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Labels: funny, movies

Susanne Bier (After the Wedding, Brothers), who is emerging as a powerful director of international acclaim, explores several things in her outstanding new film Things We Lost in the Fire: grief, addiction, love and, most of all, friendship. Creating star turns for Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro, this is a movie you will remember long after the credits roll.

Things We Lost in the Fire opens in the midst of sorrow. Audrey (Berry) has already lost her husband Steven (David Duchovny) to tragic circumstances and is planning his funeral. At the last minute she remembers that she has forgotten to inform one of Steven's closest friends, Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), of his death. Through various flashbacks you discover that he is a down and out junkie who has long been a thorn in her side; she has never understood the nature of their friendship.

But, as you find out, Steven and Jerry are lifelong friends who have known one another since childhood. As Steven tells Audrey one night after she confronts him about Jerry, "He's my friend. He looks out for me. He's my friend." Bier reveals the depth of their friendship through Steven's obvious dedication and loyalty and Jerry's subtle attentiveness. It seems that he has remembered and held onto every word Steven has ever uttered, from insignificant details about his children to major insecurities about his marriage. The knowledge of these facts is dispersed throughout the film until you fully realize that, although he may seem like a total and complete fuck-up, Jerry respected and cherished his friendship.

Accordingly, Jerry comes to the funeral and for reasons that she does not quite comprehend, Audrey brings him into the fold of their family. Maybe she does it out of guilt for all those times that she urged Steven to give up on his friend. Maybe she does it out of obligation because it's what Steven would have wanted. Or maybe she's so desperate that she would do anything to be near any connection to her dead husband. Either way, Jerry's presence helps through the sheer force of the fact that he has already reached rock-bottom; when you're that low, it makes it better to be with someone worse off than you.

There are moments in Things We Lost in the Fire that are devastating in both their tenderness and their grief. You get glimpses of Audrey and Steven's idyllic life in Seattle with their two children through poignant memories that are handled with just the right amount of emotion and gravitas. Likewise, Jerry's struggle with his heroin addiction is acutely intense. Bier displays the same tight direction and control that she utilized in After the Wedding -- intimate close-ups that focus on faces, hands, eyes, and even ears so that they are no longer merely parts of a body but vehicles for conveying inexpressible emotions. The script from first time film writer Allan Loeb is nuanced and engaging, and although it relies heavily on flashbacks it neither confuses nor deters the momentum of the film.

One criticism is that, at times, the film seems a little too similar to 21 Grams. This could be because of Del Toro (who was in both films) or that the two movies also feature a grieving woman who loses members of her family to tragic circumstances. Another criticism is that a few plot turns come off a little too tidily. The fact that everyone just immediately takes to Jerry is a prime example of this. Something like that happens in sitcoms, not in movies that want to come off as realistic.

Nonetheless, Things We Lost in the Fire is a not-to-be-missed film. Don't be surprised if both Del Toro and Berry get nominated for Academy Awards.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Labels: movies, reviews

Living in the garage next to his brother Gus' (Paul Schneider) house, Lars (Ryan Gosling) is a socially awkward 27-year old who much rather sit by himself in his puffy coat wringing an old baby blanket his deceased mother (who passed away while giving him birth) had knitted for him than interact with real, live human beings. As you see him at work and church and with his family, you quickly realize that he is badly in need of a Paxil or maybe even a hug. His pregnant sister-in-law, who has the doe-eyed demeanor of an eager puppy, Karin (Emily Mortimer), knows something is wrong and despite her fumbling attempts at getting him to open up, still can't get him to crack a smile or, as one of his co-workers would say, "chillax".

All this changes when Lars' new girlfriend Bianca suddenly shows up. Lars has never seemed happier, he's practically blushing and giggling like a little schoolgirl. Gus and Karin are pleased and delighted to learn of his new romance. That is until they meet Bianca, who's a life-like yet completely artificial blow-up doll. Unfortunately, as they discover, Lars is in the middle of a powerful delusion in which Bianca is 100% real woman. She's a wheelchair-bound and orphaned missionary from Brazil who also happens to be a registered nurse. Needless to say, Karin and Gus are speechless.

The scene in which the two first meet Bianca is one of the funniest scenes in the history of cinema. All hyperbole aside, it is truly hilarious. And, fortunately, the first of many laughs that Lars and the Real Girl has to offer. But humor isn't all there is to the movie. Lars and the Real Girl is essentially a sweet drama about a young man trying to work through his loneliness. When Karin suggests that Bianca go for a "check-up" to her doctor, Dr. Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), a family practitioner trained in psychotherapy, who then diagnoses her with a serious sickness that requires weekly sessions, Lars begins the process of healing.

In order to help him, the entire town plays along with the delusion. Gus and Karin tell all their friends, and even go to the church for help. At first there is resistance but when the pastor poses the question "What would Jesus do?" everyone ends up going along with the idea. Eventually, they even start building their own relationships with Bianca. More hilarity ensues.

Lars and the Real Girl could have derived easy laughs at the expense of its main character but it strays away from such cheap shots. Instead it takes a much more difficult and nuanced road and comes off just as funny. But it's a witty, insightful humor rather than silly, slapstick antics. This can be accredited to director Craig Gillespie (who also surprisingly directed the insipid Mr. Woodcock) and writer Nancy Oliver's (best known for her work on "Six Feet Under") skills as well as the superb cast.

Gosling takes someone who could have easily been a serial killer in the making and turns him into a vulnerable character that you just can't help but root for. The character who garnered the most laughs (besides Bianca) was Gus due to Paul Schneider's pitch perfect comedic timing. The overall scene-stealer, however, was Kelli Garner as Lars' overly friendly and lovelorn colleague Margo.


Lars and the Real Girl is easily one of the best, and most original, movies of the year.


Rating: 5 out 5 stars

Labels: movies, reviews

Something about this photo just doesn't seem right...

Directed by Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth, The Four Feathers, Bandit Queen), the latest offering on the life of England's Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is little more than a linear character study set amidst an elaborate fashion show. With a stellar award-winning cast and a proven, skilled director the film is two hours of wasted potential.

A decade after the original, we meet the Queen (played by Cate Blanchett) again in the year 1585. She's matured and grown into her gowns but she's pretty much the same -- there are people still trying to marry her off, manipulate her or assassinate her. With its famed Armada, Spain is the most powerful country in all of Europe, and is ruled by the devout and fanatically Catholic Philip II (Jordi Mollà), who just needs a reason to wage war against Elizabeth and her "whoring" Protestant ways.

But none of this is the real focus of the film. In Elizabeth: The Golden Age, politics take a back seat to the Queen herself. While she comes off as a just, fair and intelligent ruler, the film explores her human side and the personal sacrifices she makes for the sake of her country. At least it tries to.

When adventurer and supposed pirate Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owens) appears at court trying to gain the Queen's favor, i.e. funding for his next expedition, Elizabeth becomes intrigued. While she cannot publicly converse and interact with him, she dispatches her favored lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton aka Bess (Abbie Cornish), to communicate with him in her place. However, as the Queen becomes more and more infatuated with Raleigh, his own attentions turn towards Bess.

Owens is fascinating and has a great intensity in his eyes that conveys his character's overwhelming conviction. But this is supposed to be about Queen Elizabeth's reign not about her obsessive crush on a roguish hunk. If you want that all you need to do is whip out a smutty historical romance novel. No -- this is supposed to be a historically based drama.

However, there is very little drama to be found in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Writers William Nicholson and Michael Hirst, who wrote the screenplay for Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen, really missed the mark here. Instead of political intrigue, the brewing war between England and Spain and growing tensions between Catholics and Protestants, the movie pays attention to issues of less importance.

It is filled with regal, intricate and…VERY distracting costumes. They are especially distracting because there is little else to keep your attention. Fortunately there is more humor this time around. One particular scene, in which Raleigh introduces the humble potato to court, elicits genuine laughs. Besides the humor, there is also great beauty to the film. Some shots are works of pure cinematic artistry. The scene of an attempted assassination, easily one of the most powerful moments in the film, is breathtaking in its visual intensity; if freeze-framed the individual shots could be seen as paintings. This, of course, is due in part to Cate Blanchett's indomitable on screen presence.

However, the real scene stealer in Elizabeth: The Golden Age is Samantha Morton as Mary Stuart, Elizabeth's cousin, a queen in her own right and rival to the throne. Her performance brings a quiet ferocity to the film and imbues it with a missing gravity. On the other hand, the presence of Geoffrey Rush as the Queen's most trusted advisor Sir Francis Walsingham adds nothing to the movie. His character is completely, and unfortunately, underused.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age can be summarized quite nicely through one specific scene. In it the Queen, resplendent in one of her gowns, retorts to a threat made by a fuming Spanish ambassador. (It will feel familiar as it is featured quite prominently in the trailer. However, it doesn’t play out in the actual movie quite the same way.) She shows her strength for sure, but it is to the retreating back of the Spanish ambassador, making the whole gesture seem impotent and almost desperate. She is trying too hard, just like this movie.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is essentially an ornate character study. It shows the human side of the Queen -- her neediness, vanity, insecurity and vulnerability -- but it is nothing you don't already know. We've seen it all before in Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen, and to much better results.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Labels: movies, reviews

When this train pulls into the station, you may not want to board. One of the more anticipated films of the year, The Darjeeling Limited is just that -- limited. The movie is a disappointing road trip flick in which three spoiled, clueless, sorry saps travel by train through India while trying to absorb its "spiritual essence" via osmosis.

After he experiences a near death accident, the eldest of three brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson), organizes a spiritual journey through India's North East with his reluctant siblings, Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman). It's been a year since the tragic death of their father (and longer since they've seen their itinerant mother) and they have drifted apart. Hoping for a bonding experience, as outlined on their laminated itineraries, they take off on a mysterious journey aboard the Darjeeling Limited.

The movie is split into two parts -- the first being a 12-minute short entitled "Hotel Chevalier" starring Natalie Portman as Jack's horrid, stalker-like ex-girlfriend, which serves as a prequel, and part 2, The Darjeeling Limited. Although watching part 1 is not essential to understanding what happens in the second part, it does give a little back story. And director/writer Wes Anderson has specifically stated that he sees the two films as a whole and that they should be viewed together. This may just be an indulgence on the director's part as the prequel doesn't play that important a role.

Nonetheless, the beauty of a Wes Anderson film lays in the details and the camerawork; here it can be found in the sweeping shots, the strange and quirky characters, the tight angles, the misuse of Indian pharmaceuticals, the lush, eye-popping color palette and the trinkets and artwork inserted into the sets decorating them like Christmas trees. One thing's for sure: he knows how to construct a scene. Unfortunately, other than that, there's not much to this film. Directed by Anderson and written by himself and Roman Coppola, The Darjeeling Limited is like a very striking, sophisticated model who's completely hollow and dead inside.

By now, audiences and fans of Anderson's style, as seen in his films Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, are familiar with his work. But the director seems to be stuck in a rut; it's time to break free and try something different. Or at least expand upon the old formula. But that doesn’t happen here. The Darjeeling Limited is full of the same old shtick, and it gets old fast.

Nothing here is anything you haven't seen before but with better results. The actors come off as whiny rather than witty, the writing is dull and the hijinks are minimally interesting. The only thing going for The Darjeeling Limited is the direction, if that. What the movie essentially does is objectify a foreign culture and religion and go on way too long while doing it.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

Labels: movies, reviews

Something has obviously gone wrong in a movie when the viewers begin to lose sympathy for the main character. And something has gone horribly awry if the viewers begin to root for the character to fail or die or meet his/her comeuppance, especially when that character, as is the case in the Indian film Vanaja, a 15-year old girl who's been raped. It sounds unbearably harsh, but the title character, Vanaja, is so exasperating, bratty, spoiled and unlikable that you will find yourself completely unsympathetic to her plight.

Vanaja (Mamatha Bhukya) is a "young woman" (this is in quotes because while the production notes state that the character is 15 and she even says as much in the film, she looks like she's 11 going on 12. You would think that if you were portraying a girl in sexual situations that you would try to cast a more mature looking actress or at least make her SEEM older, but not here. Here writer/director Rajnesh Domalpalli makes her look as young as possible causing many a scene in which you will feel the need to wash out your eyeballs) in rural South India who aspires to be a dancer of Kuchipudi after watching a local troupe perform. As the only child of a poor, alcoholic widower steeped in debts, this goal seems out of reach.

But when the time comes for her to leave school in order to find work, she finagles a position as a maid in a well-respected and renowned dancer's household, Rama Devi (Urmila Dammannagari who is excellent here), who for some reason tolerates her impudent and rude behavior. She manipulates Rama Devi into teaching her how to dance; and she obviously has a natural talent for it. Between disrespecting the head cook, getting lessons, dealing with her drunken father and sexually toying with the local postboy, things are moving along.

But then Rama Devi's slimy, disgusting 23-year old son Shekhar (Karan Singh) comes back from America. Vanaja and he hit it off immediately, which is disturbing to say the least as he looks older than 23 and she looks prepubescent. However, things get taken too far after Vanaja brashly yet inadvertently humiliates him in front of his mother and their whole staff. What follows is a storyline that defies all logic.

The writing is far-fetched as is the story. The acting is excellent if the goal was to make viewers despise practically the entire cast. While Vanaja runs a little less than two hours, the movie feels like it's eight hours long. There were times that watching the film felt akin to psychological torture. Save yourself.


Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

Labels: movies, reviews

There have been many movies about treasure hunting, but none quite like this one. First time writer and director Mike Cahill brings us a sweet, quirky comedy about fathers and daughters, Spanish gold and, of course, Costco. Three very disparate things which pull King of California in three different directions.

Responsible and mature, 16-year old Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood) works at McDonald's, struggles to pay the bills and lives completely on her own, that is until her father, Charlie (Michael Douglas), is released from the mental institution he's been holed up in for the past two years. It becomes immediately clear that, perhaps, he had been let out a tad too early. Especially when he reveals his quest to find a stash of missing treasure -- gold doubloons lost by a Father Torres in the 17th century.

Miranda is exasperated and disappointed yet indulges her father as it's the only means she has to get closer to him. Winner of the Worst Father of the Year award, Charlie's obsession leads them to Costco, where X marks the spot. Along with some help from his old friend Pepper (Willis Burks II), the three put their foolhardy plan into motion. And what seems like a father-daughter comedy turns, oddly, into a caper flick, making the film seem as bi-polar as Charlie himself.

Douglas does a good job of being a character who's completely disjointed from reality. The few scenes of him doing his "crazy eyes" are worth the entire film. But he is no where as near as good as he was in Wonder Boys. Likewise, Wood's performance here does not match up to her outstanding turn in 2003's Thirteen. She seems flat and lifeless at times.

Of course, that could also be the script. It's difficult to be off-beat and quirky and still retain a degree of character complexity and depth. Elements that are just plain sad and pathetic aren't given the sense of levity they deserve. Furthermore, the movie is all over the place. There's a jazz motif, a dramatic back story, the issue of gentrification and development, a history lesson, and familial dysfunction and none are explored to satisfaction. While the shots are framed well and the direction is interesting, King of California is too reliant on voiceover, which takes away from the film's momentum. And most people prefer their treasure hunts to be exciting.


Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Published on SF Station.com here.

Labels: movies, reviews

When Seattle-based customer care specialist Todd Anderson's (Josh Hamilton) smug boss tells him that he is firing his entire department and shipping him off to India to, in effect, train his own replacement, it is done with an almost malicious glee. Little does he know that he has just handed his employee a gift. Whether he is ready for it or not is a different issue.

At first Todd is clearly unhappy with the situation. He's disheveled, has a bad case of the runs and is being forced to stay in a country he knows nothing about. There is, of course, the obligatory sequence of scenes showcasing all the cultural differences Todd has to suffer through. Most films turn these scenes into campy, slightly insulting reductions.
But here they are done just right. And the differences are not all the obvious ones seen over and over again; for example, the habit of eating with one's right hand instead of the left; language miscommunications, and violations of personal space.

But Todd, which everyone pronounces as "toad", perseveres. His arrogant attitude diminishes as he gets more and more exposed to the country and his co-workers at the call center outside of Mumbai where he is doing his training. Some of the best and most endearing scenes occur during these training sessions.

It’s hard to imagine that the vast majority of the cast is "unknown" except for Todd, Asha (Ayesha Dharker), Todd's co-worker with whom he has instant chemistry, and Purohit N. Virajnarianan (Asif Basra), his replacement. The acting is right on and does not seem forced at all; except for a few tentative scenes with Josh Hamilton as Todd at the beginning of the film, which make you truly realize that this is indeed an indie film and not a big-budget Hollywood spectacle.

And thank god for that, as Outsourced is a little gem in the sea of highly marketed Fall films. It is both engaging and funny in a way that sets it apart from other movies this year. However, while the cultural elements are all on par, there is one plot turn which is wholly unbelievable -- that of the relationship between Todd and Asha, which seems neither genuine nor believable. With one fell swoop, the entire film's credibility is called into question. Why did co-writer/director John Jeffcoat tack on their relationship like that? By doing so he introduces a whole slew of sticky issues: exotification, interracial relationships, class dynamics, gender inequities, etc.

Nonetheless, Outsourced accomplishes what it sets out to do by taking a "hot topic" like outsourcing and turning it into a heartfelt cultural comedy. It could very well be the sleeper hit of 2007.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Published on SF Station.com here.

Labels: movies, reviews