The Frame » film-2005

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Jandy — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:56:51 +0000

In this French movie, a young guy who acts as the gangster muscle behind his father’s real estate business yearns to escape his life into that of a concert pianist (his late mother’s profession). Working with a Chinese woman recently arrived in Paris (who speaks no French), he practices for an audition that might change his life, while also dealing with the demands of his father’s business. It sounds far-fetched, but I hoped that the French sensibility might make it work. What actually happened is that I came very close to turning it off in the middle due to boredom–about as close as I’ve ever come while watching a film. Yet I’m not willing to say it’s really that bad of a movie, because I was overly tired and I probably shouldn’t have been watching anything. Honestly, I think it’s probably fairly good, just completely not what I was in the mood for, and not as good as I was hoping.
Average

Underworld: Evolution

Jandy — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:48:10 +0000

Selene the vampire deathdealer and Michael the hybrid vampire/werewolf are back, this time with more backstory about how the whole vampire vs. lycan war got started in the first place like 800 years ago. That backstory is pretty silly, as is some of the vampire mythology, and honestly, could Michael be more annoying? While we’re on the subject of annoying, what sort of accent is Bill Nighy trying to do, because it’s not good. On the other hand, Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight leather kicking ass with the same cool blue filter from the first film. And that’s really all I was expecting out of the film–Kate Beckinsale looking hot. Since I got that, I was satisfied.
Below Average

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

Jandy — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:16:22 +0000

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this film. It’s certainly unlike almost anything I’ve ever seen. Romanian cinema is apparently undergoing a “new wave” of sorts, and this film is in the vanguard of it. Mr. Lazarescu is an elderly man who starts throwing up blood one day, and his neighbors finally call an ambulance. Lazarescu insists its just an ulcer, but the EMT thinks it might be cancer or something, and she tries to take him to the hospital. And every hospital turns him away for one reason or another, all night, despite the fact that he’s steadily getting worse. It’s an indictment of the Romanian healthcare system for sure, but I think it may be more than that…precisely what, I don’t know. A meditation on death itself, perhaps. The style, though, caught me completely off-guard. It’s so very realistic that it would be easy to mistake it for a documentary. The actors don’t act like actors at all, a lot of the dialogue doesn’t feel written, and the cinematography is bare-bones. I’m not sure I really liked it, but I’m glad I saw it.
Above Average

Breakfast on Pluto

Jandy — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:53:12 +0000

Patrick is a young Irish boy who before very long becomes Patricia. His story is about more than just his attempts to get people to accept him as a her; his quest for identity and his lost family (he was abandoned on a church stoop as an infant) is played out against the backdrop of the early years of the Troubles, as his friends get more and more involved in IRA factions while he does his best to keep from getting involved in things that are too “serious.” There’s a lot of heart to the film, yet it never gets overly sentimental or stops being fun. There’s a tough-to-find sweet spot between hilarity and tragedy, and hilarity that masks tragedy, and director Neil Jordan and actor Cillian Murphy found it with this film. It isn’t a masterpiece, but it is a really well-done indie-type Irish film.
Well Above Average

Where the Truth Lies

Jandy — Sat, 05 May 2007 18:51:04 +0000

Canadian director Atom Egoyan sort of has a niche in high-concept, eroticized thrillers, and this one fits in there pretty well. Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon play two performers/best friends in 1950s Hollywood whose friendship dissolves after the death of a young actress which may or may not have been a murder in which either Firth or Bacon or both may or may not be involved. Confused yet? Alison Lohman plays an author who is trying to write a biography of one of them (I forget which) and ends up playing the detective role as she tries to discover the truth behind the girl’s death. The film is made up of a series of flashbacks told from all three characters’ points of view, showing how memory and/or deception make it almost impossible to discover what actually happened to the doomed actress. That part is intriguing, and the mystery is well-done. The erotic parts fit less well and are rather distracting, I think, from the actual story. Not to mention the fact that they make thinking about Lohman playing the adolescent lead in the recent Flicka (which was made AFTER Where the Truth Lies) distinctly uncomfortable.
Above Average

Joyeux Noel

Jandy — Sat, 05 May 2007 17:57:26 +0000

The story is pretty simple: On the European front of World War I, the Germans, French, and British (a mostly Scottish brigade) are trenched up within a few hundred feet of each other fighting over a roughly triangular batch of no-man’s-land. It’s Christmas Eve, and the three groups end up tentatively calling a cease-fire and celebrating Christmas together, soon realizing that they’re not that different after all and forging friendships. Of course, this creates problems when Christmas is over and they’re supposed to start shooting each other again. Rick didn’t like the ending, but I’m not sure why–I won’t give it away, but I felt it was appropriate and realistic, and I don’t think I would have done anything differently in the film. Still, it wasn’t a great film, just a rather good one–it did what it tried to do, did it well, was a little predictable, and didn’t bowl me over.
Above Average

Three Times

Jandy — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:38:46 +0000

I don’t know what to write about Three Times. It’s a Chinese film, laid out in three sections–one set in 1966, one in 1911, and one in 2005 (the year it was released). Each section has the same actors playing out a love story. They’re not meant to be connected, I don’t think, in any kind of metaphysical way, except insofar as they intrinsically comment on each other as three love stories in three different eras. Each story was told very beautifully–I particularly liked the 1966 one–but the film is almost agonizingly slow. I hate saying it like that, because I know what I think whenever someone tells me a movie was slow: “Well, yeah, if you have a five-second attention span.” But I’m serious. This film really takes its time. It’s worthwhile, the acting is good, the cinematography is gorgeous, it’s just paced very differently from mainstream Western film. I would like to see it again sometime when I’m in a less distractable mood, because now I’m left with a film that I thought was beautiful but didn’t enjoy watching very much.
Well Above Average

Assault on Precinct 13

Jandy — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:52:46 +0000

I didn’t really expect this to be much more than an excuse to shoot a lot of guns, and I wasn’t wrong. Ethan Hawke is a police sergeant about to close down Precinct 13 for shinier digs, when a prisoner transport caravan stops in to stay the night due to inclement weather. Among those prisoners is a highly dangerous murderer, wanted for cop-killing. Before long, the precinct is under siege by people wanting this murderer out. The few policemen in the building have to hold off the attack because the storm has cut off communications; there’s also corruption on the force, a growing bond of trust between the murderer and the sergeant, and several other cliched plot points. It’s pretty much a mess.
Below Average

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Jandy — Sat, 06 May 2006 21:09:53 +0000

Note to Disney, Fox, Dreamworks, and every other studio who attempts to make animated/kids movies (except Pixar, who gets nothing but my undying love): THIS is how you make a family film. You start with a story that doesn’t necessarily turn on a life lesson, and can’t be summed up by trite little maxims. If you want, you can include some things like this, such as “getting rid of pesky, garden-killing rabbits in a humane way is better than shooting them all,” but don’t beat it over the head…in fact, you may want to gently lampoon the bleeding-heart animal lovers even while you agree with their position. Basing the story on well-known horror legends is a little risky, but as long as you keep the balance between homage and reworking, you’ll be fine. Keeping the emphasis on character is a good idea, too. Humor is a good thing, of course, and if you can manage to make both the kids AND adults laugh, you’ve got a winner. In fact, this last is possibly the most important thing. It’s not horribly difficult to please either kids or adults…pleasing both, while keeping the film agreeable for parents to let their kids watch, is much more difficult. Oh, and this especially directed to the movie-in-joke-laden Madagascar: References to other movies are awesome; I love them. They’re my favorite. But subtle is better. Wallace and Gromit smacks in twice the references as you did, and they’re beautiful…obvious to film freaks, but they won’t be noticable at all to people who don’t recognize them, as opposed to your “darn them all to heck!” Planet of the Apes scene recreation. It’s one thing if the viewer knows Planet of the Apes, but if not, it doesn’t fit and is more of a distraction than anything else. In short, Wallace and Gromit films rule, other kids movies drool!
Well Above Average

Millions

Jandy — Sat, 06 May 2006 19:28:44 +0000

When I first started watching this, I was like, “whoa, this is sort of weird.” Then I picked up the case and noticed that it was directed by Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Trainspotting), and then the weirdness all made sense. The story is relatively simple: Damian, a young idealistic boy in Manchester, finds a duffel bag with thousands of pound notes in the field behind his family’s new house, and thinks it’s a gift from God. He shows the money to his brother, who wants to spend it on themselves, but our young idealist (who has visions of saints) wants to give it to the poor. A worthy goal, but as he starts handing wheelbarrowfulls of money out to the neighbors, the charity representative at his school, and even welcomes the creepy guy who shows up at his improvised fort in the field, suspicions rise. Adding to the pressure is the fact that in the story, the UK is about to make the switch from pounds to euros, and the children’s millions are soon going to be worthless. Now, this could be a really routine family film, asking what’s really important in life, money or family, bringing out all sorts of ethical questions about whether they should keep the money, report it to the police, give it to the poor, etc. But in Danny Boyle’s hands it’s not routine at all…it’s also not really a family film. It’s extremely fantastic in presentation, with Damian’s visions of saints and flights of fancy. The manner in which he discovers how the money really came to be in the field (the robbery of a train on a nearby track) is more punk-action style than anything else. It’s a really hard film to describe, and even now I’m not sure I’d say I thought it was really good. It was certainly not what I expected, and it kept me interested and fascinated all the way through, so I suppose there’s that. And there’s a joy of watching Alex Etel as Damian…he’s really brilliant.
Above Average