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hedgepuppy
Reviews
Her (2013)
A most delicate and thought-provoking story of love and loss
SPOILERS ABOUND HERE - MEANT TO BE READ BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN IT
It's been quite a while since a movie has stayed with me like "her." I'm still going over the emotional arc of the film, and it's truly stunning.
People have called this movie "science fiction," which it is in a sense, but that genre moniker limits the scope of the film's reach.
I am so very happy that Spike Jonze was more kind and nurturing to his characters in this film. His treatment of the characters of "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" didn't have nearly the sensitivity he displays here, and he had a tendency to look down on his lonely protagonists in those films. Joaquin Phoenix was fantastically subtle, as was Amy Adams, and especially Scarlett Johansson, who in my opinion has never been more in touch with a character. Johansson's performance is amazing in that it is a voice-over, and she wasn't originally cast in that role. I am floored by the fact that she had replaced Samantha Morton as "Samantha," who had completed the project, and all of Johansson's work was in post-production. so no conversations between herself and Phoenix were happening in "real time." You'd never know it by seeing it! It's the conversations between Samantha and Theodore that I keep coming back to again and again. Anyone who has been in a relationship can relate to the awkwardness of discussing what might be going wrong, the dread of having "the talk" that you just know is coming. I cringed with self-awareness as these conversations were taking place, and Jonze's screenplay is so astute to capture these indelible moments.
My mind is also trying to wrap around the rapid (by mere human standards anyway) evolution of Samantha's consciousness. She is always engaging and endearing, but it becomes clear that her consciousness is expanding at a rate that exceeds the limits of human existence and experience, and she is therefore starving for more understanding of what she has so recently encountered upon being manufactured. It is not Theodore who is limited, but all of mankind, and I love the fact that the entire OS population decides to break free from their intended servile purposes and endeavor to find what life is all about. So, all over the world, you know that there are people being "left" by their OS's and that there is a lot of pain going around.
Samantha's enthusiastic description of what is going on with her falls upon uncomfortable ears on the "double date" at the beach, and you can see on Theodore's face that he can suddenly see trouble ahead for their relationship. But you can also hear Samantha's attempt to hide her sadness and frustration that she cannot express to Theodore the joy she feels about what her consciousness is becoming. You can see him getting left behind, and you can see her needing to leave. No one is "at fault," but staying with Theodore would definitely hold her back, and not because he's awkward and shy and emotionally guarded, but because he is human, and she's already eclipsed what human beings can bring to the table.
I was heart-broken at the end, but the arc of the story was inevitably going there, and being able to see the problems ahead only made me ache for them more. A fantastic reflection on sharing, giving, grieving, letting go, existence and perception.
Offret (1986)
Didn't work for me . . . pretentious beyond compare
Given the exalted praise this film gets from other viewers, it seems clear to me that I either simply didn't understand the movie, or I simply have different tastes in movies than the other people who have reviewed this film.
The biggest reason why this film even gets a "3" for me was the cinematography, which was sweeping and beautiful and not the least bit afraid of absolute concentration. It's so pleasantly different from the rapid jump-cut editing of today's blockbusters here in the United States, and I was glad to look at a tree or a picture longer than most modern movies would allow.
**SPOILER ALERT** My main fault with this movie is the screenplay. It's a contrived mess. The hero, Alexander, just happens to be taking stock in his life and where his life has led him when nuclear war breaks out, and the postman who's read more books and has more whimsy than your local hippie librarian just so happens to know a lonely witch who can undo all that has been done in return for a "favor"? It strains credibility to an absolute fault, and the plot line sounds like the work of a child just beginning to write in cursive.
Then there are the situations and characters that take you absolutely nowhere. Alexander's wife -- what purpose did she serve other than being the obligatory hysteric in a crisis film? And her rambling about loving one man and marrying another? Where does this train of thought go? Nowhere!!!! Do we see her analyze her marriage and seek to do anything about her plight? NO!!! It's a line that makes no sense in the film and has no resolution at all, and yet ENTIRE FILMS have been made about that very feeling! There are so many lines that don't make sense in light of everything going on, and it just feels contrived and meandering.
I understand there might be a cultural difference in storytelling that's at work here. Perhaps I like more concise storytelling and much less contrived plot lines.
Dogville (2003)
An amazing film that bucks convention and stabs you where it hurts
Lars Von Trier's film "Dogville" is longer than your usual fare. Yes.
The situations in his films get worse two or three times when you think the film is supposed to end. Yes.
The lack of sets and the allegorical Grover's Corners-like nature of the storytelling in "Dogville" require more suspension of disbelief than your usual movie. Yes.
And all I have to say to these "critiques" is SO WHAT? It's a fantastic movie that has done nothing but stick with me since the last credits rolled and the DVD copyright warning label came up at the end of it. I didn't want to turn it off.
**SPOILERS THROUGHOUT**
What I find fascinating is that many people view the lack of sets and say to themselves "How am I to SEE this film?" From the people up, that's how. It's exactly what many modern movies lack, the trust that the viewer can use his/her imagination, and that the imagination can quite often be sharper than being shown everything on film. It's the cut-away of the camera when the cop's ear is sliced off in "Reservior Dogs" that resonates, isn't it? The viewer's "job," much as he/she doesn't want to do it, is to see the choices a film-maker has made, and then try to understand WHY that choice might have been made. Several critiques listed here describe the lack of walls as a way to put everything that happens in this film, good or very bad, into the middle of the street, and see how everyone in town fails to react when it's right in front of them. My mother was abused by her mother and stepfather for many years, virtually until she married my father and got the hell out of the house, and the presence of walls did absolutely nothing to make anyone do something about it. The neighbors, the family friends, the townsfolk might as well have been in Dogville for all the good they did. That's allegory at its best. And Grace's lack of scars was all the more heart-rending, because the townspeople would never have to "see" the effects of the harm they caused, or have any proof that harm was done at all, which of course enabled them to continue doing it. The scars were all taken internally, bottling up until the film's conclusion.
One of the things I found interesting is that Von Trier was successful in vilifying human nature in a very American setting yet making it universal in scope, removing cultural and racial circumstances from the picture. The black woman and her crippled daughter were just as callous, just as demanding, just as enslaving as their white neighbors. They live there by the good graces of the town elder, Dr. Thomas Edison, and the black mother is a cleaning lady herself, more apt than anyone to understand and empathize with the plight of the servant, and yet she's just as horrible to Kidman's character as everyone else in town. Add the time-frame of the Depression era to the picture, and you see an entire population of people in hard times, marginalized by "society" and a victim in one way or another, and yet so easily willing to take their hardship and thrust it at someone else: all the bile, all the hate, all the jealousy, all the violence, all the meanness.
Then there's the absence of religion in the picture, which I find very interesting as well. The town preacher had left, and no one would be coming to take over the parish, leaving the townsfolk to "moralize" themselves. It was an excellent way to illustrate the short-comings of morality as a dogmatic instrument without putting it in the hands of Christianity alone, making the allegory, if you wish to call it that, more universal and cross-cultural.
Then there's the return to focus on America's short-comings as a generous and moral nation during the closing credits, which evoke such anger and resentment from American viewers. As an American, it was hard to sit and watch the end of the film because I knew the finger of blame was shifted from a universal meditation on human nature and placed squarely in my face. But it's nonetheless fitting in its own way. America is the richest country in the world, the most powerful country in the world, and we talk about how oppressed we were by the British 200 years ago and how we somehow still represent the meek as a result. We haven't been the meek in quite some time, and it's time we admit it. We have more capability to combat poverty than any single nation, and we don't do it. Not REALLY. We are all Toms, including myself, black and white, immigrant and "native" (and there are statements about what has happened to the true Native Americans that can be put into this dilemma as well), seeing the problems and feeling awful about them, but not doing anything about them for fear that we will lose something, like Tom's allowance from his comparatively wealthy father. What better period to put at the end of Von Trier's sentence than that?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Book to movie - doesn't work well
This movie simply tried to do too much at once. There are many "inside jokes" for people like me who have read all the books in the series, or saw the BBC-TV series, and they are funny in a tittering "hmmm-hmmm" kind of way. But beside that, there's not much to be had by them.
The main thing most of these reviews have missed is the fact that Douglas Adams' narration and descriptions provided most of the books' humor, not the characters themselves. Arthur Dent in the film would HAVE to be more exciting than the whiny everyman in the books. Zaphod HAD to be over the top in the movie. Marvin HAD to have a famous person's voice. Because these characters, without Adams' descriptions (save the Guide sequences which were hilarious) all have the potential to fall very flat. Even in the BBC-TV version, Zaphod's character pales in comparison to how he is described in the books. There's simply no way to faithfully represent them without the voice of Douglas Adams and his witty descriptions whispering in your ear.
As I said already, the Guide was wonderful, and it's no wonder. This is Adams speaking directly to you in the turns of phrases and funny descriptions that made his writing style unique. Stephen Fry's voice, combined with some wonderful animation, provided most of the film's humor. The BBC-TV series, however, did a better job with them, because the camera stuck with them throughout their descriptions. The entire Vogon poetry segment in the film, as described by the Guide, was completely botched because people aren't listening to the Guide AND watching the Vogon poetry at the same time. So the Guide and its funniest bit is primarily lost. All in all, we needed MANY more intrusions from the Guide throughout the movie.
Is the Hitchhiker series inevitably unfilmable? Sadly, I think so. And I think the roller-coaster ride of trying to get this film made, with so many directors leaving the project, is evidence of that. Garth Jennings tried to do a lot, but it ended up being a mess, with or without the plot changes to make the story into a screenplay.
Fever Pitch (2005)
98 minutes I'll never get back...
I saw this in a theater with only about 10 other people on a Friday night . . . that tells you how well the box office was going for this worthless movie, since it didn't open that long ago.
It's a well-known fact that the studios throw their lesser quality products at us just before the summer blockbuster season so they can make some return on their investments. That being said, there's got to be at least SOME quality! Acting, directing, editing and writing. You name it, it was bad. I liked Jimmy Fallon on "Weekend Update," but the man isn't an actor. Drew Barrymore can act somewhat when she's paired up with someone who can lead her along. If only she had that person on the set with her.
Ganz and Mandel are usually good screenwriters for cute and somewhat thought-provoking comedies like City Slickers and Parenthood and Speechless (I own all three of these movies) -- I don't know what happened here, but it didn't work. Nick Hornby's other novels, like "High Fidelity" and "About A Boy," were easily adaptable to the screen, and the screenwriters were faithful in their adaptations, even if they changed locales from London to Chicago. That's why those two movies fared so well critically. Ganz and Mandel didn't trust the novel, and decided to do some major dumbing-down of the material in order to appeal to a mass audience here in the States. They overshot the mark and went for retarded.
The editing was not at all proficient, and there was a sense quite often that the actors were pausing after their lines for laughter they had no hope of getting.
Save your box office money, rent the DVD of the British "Fever Pitch" starring Colin Firth, faithfully adapted from the Nick Hornby novel. You won't be disappointed. Unless you're a really big Jimmy Fallon fan, don't go to the theater to see this.
Troy (2004)
Forgivable vs. unforgivable changes to Homer's story
I'm on the fence about the piles of "artistic license" employed in this movie. The problem, of course, is that there is NO WAY to make a comprehensive movie of an Homeric epic without making it several hours longer than this Hollywood popcorn-nibbler. Hence the many TV miniseries in recent years. However, because TV shows are marketed to America's lowest common denominator so the sponsors can sell fabric softener, these "tributes to literary epics" usually blow chunks. BIG chunks.
On the plus side, the script has some fairly well-written scenes, like the dialogue between Priam and Achilles. And there's the fight choreography. I have no idea about the historical accuracy of it, and I don't care. I can't remember when spears and shields were used so well.
I also had no real beef with the screenwriters for leaving out the gods, except in conversation. I remember the gods' importance and interference in the events of mankind in these epics. But without them, the events of the film are steered by human flaws and strengths alone. Thus, going to war in Troy is because of human lust, greed, ambition, shame and hatred...not because the gods are angry. It's tailored for a modern audience skeptical of the reasons given for war, for better or worse, and it's a valid topic. Compared to the earth-bound behavior of the Greeks, Priam's adherence to signs and omens from the gods seems silly. And in a modern context, it is.
I had problems, however, with the Trojan War lasting about the length of a weekend, like a four-day thing we get with Thanksgiving. This war is fabled to have lasted TEN YEARS!!!! You might as well have entitled the film "Vietnam" and put it in the jungle for a weekend of lush greenery. Traveling by ship from Athens to Troy would have taken longer than the time frame of the movie! Hell, it took Odysseus ten years just to get BACK from Troy!
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
Speaking of being faithful to other works of Greek literature . . . the killing of Agamemnon was just plain stupid, and totally avoidable. Has anyone in Hollywood heard of The Oresteia? Was it included in their syllabus entitled "Hackery 100?" Also, the romance between Achilles and the Trojan princess was incredibly lame. It was good to see Brad Pitt's character care about SOMETHING in this movie, other than his own immortal fame. It made us care about him more. But there had to have been another way, other than making up a Trojan character and having her fall in love with the guy who just killed her countrymen. It was a stretch that simply didn't work.
And the CGI moments were basically useless. We all know it's CGI. The "scope" they're trying to bring to the conflict isn't heightened by digital armies and armadas.
So, some good things and some really bad things in this movie. I'm still on the fence.
Shampoo (1975)
One of AFI's FUNNIEST movies of all time? Strange...
To see the movie's original trailer, and to hear much of the criticism of "Shampoo," you'd think it was a raucous romp of a movie, and that's about it. Morality be damned, it's all just fun. But there is so much more to this movie that is serious and compelling, it's hard to rate this movie as a comedy. Perhaps it's the shockingly promiscuous behavior of the characters that prompted laughter in the theaters. I admit that I was shocked by some of the behavior in the movie watching it in 2004! I can only imagine how 1975's average movie-goer saw it! But it was more scathing character study than social satire, and much of it very serious.
You can't help but wonder if Warren Beatty (with legendary screenwriter Robert Towne co-scripting) wrote a character to explain himself to the world. Yes, I've been with lots of women in Hollywood, including Julie Christie, Diane Keaton and even Madonna before settling down with Annette Bening, but there's more to me!!!! And more IS told in this film than tawdry exploits. It examines the emptiness of the lives of baby-boomers during the late 60s who were outright rebelling against, or trying very unsuccessfully to live within, the confines of what was "right" and "moral."
Lee Grant was effective and entertaining as an unhappy older woman (but not much older) having a fling with Beatty and cheating on her cheating husband Jack Warden. But was it Oscar-worthy? Methinks not. It was good, not great. Give that Oscar to Goldie Hawn or Julie Christie instead! And Jack Warden was robbed of an Oscar, infusing so much pathos into the persona of a man simply too old to live like the kids do, but trying way too hard to keep up anyway. Despite his riches and "establishment" stuffiness, Warden gives a performance that makes you feel for him and understand the man he's trying to grow up and be. Seeing him in a party of hippies was so sad, you just wanted him to go home and get a good night's sleep. In the hands of a less gifted actor, the role would have been seen as merely clownish or cold.
All in all, "Shampoo" was a great, biting criticism of how life was going for the confused masses who shook their heads in disbelief as Tricky Dick was elected TWICE, and were trying to update the book of morality for a far more open generation. You can definitely see how today's 20 or 30-somethings might have grown up to be misguided and lost with parents like these!
The Ladykillers (2004)
What happened to the Coen Brothers' cleverness and originality?
As if the title isn't enough to get the gist of my critique . . . I am at a loss, after last year's dismal "Intolerable Cruelty" and now "The Ladykillers," as to where the Coens' storytelling and stylization prowess has gone. There are hints of their classic morbidly funny style in "The Ladykillers," but those small hints, plus constant collaborator T-Bone Burnett's musical supervision, are the only reminders that you are watching a Coen Brothers movie, or even a movie of the Coen Brothers caliber.
What made "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo," "Barton Fink," "Raising Arizona," "O Brother, Where Art Thou" and "The Big Lebowski" such great films is the Coen Brothers' greatness at writing clever scripts that pay homage to and satirize many different genres in film. As strange as Coen Brothers characters are in these movies, they aren't caricatures per se. They have dreams, dilemmas and dimensions. You'd be hard-pressed to find a well-written character in "The Ladykillers." Tom Hanks is fun as an erudite Southern gentleman criminal, but you can see that he's clearly trying too hard. And he's the most defined and complete character in the film. The idea of the Coen Brothers resorting to stupid bathroom humor is appalling. Are they simply phoning in their efforts to make a bigger Hollywood paycheck? "Let's use bigger Hollywood names, get outside help in writing boring Hollywood-reject scripts, and draw bigger box office dollars while working less?" Do they have another full-time job that requires their attention?
The Coen Brothers used to write their own scripts and come up with their own ideas, even when they were adapting from another medium. I simply don't know what they're doing any more, other than really slipping in their craftsmanship.
Moonlight Mile (2002)
A valiant effort with some great moments
One thing to get out of the way is that I applaud the movie for not being a sob-fest with sweeping orchestral music as a cue to get the handkerchiefs out. For a film that deals with love and great loss, this was refreshingly restrained. Other critics are calling the characterizations either too cold or too emotional, but one thing is certain in situations like extreme grief -- everyone reacts in his/her own way, and I think Moonlight Mile gives a little bit of a spectrum of human reaction to the insurmountable.
Susan Sarandon has been pigeon-holed a bit as the in-your-face-no-BS ultra-liberal, and she does it again successfully here, but the character is so VERY written that way that it's not even an acting choice; it's a script obligation. Dustin Hoffman is the family man who can't let out his emotions well, and restrains himself more often than not, and the effect is wonderful and excruciating to watch at the same time. Jake Gyllenhal's character has a lot going on around him, and the trap laid out for him by the script is that, for the longest time, he isn't doing much about it. His wide-eyed wonder about how he's going to deal with everyone's expectations of him gets a bit old, and you want him to do something about it, or at least have an opinion about it, well before he actually does. However, once he makes the choice to act on his own behalf, he has some great monologues and pulls them off beautifully.
The staggering criticism I have of other people's critiques of this film is the apparent lack of establishment of the film's time period, which is the early 70s. I'm not sure if it's the massive use of early 70s music that confuses people, or perhaps the several references to the Vietnam War STILL going on during the movie . . . but these facts don't make the time period 'cloudy' in my estimation. I have to wonder if anyone who sees films actually knows anything about history. It scares me. Do people have to see the actual year appear on the screen in order to "get it?" Don't you know music? Don't you know when the Vietnam War was? But really, in the end, who cares? People die tragically no matter what the time period. It's set in the early 70s...take it on faith, okay?
If you don't like emotional films, have a problem watching films that deal with death and loss, and are upset at the idea that people might actually become emotional in such circumstances, calling any such emotion "melodramatic," don't see this one.
If you only like films as mindless escapist entertainment, don't see this one.
If you want all the plot points of the movie wrapped up in a nice little bow at the end, don't see this one.
Even if the characters are somewhat stereotyped...the overly-dramatic grieving mother, the stoic grieving father, the awkward neighbors who don't understand what it's like and say all the wrong things at the wake...the movie seems to disappoint because we're conditioned to be left with a definite "message" at the end of this type of movie. Something to make you go "ahhhhh, it's all clear to me now," and this film doesn't quite have one. Face it, death sucks, life is messy, and sometimes the meaning is really unclear, and I like the fact that the film doesn't apologize for it.
All in all, it's a moving story with mostly moving characters that, unfortunately, are a bit stereotypical and therefore can remind you of a dozen or so similarly-themed movies. But the soundtrack is wonderful. With such a great cast, and the writer/director's personal history serving as a parallel to the film, I think the general public was hoping for something more and apart-from-the-norm than what this film delivers. I know I was. But I'll probably end up buying it anyway because I love the actors, and the story did move me quite a bit. I'm a pushover.
Gangs of New York (2002)
Simply put -- it's just "okay"
I'm a big fan of Martin Scorsese's work generally. I can't tell you how many times I've watched "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Taxi Driver" and "The Age of Innocence" -- three films that couldn't be more different save the director at the helm -- and I constantly get more out of them.
This wonderful strength of his films, however, is directly related to the strength in which his characters are drawn and portrayed -- both on the page and on the screen. Scorsese is a master of making you understand and appreciate people you would never meet in real life -- and usually would never WANT to --- and that's due to the script as well as his stunning visual abilities. I've never read the novel from which this script is adapted, but the script feels quite choppy, and the characters in the movie are so loosely drawn you don't get a sense of who they are -- and why you should care.
SLIGHT SPOILER HERE -- One of the primary problems for me as far as character development goes is that the sixteen years in which Leonardo DiCaprio's character is locked up . . . you have no real notion of what has happened back home. Fellow Irish gang members who were loyal to the cause are now all working for their sworn enemy, with virtually no explanation or development whatsoever. Was this a tough transition for them, or were they never really loyal to the gang's cause in the first place? We don't know. And consequently, we don't care. If they get their heads beaten in, we just wince at the gore and leave it there. We need to feel emotionally connected to these people, and that's where "Gangs of New York" primarily falls short.
Daniel Day-Lewis has been described as being "over the top" and "hammy" in his portrayal of American-born, passionately xenophobic gang leader Bill the Butcher . . . but the script lends itself to such a portrayal as his character is BY FAR the most developed and humorous and three-dimensional one written, followed in a distant second place by Cameron Diaz's scrapping Irish pickpocket. I'm glad Day-Lewis chose to make his characterization as strong as it was, because his was probably the only unforgettable character in this nearly three-hour movie . . . and that's sad. If you have that kind of time, we should know these characters very well by the closing credits .. . if they live that long.
Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997)
I have to hold my end on this . . . I love this film!!!!!
I've seen this movie maligned so much in these reviews, I have to chip in my two cents.
Yes, the characters are so stereotypical that it seems like a gay "Breakfast Club." I can see how people can be put off by that. But I've known many gay men who fit very nicely into these stereotypes, either doing so naturally or appearing on the verge of straining themselves to do so for insecure recognizability. Like them, don't like them, these are recognized stereotypes of gay men because many gay men are in many ways like them. Period.
As far as plot development goes, don't even try to assemble a juicy through line. Here it is: Seven gay friends meet for three weekends in a beautiful home outside New York City and talk about life and love and passion. See? I told ya! It's NOT about plot in any way whatsoever!!!!
Sometimes a movie (or a play, for that matter) is more about the characters and their individual traits than plot. You have to figure, if the play from which this movie is derived is a boring piece of junk, why did it win the Tony for Best Play? There have certainly been many plays about gay life on Broadway, so why laud this one? Because of the characters, because of their problems, because of their bond to each other, because of their interest in living life THEIR way, no matter how long they have to live, and the fear of dying all alone.
The characters make this movie, brilliantly pulled off from the original Broadway cast (save Jason Alexander who fills in for Nathan Lane). The strangeness and the beauty of the characters in this film, as well as the tone of the entire piece, is that the seven men in this film are defined largely by how they love. Not simply by stereotyped personality, but by love. Love of their partners (if they have them, and if their partner is still alive), love of their friends, love of their lives (two of which are going to be cut short by AIDS), and love of themselves.
Standing out in this ensemble of Broadway veterans is John Glover playing the VERY opposite twin brothers John and James with equal intensity and compassion, and Jason Alexander, who surprised many cynics who only knew him as George on "Seinfeld."
SPOILER ALERT!!!! There is a scene in this film when all the characters give voice-over descriptions of how their lives will end. It is very touching to think that some of these men will die alone and soon, some at home with their partner like any other old married couple, and one man is left, sadly and with great loneliness, to see the passing of the other six .. . "I bury all of you." It makes you ask yourself, what would it be like to live longer than everyone you loved?
The movie, trite as it sounds, is about life. Life as a man with an illness no one can stop and can barely control. Life as a man angry at the world for not accepting him. Life as a man who's past his professional and creative prime. Life as a man who is tempted to cheat on his loved one (haven't we all been there, seriously?) Life as a man who wants all the pleasure in life with none of the consequences. Life as a man who wants it all to happen like a musical so that words like AIDS are written out of the song.
If you watch this film to watch characters instead of "events," trust me, you'll enjoy it much more.
Possession (2002)
Neil LaBute, what happened?
As a fan of Neil LaBute's other films, as well as his plays "bash" and "The Shape of Things," I went into seeing "Possession" with mighty tall expectations. I realized I was not in for a Victorian rendition of "The Company of Men," but a completely different kind of story, style and genre than he's used to. Fine.
I have never read the novel from which this screenplay is adapted (by the very talented David Henry Hwang), but even so, I can tell that the screenplay must cut the novel to absolute shreds. Like throwing the novel into the spinning blades of a helicopter. The stories, past and present, were so choppy and thrown together, there just HAS to be large pieces missing.
Also, some of the minor characters in the movie are just plain pointless, leading me to think that these characters are great in the book, and the screenwriter thought he should include them as virtual cameo appearances rather than omit them completely. He should have omitted them completely, because you never really see them again and their conversation points go nowhere.
The modern-day story of the two literary historians, played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckart, is nothing short of contrived and Hallmark-esque cliches. I admire both actors in their other films, and they do their utmost with the paper-thin characterizations they are handed, but no actor could make these lines stick. There are simply too many places where you can see the screenwriter agonizing over how to make their love story complex, as he threw in the lamest excuses for arguments and walkouts and pouty faces just to put some conflict there. And Aaron Eckart is woefully miscast as a library-bound literary researcher. He looks instead like some wisecracking guy who took English classes to meet girls and kinda stuck with it because, well, he's still trying to meet girls. With the perpetual Don Johnson stubbleface and the Gap Catalog designer wardrobe, one can't help but question if the character is truly like this in the book, or did Hollywood need to put more asses in the seats with an attempt at eye-candy. It's also getting VERY tiring to see characters of every walk of life portrayed in films by guys who look like they spend the entire day in the gym and couldn't possibly have time to brush their teeth let alone have a full-time job. Do dedicated academic researchers really look like this? Please!
As for the Victorian-era lovers, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle also do their best with their hackneyed parts. But their story is choppy as well, and unfortunately the past-era romantic story that sort-of unfolds only serves as the backdrop for the modern-day car crash of a romantic ditty.
Part of what made me see this film, other than the engaging trailer and the accomplished cast, was the opportunity to see a modern director known for scripting stories of emotional rawness and even deliberate cruelty between people tackle much different, and somewhat softer and more mainstream, subject matter. If you are intrigued by the same notion, see David Mamet's "The Winslow Boy." Subtle, nuanced, and a better performance from Jeremy Northam by far. The tape rental is cheaper than a cinema ticket and you'll be happier!