Spoilers (somewhat), so don't read if that matters to you.
Late yesterday, we went to see The Aviator, the story about Howard Hughes. This was one of those moments when Carl was really sure he was going to enjoy the film (he's big on historical stuff) and I was willing to humor him for all of the times I've dragged him to films he wasn't all that keen on seeing.
Let me just put it like this: save yourselves.
I really really really want the six years I spent in that theater back.
I knew it wasn't going to be good within the first few minutes. Carl agreed with me by minute seven when I looked at him and he said, "I am sooooo sorry."
The thing is, it's hard to say what's actually bad about the film, other than I just didn't care, and no one ever ever made me care. Leonardo DiCaprio is kinda on my "eh, whatever" list. I will grant you that he may be a first class actor, but he's so baby faced that to me, he just doesn't have the gravitas to pull off some of the story, though he gives it an admirable shot. But all through the entire film, I was always thinking, "Yeah, there's Leo doing an admirable job acting," and "Wow, I'll be he's hoping that's his Oscar shot." Meanwhile, Cate Blanchette also does a fine job, particularly the first time we see her, of being Kate Hepburn. So much so, I had this eerie sense of seeing Kate up there on the screen. But later in the film, she seems to lose Kate Heburn's edge. Now, maybe that's how the real Kate Hepburn was in real life -- bigger, edgier in public, softer in private, but it felt like we were watching a digression. And the story itself had enough big moments and overcoming-the-odds sorts of stakes / tension, but everything about Howard Hughes still felt exterior, like they had assembled good visuals about why he was the way he was without really understanding them, and so they were just presenting this and hoping it would be enough. But it never felt like enough. I always felt like I was watching vignettes on Hughes, not a fully thought-out story, and certainly I never felt pulled into the experience. There was no suspension of disbelief because there was nothing really there to believe in.
And this one will probably get a bunch of Oscar nominations. I would imagine Scorscese, who hasn't won an Oscar (is that right?) will win, unless someone else totally comes out of left field. (But I can't think of anything this year that was all that great, so he stands a fair chance of walking away with it, plus the Academy wants to give him something for his longterm career achievements.)
At any rate, we left the theater wishing we'd done almost anything else, including braved the mall for some gift-exchanging we ought to have done.
As with any review, there may be spoilers here, so if you don't want to read about them, skip this entry.
I have to partially agree with Mary Ann of Flick Filosopher on her assessment of Hidalgo: two words: Veeeee-go. I mean, really. The man could stare at a phone book, much less read it, and I could be entertained.
Unlike Mary Ann, the movie felt slow to me, but not in the purposeful force-you-into-the-movie way of an Antonioni, but simply too... over-simplified. And to me, Viggo really has the chops to have taken it to a deeper level, so I have to fault the story.
The story wants to be about a man's inner journey, and there's enough angst and denial-of-his heritage in Frank's life at the beginning of a movie that we feel the promise of something deeper to come. Frank enters the ultimate race of a lifetime -- 3000 miles of desert across Iraq -- and puts his life and that of his beloved horse, Hildago, on the line mostly because he can't stand his world and what he's become. He's been running from himself for his entire life, and this ultimate race is just one more way to run.
The thing is, Frank is already pretty certain about who he is in ways that come across in the story; the way he sits on a horse, the self-assured way he handles all of the taunts from the other racers and bystanders, the way he seems to already know how to run a 3000 mile race across a desert, even though he hasn't run one across a desert before and we don't really see him learning much from anyone around him. He just knows, and that sort of self-assurance doesn't lend itself cinematically to a man discovering himself. (If that makes sense.) So the inner journey that the outer race represents... isn't all that far for him to go. He faces obstacles, he overcomes. He faces more, and overcomes again.
Then, in the middle of this journey story, and to add twists (though someone will probably pipe up that this is real from the real life story)... is the kidnapping and rescue of the Shiek's daughter. It briefly gives Frank the opportunity to say some things out loud about his heritage that he hasn't vocalised yet... and even so, it felt superficial when it should have felt more moving. This is, after all, the most important epiphany of his travels, of his life, and it feels like it emanates off the surface and isn't wrenched from the gut. Even at the point of the climax, when he sees the images surrounding him, when he's at the last leg and giving up? I'm still not sure what it is he's getting from that moment or how it's ultimately playing into the journey of who Frank is and who he will become. The writer has the first racer interrupt him and point out that they are very near the end of the race... which he hadn't been able to see because of his dehydration and exhaustion... which just sucks the power out of those images. I get that he's asking for help and that the help comes... but it comes from serendipity, not from a specific message or guidance from the images, which were what he was calling upon. I wanted to see a moment when the images were beckoning him forward, when something was conveyed to him about who he was as a man, when calling on that heritage paid off for him in a more emotional way. And instead, the competitor stopped on his way to taunt him (thus wakening him up to the fact that he was very close to winning) and the horse that was almost dead a few seconds before stands up and looks miraculously better. And can run like hellfire is about to get it.... while he's dehydrated and couldn't even walk a few minutes before... with a deep gash in a front muscle... while carrying a rider. (I had a horse with a gash not nearly as bad as that -- she was a quarter horse and damned fast, and when she gashed her leg, she was in so much pain, she was practically in a stupor. It took her weeks to get back up to the point where she could walk without wincing and longer to carry a rider. And I weighed less than a 100 lbs.)
Even with all of that complaining, I still enjoyed the film, but it was mostly because like I said, Veeee-go, and then, there are horses. I love horses and I will watch almost any film where they are prominent. (One of my favorite films is a coming of age story, THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER. I know, half of you just rolled your eyes, but I love that movie and if you don't like it, there is something wrong with you. Seriously. Wrong. So there.)
As mentioned in a previous review, this isn't a "review site" but my personal take or response to a film; it's going to contain spoilers and probably a bit of snarkiness. You've been warned.
I'm not sure about the strategy of labeling LOST IN TRANSLATION a "comedy" as they did on the DVD; I can't remember how they marketed the film, but I think the implication of "comedy" was there as well. I distinctly remember seeing the scene where Bill Murray trapped on the exercise machine, yelping, "Help!" Which was classic Bill Murray. And there were moments of irony and moments of quiet humor, moments of pathos leavened by a recognition the humor inherent in the human experience. But this was not a comedy, and whoever got the bright idea to label it as such needs to be smacked around or have a note from their therapist. Or both.
The problem is, we were expecting funny -- laugh-out-loud funny -- from something labeled "comedy" with Bill Murray starring. Unfortunately, that expectation completely undermined the viewing of this film, which is much more a slice-of-life, a moment of two ships passing in the night, a moment where they come away from a brief friendship having received something far greater than mere "friendship" implies, and their life will be forever changed and, one hopes, enriched, as a result. Had the movie been advertised as a drama, (and guys, really, it's okay for us to occasionally laugh in a drama, but not so much the not laughing for the majority of a "comedy"), then I probably would have enjoyed it.
At about the 3/4 point, a quote from our living room:
"Do you have any idea what the point is yet?"
"I'm not sure. Friendship, maybe. I think we've watched most of the film so far."
"God, I hope so."
That is not a good omen.
The thing is, I can enjoy slow, deliberate films with the best of 'em. Antonioni's THE PASSENGER is one of my all-time favorites, because the lengthy stretches of slow movement (or no movement) forces the audience to really see and feel the tension created in those pauses, and Antonioni does something evocative with the camera, and that is to make the audience almost a charcter in the film because we become the "camera eye view" -- and by placing us "in" the film, the tension worked. Sophia Coppola did similar things with the camera work in this film, and she's not afraid to let the silence fill the moment, to let the absolute isolation of each of the characters permeate the story via the visual -- which is so unusual in today's fast-paced snap-cut-quick to the next scene type of pacing, it's riveting.
Granted, I doubt this film could have been released as widely as it was had it not had someone as well-known as Bill Murray in the lead, and I doubt any regular indie writer/director would have ever raised the funds to get that story made -- even on a shoestring budget -- had their last name not been Coppola, but that's a different rant for another day.
There will be spoilers here, in all likelihood, so you are warned. There is also a bit of ranty snarkiness, too.
I'm just not quite sure what all the fuss is about, and maybe that's just me, (well, apparently that's just me since this one was nominated for various Golden Globes and I think a couple of Oscars), but this might as well have been the Southern Patient, what with all the unrequited love, angst, war, and tragic endings -- and the same Director as The English Patient, who apparently favors the hammer-it-on-the-head emoting method of story-telling. Anthony Minghella directs this from what is supposed to be a terrific book, which I couldn't tell you about since it bored me to tears right off the bat and I couldn't keep reading. And maybe it's just me, but a movie which has to have tons and tons of voice-over to convey the emotional moments and give the context has forgotten it's a movie (and no, I don't care that it was an adaptation).
Ultimately, I didn't care about the southern-crossed lovers who are broken up when the civil war starts, and I don't know the people mutilated in all the battle scenes, so it's just another director's take on the brutality of war, like we haven't guessed that war is pretty awful. I don't care that Jude Law (who is gorgeous even if he looks like he hasn't bathed in a decade) loves Nicole Kidman (I have thankfully forgotten their character's names), and he has done so with such longing looks and no touching and geez, enough with the chaste already, do something. But they can't, there is a war, and he gives her a kiss and runs off.
And they write letters. One would assume they had actually received each others' letters for all the angst and longing and heart-breaking going on, but it turns out in the end that he had only gotten three (though she probably wrote "a hundred and three") and I'm not sure if she even got one from him back, and who knows how on earth she knew what he felt for her, besides the one hot kiss. (Of course, in the book, there were probably whole chapters devoted to this.)
So the movie is one, very long trudge of hottie Jude Law going home to be with poor helpless Nicole Kidman, who now has Ruby, but of course, he has obstacle after obstacle after obstacle to overcome to get home, and the women have lots of hardships, and finally, finally, on a very cold mountain, in the frozen snow-covered cabin, the couple meets up again, barely talks to each other at first, then talks a couple of minutes, then marries each other and has hot sex. Finally. So of course, he has to die the next day, because God forbid there should actually be any happiness for either of them with all the hardships, and when he really did die (who did not see that coming a mile away?), I sat there and thought, "this sucks." I wanted my two hours back. There was no real journey here, no real learning curve, except to survive and take care of yourself, and barely a journey at that, and for the life of me, I can't discern a real story here except that life sucks, you may fall in love, but then you die.
I just do not know what the fuss was all about.