I’m not normally one for the “scientist discovers proof of God/the afterlife/reincarnation/souls” sub-genre, but I do like Kube-McDowell’s writing, and this book presents the “proof” as a very ambigious and tenuous thing, with hard choices for the characters to make.
(This quick review is part of my September 2005 “clearing the decks” exercise.)
This is much worse than just a bad film: it is actively evil. It starts out with a highly emotive and disturbing premise: Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) is told that her son, whom she believed died in a bus accident, never actually existed. It gets you to empathize with this character, and gets you intrigued by the potential for a conspiracy and cover-up story. Unfortunately, it all turns out to be a simplistic Twilight Zone re-hash. I don’t know exactly how often the “it’s all an alien experiment” plot card has been played in bad science fiction books and films, but I reckon that “WAY TOO” is close enough.
But that’s not the worst of it. The worst part is the ugly and jarring happy ending that betrays all the compassion you have invested in the main character (which might be substantial–the hooks at the start of the film are effective, and they go right for the heart).
After her confrontation with the alien, Telly is broken. She has uncovered the secret, and the secret is that the aliens are uncaring creatures who consider us nothing more than bugs for their little experiments. They are even ruthless enough to kill one of their own scientists when he fails to provide results quickly enough. She has lost her son, her husband, her former life, and by catching a glimpse of the puppet master behind the curtain she has learned how insignificant the whole human race is. Major bummer. You know what we really need now? A happy ending! How about, the aliens wipe the slate clean with an omnipotent “let’s make it like it never happened” sponge, and everything will be just peachy! Telly gets her son back, other characters who died are restored to life, and everyone smiles.
Er, no. That’s just fucking stupid. The film is about loss, despair, and coming to terms with failure in the face of overwhelming odds. Closing with a three-minute family reunion sequence is more than just lazy filmmaking–it’s offensive.
Films don’t usually leave me feeling angry. This one did.
Adventure on the high seas. Not carefree swashbuckling, but a much more gritty depiction of the frequently unpleasant life on an 18th century warship, far, far from home. I didn’t warm much to Russell Crowe’s Captain Jack Aubrey; his bluff, self-assured manner, touched occasionally with light self-doubt, seemed far too generic. Paul Bettany’s character, the ship’s doctor and part-time naturalist, was far more interesting, and I enjoyed Bettany’s performance a lot. Must try to see more of him.
It plays like an extended TV episode, and if you’re a fan of the series, it’ll probably tickle your barnacles. Otherwise, it’s amusing in places, but nothing special.
Emotional tale of a young firefighter (Joaquin Phoenix) whose life flashes before him as he lies injured in a burning building, with his colleagues frantically working to rescue him. Inevitably, it takes itself a bit too seriously.
American football film.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the movie business owes it to themselves to read this book. Goldman goes into great depth about how movies are come to be, rather than how they are made: the bulk of the book is about Deals. In the latter part he takes a short story of his own, converts it into a script, and then dissects it. This is an interesting insight into the process of screenwriting, but it is the large collection of anecdotes and bitchy backstabbing earlier on that is much more amusing.
As the book was written in 1982, it is also very interesting to see how Hollywood has moved on since then, particularly in terms of movie budgets. A major big-budget film for $10 million? Pocket change, now.
Turns out I’d forgotten pretty much everything about the original Magic Roundabout TV series apart from the characters’ names. Unfortunately the film doesn’t do a great job of re-introducing them. Apart from the cliffhanger opening, the first ten minutes are muddled and uninteresting.
It does get better after that, though. The story is little more than a dressed-up video game (the heroes have to find the three magic diamonds before the villain Zeebad does), but it’s the little character touches, the cinematic in-jokes, and the subtle asides that really bring a smile to your face. Robbie Williams surprised me by being excellent as the voice of Dougal, and everyone (in Britain, at least) will love Tom Baker as Zeebad. Just forget about the TV show, and enjoy it for the silly, simple kids’ film it is.
Although the characters in Closer are on an emotional rollercoaster ride of love, betrayal, loss, and guilt, and I appreciated that they were caught up in this storm, I myself didn’t feel broken up by their plight. In a way I felt like a voyeur: fascinated up in their lives, but not actually affected by them.
It’s a beautifully made film, with strong performances all round (although I’m scratching my head a bit about Clive Owen being the stand-out, award-winning one), although the dialogue is sometimes just a tad too clipped and stagey. It’s unquestionably a worthwhile watch, but don’t go in expecting an easy love story. It’s pretty brutal about the hurt that people cause each other, and not terribly positive about the ultimate outcomes of the various intertwingled romances, either.
Beyond the sweet collection of love stories, two things are going to stick with me from Love Actually:
1) How refreshing it is to see Liam Neeson in a contemporary, non-genre film, where he doesn’t have to put on a costume or an accent. In his natural state, he is a lovely, laid-back actor with a relaxed yet commanding screen presence.
2) How on earth Richard Curtis got away with sticking such a blatant, piercing political point in the middle of a big-budget film which, in all other respects, is designed to play well to an American audience familiar with other British rom-com fayre.
Apart from that, it’s sweet, bittersweet, and enormously likeable. The fact that it is trying to tell about eight stories at once means that it has to be short and to-the-point with each one, and has no time to linger on filler scenes. Upshot: an excellent film, heartwarming and funny.