What was the last movie you saw at the theaters?

I saw Jarhead today and I don't know what I can say, you said it so well.

Jarhead trailer: A

Jarhead movie: C+

__________________
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

Nine Lives (2005 - Rodrigo García)

Nine ten-minute vignettes centered on nine different women. For anyone who is a fan of the short story form in literature, this is the cinematic equivalent. Some of the stories in Nine Lives intertwine here and there, but none of them are really connected narratives. Each is a separate piece, and in those brief glimpses of each life the audience is treated to a range of experience and emotions. The nine women are Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo), Diana (Robin Wright Penn), Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton), Sonia (Holly Hunter), Samantha (Amanda Seyfried), Lorna (Amy Brenneman), Ruth (Sissy Spacek), Camille (Kathy Baker) and Maggie (Glenn Close), and some of the actors playing with them in their moments are Jason Isaacs, Ian McShane, Molly Parker, Joe Mantegna, William Fichtner, Stephen Dillane, Aidan Quinn, Mary Kay Place, Miguel Sandoval and Dakota Fanning. The entire ensemble is good to great. Each sequence is a single continuous steadycam shot that stays almost exclusively with the character at the center of each story, adding to the feeling of voyeristic intimacy. There is no one unifying theme, we are simply allowed transitory connections with nine varied women in 21st century America. You'll be surprised just how finely and subtly drawn these characters are in ten-minute portions, which is a testament to the script, the acting and the filmmaking.

I won't bother going into each of the plots, as if you know anything about short stories the "plot" isn't usually paramount anyway. The only one of the lives that didn't really interest me and came off as much too contrived was the final piece with Close and Fanning. My favorites are probably Diana's (Robin Wright Penn), Lorna's (Amy Brenneman), Camille's (Kathy Baker) and Sonia's (Holly Hunter), but each viewer will have those episodes that they connect more or less with. That's one of the joys of a movie like Nine Lives, that there's something in there for just about everyone.

GRADE: B+

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Who told you

__________________

Shopgirl (2005 - Anand Tucker)

This is a faithful adaptation of Steve Martin's novella of the same name, where we meet Mirabelle Buttersfield and the two men who will be he suitors. Mirabelle (Claire Danes) is a quiet withdrawn young woman somewhat lost in the middle of Los Angeles. She works at the glove counter in Saks Fifth Avenue - not the busiest or hippest counter in the store. And night she returns to her little apartment, sometimes making drawings, most times not doing much of anything. Enter Jeremy (Jason Shawartzman), a hipster doofus who introduces himself at the laundromat. Mirabelle agrees to go out on a couple dates with him, but while his quirky energy is interesting it isn't really what she's been waiting for. Then enter Ray Porter (Steve Martin), a signifigantly older man who sees her in Saks and charms her into a date. She is hesitant and careful, but also flattered, and almost immediately she decides to choose Ray.

What follows could have been a bunch of sitcomy gags and misunderstandings, but instead Shopgirl is a quiet and melancholy character piece much more interested in examining the emotional choices we make in our lives than in going for broad laughs. Danes is the title character and truly the star of the movie. I've never been overly impressed with Danes on screen. Her work on "My So-Called Life" was good teenager stuff, but except for Igby Goes Down I hadn't really seen her expand much past that as an actress. But Claire is very good in Shopgirl, defintiely the best role she's been given and she makes the most of it, playing the curious, fragile and resilient character perfectly note for note. Schwartzman is effortlessly engaging as the space cadet who decides to grow up a bit, and he has an impeccable comic timing. Steve Martin, who adapted his own book, gives himself a difficult role in Ray. He is attractive and charming, though to a more subdued degree than the casual fan may be accustomed to. But the tricky part about Ray's character is he's kind of a bastard. The novella and thankfully the movie too present him as a bit of a creep, which is a delicate balance to maintain and must be revealed in subtle ways. Which isn't to say Ray is a villain either, but he's not the simple character his type might have been in lesser hands.

Shopgirl is being sold as a romantic comedy and I suppose, in a way, it is. But apart from the first section of the film where Mirabelle and Jeremey meet and a very amusing sidetrack in the gallery toward the end of the movie, there isn't much "comedy". As for the "romance" aspect, it isn't idealized but presented with the hurt that often accompanies matters of the heart. This is really a character piece that plays it straight, and the underlying sadness of the three main characters is presented accurately and not used as plot points to get to jokes. This is director Anand Tucker's first feature since 1998's Hilary & Jackie, the biopic on the du Pré sisters starring Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths. That was a pretty heavy drama, but in a way it made him an excellent choice to shepherd Shopgirl, to make sure the more somber and muted tones wouldn't be excised in favor of slight comedy.

If you go in looking for a quiet meeting with a few well-realized characters, Shopgirl is going to be a delightful excursion.


GRADE: B

Wow Holden, after reading your review I was expecting a higher grade for Shopgirl. Never the less it sounds great.

__________________
"Like all dreamers, Steven mistook disenchantment for truth."

I don't think a "B" is a bad grade at all. I really liked the novella and I really liked the movie, but I wouldn't say either is a great masterwork. Shopgirl is a good piece, but while it all works and does everything it aims to I'd find it difficult to raise it to the level of something like Lost in Translation, which has similar themes and even a similar tone but for me does more with the material, takes some chances and charts into some territory that Shopgirl doesn't. Compared to a lifeless mess like The Weather Man, Shopgirl is quite amazing and ever so much more satisfying. But while I definitely recommend it I don't think it's going to blow anyway away either. Comparing Shopgirl to a couple of the other movies I saw this week, Nine Lives and The Squid & the Whale, both of those are a bit more substantial. It's not a huge margin of difference, but a difference just the same. A "B" is a solid if gentle grade for a solid and gentle film.



But that's just me. Your mileage may vary, of course.

I see. I never meant that a B was bad grade but I guess I was more exited about the description of the content of the film than the opinion contained therein.

I watched the Weather Man a couple days ago. I thought it to be suprisingly good. Perhaps cause it go hammered in the papers I was expecting alot worse. There were a few scenes in there that were just hilarious.

Excellent reviews, as always Holds. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

__________________

Jarhead could have been much better than it was. Parts of it were good but I was expecting more commentary from Swofford. Both pro-war and anti-war viewers could watch this film and not be offended. Because it never really made a statement. It was more like a travelogue in the lives of young recruits. Before March, 2003; that might have been enough. But passions about war are high again. It's not a time for travelogues.

A game was released entitled Shattered Union. It involves a separation of the 48 states into warring factions.

Religion, No. Culture, No. Race, No. Oppression, not really.

It is based off of regions, yes, that's right, the divisions are based off of regions.

My point, the "liberal" media watches too much Bill O Reilly and is therefore afraid to say anything against conservatives. Bill O Reilly is a big irish ****er, so you don't **** with him.

But, watching anything nowadays would have you believing that we live in a world plagued with endless reverse racism and liberal tomfoolery.

I believe that happens somewhat, but on a much smaller scale than many people want you to believe.

Ultimately, Jarhead would not be political because 51% voted for it in 2004.

Yea.

I'm not really sure what any of that has to do with the post you quoted, but this part...

...is confusing me. Did you mean to say that Jarhead isn't liberal? I don't think "political" is the correct word. You can't check the "political" candidate on the ballot over some other candidate, because they're all in politics.

While I haven't seen Jarhead, I think what Twain was trying to say was that the film didn't really take a stance on whether war is good or bad or justified or unwarranted or whatever, but rather an "it happens" kind of stance (which is more of an observation than anything); while passages from the book that were posted in another thread show how the book DID take a stance on war, and what it means, etc. And because the film took such a cautious (or maybe just indifferent) approach to illustrating the character's experiences, it didn't make the same powerful statements that it could have made had it been a little more confident and open (like the book it was adapted from).

It has nothing to do with whether or not a war movie tries to make you believe that certain injustices are going on. The book was written by Swofford himself, and he conveys his take based on his experiences (which, from what I gather, actually made some kind of statement). If a film doesn't say something, then why watch it? Why care about the characters or the plot or the ending? The best films make you think, make you confront an idea you may or may not have previously considered, and challenge you to look deeper - not only into the film's voice (that is, what it wants to say) - but also into yourself.

That is exactly what I had expected from viewing the trailer and why I crossed it off my must see list. It didn't feel like there was gonna be much to it.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005 - Shane Black)

In 1987 and 1988, with the huge successes of Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, a new breed of action movie was born. One of the men responsible for that was Shane Black, the screenwriter of the original Lethal Weapon. I'm not saying this new Hollywood fascination with the action movie was such a great thing, as goodness knows most of the many dozens flicks that followed became less and less interesting and inspired, and eventually the genre played itself out, more or less. Shane Black had a hand in that too, as the screenwriter of The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and The Last Action Hero. In those latter scripts, Black tried to playfully deconstruct this new brand of movie he had helped birth, but while they work here and there and a few of the ideas are clever, ultimately they all failed (to various degrees), and instead of a wry comment on the genre they simply became more noise at the tail end of the boom.

Some eighteen years after Lethal Weapon, Shane decided to take one more crack at that deconstruction...and this time he succeeds. Big time. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a funny and smart valentine to those movies that amuses even when it is pissing on their corpse (including the very funny scene where somebody literally pisses on a corpse).



Not only that, but it gives two showcase roles to a couple actors who's careers need them. Robert Downey Jr. is frippin' hysterical as the small-time thief mistaken for an actor mistaken for a private detective who comes to Los Angeles and almost immediately finds himself at the center of an amped-up Chandleresque mystery. Whatever his self-destructive real-life woes, Downey has always delighted me on the screen, and this his his best role and his best work since Wonder Boys (2000)...and this time he's most definitely the star and in nearly every scene. Val Kilmer, who has been doing some decent work this century but also trolling in some real garbage, is almost as wonderful playing an openly homosexual private eye who earns extra money as the technical advisor on movie projects.

The plotting has nods to Chandler and pulps like Jim Thompson, if the milieu is by way of Tony Scott, and it's nothing but fun every step of the way. Each day is a chapter in our story, and each chapter has the same title as a Raymond Chandler novel ("Trouble is My Business", "The Lady in the Lake", "The Little Sister", "Farewell, My Lovely"). But this is a bit of self conscious fun where the plot truly don't matter all that much, an exercise in cinematic style where you know it's a movie that knows it's a movie and enjoy every frame of it anyway. While this self parody and deconstruction didn't work in The Last Action Hero, it is a positive hoot in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. It's a tricky line to walk, between clever and annoying or between ingenous and tedious, but Black and co. run right down that line, guns blazing, wisecracks galore, bodies in tow, and somehow manage to stay on the correct side of that line scene after scene.

So damn much fun. And for all you fine folks in the midwest, forgive all the foul language and just enjoy the ride.


GRADE: B+

Thanks Pikey, I love Robert, I will go and see this one when it comes here.

__________________
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

I got to see a screening of Crash at a theater in Hollywood the other evening, followed by a question and answer with the writer/director Paul Haggis and co-writer Bobby Moresco.

__________________
Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

My last movie was.....Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. What a great movie that was

When reading the diegisis of kiss kiss bang bang I have noticed that it seems like the best movie ever.

But yet it gets a B+?

I can't imagine what kind of verbs the A+ movies get.

But it was a good review.

That must have been interesting

It's far and away the best action movie/detective thriller/comedy/satire out there. And yes, as great as it is it only rates a B+ from me.

But thanks for reading, it means so much to me.