The Film Junkie

I truly believe that Atom Egoyan is one of the most talented filmmakers working today.  He has impressed me time and time again, and yet here I am not sure what he was thinking.

The film starts out a very promising story about a pair of comedians known for their telethons (much like Martin and Lewis) who have hidden from a scandal involving a dead girl in their hotel room for 15 years.  Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth play the duo and are exceptional in their roles.  We are drawn in and begging to know more.

Yet as the film continues to unfold we are forced into the life of Karen (Alison Lohman), a journalist connected to the two who is attempting to write a book about their lives.  I have liked Lohman in previous roles, however here her voice is childish and grating and her performance is too soft and cold to be interesting.  As we are forced more and more into Karen’s world, we lose our connection to the two men and the plot becomes predictable, soft core porn-ish and unentertaining.

Egoyan stays true to his Canadian roots by casting Rachel Blanchard as the dead girl as well as Don McKellar, Arsinee Khanjian and Gabrielle Rose as publishing executives and the incomparable Maury Chaykin as a gangster.  I appreciated seeing these great Canadian actors in their small roles, only wishing they were more involved in the story.

Overall I saw it coming and by the time it was ‘revealed’, I just didn’t care anymore.  If only the second half lived up to the first.

Grade: C+

I absolutely loved this book.  It was something very rare to find these days: a completely original experience in narration and style.  It was funny, moving and interesting.  The film adaptation, on the other hand, completely misses the mark.

Elijah Wood stars as Jonathan Safran Foer, a Jewish writer who visits the Ukraine in a quest to find out more about his grandfather’s experience during WWII.  Foer is a quiet and odd character and I was impressed with Wood’s performance for the most part.  You can see him trying to bring in his natural appeal but then fighting it back in many scenes, but his physicality as a small man worked for the character.

Eugene Hutz costars as Alex, Jonathan’s translator and tour guide.  Hutz is funny and odd as Alex, however this is not the Alex I met in the book.  This Alex does not have the full circle experience and we do not see the fears and insecurities hidden underneath the large personality.  This Alex is somewhat attractive and appealing, where in the book he only pretended to have those qualities.  I can see why Hutz was cast, he is a charismatic young rock star, but he does not fit with what Alex was intended to be.

This film is actor Liev Schreiber’s directorial debut and it is a lovely looking movie.  He clearly designed the shots very well and he has a very cinematic eye.  However, Schreiber also adapted the script and it is in this adaptation that so many of the films flaws comes from.  In the book, we were constantly flashing back into the history of Jonathan’s family to discover their stories alongside his journey.  Schreiber chose to ignore those chapters and change one of the most important parts of the story to make it more ‘approachable’.  Alex’s grandfather is a far less appealing man in the book and his redemption is a much harsher conclusion.  Instead we get a neatly wrapped up ending that leaves us wanting more mystery.  Without the stories of Jonathan’s relatives we lose the weight of the story and instead it becomes a weird little road trip movie through the Ukraine.

Disappointing.  I cannot recommend the film, but I highly recommend the book.

Grade: B-

I was hoping everyone was wrong.  I hoped that the ending would not be as predictable as they said.  I was let down.

It is the story of Charles (Clive Owen) and Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston) who meet on a train and begin an affair when their lives are spun out of control due to a robber and rapist who comes into their lives.

I saw it coming.  I don’t know what else to say.  Owen is a fantastic actor, but the material was beneath him.  Aniston’s part was limited and thus dull.  Vincent Cassel is creepy and devlish and I love him as LaRoche, the bad guy. 

The ending of the film was silly and unnecessary considering that the predictable real ending had already happened.  I felt let down by the script and the actors were too good for the material.

Grade: C

This miniseries chronicles the life of Queen Elizabeth I (Helen Mirren) through her two great loves and the wars that fell between.  Mirren is brilliant as the queen and her work is a perfect evolution of the character Cate Blanchett developed in the film ‘Elizabeth’ (1998).  Mirren has all the power and stature of the queen with the humanity and flaws of the woman we can never really know. 

Jeremy Irons co-stars as the Earl of Leicester, her one great love.  Irons is sexy in a way he has never been before, in my opinion, as a powerful and intelligent man who is genuinely in love with the great queen.  When Leicester dies, he advises his step-son, the Earl of Essex (Hugh Dancy), to take care of the queen.

The second half of the film focuses on the queen’s relationship with Essex.  He is a young and foolhardy man whose life comes strangely close to Leicester.  However this young man is not intelligent or modest in the ways Leicester was and it seems that the queen is using him for her own vanity rather than because she is actually in love with him.

It is an interesting way to examine the life of this extraordinary woman, however this film seems for interested in dispelling the idea of ‘The Virgin Queen’ than actually looking at what kind of leader she was.  I wish the filmmakers had spent more time looking beyond the bedroom, because that is the queen I am curious about.

Mirren and the boys do a great job, but this film seems to demean the idea of a female ruler in its insistence on seeing her relationships as selfish and petty, especially that with Essex.

Grade: B+

So many documentaries these days focus on the irreparable damage we are doing to our world, and force us to look at the dark side of humanity.  Thus it is a refreshing change to see this great documentary about real New York public school students competing in the city’s ballroom championships.

We are intoduced to students from various burroughs, ethnicities and economic classes to get a wider perspective on what these ballroom dancing classes are doing for their self-esteem as well as how it keeps them out of the streets and improving their communication with their parents.  We see girls talking about boys and vice versa to realize that all these children are just on the verge of romance and thus are able to dance together with minimal embarrasment. 

What I was missing from this film was a look at more of the teams, I know that it would have been impossible to see all those students from all those schools, however because we only have one team that we are cheering for the outcome is almost too obvious. 

But all in all, this is heartwarming and sweet film that made me cry despite myself.

Grade: B+

I am such a non-fan of Heather Graham its not even funny.  Yet I watched this movie because it has Sandra Oh and there are few people I love as much as that woman.  Then I was pleasantly surprised by this quirky post-feminist flick about women dealing with love despite of themselves.

Graham can actually act!  That was probably the most shocking thing I discovered during the course of this film.  I had always thought that ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Two Girls and a Guy’ were flukes, but then here she is carrying pretty much an entire film by herself.

There are some great moments here, some things I certainly never thought I would see in a movie (like tossing an annoying bra away and then retrieving it later when your boobs begin to ache!).  Oh is fantastic as Graham’s eclectic best friend and Sarah Chalke has a small role as their uptight married friend.

This movie starts out very promising, however as Graham’s Pippa becomes more and more interested in dull Ian (’Gilmore Girls’s ‘Christopher’, David Sutcliffe) the movie falls apart under the weight of rom-com expectations.  It wraps up nicely, but all the while I was hoping she might end up with Taye Diggs’ hot photographer.

Great start, disappointing love story, but brava to Heather Graham.

Grade: B+

I have recently been reading a lot of Neil Gaiman comic books and graphic novels, thus with this his feature film writing debut I expected a lot of pretension and stunning visuals.  However this film is far less pretentious than, say, ‘The Sandman’, instead it is a sort of mix of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ if they were directed by Marilyn Manson’s art director.

The story is of Helena (Stephanie Leonidas), the daughter of a circus owner and a juggler in the show, who is transported to an alternate reality on the night her mother is to have a serious operation.  Helena must save the alternate world and stop her anti-Helena self from destroying her life.  If that makes any sense…

The alternate world is interesting, constructed out of Helena’s drawings, but the CGI looks quite cheap in comparison with what Peter Jackson has gotten us all used to.  In fact, it is a bit frustrating to see such CGI, no matter what their budgetary constraints were, as it takes one right out of the moment.  They would have been better off using mechanical constructions.

The film is a cool idea, however the filmmakers certainly didn’t have the means to fully realize it.  They do their best and the pseudo-circus/goth world is an interesting, if not fascinating, experience.  There is a really great scene where Helena becomes dressed as the anti-Helena while robotic jack-in-the-boxes are singing ‘Close To You’ that made me really like this movie, however that was soon lost in the muddle.

It is a cool movie, but not great.

Grade: B+

This film is slow and painful and lovely and it really feels like a slice of life.  It follows Don Johnston (“with a t”), played by the tragic clown Bill Murray, a long-time bachelor who receives a note telling him he has a nineteen year old son wiht no return address or signature.  With the help of his neighbour (the always-fantastic Jeffrey Wright) he sets out a course to visit all the women he slept with 20 years ago.

Because it is a Jim Jarmusch film there is a lot of coffee and not a lot of action, but these are the kind of movies I love.  You see every moment of pathetic realization wave over Murray’s face and the women, oh! the women.  The ladies he left are Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton.  Each woman is astounding in their brief scenes with Murray.  Each has an entirely different reaction to his arrival and each demonstrates that actresses ‘of a certain age’ are vital and needed in modern cinema.

This is a lovely and stirring film that is even more still and silent than the previous Murray ’serious actor candidate’ role in 2003’s ‘Lost in Translation’.  In fact that film could be seen as a comedy in comparison.

I loved it, what can I say…it gave me goosebumps.

Grade: A+

For some reason this TV movie was nominated for a ton of Emmys and Golden Globes.  This movie is slow, dull and badly written.  The best part of the film is a great performance by the eternally wonderful Annette Bening, and I have no idea how she pulls it off because the script and director and certainly giving her no help.

This is the story of the girlfriend of famed dietician Herman Tarnower (Ben Kingsley, smarmy and great) who shot him in cold blood while claiming that she only intended to kill herself.

Bening plays Jean Harris as the together and confident woman she surely was, but we are never really given a good idea of why such a woman would be attracted to the womanizing and chauvanistic Tarnower.  Harris says again and again that she wants to be told where and when instead of asked, but for such a complex character as Jean Harris this seems a pathetic excuse that doesn’t ever really work.

This movie is dull, but Bening gives it light.

Grade: C+

I was not expecting to like this movie.  First off, it stars Bow Wow and a former rapper trying to become an actor is rarely a good thing.  Secondly it is about roller skating, and I was very skeptic on how that would make a good movie.

However, this film is more the story of growing up black in the 1970’s and trying to be cool.  Bow Wow is certainly not a great actor, but he is somewhat believable and is helped out by a strong supporting cast of dudes playing his friends.  Chi McBride is good as ever as his struggling single father and he brings a weight to the film that few actors other than him would be able to (and no that is not a comment on his size).

The plot concerns a big roller skating competition where Bow Wow must showdown with Sweetness (’What I Like About You’ star Wesley Jonathan), the kingpin of skating from the classy North side.  Bow Wow and his boys, a mixed bag of jokers, are from the poorer South side and thus are fighting for their cred.  There are also some ladies involved, ‘Stomp The Yard’ (2007) hottie Meagan Good plays the object of Bow Wow affection while Jurnee Smollett (1997’s ‘Eve’s Bayou’) plays the gal pal to all the boys.  Smollett is a real find, she has great timing and hopefully she will get some bigger parts soon.

The film is a glossy and fake version on the 70’s and race is almost a non-issue, but it is kind of nice to see such false representation of the era, we get that for white people in every decade, so why can’t we have a film where black people are functioning and thriving without constantly fighting for a voice, it is nice to see a film that shows black people have always had a voice.

A fun, sweet little movie.

Grade: B