Reviews in Review on Parade
Dec. 13th, 2005 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseThe Ballad of Jack and Rose
First of all, anything with Daniel Day-Lewis is going to be good. (Aside: how does the Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim think he can get away with his name?)
This movie, written and directed by Day-Lewis' wife Rebecca Miller (granddaughter of Arthur Miller) doesn't have a false note in the acting by any of the excellent cast. This, to me, indicates a really sure-handed director. Even Jason Lee's short screen time (mmm, Jason Lee) reveals a fully-realized believeable person. Catherine Keener is one of the best and funniest actors in the world. Period.
The movie, about a man with a terminal heart condition, living on an island in an ex-hippy commune with his adolescent daughter, deliberately evokes The Tempest and asks a lot of questions about the true motivations behind the father's idealism. The daughter (played by Camilla Belle) is a marvel: furious, joyous and able to go head to head with her headstrong father as he turns her perfect secluded world on its head. Watch her let poisonous snakes loose in the house! Watch her hang her blooded devirginification sheets like a flag of conquest! Watch her reinvent herself when her world makes no sense anymore.
Also featuring the affable Beau Bridges as an evil developer and the cool Jena Malone who was so great in Secret Life of Altarboys, Life As a House and Saved!. Bonus! First movie I've ever seen shot on Prince Edward Island that didn't involve a Lucy Maud Montgomery character.
Saw
Pretty good. The ideas are there and the atmosphere is right but the director couldn't always pull it off. Also, including Danny Glover as the troubled cop made for one too many similarities to Seven.
"How much do you want to live?" the killer asks his victims. There is a moment which should have been made to work. The only survivor of the killer is asked by the cops how she feels about the killer. "He helped me," she responds. If we could have understood that better -- how the killer's reprehensible actions helped her turn the corner on drug addiction and turn her life around -- then the contradiction at the heart of the movie would have made it really fly. I hear the sequel is better.
Survivor Guatemala
One of the best seasons I've seen. Some really smart strategizing and a healthier balance of gamesmanship and moral pondering. In other seasons, losers whine that they were "lied to." Well, no shit. In this season—the most physically gruelling yet—most people realized they were playing a game. And then the real moral choices like Rafe's decision to let Danni out of her pact, were genuine and genuinely surprising. I truly belived him at the reunion that he wasn't sorry he had done that even though it probably cost him $1,000,000.
First of all, anything with Daniel Day-Lewis is going to be good. (Aside: how does the Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim think he can get away with his name?)
This movie, written and directed by Day-Lewis' wife Rebecca Miller (granddaughter of Arthur Miller) doesn't have a false note in the acting by any of the excellent cast. This, to me, indicates a really sure-handed director. Even Jason Lee's short screen time (mmm, Jason Lee) reveals a fully-realized believeable person. Catherine Keener is one of the best and funniest actors in the world. Period.
The movie, about a man with a terminal heart condition, living on an island in an ex-hippy commune with his adolescent daughter, deliberately evokes The Tempest and asks a lot of questions about the true motivations behind the father's idealism. The daughter (played by Camilla Belle) is a marvel: furious, joyous and able to go head to head with her headstrong father as he turns her perfect secluded world on its head. Watch her let poisonous snakes loose in the house! Watch her hang her blooded devirginification sheets like a flag of conquest! Watch her reinvent herself when her world makes no sense anymore.
Also featuring the affable Beau Bridges as an evil developer and the cool Jena Malone who was so great in Secret Life of Altarboys, Life As a House and Saved!. Bonus! First movie I've ever seen shot on Prince Edward Island that didn't involve a Lucy Maud Montgomery character.
Saw
Pretty good. The ideas are there and the atmosphere is right but the director couldn't always pull it off. Also, including Danny Glover as the troubled cop made for one too many similarities to Seven.
"How much do you want to live?" the killer asks his victims. There is a moment which should have been made to work. The only survivor of the killer is asked by the cops how she feels about the killer. "He helped me," she responds. If we could have understood that better -- how the killer's reprehensible actions helped her turn the corner on drug addiction and turn her life around -- then the contradiction at the heart of the movie would have made it really fly. I hear the sequel is better.
Survivor Guatemala
One of the best seasons I've seen. Some really smart strategizing and a healthier balance of gamesmanship and moral pondering. In other seasons, losers whine that they were "lied to." Well, no shit. In this season—the most physically gruelling yet—most people realized they were playing a game. And then the real moral choices like Rafe's decision to let Danni out of her pact, were genuine and genuinely surprising. I truly belived him at the reunion that he wasn't sorry he had done that even though it probably cost him $1,000,000.
