Change Your Image
mcravener
Reviews
The Girl (2012)
An Emotional Journey Beyond the Borderlands
I was expecting "The Girl" to be mired in the stereotypical contrast of poverty-stricken Mexico vs. the wealthy United States with the protagonist Ashley (Abbie Cornish) coming to make a living off the misery of others, in a manner similar to that of a drug-dealer.
My low expectations were thankfully confounded. Instead I was pulled into the evolution of the protagonist as she gets too close to the people who want to cross the border to be an effectual cold-hearted "coyote".
Abbie Cornish's portrayal of a poor, white woman bred on low-grade racism is totally credible. But this is only a starting point for her character, as she travels on an emotional journey in Mexico which comes to mirror her life in Texas, but allows her to become something more than she was.
Laid (2011)
The Office meets Ally McBeal with a sex drive
A first review of this Australian series, which I feel deserves some attention after seeing the first episode: "Laid" is situated in an environment something like The Office, but with more of a protagonist focus. The series is about Roo, a 29 year old single girl who works at a product marketing firm, desperately searching for Mr Right and the situations she finds herself in by doing so.
Roo is an offbeat kind of person, never quite fitting in at work, never quite sure if what she says is totally off the wall or if it is the current acceptable way of thinking.
The humor is very on the mark and quite racy compared to the more normative and streamlined US TV series, and the main character Roo (Alison Bell) comes off as both real and also very funny.
So hoping that the series keeps its format...
8/10
How Do You Know (2010)
A well-developed rom-com
I guess you can call "How Do You Know" a rom-com, though the perspective is a bit wider than a standard boy-meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl story (or the reverse).
The film provides a warm and humorous take on all the random things that affect life from one moment to the next and how we attempt to handle them. The protagonists are both subjected to sudden hardships; the softball player Lisa has just been cut from the team and fired CEO George is facing indictment. Both are trying to redefine their lives and climb out of the hole they have just found themselves in.
This film is not the kind that constantly has you on the edge of your seat, but it does connect with you both seamlessly and without effort due to Brooks' solid script and the on the mark acting.
Kudos to Jack Nicholson as George's moral midget (sic) father and Owen Wilson as the playboy who wants a relationship without necessarily sacrificing anything.
So if you want a film that rings true and has you smiling an inward smile of recognition throughout I think you will really enjoy this.
8 out of 10
The Marc Pease Experience (2009)
Heartwarming
To balance the comment from Dec 10, I watched the film on its own merits. I must say I found 'The Marc Pease Experience' enjoyable. Jason Schwartzman did well in portraying the boy-man stuck in fear and in life, but who finally finds voice and his way. I liked Ben Stiller's schlocky affectations as the 'virtuoso' high school music director. Jason Schwartzman did fine with his role. The characters were slightly formulaic, perhaps, but the acting worked and you were pulled into the plot and movie. Predictable is not always a bad thing. The film was light-hearted but still had some human dilemmas you could emphasize with. All in all this was a pleasant and heartwarming film.
Franklyn (2008)
An elegant saga on human despair
I've seen a few movies similar to this, using sci-fi/fantasy imagery to portray an internal state of mind. Too intellectual for some I guess, and it definitely goes beyond 'what you see is what you get'.
This movie worked for me. Some have been critical that the characters in the film were not interesting enough. I on the other hand think the director/writer Gerald McMorrow successfully walked the thin line of saying just enough, enabling the actors to fill in the gaps and create personas rather than cookie cut-outs. The characters were memorable and real, responding to slightly surreal situations in two worlds that were both out of kilter with our own. The movie's alternate realities drew me in and kept me interested, and the eventual juxtaposition of both did so even more.
This is a smartly made movie - with very convincing CGI for the fantasy world combined with an almost indie sense of the intimate and human in the alternate world closer to our own.
Well this review is not much of a blow-by-blow synopsis, others can do that, but if you appreciate strong acting, and an imaginative script, I don't think you will be disappointed.
7/10
Crashing (2007)
About the dilemma of living life, or simulating life (9/10)
Geez it's been a while since I've written a review but I've been in a rut seeing action-prison-bad-guy-does-good genre flicks that usually end up boring me after 20 minutes. The last film that actually amused me was the latest Star Trek (2009). It's been a dry spell when it comes to movies that go beyond face value - I kid you not...
Crashing (2007) had me interested from the starting credit music - a quirky, sparse little woodwind theme that would be repeated throughout the film.
The film is about a the travails of a writer, Richard McMurray (Campbell Scott) stumbling over himself and the roadblock of first novel success. Comfortable, complacent and frustrated by eternally trying to repeat the formula of his first book.
Richard's life gets ripped apart when his wife kicks him out of the house and freezes his bank accounts. At a creative writing presentation he tells of his writer's block and new sense of heady liberation due to circumstances beyond his control, and gets invited to crash at the apartment of a female student. And so Richard ends up sleeping on the couch of coeds Kristen and Jacqueline, provided that he critiques their own writing endeavors.
Much credit to Izabella Miko and Lizzy Caplan, who nicely contrast each other as the muse twins of dark and light. I've been a fan of Campbell Scott since Roger Dodger (2002) and here he is just as amusingly self-deprecating.
It's an engrossing movie that will pull you in as the author and two young girls intertwine in life and in fiction.
Home Room (2002)
Brilliant
Home Room deals with a Columbine-like high-school shooting but rather than hashing over the occurrence itself the film portrays the aftermath and what happened to the survivors, their trauma, guilt and denial.
*Spoilers* The shooting itself is treated as a foregone conclusion, with no action footage other than the reaction of an almost teenage SWAT commando after shooting the high school killer. The film has three protagonists; the detective investigating the crime of which no guilty parties are left to convict and two teenage girls surviving the incident, played by a very young Erika Christensen and Busy Philipps.
The two girls having nothing in common besides the shooting, are put together because of it and the drama ensues.
Erika Christensen, though only 24 has been around the block so much that film viewers are pretty much acquainted with her solid and reliable style of acting. Busy Philipps, three years older than Christensen and altogether unknown to me, blew me away with her overwhelming dramatic strength and screen presence. This girl was the part.
It's a great movie and it connects to you with its intimate focus on the fragile yet growing relationship between the two traumatized girls. Gus van Sant's Elephant (2003) though good, seems almost superficial and paltry compared to Home Room when it comes to dramatic flair and acting. What I can see this film got very little screen time and exposure - so much more a loss for a traumatized America.
Ten out of Ten
Ali (2001)
Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee - NOT
I was looking forward to this film, especially after reading some of the reviews here, and had hopes of getting an idea of Muhammad Ali the Man beyond Ali the Icon, but came out with neither. The film covers Ali's first world pro heavyweight title fight against Sonny Liston in '64 and ends in The Rumble in the Jungle against Foreman in '74, with the Vietnam controversy in the middle. Turbulent times which the director Michael Mann unsuccessfully portrays.
Some reviewers here have applauded Will Smith's portrayal of the charismatic, dynamic and quick-thinking boxer. I can't say Will Smith did a bad job, but the film worked against his efforts. The film has too many characters, and too many characters without personality. When you place the world champion boxer side to side with other icons like Malcolm X, Don King, Howard Cosell and Martin Luther King some personality description has to give. Unfortunately it turned out to be all the protagonists lost - at times Mohammad Ali the person was no more than a lackluster cut-out figure around which the other icons of the time revolved.
The cinematography was sombre, dark and lethargic. The musical score is similarly a heavy-handed monotonous base, indicating a misplaced mood of impending doom (!). The director Michael Mann has used this type of scoring to great effect in films like Manhunter (1986) and Heat (1995) - here it simply is formulaic and confusing. OK so the director wanted to describe a dark period in American history with race riots and the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King but this was never fully explored. There is also a lack of emphasis on boxing in the film, which would be OK if it was replaced with a new and interesting point-of-view, but here it just was sacrificed to no end.
It's hard for me to recommend this film to anyone. Someone new to Ali's greatness would never get it from the movie. Someone who has more than a fleeting acquaintance with Ali's life will be confused by how the period of 1968-1974 is misrepresented.
I have to agree with director Spike Lee's comment - how can it be possible to make a boring movie about one of the most exciting figures of the 20th century?
New York Waiting (2006)
A brave production that paid off
The cast was well-composed, consisting of talented new faces, the acting bravely filmed at close range, especially considering the (I'm sure) extremely restricted time allocated to make this film for $500,000. Some pans, cuts and single camera shots didn't work out, but the all-out intimacy of the close-ups paid off, and the acting made the movie.
And yes although the picture does have a scenario similar to Richard Linklaters, New York Waiting is not as glib. Paradoxically by providing the viewer with little biographical background on the characters Sidney, Amy and Coreen, their longing and sometimes misdirected need came sharper into focus than "Before Sunrise", and was in its nakedness more akin to Michael Schaeffer's "Fall" (1997).
Finally, an accolade for the original choices made in the soundtrack, which smoothly meshed with the film.