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connielane at 10:10pm on 10/12/2008 under movies
connielane at 10:10pm on 10/12/2008 under moviesI'm going to give Milk it's own post, because I have too much to say about it to make it a one-paragraph blurb.
Slumdog Millionaire - Young man goes on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and wins 20 million rupees. The people who run the show think he cheated and take him in for questioning, only to learn that he really did know all the answers and that key moments in his life provided him with the information necessary to win all that money. What he's really winning in this game, though, is a girl he's loved since he was a child. This doesn't feel like a typical Bollywood movie - it's much darker than any I've ever seen - but the story fits a similar fairy tale mold. This is a gorgeous movie, and a great story.
Frost/Nixon - Having been born just a year before the real event happened, I knew nothing about the Frost/Nixon interviews of 1976 until I heard there was a film being made (I hadn't even heard of Peter Morgan's play). This is a great time capsule movie that shows you just how much pressure Frost and his crew were under trying to pull this off. Performances are incredible all around, but no one can escape the shadow of Frank Langella's Nixon.
Australia - I commented about this to someone the other day, and I borrowed Roger Ebert's comparison of it to Gone With the Wind. This is a movie that tries to cover too big a canvas. It's subject is too big, and it occasionally condescends to its characters. There is certainly an entertaining quality about it - it's really beautiful to look at, and Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman (I almost typed Laurie, LOL!) give genuinely good performances. But ... I don't know. In a way, what I hated about it was the same thing I hated about Moulin Rouge (I didn't hate the movie, just a particular aspect). The dialogue is often painfully generic and feels cobbled together from any number of other movies. I liked this one, but it's a little like window shopping on Fifth Avenue - fun while it lasts, but when it's over, you wish you'd been able to get something out of it.
Rachel Getting Married - I've been trying for WEEKS to see this and finally did yesterday. What a wonderful and raw, painful film. The director, Jonathan Demme, also directed my favorite film of all time, and it was kind of an interesting exercise to see similarities in style (though certainly not story :P) to that film. At first it just seems like it's going to be a quirky indie movie about a dysfunctional family. I didn't expect to cry. Now, I haven't been through nearly what Kym has been through in this movie, but there was something about her self-loathing that hit kind of close to home. Anne Hathaway has gotten loads of attention for this movie, but Rosemarie DeWitt, who plays her sister Rachel, is perhaps even more impressive (and it's awesome that a lot of the critics and award-givers have seen that, too).
Slumdog Millionaire - Young man goes on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and wins 20 million rupees. The people who run the show think he cheated and take him in for questioning, only to learn that he really did know all the answers and that key moments in his life provided him with the information necessary to win all that money. What he's really winning in this game, though, is a girl he's loved since he was a child. This doesn't feel like a typical Bollywood movie - it's much darker than any I've ever seen - but the story fits a similar fairy tale mold. This is a gorgeous movie, and a great story.
Frost/Nixon - Having been born just a year before the real event happened, I knew nothing about the Frost/Nixon interviews of 1976 until I heard there was a film being made (I hadn't even heard of Peter Morgan's play). This is a great time capsule movie that shows you just how much pressure Frost and his crew were under trying to pull this off. Performances are incredible all around, but no one can escape the shadow of Frank Langella's Nixon.
Australia - I commented about this to someone the other day, and I borrowed Roger Ebert's comparison of it to Gone With the Wind. This is a movie that tries to cover too big a canvas. It's subject is too big, and it occasionally condescends to its characters. There is certainly an entertaining quality about it - it's really beautiful to look at, and Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman (I almost typed Laurie, LOL!) give genuinely good performances. But ... I don't know. In a way, what I hated about it was the same thing I hated about Moulin Rouge (I didn't hate the movie, just a particular aspect). The dialogue is often painfully generic and feels cobbled together from any number of other movies. I liked this one, but it's a little like window shopping on Fifth Avenue - fun while it lasts, but when it's over, you wish you'd been able to get something out of it.
Rachel Getting Married - I've been trying for WEEKS to see this and finally did yesterday. What a wonderful and raw, painful film. The director, Jonathan Demme, also directed my favorite film of all time, and it was kind of an interesting exercise to see similarities in style (though certainly not story :P) to that film. At first it just seems like it's going to be a quirky indie movie about a dysfunctional family. I didn't expect to cry. Now, I haven't been through nearly what Kym has been through in this movie, but there was something about her self-loathing that hit kind of close to home. Anne Hathaway has gotten loads of attention for this movie, but Rosemarie DeWitt, who plays her sister Rachel, is perhaps even more impressive (and it's awesome that a lot of the critics and award-givers have seen that, too).
(mystery)