Lost In Translation - This Bill Murray vehicle shows him as a burnt-out
actor doing an ad campaign for a Japanese whisky company. While being bored out of
his mind, he befriends Stinky, (Scarlett Johannson) the young wife of an American
assignment photographer. The movie falls into a classic Hollywood trap, that of the
older actor interacting with the young hottie, and understandably so, as Ms Johansson
is very easy on the eyes, and the japanese cinematographer takes a borderline voyeristic
anime take by lingering on her in underwear more often than justified by script.
The film is redeemed by Murray's bottomless charm and humor and convinces us that
he might attract her, but then Murray's character would not likely ever be as charming as
Murray in real life, so there is a stretch in believability. The second redeeming aspect is
the cinematography, with long sweeping views of Tokyo, well shot. The film was
not particularly kind to Japan or its people, though, portraying them as derivative and
the urban environment as incredibly sterile. I left convinced that it was not a place
to visit without contacts or a good deal of money. The sense of isolation that would pull
two people together was well conveyed, as well as the nod to mid-life crisis better covered
in American Beauty, but ultimately, this is a comedy with Bill Murray that could have
remained undiluted by supposedly weightier material. Entertaining, but hardly
the masterpiece its been called.
ccc 3 claps


Whale Rider - Keisha Castle-Knight, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton, dir Viki Koro
One of the best of the year, this is a phenomenal movie that manages to entertain and show the
humor in the mundane as well as tell a story of family drama couched in a larger parable of humanity
and its state in a global tech world. The movie opens on the birth of a young Maori girl, Pai, whose
mother and twin brother die during her birth, depriving her grandfather of a proper male heir.
Played broadly and effortlessly by Keisha Castle-Knight, Pai wants to receive the warrior training
that her male peers receive but her paternalistic grandfather is unremitting in his refusal to break
with tradition. The movie says something about each character and their relationships, from the
father who is living abroad in Germany, living a 'modern' life, to the grandmother, Flowers (Haughton) and her
trials with her autocratic husband, to the uncles who should want to lead the tribe forward, but
are unmotivated or unchosen to do so. The scenery is pretty, but authentic, and not dolled
up like in current CGI extravagnanzas, which makes the film a real relief from that feeling
of cheap manipulation scourging film today. This movie was produced by a German/New Zealand
consortium. with no assistance from Hollywood, and shows once again that great film
can be wrested from plot and performances and little more.
If you dont believe me, here is a list of film festivals where Whale Rider was voted the winner - yes
that's FIRST place: Sundance, San Francisco, Seattle, Maui, Lake Placid, and Rotterdam.
ccccc 5 claps


Gods and Generals - When my three friends and I watched this,
one left after 40 minutes. We remaining two snickered
and held on, sure that we were going to be glad we did.
Unfortunately, this movie is long and painful and I resorted to
a good deal of fast forward to get through multiple and pointlessly
repetitious longshots of lead characters expounding at each other
in stilted period english for fifteen minutes at a time.

The battle scenes are great for a civil war buff, and I did learn
about the mode of battle at the time, but the movie was funded by Ted Turner,
and it looked like he interfered in the directing, which has the quickness
of molasses. The movie could be renamed 'Stonewall Jackson',
as it mostly focuses on him, despite including Jeff Daniels in a
reprising role as a colonel from Maine in 'Gettysburg', a FAR better film.
I was impressed by the attempt to make a civil war film from the
perspective of the South, but this broke too many basic laws of
film-making. The sleeve says 3h37min, but it felt like 5 hours, and not
only could it have been edited down to two hours and been decent,
it really shouldnt exist in its current cut, because it is downright
meandering and awful in its utterly bloated length. The battle scenes
also appear unconvincing and too brief considering their apparent complexity.
-cccc negative 4 claps


Frida - Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Julie Taymor directing.
Salma Hayek plays Frida Kahlo is the best performance of her career, in which she
clearly relished and tracked down the opportunity to portray the drama and
sheer torture of a physical disability which Kahlo endured in her life as a painter
and wife to Diego Rivera, (Alfred Molina). Besides being a deep biopic of the two artists,
the director pulls off one of the most convincing depictions of painting by giving equal
time to the work itself by using, for the first time that I've seen, modern CGI effects
to bring Frida's paintings to life in brief motion-paint vignettes. Much care is also
shown to the disability that tortured Kahlo and how it made her work authentic
in a way that Rivera calls truer than his own. The film covers both their lives and speaks
to Mexican revolutionary culture of the 30s and the vast gulf between Them and the USA.
The film moves quickly and pulls off a lot of historical insight in the usually dull biopic genre.
Kahlo's distate for the US and Rivera's problems with the Rockefellers over his socialist murals
are covered, also well-portayed in the Robbins/Sarandon film "The Cradle Will Rock."
This film is as close to leftist and anti-elitist as Hollywood can stand, but it's nothing
but a period of real history which despite having taken place 70 years ago, still remains
largely in the dark to Americans. Entertaining and informative, and visually incredible.
ccccc 5 claps



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