500 Days of Summer

This was an interesting movie about love and romance. But, what was more interesting was the way the story was told. It is the first time for director Marc Webb, who cleverly utilizes his music video and commercial background to provide us with quirky, imaginative story-telling.

The script for “500 Days of Summer” is written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. I would have enjoyed a little a more interaction with some of the supporting characters like Matthew Gray Gubler (who stars on CBS’s “Criminal Minds”) and Clark Gregg, funny man from “The New Adventures of Old Christine.” But, overall, the quirkiness between our 2 leading characters is great. The movie keeps things moving by jumping back and forth in time between Day 500, Day 1 and everywhere in between; the structure also creates a feeling of curiosity throughout, because we are quite sure from the beginning, that this relationship is doomed, we just don’t know how it falls apart. (I kept hoping for a surprise twist ending where they end up together.)

We watch the romance unfold through the lovelorn eyes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s (from the priceless TV show, 3^rd Rock From the Sun) as Tom Hansen, a greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic with discarded dreams of becoming an architect. Tom thinks he’s found the perfect woman in Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), his boss’s beautiful new assistant. In the movie, Tom reflects back on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in so doing, Tom, through the help of his little sister, discovers some surprising things about their relationship.

In the movie, I wanted Tom and Summer to end up together at first. But, honestly, I didn’t like Summer’s character that much. I felt like she was typical of so many girls I’ve known in my life (and guys I’ve dated, as well) who date someone because she likes the guy, then decides to dump the guy because she’s “not in love with them.” There’s nothing wrong with that except that the girl (or guy) usually knows the other person is in love with him/her and indirectly leads that person on. They enjoy all the attention, but never quite give fully of themselves to “fall in love.”  Then, when they break up with that person, their fallback is “I told you I only wanted a casual fling – that I didn’t want a relationship.” So, I very much empathized with Tom’s character in the movie. I understood why he would fall in love with Summer – she was fun, beautiful and charming. She did everything but “love him.” It’s his longing that makes us love him and want him to be happy. We know he’s loving her with every bit of his heart, but she’s just not opening herself to that love. (And I wanted to wring her neck for that!)

The pop soundtrack is quite good and carries the movie’s emotional moods. Definitely go and see this one. You’ll see yourself in the characters as well as other friends you’ve known along the way.

I enjoyed this movie very much. It’s about a middle-aged lawyer from Paris who is organized, successful, and controlled. His life has become logical and predictable. When he meets a beautiful young woman in Monaco in Anne Fontaine’s “The Girl From Monaco,” his life is literally turned upside down. Bertrand Beauvois, played by a deadpan Fabrice Luchini, is a brilliant, fifty-something Paris lawyer who goes to Monaco to defend Edith Lasalle (vet Stephane Audran), who’s accused of murdering a Russian. Bertrand appears to be happy with his ordered, well controlled lifestyle.

Into his very organized life enters Christophe Abadi, played by Roschdy Zem, a tightly wound, deadly serious bodyguard who’s been hired to protect him by Lasalle’s son, Louis (Gilles Cohen), who is afraid of a reprisal by Russian hit men. Christophe sticks closely to Bertrand and checks every room he enters, establishing a “security perimeter” around his bemused client.

Louise Bourgoin is beautiful as the weather girl named Audrey in Monaco who meets Beauvois. She seduces Beauvois when he arrives in Paris. Their first two encounters are by accident, one in an elevator, one at a night club. By their fourth rendezvous, at her parent’s restaurant, she locks her door, slinks out of her underwear, and seduces him.

Bertrand has never encountered anything like Audrey. She is beautiful, full of life, young, flighty and a sexually boundless creature. Bertrand, a man of logic and argument, is thrown by this and is soon obsessed with her. She quite literally brings a new zest to his life that he has not experienced before.

For me, the movie showed how older people in their 50s can become fixated in their routines and orderly worlds. The excitement of an affair with a younger, more beautiful person, can stir even the calmest of hearts. It also depicted how loneliness pervades older people’s lives, especially if they’re single. Once Beauvois spent an evening with Audrey, he was lost. She became a drug to him – one he could not pass up. Christophe, his bodyguard, warns him repeatedly, but all Christophe’s warnings fall on deaf ears, though the time eventually comes when Bertrand asks for his friend’s help.

Bertrand forms a respectful relationship and friendship with the bodyguard Christophe. It is made clear from the outset that Christophe once had a sexual relationship with Audrey and that it ended, as all of Christophe’s relationships seem to do, with little drama. Christophe is the one who takes care of Bertrand and helps him through his problems with Audrey.

I’m not going to tell you what happens in this movie. It has a little bit of a surprise and twist ending. It is worth seeing. It is as much a commentary on the loneliness of established, older, single people and the power of youth, beauty and sex to serve as a drug as much as anything. I think it could have been a fun comedy if written in a different way. As it is, it is a dark comedy, but is more thought-provoking than outright funny. It is aptly a psychological study of dependence and obsession.

The film has some beautiful shots of Monaco. It is in French with English subtitles. Definitely go and see it!

The truth about how to catch a man

As you might expect, this is a fluffy “chick-flick.” Not very deep with mindless jokes about sex. But, surprisingly enough, in the theater, men were laughing and seemed to enjoy it too, so consider it a “dude-flick” as well.  It’s an O.K. film if you just want to go to the theater and veg’ out for a while.

Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) portrays a TV news producer who does not know how to date and does not have a boyfriend. I have to say that a woman as beautiful as Katherine Heigl has probably never had to worry about whether she knew how to “play the game” when it came to dating. I mean, let’s get real! In a way, she was miscast. It would have been more believable if the actor in this role of “Abby” was a little less beautiful.  Am I right, ladies? She spends a lot of time, despite a long and arduous search for the perfect mate, hopelessly single. Bree Turner plays Joy, her assistant, and she stole every scene she was in. She was awesome and way more believable than Katherine Heigl as Abby.

The battle of the sexes heats up when her television corporate head honchos team her up with Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), an opinionated TV celebrity on a small cable channel in Sacramento, who brutally tells “the ugly truth” about what men want in the dating world. Mainly, men want beautiful women with perfect figures. They could care less about women’s IQ, humanitarian efforts, ability to carry on an intelligent conversation, or anything else. I have to also admit that – in my experience as a single woman who has dated a lot of men – this message in the movie is mostly true. Men are attracted to beautiful women based on their looks and then they fall in love with them if they stick around long enough. Women, on the other hand, fall in love with men and then become attracted to them. It’s just the way men are wired. (I don’t mean to be bashing men here, but I think most of them will agree with me.)  The movie reminds me of the book, The Manual, A True Bad Boy Explains How Men Think, Date, and Mate, and What Women Can Do to Come Out on Top by Steve Santagati. (I also found that everything Santagati said in the book was mostly true, too, much to my dismay.)

Of course, Abby disagrees with Mike and this provides the conflict and many heated arguments in the movie. Eric Winter plays Colin, the gorgeous doctor who moves in next door to Abby and Mike coaches her on how to win his love.

It’s a predictable story and as I mentioned, one of fluff and mindless sex jokes. It’s great for a Sunday afternoon when you have nothing better to do.

Little Ashes is a story about repression, fear, prejudice, homophobia and romance. It focuses on the true story of the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dali, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico Garcia Lorca. The story takes place in Madrid, Spain in 1922. The Catholic Church and the intellectuals are locked in a battle for the Spanish soul. At the university, ideas and emotions are roiling the lives of three friends; the esoteric is debated in bedrooms and bars over huge quantities of alcohol.  It is a time when Madrid is wavering on the edge of change as traditional values are challenged by the dangerous new influences of Jazz, Freud and the avant-garde.

Salvador Dali, played by Twilight’s gorgeous Robert Pattinson, arrives at the university. He is the strange, shy Dali, who steps out of his motor car, looking like he’s from an earlier era, all ruffles and velvet. Dali is a quick study though, and after experimenting with a few clothes, he’s fashioned himself into something modern and unique. (Let me just add here that a hairstyle definitely can make or break a person’s looks. When Dali (Pattinson) first arrives at the university with a long bob, Rob Pattinson does not look very handsome. As soon as he cuts his hair and slicks it back fashionably, he is gorgeous. Dali’s love affair with Surrealism has already begun, and he’s talented enough and vulnerable enough to catch Luis Buñuel’s eye. Played by Matthew McNulty, Buñuel is the one who will pull Dali into his inner circle, where experimentation and anarchy run high. Although Buñuel is seduced by Dali’s talent, it is Javier Beltran’s Federico Garcia Lorca, the university poet, who will fall in love with the man.

Salvador is absorbed into their decadent group and for a time Salvador, Luis and Federico become a formidable trio, the most ultra-modern group in Madrid. However as time passes, Salvador feels an increasingly strong pull towards the charismatic Federico – who is himself oblivious of the attentions he is getting from his beautiful writer friend, Margarita, played by Marina Gatell, who is brilliant in her role.

Federico and Salvador spend the holiday in the sea-side town of Cadaques. The cinematography is beautiful in the film.  My favorite was the swimming in moonlight scene. It will take your breath away – if you are a woman. If you’re a man, you might feel a little uncomfortable. Salvador and Freddie (as Salvador calls him) draw closer, sharing their deepest beliefs, inspirations and secrets, convinced that they have found a kind of friendship undreamt of by others. It is a deep soul connection that’s generally only shared between artists, poets and musicians.

Filmmaker Paul Morrison almost got it right with this film. He has the foundation for a truly great film, but never fully captured the true spirit of the different emotions of the people and the times. It is, instead, a good film with beautiful cinematography  - thanks to director of photography, Adam Suschitzky -  and good actors.

Robert Pattinson does a remarkable job as the young Dali. This was a huge role for this young actor (about 21 or 22 at the time) to tackle. But, not only does he look and act like Dali, he also portrays the emotional depth of an artist who is trying to find his identity and place in the world. It’s as if Pattinson can identify with the pain of Dali – of searching for his place in the world. The only drawback was that Pattinson’s accent was less than perfect. He seemed to drift between a Spanish accent to an American and even British accent.

Afraid of the sexual chemistry and intimacy between Lorca and Dali, soon Dali would leave Lorca and Spain to go to Paris and work and collaborate with Buñuel, including “Un Chien Andalou,” Buñuel’s legendary Surrealist short, whose close-up of a woman’s eye as it is sliced by a razor shocked more than 80 years ago (and the few seconds used here earned the film “a brief disturbing image” warning from the MPAA). For the record, I squinted my eyes through this part. I simply couldn’t watch it.

Dali marries a woman named Gala, played by Arly Jover. I honestly thought she looked more like his mother than someone near his own age that he would marry. She was miscast as Dali’s wife.

Actually, we get to know Lorca (played by Beltran) much more than we ever get to know Dali. Beltran does a superb job in his role. I wanted to know more about Dali – why he behaved the way he did and why he had trouble with sex and intimacy. In the movie, it is made quite clear that he never consummated his marriage with his wife.

In the theater, I expected many Twilight movie fans. I thought they’d all be there so they could watch Rob Pattinson. Instead, I saw people who ranged in ages from 30 to 80 years old. I believe people wanted to see a movie about Salvador Dali. And the fact that Rob Pattinson portrayed him so well, they (we) got what we wanted!

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

I thought “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was O.K.  Well, more than O.K., actually. It was quite good. It opens with Harry flirting with a cute Muggle waitress in London. Right away, one feels the presence of evil and darkness as the Death Eaters streak through London and wreak havoc on the city. Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) comes to Harry and travels magically to the home of Horace Slughorn, a teacher who Dumbledore recruits to go back to Hogwarts. Slughorn was a friend of a certain former star student named Tom Riddle who later became Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes.) Hero Fiennes Tiffin (Tom Riddle, age 11) and Frank Dillane (teenage Tom Riddle) are fantastic in the roles of young Voldemort.

Harry is now entering his 6^th year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry has been recognized as the Chosen One, a.k.a. the one that must face Voldemort in an epic battle of magic, and as a result, his fame has grown, but he has duties he must attend to. Duties designated by Dumbledore as well as by his maturity. Once back at school, he is directed by Dumbledore to go to a potions class that is taught by the new teacher, Horace Slughorn. In class, Harry discovers an old book that is marked “This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince.” With the help of Dumbledore, Harry begins to learn more about Lord Voldemort’s dark past. (We do not know who the Half-Blood Prince is.)

Meanwhile, Harry, (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermoine (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are all growing up as typical teenagers who are experiencing their first loves. Hermione fancies Ron and Ron is infatuated with Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave)! Next, Harry has a crush on Ron’s sister, Ginny (Bonnie Wright)! Love potions, common-room snogging, and adolescent heartbreak are focused on in the movie. One thing that did not ring true was the buildup of Harry and Ginny’s romance. They’re supposed to have a budding romance, but I saw nothing in the movie that made me tingle or excited for them. There was little substance in the movie to make it believable. Plus, Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny, had zero onscreen chemistry with Daniel Radcliffe (Harry.)

My favorite in the movie was Rupert Grint, who fell victim to a powerful love potion and gave a wonderful performance as a lovesick teenager. I wanted the film to focus more on Harry’s, Ron’s and Hermione’s relationship because that’s where the heart of the story lies. We want to experience Hogwarts as well as love, friendship, and magic through their eyes.

In my opinion, most movies are never as good as the books. They can’t be because they simply can’t film every nuance that’s in the book.

But, this film does not tell the two stories that, at heart, the book tells. It fails miserably in presenting a mysterious portrait of the birth, life and descent into evil of the villain who has haunted this series from its opening scenes: Voldemort. In addition, there are a few scenes that are repetitive and other scenes which feel completely under-explained. I was also disappointed when the Death Eaters finally get access to Hogwarts, and the big, chaotic fight scene oddly never takes place.

It’s important to pay attention to the “Horcrux.” This is important because a Horcrux is a hiding place for a piece of your soul. The cryptic Horcrux in Prince includes a devious twist – and establishes the premise of the seventh film.

There are some excellent moments in the movie, of course. The cinematography is breathtaking (thank you cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel – a Potter newbie who memorably shot Amélie and Across the Universe) and the special effects are amazing, as always. Jim Broadbent is wonderful as the new teacher, Horace Slughorn and Tom Felton does a good job as the evil Draco Malfoy who has been recruited by Voldemort as an assassin. And, I have always loved Alan Rickman. I think his role as Professor Severus Snape is great. I love the way he talks in the movie with. Deliberate. Punctuated. Pauses. (It reminds me of the way Stephenie Meyer wrote sentences in her Twilight series.)

Directed by David Yates, Half-Blood Prince encompasses important plot developments involving both love and death that will be more intensely focused on in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This film doesn’t stand alone as much as some of the other ones. One film always leads to another, but this film’s ending was very weak. Because there is so much information from the book, it makes sense that many events had to be left out. In my personal opinion, there were too many important factors left out that were crucial for the understanding of the future movie to come.

However, the story is, still and all, only a pause, deferring an intensely anticipated conclusion. It’s absolutely worth seeing. I always expect a lot from the Harry Potter movies because the books are so brilliant. So, I recommend that you go and see it. I think you’ll love it even if you have a few complaints.

I just saw the movie, MOON this past weekend. It is a fairly good sci-fi film in which Sam Rockwell plays a solitary astronaut for a major corporation. (Actually, Sam should be nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. It’s quite stellar!) In the movie, he is finishing three lonely years on the dark side of the lunar surface. His name is Sam Bell, and his job is to oversee the mining of helium-3, which has become Earth’s primary source of energy. In a cold, unfriendly space station, Sam works alone with only a computerized robot named Gerty to talk to. Gerty is voiced by Kevin Spacey, who does a great job as a “caring” companion. The movie is shrouded in mystery and one can’t help but wonder if Sam will ever get off the moon and be able to return to earth where his wife and daughter wait for him.

An accident takes place and Sam wakes up in the hospital room where Gerty has been caring for him. On an expedition outside the station, Sam finds what looks like another, wounded astronaut. Actually, it’s a younger version of himself — a clone. Now there are two Sams. But, the clone poses some fascinating questions to Sam and this spurs another adventure. Questions of identity -  Who am I? abound in this movie.
Moon is the first feature to be directed by Duncan Jones, who is David Bowie’s son, and he brings it a desolate, albeit corporate look.

I don’t want to give away too much about the plot.  I was on the edge of my seat through much of the movie – wondering what would happen next. I think it’s a good movie for any sci-fi lover.  It’s a bit grim and it will leave you with more questions than answers.  Or, it did for me, anyway. But, definitely go see it.