what's tasty and new in show business. [beta]
REVIEW:
(500) Days of Summer, one of the year’s most refreshing and endearing romantic comedies, has arrived on DVD and Blu-ray, and it’s just as good as it ever was when we saw it in theaters. The whimsical love story of Tom Hansen and Summer Finn is an original and fun spin on traditional movie romances as the film chronicles 500 days of the relationship between Tom, a consummate believer in love, and Summer, the skeptic girl of his dreams.
Music video director Marc Webb makes his transition into the feature world and he, along with writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, populate the world of (500) Days with a cast of quirky and relatable characters. Set to a catchy pop soundtrack, and indeed Webb calls this a “pop movie,” the film nevertheless avoids being over-sentimental to the point of saccharine, nor is it so self-aware as to be disingenuous. It navigates that fine line perfectly, finding a successful harmony of off-the-cuff quips and emotion-loaded looks. The performances are universally wonderful, led by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, culminating in one of the year’s best films. Read»
Editor’s note: We never reviewed Jennifer’s Body on c, vt, so as opposed to a mini review, we’re running a longer one for the Blu-ray release.
REVIEW:
Jennifer’s Body was a script that received a lot of attention when it first began circulating through Hollywood, though with good reason. For starters, it was Diablo Cody’s first script since she won an Oscar for Juno. It also revealed itself to be a hip ode to the brand of 80’s horror-comedy probably best represented by Sami Raimi’s work of the period. It also hinted at some interesting themes, chiefly having to do with teenage female relationships. The fact that it was funny and chock full of gore didn’t hurt its case either. All it needed was a good cast and a competent director, and one could easily imagine it becoming the next cult classic.
Fast forward four months from its theatrical release, and few would try to argue Jennifer’s Body as a crucial addition to the canon of horror-comedies. It’s easy to say why — the movie turned out to be a moderately entertaining film that didn’t have any glaring lows, but also failed to hit any cinematic highs. It’s got a semblance of good energy, but never really finds its stride. It certainly understands the genre, but fails to bring anything notably new to the table or improve on the old formula in a significant way. Put simply, it’s an acceptably diverting movie that has all the right ingredients to be special — strong themes, great visuals, a good story — but never gets them to pop.
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Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air continues the talented director’s trend of smart, sharply-executed, and slyly sweet films. It delivers a splendidly rounded cast of characters and a genuinely moving tale while managing to remain topical in the best of ways. Reitman’s policy of “let the film play, and the humor will come” works brilliantly, and turns out to work just as well for the entire range of emotions the movie engenders. It’s this demonstration of restraint, and the ability to execute it without losing any sense of artistic adventurousness, that makes the movie one of the year’s best.
Up in the Air excels in peppering itself with little details and subtle flourishes, fortifying the expression of its biggest and most poignant ideas through a chain of miniscule movements that quietly reveal themselves with lingering effect. The film is exceptionally good at sticking to the telling of an honest story, avoiding the pitfalls of faux grandiosity by letting the truth of the characters power the story. This is what makes it so effective a movie about the present. Read»
Pedro Almodovar begins Broken Embraces, his fourth collaboration with Penelope Cruz, with a cryptic shot of some sort of video screen. We see bodies, faces just out of view, bustling about on the edges of frame, and a lone woman standing near the center, staring at a man whose shoulder we are looking over. If there is any communication between the two, we are not privy to it. After several inscrutable seconds, she steps out of the frame and Cruz replaces her — finally, it clicks into place. We’re looking at a video monitor on a film set, and the unknown woman before was a stand-in. But this opening sequence frames a lot of what is to come: the self-reflexivity imbued in the film, as well as the mood and mystery that is pervasive throughout.
Broken Embraces follows the story of ex-film director Harry Caine (Lluís Homar) as he recounts the tale of the great love of his life. Blinded in an accident many years ago, he was forced to retire from the director’s chair and now writes for a living instead. His life and work is overseen by his agent Judit (Blanca Portillo), with her adult son Diego (Tamar Novas) working as his de facto assistant whenever Judit is unavailable. Harry hears that millionaire Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) has passed away, and soon after a young filmmaker named Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano) appears at his door, asking Harry to write a biopic on Martel that Ray will direct. Harry turns him down, but this chain of events upsets Judit greatly and also leaves Harry shaken. Diego is curious about the whole affair, though Harry refuses to talk about it until Diego inadvertently overdoses on a drugged drink in a Madrid nightclub and Harry must look after his recovering assistant while Judit is out of town. Only then does Harry begin to tell his story, one of love, lust, betrayal, and jealousy, and all of which is rooted around the ravishingly beautiful Magdalena (Cruz). Read»
Where the Wild Things Are is Spike Jonze’s ode to childhood. Specifically, it focuses on the confusing, mercurial, and powerful emotions that command us as children when we haven’t been forced or trained or taught to master them yet. In that sense, it is a piercingly honest film, with a reverberant beauty gracing both its visual aesthetics and narrative movements.
Before diving into the film’s potent storytelling successes, I feel a brief mention must be made about its technical achievements. The creatures in WTWTA are beautifully crafted and lushly realized. The visual effects work done to animate their faces is stellar, to say the least. Jonze’s team really brought the monsters to life with a convincing mix of physical size and dynamic expressions. It’s important to note this because since so much of the movie is centered around them — and Max’s usually very physical interactions with them — filling them in with entirely CG characters or failing to allow them to adequately express themselves would have been damning to the film. The movie wouldn’t have worked otherwise. Nailing this one aspect has gone a long way towards allowing the inherent poignancy of the film to shine through.
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The coming-of-age story has been done so many times that it is difficult to imagine that anyone has anything refreshing left to add to the genre, if it can be called that. Yet somehow director Lone Scherfig and writer Nick Hornby’s An Education manages to present itself as wholly original, a charming, nostalgic, heartbreaking, and altogether invigorating tale set during a 1961 England that was on the cusp of social and artistic revolution.
Taking place in a post-war, pre-Beatles London suburb, An Education follows 16-year old Jenny, a brilliant and culture-minded student with aims to “read English” at the prestigious Oxford University. Her quiet existence takes an unexpected turn when the charismatic David appears in her life, a suitor twice her age who is debonair, witty, and culturally refined in all the ways that Jenny postures to be. He charms his way into her life and home, even winning the approval of Jenny’s timid and buttoned-up parents, and whisks her off to the alluring and seductive world of smoky jazz clubs and romantic Parisian getaways. Jenny suddenly finds herself faced with either continuing her education, a self-empowering but toiling exercise in which she has recently lost sight of its meaning, or giving herself over to the “university of life” and tackling the world’s adventures head on. Read»
Many believed that with Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright simultaneously created and ended the zombie horror-comedy subgenre, inventing the bar then setting it so ridiculously high that none would ever be able to follow. Director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick apparently never got the memo. Their work on Zombieland proves that there are still much more laughs to be had from walking stiffs and the inevitable brain-spatter that follows in their lumbering wake. A brisk 81-minute romp through blood-and-bile-filled hilarity, Zombieland is a tightly packaged effigy to zombie flicks, made by people who clearly understand zombie movies and, more importantly, the inherent comedy of the concept.
The film has a dazzling energy, slinging jokes and gags relentlessly throughout. What’s most impressive is how naturally and easily the jokes come, and though some wind up working better than others, none of it ever feels forced or contrived.
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Quentin Tarantino’s latest is a thrilling, unrestrained romp and a helluva good time. Read»
A tautly-drawn and excellently-crafted sci fi thriller rife with stunning visuals that will win over both hardcore fans and casual viewers. Read»
The sweeping fantasy melodrama never quite finds a way to engage the audience on its way to a mediocre, if ambitious, love story. Read»
The hilarity and the heart overcome an overly indulgent plot to make Judd Apatow’s latest a winner. Read»
Strong performances power this drama past its smaller flaws to become a funny and quietly moving experience. Read»
(500) Days of Summer is an extremely funny and even deeply moving twist on the traditional romantic comedy, anchored by the excellent performances of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Read»
For an infinitely more satisfying action movie than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, check out Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Read»
In part 2 of our Day Seven Wrap-Up, catch the reviews for documentary October Country and the excellent Cold Souls!
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