway. I’m dead excited about seeing a documentary that’s screening called Last Call at the Gladstone Hotel (it’s actually the only piece of spam I actually paid attention to). It’s airing on TVO May 9 and 13 at 10 PM. A look at the gentrification of the Gladstone, one of my neighbourhood’s hot spots, and a current literary scene staple, I’m curious to see the story behind the walls.

On Sunday, after a manic morning of attempting to clean the house because my writer’s group is coming over tonight, I escaped for an afternoon to the movies with Tara. We ended up seeing Mira Nair’s The Namesake, which got a great review in EW this past week.

The filmed adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel manages to keep all of the good bits of a novel by utilizing a series of vignettes to tell the story. Within these smaller scenes, the larger narrative, the lives of the members of the Ganguli family, unfolds. I didn’t finish the novel, I think I had 10 pages to read when I abandoned it, because it hadn’t grabbed me entirely, so I knew what in essence was going to happen. But regardless, the film still managed to be engaging and utterly heart-stopping.

Gogol Ganguli (Kal Penn), named for his father Ashoke’s life-saving obsession (he had the book in his hand when he survived a terrible train crash) with the Russian author Gogol, grows up in conflict: the push and pull between his world, his American lifestyle, and the world of his immigrant parents. It’s a familiar story but Nair infuses both worlds with elements of the other highlighting the differences in truly inspirational ways, which is just part of why this film works so well.

Ashima (Tabu), on her first morning in a suburb of New York after marrying Ashoke (Irfan Khan), has a bowl of Rice Crispies with no milk, a bit of curry powder and some peanuts. She agrees to marry Ashoke because she likes his American shoes. Ashima’s son, Gogol, finds his calling (he becomes an architect) while visiting the Taj Mahal for the first time on a trip with his parents to India. But then moments later, he’s fallen in love with an upper crust American girl named Max.

It was wrong of me, I know, to expect Harold and Kumar playing unsuccessfully against type from Penn, but his turn as Gogol is career-making. Penn runs the gamut in age from a dope-smoking teenager to a man who not only weathers the tragedy of life, but wears it open on his face like a heart on a sleeve (how mixed up is that sentence from a metaphorical POV. Heh.). He’s utterly striking in this film, and Nair’s ability to craft subtle nuisances from scenes where the majority of the action is left out, makes an impact that’s in your imagination, much like a novel.

Goodness me I loved Monsoon Wedding with its subtle sexuality and bold swashes of marigold, and The Namesake too, takes the best of both worlds, the opportunity and magic of an old-school American dream and builds into it the traditions and honour of an Indian lifestyle. Neither are things I know a lot about, being a Canadian girl from Toronto, but I felt the film gave me an insight into both, from the eyes of Gogol, of course, but also in the majestic Ashima, who changes intrinsically from the beginning of the movie until the end.

And how wonderful is it when a title fits so perfectly into the story itself? I guess it’s what every writer dreams of? And that’s enough gushing for one Tuesday morning.

My week off of work was supposed to be punctuated by seeing a lot of movies, but I was felled by a damn cold, and so the only day I did actually make it to the theatre was yesterday when Tara and I went to see The Queen. The last of the Oscar films I’ll actually get to go and see before the Awards tomorrow night, I have to say that I enjoyed it very much, and was impressed by the performances, both by Michael Sheen (love him) and Helen Mirren (goes without saying that she’ll win).

But on the whole, other than The Departed, I’m really uninspired by this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees. I haven’t seen Letters from Iwo Jima, but I have now seen the other three, and I still think that Scorsese’s picture is the best out of all of them. And two movies I’ve seen since, The Children of Men and Half Nelson, are better pictures than the other nominees. But I’m not on the voting committee and I don’t share the lovefest over Babel, so who knows. I also think that Little Children should have had more nominations, and that Jackie Earle Haley should win in his catagory, even though my vote will probably go to Eddie Murphy.

But it does make me think that with all the money Hollywood spends to make money, I’m surprised that better movies simply don’t come out. Or maybe I’ve just watched the wrong ones lately. We did watch The Prestige yesterday, and it was really good, better than Dreamgirls, better than Flags of Our Fathers, better than (shhh) Babel, and still nothing in the way of recognition.

I’m guessing that my radar is really off the mark in terms of what Hollywood finds to be good and I what I think truly is exceptional. But isn’t that always the case?

My “official” review is posted up at ChartAttack.

So I’ve been on the ‘oh my gosh I have to watch all the Oscar-nominated films in one go’ streak lately. It’s not that I’m going to do well in any awards night polls because, well, I never do—I always vote from the heart, which is the kiss of death in those types of contests.

Annnywaaay.

Children of Men
On Saturday afternoon, the RRHB and I went to go see Children of Men with Tara and Dave. Many, many people have been raving about how wonderful this movie is and about how it truly should have been nominated for Best Picture. I can certainly see why. Based on P.D. James’s novel of the same name, the film takes place in the near future after the human race has, essentially, ended—all women are infertile. Society is barely functioning. England is exporting all of its immigrants. Eerily familiar bombs are being detonated in coffee houses. Violence and civil disobedience are everywhere. In short, it’s on the verge of apocalypse. And so soon! The film is set twenty years from now, which is one of the reasons it scared the bloody crap out of me.

Clive Owen plays Theo Faron, an alcoholic, downtrodden London office worker who finds a shadow of his former self when he’s enlisted to help his underground-movement-leader of an ex-wife smuggle some important human cargo out of the country. It’s a bone-chilling and brilliant movie that should have gotten a lot more kudos than it did. Where’s Clive Owen’s love? He holds the movie together, from start to finish, and man, is the movie the better for it. Add to the mix superior art direction, brilliant editing, a wonderful script and man, you’ve got a superior piece of film work. And it’s not often that I rave, rave, rave about a film. The crucial test is whether or not I’m still thinking about it days later, and I am.

Half Nelson
Okay, I’ve never downloaded a movie from the internet before. But, and I’m not saying who, a certain someone I know and love does it a fair bit, and he grabbed Half Nelson the other night. The two of us, perched on desk chairs and eating lasagna for dinner, watched this utterly captivated picture from start to finish on the computer. I felt guilty the entire time.

Ryan Gosling plays Danny Dunne, a junior high school history/social studies teacher and aspiring writer with more problems than the usual Mr. Smith standing at the head of the class. A functioning addict who uses the kids like an anchor holding him on board his own life, Danny is a total mess when he’s not at school. Like one of those truly tortured souls who can’t possibly be meant for reality, he develops an oddly patriarchal and somewhat inappropriate relationship with Drey (Shareeka Epps). From the first, tragic minute when she discovers his fatal flaw, the two dance around the issue of his drug use, until the penultimate moment where Drey, when confronted with the cold, hard truth of the life she’s in the middle of, is forced to leave her childhood behind far sooner than she probably should.

Gosling’s performance is haunting and hectic, full of addiction ticks that aren’t remotely stereotypical but the product of a man whose talent is so compelling it almost steams off the screen. He is so magnetic that your body tingles when you watch him. And Shareeka Epps shows such wisdom in her own performance that the pair of them are both captivating and, yes, heartbreaking at the same time.

I truly think that Half Nelson might be my favourite movie I’ve seen this year (I’m using ‘year’ in terms of Oscar-nominated pictures, of course).

Music and Lyrics
Another film I had to review for Chart, this film, a fun, whimsical romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant turned out to be kind of charming and almost funny. And, seriously, watching it just for Hugh Grant’s dancing was enough for me, more to come on that one when I write my “official” review.

Or “Quite possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life and if I didn’t have to review it I would have walked out of the theatre.”

Okay if you are remotely interested in seeing Because I Said So in the theatres and don’t want to be the least bit spoiled, do not read this post. But if you do go see that movie and decide that it sucks, don’t blame me for not telling. I’m just sayin’.

Yes, the Diane Keaton / Mandy Moore cash grab for the poor suckers on Valentine’s Day who actually convince their men folk to go to see this film are in for a real treat. Because I Said So, which I saw last week for Chart magazine, is truly and abysmally bad. It’s cliches wrapped in forced situations and all tied up in a shrieking bow that made me wince more times than I can count.

Essentially, Keaton plays a single mom facing the wrong side of fifty, who approaches her “big” six-oh with trepidation because her youngest daughter can’t find love. Cue the big sweeping “I am your mother and can’t rest until you are settled” speeched coupled with the “I just don’t want you to turn out like me” sap storm, and you’ve pretty much got the emotional underpinnings of this movie of the week wannabe.

Keaton, playing “Daphne”, decides that Mother Does Indeed Know Best and places a want ad for fellows for “Milly” aka Mandy, a perky, singing chef with a heart of gold and nose for the perfect soufflé. The fellow she finds is a remarkably wealthy, shockingly single schmarmball named Jason who loves polka dots and long walks on the beach. Barf. Of course, as happenstance would have it, Johnny, a guitar-playing musician-slash-teacher with a crazy-ass kid meets Daphne when she’s interviewing potential suitors and wants in on it too. According to Johnny, he’s got a feeling he’d really like Milly (what? come the fark on) and, of course, Daphne thinks nothing of the sort.

What do you think happens? Milly falls in love with both men. Yawn. Cue the “conflict” scenes. As you could probably tell from the trailer, it gets all messy and stuff when she finally, after a good 90 minutes and my ass becoming so sore from boredom that I almost needed a seventh inning stretch, figures out who she wants to be with, and well, let’s suffice to say there’s a happy ending.

I think what I find most offensive about films like this, apparently made by women for women, is that they don’t take women at all seriously. Every single romantic cliche that is so worn down, recycled and ever-so tired is pulled out in this film, shined up, sung out loud (yes, Mandy Moore SINGS in the picture) and then applauded. In a time where polar bears are drowning, and we are wasting more and more of our precious resources on art that will make no difference to the world, I’m even more ashamed that dreck like this is still finding its way onto the big screen.

But maybe that’s the debate for today. Should art just make a difference or is there value in creating mindless entertainment?

It’s very rare that I like any movie better than the book, and considering I really enjoyed Zoë Heller’s novel, to say I was surprised by the film is kind of an understatement.

Notes on a Scandal follows the story of an upper-class British woman, Sheba Hart (Blanchett), who has an affair with one of her students, 15-year-old Steven Connolly (played by newcomer Andrew Simpson), and must rely upon her much older friend Barbara (Dench) once the affair comes out and her life falls apart.

Only the film is from Barbara’s perspective, it follows her life, her narrative and tells the story from her point of view. This means we hear of Sheba’s affair second hand, through her retelling of it to Barbara, once the elder woman discovers the lovers in the classroom, ahem, in a precarious position. And Barbara, or “Bar” as Sheba calls her, is nuts, driven to the point of obsession by utter loneliness and maybe a bit of a predilection for mistaking friendship for the intimacy normally found between two adults in a romantic relationship.

But you say, it stars Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, of course it’s going to be good. And yes, Dench’s Barbara is totally creepy and quite obsessed, and Blanchett’s Sheba is one part flighty, one part entitled and always beautiful, which is perfect casting. However, why the film succeeds has more to do with how it manipulates narrative exposition to its advantage. In bookish films where the “book” aspects don’t usually work (ahem, Possession, I’m looking at you), it totally ruins the film for me. Here, however, Barbara’s obsessive note-taking and journal writing underpins her character so perfectly that it actually makes the movie. And it doesn’t hurt that the script is bloody brilliant.

There are a couple of cringeworthy moments, and Bill Nighy as Sheba’s husband is stupendous casting (LOVE him), and on the whole, I liked this movie far, far better than I thought I would.