Four Movie Reviews Sunday, Feb 3 2008 

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I haven’t had a chance to review some of the movies PJ and I have seen lately, so I thought I might catch up by composing quick reviews of them.

There Will Be Blood

Last weekend we saw There Will Be Blood starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a prospector turned oil magnate in early twentieth-century California. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, this movie is amazing — it definitely lives up to its critical acclaim. Day-Lewis is a powerhouse as the increasingly vindictive and malevolent Daniel Plainview, a man of raw grit who is committed to succeeding at all costs. In the movie’s opening section, we see him injured in an accidental cave-in while prospecting in a hole in the ground. Despite his broken leg, he manages to recover a hunk of silver and literally scoot his way across the desert and back to the nearest place to sell the precious metal. Here’s the trailer:

When one of his workers dies in an oil drilling accident, Plainview adopts the man’s son as his own, using him to swindle families out of their rightful share of oil profits by casting himself as a widowed family man. When his “son” is later injured, we see both Plainview’s seeming love for the boy but also the limits of that love.

Plainview’s antagonist throughout much of the film is a local evangelical preacher, played by Paul Dano, who really should have also been nominated for an Academy Award. He’s excellent in this part, especially in the film’s climactic ending, a confrontation scene between him and Plainview.

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Atonement: A Review Sunday, Jan 20 2008 

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In preparation for the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees on Tuesday, PJ and I saw Atonement today. As with 2005’s Pride and Prejudice, director Joe Wright has crafted a beautiful adaptation of a much loved novel. This time, Keira Knightley, is joined by James McAvoy, Brenda Blethyn, and Vanessa Redgrave. Here’s the trailer:

McAvoy plays Robbie Turner, the son of the housekeeper to the wealthy Tallis family. Having won a scholarship to school, Turner then went to Cambridge at the Tallises’s expense. While this beneficence is admirable, the family’s true colors come out when Robbie is accused of a terrible crime by Briony, the youngest Tallis daughter.

Briony is played by Saoirse Ronan, who does any amazing job as the precocious girl who mistakenly thinks she understands the adult relationships around her. The first act follows Briony’s rather fractured witnessing of three separate events, which leads her to conclude that Robbie is a “sex maniac,” as she tells another character. This conclusion leads to her accusation against him. Five years later, she has a completely different reading of these puzzle pieces, one that forces her to confront her previous actions and at least attempt to atone for them.

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Sweeney Todd: A Review Friday, Dec 21 2007 

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I just got back from seeing Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Johnny Depp plays Sweeney, and Helena Bonham Carter plays Mrs. Lovett. Having been exiled from England for fifteen years for a crime he didn’t commit, Todd returns to London seeking revenge on the man who unjustly sent him away, Judge Turpin, played by Alan Rickman. He sets up his barber shop above Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop and guarantees his clients the closest shave they’ve ever had. Here’s a taste, part of the scene in which Mrs. Lovett figures out what to do with the bodies:

Sweeney Todd is getting lots of good reviews and quite a lot of Oscar talk. It’s definitely well deserved. I loved it!

Let’s start with Depp: he’s perfect for this role. His voice is surprisingly strong and appealing, and he gives Todd a real sense of anguish. Maybe because it’s Depp, but you can see why the other characters, Mrs. Lovett for example, really like him. His Todd has soul, and this is definitely Depp’s best performance to date. He’s been nominated for two Academy Awards in recent years; Sweeney Todd should be his third.

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Juno: A Review Tuesday, Dec 18 2007 

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While we were in NYC last week and needed to get out of the pelting icy rain on Thursday, PJ and I saw Juno, the new film starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and Allison Janney. Here’s the trailer:

Juno was written by Diablo Cody and was directed by Jason Reitman. It’s about a 16-year-old girl, Juno, played by Page, who gets pregnant after she sleeps with her adorably dorky boyfriend, played by Cera. After considering an abortion, she decides to go through with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption. Before she even tells her parents that she’s pregnant, she finds the right couple to adopt the child: Garner’s uptight Vanessa and Bateman’s cool Mark. The film then follows Juno through her pregnancy as various comic complications ensue.

Juno has been getting a lot of great press and even some Oscar talk. I think it’s all well deserved, since this is a really good movie. Page is perfect as the 16-year-old who’s too smart for her own good. What I especially like about her performance is that she balances Juno’s innate intelligence with typical teenage stupidity. Juno doesn’t have all the answers, even if she does have a few of them.

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Back from New York Saturday, Dec 15 2007 

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PJ and I got back from NYC yesterday afternoon. We had a great time — even better than last year. I’ll blog about the specifics over the next week, but I thought that I would briefly summarize the trip here first.

We arrived in the city on Monday around 2 pm. We saw our first semi-celebrity in the Columbus airport — John Kasich, the former Republican representative from Ohio. He was on our flight to New York. After we arrived in the city, we checked into our hotel, which was in Hell’s Kitchen in midtown Manhattan. The weather was a little cold and drizzly, but it was fun just to see some of the now familiar sites, like Times Square and Rockefeller Center. We ate dinner at Yum Yum 3, a Thai restaurant on 9th avenue. After dinner, we saw Things We Want, an Off-Broadway play by Jonathan Marc Sherman and directed by Ethan Hawke. (I’ll review each of the plays later.)

On Tuesday, we ate breakfast at Pigalle, the only restaurant we ate at last year and returned to this trip. We then visited the Frick Collection. We also walked over to the Lincoln Center to look at it. We briefly considered getting tickets for an opera but ultimately decided not to — we were not familiar enough with the opera that was showing. We later found out that we could have seen Placido Domingo if we had gone to the opera. Oh well. Next time we’ll check out the opera before we go and maybe even plan our trip around seeing one. We ate lunch at P. J. Clarke’s across the street from the Center. In the afternoon, we went to the TKTS booth to get tickets for Spring Awakening. It took a lot less time than we thought it would to get the tickets, so we had to find something else to do for a couple of hours. We decided to walk downtown. We walked down Fifth Avenue and walked by the Empire State Building (we went up it last year) and looked around Macy’s. We had dinner at the Blue Point Creperie. Spring Awakening was great. We saw B. D. Wong in the audience; he and a companion sat a couple of rows ahead of us. He was our third celebrity of that day: we also saw John Tartaglia (so cute) walking in midtown and Bob Saget (also cute) arriving at the theater for his performance in The Drowsy Chaperone.

Wednesday started with breakfast at the Cosmic Diner. We the took the subway to the Whitney Museum. We had misunderstood when it opened and got there an hour too early. So, we walked over to the American Museum of Natural History. We then went to Bloomingdale’s. I wanted to buy a new pair of underwear, and the weather that day was so bizarre — kind of cold and kind of warming up — so I also decided to buy another jacket (a fleece) to wear. After doing a bit of shopping, we ate lunch (at The Brasserie 360) and then went back to the Whitney. The Seafarer was our top choice for a play that night, and we were glad we got tickets. We had dinner at a restaurant called Meson Sevilla on 46th Street and the went to the play. (Again, more about that later.) We only saw one celebrity on Wednesday: Michael Feinstein, who was walking in the Upper West Side.

Thursday was our last day in New York. The weather was supposed to be dicey — snow, slush, and icy rain. As PJ keeps saying, it felt like someone was dousing us with buckets of ice cold water most of the day. We walked over to Bryant Park and watched people ice skate as the snow started to switch over to icy rain. We then went to the Morgan Library. The weather just seemed to get worse — colder but wetter. So we decided to have lunch someplace warm and easy — Red Lobster in Times Square. We also decided to get out of the cold by seeing a movie, Juno. I’ll review it too sometime this week. We went back to our hotel room to warm up afterwards, and then ate dinner at Kyma, a Greek restaurant, and then went to see August: Osage County, an excellent new play by Tracy Letts. The full review will come later, but I can’t help but say right now that it is brilliant! It’s a great, great play. Our only celebrity that day was Jack Wetherall, who played Uncle Vic on the American version of Queer as Folk. He’s surprisingly sexy (PJ’s words), considering he played such a frail and sickly character on the series.

Friday morning we got up at 5:30 and hailed a cab to the airport. Despite the previous day’s weather, our flight was on time and we got back to Columbus in time for lunch and a little Christmas shopping. It was a great trip. Unfortunately, we probably won’t be able to go next December. Whenever we do go again, my goal is for us to get out of Manhattan. In the meantime, I’ll spend my time fantasizing about another week in New York.

 

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: A Review Saturday, Dec 8 2007 

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Yesterday PJ and I saw Sidney Lumet’s new film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, and Marisa Tomei. Here’s the trailer:

BtDKYD is about two brothers who are both in dire financial straits. Hoffman’s Andy is a drug addict who’s been stealing from his corporate account in order to finance his lifestyle and habit. Hawke’s Hank is Andy’s younger, ne’er do well brother who owes three months of child support to his ex-wife. Andy figures out a way to solve all of their problems: they just need to knock off their parents’ suburban jewelry store, which he argues will be a victimless crime due to their parents’ insurance. Not surprisingly, the heist goes terribly wrong, sending the lives of all of the characters into a chaos.

Let’s start with what I like about this movie: Albert Finney, who plays the two men’s domineering father. He plays the most complex character in the movie. His role is really limited to two substantive scenes, but he’s brilliant in both. His character also has the widest emotional arc, despite the limited screen time. He’s really great in this role.

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No Country for Old Men: A Review Monday, Dec 3 2007 

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In keeping with the Texas theme of our trip, PJ and I saw the Coen Brothers’ new film, No Country for Old Men, on Thanksgiving day. It stars Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, and Kelly Macdonald and is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Here’s the trailer:

No Country for Old Men is set in Texas in 1980. The movie starts with Brolin’s character, Llewelyn Moss, accidentally stumbling across what looks like a massacre, the results of a drug deal gone wrong in the desert . Investigating the scene more closely, Llewelyn eventually finds a leather case full of money, at least a couple million dollars. When he takes the money, it sets off a violent chain of events that, despite his best efforts, he cannot control or stop.

NCfOM is a great movie, certainly one of the year’s best. Jones plays the local sheriff, Ed Tom Bell. His character grounds the film in common sense and serves as the audience’s way into the film. He also serves as the film’s narrator of sorts. This character isn’t a stretch for Jones; in fact, he’s played this kind of role several times. But he is perfect in this part and watching him is like sitting in on a master-class for actors. This film wouldn’t work if Bell came across as hokey or cocky. Jones imbues him with a fundamental sense of morality that reflects a kind of everyman’s quest to make sense of the senseless world around him.

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American Gangster: A Review Sunday, Nov 4 2007 

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Yesterday I saw American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Washington plays a Harlem drug lord, a real-life figure, Frank Lucas, who uses the caskets of dead soldiers from Vietnam to smuggle heroin into the country. He then sells it, undiluted, for less than other drug dealers sell their diluted drugs. Crowe plays the ethical cop, Richie Roberts, who is appointed to clean up the local drug problem by finding and bringing down the men, like Lucas, who control the drug trade.

It’s the first big Oscar contender (as defined by the various Oscar predictions sites that I read: The Oscar Igloo, Everything Oscar, Awards Daily, Oscar Race 2007, and The Envelope — ok, so I read a lot of Oscar blogs; I’m a gay man: what do you expect?!) that’s come to Athens. PJ and I try to see all of the Oscar contenders each year, and the race is now on.

I liked American Gangster. Washington is great in his role. I am a big fan of his early work — I love Glory and earlier this year PJ introduced me to St Elsewhere, which I had never watched before. He’s always good, even if the film he’s in isn’t, but he’s great in American Gangster. Lucas is both a level-headed businessman who loves his family and a cold-blooded psychopath whose fuse can blow in a split second. Washington handles both aspects of the role with aplomb. I especially liked that he doesn’t overact the violent moments. Even though the character is out of control in these scenes, Washington isn’t. Watching him in this movie is watching a master craftsman.

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Teaching Tom Jones Friday, Oct 19 2007 

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This week I finished teaching Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, which I had never taught before. In fact, I’d never finished reading it before, which is one of the reasons I decided to teach it this term — what better way to force myself to read it!?

Because the novel is so long, some 800 pages, we spent three weeks (fully a third of our class) on it. Now that I’ve finished it, I have to say I see why this book is reputed to be one of the great novels of English literature. It’s a hoot! Parts of his are hilariously funny, and (maybe because it is so long) it encapsulates just about every major issue that a teacher would want to bring up about mid-eighteenth-century literature and culture. I also think a good number of my students enjoyed reading it. Not all of them, of course, but the ones who clearly read all (or most of it) seemed to enjoy it and have interesting things to say about it.

Tom Jones DVDWhen I decided to teach it, I also decided to show my class a miniseries version of the novel as we read. The dvd is distributed by A&E and was originally a BBC production. This production stars Max Beesley as Tom and Samantha Morton as Sophia. They both do an excellent job in the roles. Beesley is very good at playing the manslut with the heart of gold, and Morton is great as the ever put-upon Sophia (but she’s always great in everything she does!).

One of my students commented on the production’s costumes when we finished it on Wednesday; she really liked them. I totally agreed. This miniseries gives its audience a great feel for eighteenth-century clothing, manners, houses, etc.

To finish my mini-review, everything about this production is top-notch. I also really liked James D’Arcy as Blifil, Lindsay Duncan as Lady Bellaston, and Brian Blessed as Squire Western. All of the casting was perfect, but these three actors were especially great in their roles. So, I’m glad we watched it.

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Two Days in Paris: A Review Thursday, Oct 4 2007 

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Over the weekend, I saw Two Days in Paris, a film written, directed, and starring Julie Delpy. Here’s the trailer:

The movie is about Marion, played by Delpy, and Jack, played by Adam Goldberg, who spend two days in Paris on their way back home to New York after a vacation in Venice. Marion is French and grew up in Paris. She is therefore naturally looking forward to showing Jack the city and introducing him to her friends.

Jack, who is an interior designer by trade, is a rather difficult person even under the best of circumstances, but meeting Marion’s too familiar parents is just the beginning of his troubles in Paris. It turns out that Marion has remained friends with many of her exes, and every time she and Jack go anywhere they inevitably run into one of them. What first seems a funny coincidence quickly becomes the bane of Jack’s existence, especially when he starts to wonder just how friendly Marion remains with one ex in particular.

I thought this movie was delightful, but I have to admit that I’m a total sucker for Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, and movies set in Paris. So, this was cinematic feast for me. I laughed throughout he film — it’s hilarious: Marion’s mother walks in on them while they’re having sex, for example, and Marion seems to think nothing of it. Similarly, we learn early in the movie that Marion has given her family a copy of a picture of Jack nude with a balloon tied around his penis (Adam Goldberg is HOT, by the way, in this picture!) And I laughed until it hurt during a scene in which Marion’s cat, who has grown rather stout in the two weeks that Marion and Jack were in Italy, is the focus of a family argument. The cat steals the show simply by being passed around like a sack of potatoes. It’s hilarious!

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