Film Review - Away We Go

Film #3 of 2010

I actually decided to hold off on reviewing this movie, because I wasn't sure how I actually felt about it. When all was said and done, I felt a definite sense of detachment, but the question is, "Is that what I was supposed to feel?"

Away We Go is the latest film by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) and stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph as an unmarried couple in their 30's who embark on a cross-country trip in order to "find their place in the world" before the birth of their baby. Faced with the choice of being with family or friends, or moving somewhere for a job, or just settling down where they think they will be happy, the two encounter a few different types of families in their quest to "be adult" and strive for their own version of perfection.

I loved the flow of Away We Go, and it certainly had a breezy spirit. Unlike some of Mendes' other films, such as the aforementioned American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, Away We Go examines relationships, including conflict and the "dark underbelly" of outwardly normal people without becoming overly dark and dramatic. Certainly on the lighter end of the melodramatic spectrum, Away We Go is able to examine extremely flawed relationships without being heavy-handed. However, the lighter tone lends itself to appearing detached, with a lack of focus, which I admit I struggled with. I found that I didn't really care about the characters that much, and, since I actually enjoyed many parts of the film, wondered if this was intentional. Unfortunately, for a film that is so character driven, I don't think that was Mendes' intent.

Krasinski and Rudolph were decent as Verona and Burt, but I fear that my knowledge of one actor and not the other got in the way of viewing their performances. Krasinski was simply his character "Jim" from The Office, only with nerd glasses and a beard that covered most of his face. This isn't necessarily bad, because I think that Burt and Jim are similar characters, but it didn't really showcase any range on Krasinski's part. Since I'm not a Saturday Night Live viewer, I don't know anything about Maya Rudolph, and if her performance was a stretch, but I was torn between wondering if her detached demeanor was intentional or her acting style. Maggie Gyllenhaal does a great job in a cameo that borders between supremely annoying and hilarious, especially during a superb dinner scene.

None of these criticisms killed the film for me, but I am still struggling with how I really felt about Away We Go, and I can't decide whether this is a good or bad thing. The conceit of the film was examining relationships, and finally "becoming an adult", which can occur at many different stages of one's life - and Away We Go succeeded in its task. I definitely had more positive than indifferent feelings for the film, but while this is a positive film overall, there was nothing enlightening or even very exciting that the film offered.

3 out of 5 stars

Catch Up Time

One of the disadvantages of watching movies is that because I intend to review most, if not all, of the films I see, I am perpetually behind on reviews. It's only the 12th day of the year, but I actually have managed to stick to keeping track of the films I've watched with the help of the task pad on my Blackberry.

With Oscar season kicking into high gear, I'm going to be concentrating less on classic films and more on current (hopefully) gems, but I'm looking forward to seeing some good movies, regardless of the era.

I do still have two films on the DVR I'd like to watch when I get caught up with reviews - Death of a Cyclist and the original The Wicker Man, so hopefully I will get a chance to watch them soon!

1 Year/100 Movies Challenge!

The challenge is on! Can YOU see 100 movies in 1 year and write a short capsule review about them? If you'd like to join the challenge, let me know!

Film Club Lists

A few friends and I have been working our way through the IMDB Top 250 list for the past couple of years, and there are also a couple of splinter groups working on other lists as well, such as the AFI Top 100. Though I started out ahead of everyone, there has been a lot of progress made, and I also got to see a lot of really good movies a second time with other people. Now I'm down to the mid-30's range that I need to see, and figured I would share the progress and lists with anyone who may want to either compare what they've seen, or have a guideline for what they may want to see.

You can view our updated lists HERE on my website, www.thecinemaphile.com

Film Review - Nine

In the film Chicago, Richard Gere sings a song about "giving them the old 'Razzle Dazzle'" in order to put one over the audience, or in his case, the jury in a murder trial. Rob Marshall, the director of Chicago, employs this technique with his latest film, Nine, and, like the situation in the aforementioned film, it works - sort of.

Nine is the musical adaptation of Federico Fellini's 1963 film 8 1/2, a semi-autobiographical film about a famed Italian director who is expected to begin his next film and has lost all of his inspiration and retreats into his fantasies and memories, all the while juggling the many women with whom he has surrounded himself. Some things were changed for Nine, most notably, the addition of several musical numbers. In Nine, the director is Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) who is not only creatively stuck, but the pressure of his life and image have made him become an emotional cripple. Wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard)is his former leading lady and has had to suffer through Guido's obsession with his work and his many affairs, including his most recent mistress, Carla (Penelope Cruz), a vixen whose vulnerability threatens to mess up everything that Guido is attempting to juggle. While struggling to keep afloat and answer to these women and others, he also has to come up with an idea for the film that everyone is anticipating.

Nine is a technically precise film, and is stylish and beautiful. The lighting is dramatic, the cinematography was appropriately flashy and the costumes were great - I loved the look of Day-Lewis and Cotillard in particular. The performances were excellent, and once again it was fun to see actors sing and dance that we're not used to seeing. Kate Hudson, playing Stephanie, a Vogue journalist, seemed to have the most fun during her musical number, "Cinema Italiano" and, though I'm not a fan, I have to admit she did a great job. As Saraghina, a prostitute from Guido's childhood memory, Fergie provided the film's showstopping scene with "Be Italian". Completely wasted was Nicole Kidman as Claudia, Guido's long-time leading lady, who was in the film for about five minutes and whose importance was kind of lost on me. I initially thought that Day-Lewis was woefully miscast in the film, but I think he really made it work; he embodied the role, both emotionally and physically, and had a rumpled sexiness that didn't make it surprising that he was desired by so many women.

Unfortunately, the gorgeous package wasn't quite able to cover up the most serious defect of the film: There just wasn't any substance, and out of all of the characters that are introduced in Nine, (and there are a lot of them) I really only felt for Luisa, though the more I absorbed the character of Carla, the more sympathetic I became, and I think that is due in large part to Cruz's great performance. Though there were a couple of exceptions, namely both of Cotillard's musical numbers, Penelope Cruz's bump-and-grind and the aforementioned Fergie piece, the centerpieces of Nine are the musical numbers, and so many of them didn't make sense. Judi Dench, who stole every scene she was in, had a completely nonsensical and unnecessary song to sing (though, like everyone else in the film, she did it well) and though Sophia Loren was essential as Guido's mother, they just kind of trotted her out for a couple of minutes here and there, and her big scene wasn't really needed to move the story forward. Musicals are always tricky, particularly in this day and age; back in their heyday of the 1940's and 1950's, people would break into song and it was done partly with a wink and a nudge, or the audience would just accept the cheese factor. The scarce modern musical has a much tougher task, with both the fact that musicals generally don't sell anymore (that's why they died out as a genre in the first place) and we as an audience are a lot more cynical. When it's done well, like Moulin Rouge! or even Chicago, it's a revelation.

Nine, however gorgeous and entertaining it was, was not a revelation, however. Though it kept my attention throughout, and it did succeed in ending well (when I was really beginning to wonder how Marshall was going to reel everything in) I was left with feelings of apathy and detachment. Though I can appreciate the "razzle dazzle" I also want some substance. The glimpses of substance came between musical numbers, when there was a "real" story going on, and I found myself getting irritated when it would be interrupted by another musical number, particularly one that didn't really have a place there. I think I'm going move on and experience the story the way I want to see it: by watching Fellini's 8 1/2.

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Film Review - Julie & Julia

There are some films that are, admittedly, fluffy pieces that gloss over harsh realities. Julie & Julia is one of those films; however, its easy formula works really well, considering the subject matter.

Starring Meryl Streep as the iconic Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell, a Child disciple who decides to put her writing skills to use and attempt to make a mark on the literary world by cooking her way through Child's book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and blogging about her experiences, Julie & Julia weaves the lives of these two women and shows how, though they are in different generations and countries, their lives are more similar than first imagined.

Or are they? The focus on Child's life is the period between the late 1940's and the 1950's when Child, living in Paris with her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) discovers her love of French cuisine and her desire to learn to cook it. After attending Le Cordon Bleu cooking school as the only female in the class, she teams up with two other female french foodies who have written an enormous cookbook for American women, but need Child to help them with the editing and testing process. Though she encounters some resistance, first when she enrolls in the cooking school and later, when she is attempting to get their book published, her hard work and the undying support of her husband allow her to persevere. On the other hand, Powell is already an accomplished amateur cook and self-professed "foodie" who indeed comes up with an excellent idea for a blog and certainly a daunting task in tackling the cookbook, but it seems that her success either comes really easily or the realities of it are simply not addressed. As a blogger myself, I am surely one of millions of bloggers who will probably never see their own blog go viral enough where it is a featured blog on Salon or a New York Times article will be written about us. Normally this would not be a point of contention with me, particularly in such a non-challenging film, but there was such a focus on the blog itself that it seems the rise in popularity should have been addressed at some point.

Adams, who is quickly becoming the new, much less annoying Meg Ryan for this generation does a good job as Powell, considering the shallowness of the character. Streep, who is awesome in everything she does, completely embodies what I would assume Julia Child was really like and is completely delightful. There were so many times during the film that she delivers a line that is so perfectly executed and natural that I would wonder if it was actually ad-libbed. ("I'm growing as we speak!") Stanley Tucci is another actor who is always good in everything he does, and he and Streep had great chemistry and showed how truly in love the Childs were. One never thinks of Julia Child as a sexual person, but she and Paul were madly in love with one another and were not afraid to show it. I really loved that relationship in the film.

As stated earlier, Julie & Julia doesn't take a lot of chances, and indeed, does fall into standard "chick flick" territory at times, which I suppose can be attributed to Nora Ephron's direction. (Can she possibly make a film where the main female characters doesn't have a wise-cracking, slightly weird looking best friend?) But then again, it doesn't really pretend to be anything more than what it is, and with a couple of exceptions, mainly the glaring omissions in Powell's development, I was really okay with that, and I found that the film was actually pretty good and really charming, overall. I realized that throughout most of the film I had a smile on my face, and I laughed out loud more than a dozen times, mostly during Meryl Streep's time onscreen. I know a couple of people who are fond of the phrase, "It is what it is." and that accurately sums up Julie & Julia. If you don't come into this film expecting to be anything but charmed and entertained, you won't be disappointed.

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Snow Day/Classic Film Day?

Apparently we could get up to 8 inches of snow tomorrow, and after reading about Robert Osborne's wonderful life and real estate here I have visions of curling up in my chair in the living room with the cats and watching movies while the snow falls. Currently on my DVR is Anatomy of a Murder and The Wicker Man (the original, of course) but I have a whole bevy of films I could choose from and be very happy to enjoy!

However, I'm not going to hold my breath, and the reality is that I will be going to see Nine tonight with Jay and Matt, probably will be underwhelmed if most of the reviews I've read and feedback from friends are true, and we'll have just enough snow to make it really annoying to drive and park in...but not to call off work for.

Julie & Julia review forthcoming - unfortunately that's the only film I've watched so far this year.