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Reviews
Si j'étais toi (2007)
The Secret Review
I rented this movie from Blockbuster today and I'm really glad I rented it because I felt it was a really good movie, it does its job and it doesn't disappoint. I originally thought this movie was going to be a horror type movie but it turns out that it was more of a drama/thriller type of movie. I'm actually glad it fell into the drama/thriller categories because if the movie was a horror film, it would have turned into your standard horror film with a bunch of thrown in clichés. I felt that the plot was intriguing but what really captured the film to me was the acting, it was all top notch, especially by David Duchovny and Olivia Thirlby. Both performances were really convincing. Let me put it this way, if the actors are capable of evoking the emotions in me, then they have done their job making the character the way it is.
The film starts off with introducing us to David Duchovny who plays the character of Benjamin and Benjamin is an eye specialist while Lili Taylor plays the character of Hannah who is a photographer. Sam, played by Olivia Thirlby, plays the rebellious daughter who evokes a life of drugs and sex and has a straining relationship with Hannah. The suspense builds up in a scene where Hannah and Sam are driving down a road and at the same time, they have a little argument while Hannah gets distracted and ends up crashing leaving the two characters seriously injured in a hospital. Sam is close to death while Hannah yells out her name because she wants her daughter to live and eventually, Hannah loses her life while Sam ends up waking up, telling Benjamin that she's not who she is anymore, she's Hannah's soul trapped inside her daughter's body. The film moves on from the hospital and Benjamin wants Hannah to attend Sam's school so that when Sam comes back, everything will be just the way it was but Hannah embarks on a journey where she finds out that her daughter has been secretly doing self-destructive things like drugs and sex and that before the crash, Sam wanted her mother to be gone. This leaves Hannah trying to figure out what she can do to bring her daughter's soul back and trying to maintain her school grades so Sam can attend a prestigious college when she comes back.
Benjamin doesn't know what to think about soul switching and later on in the film, he has to process his emotions and he's kind of mixed between believing her and not believing her. So he's kind of stuck on what he should do which makes for a pretty interesting scenario. What do you do when your daughter tells you that she has her mother's soul inside her? I won't give away the ending, but I'll only tell you is that I was fully satisfied with the ending and originally, I thought it was going to end stupid but I felt one hundred percent happy with the ending.
David Duchovny and Olivia Thirlby both give excellent performances, those two were the ones who carried the movie and who were in it for a substantial amount of time. David Duchovny does a good job playing the father who doesn't know what to do with this situation he's found himself in and Olivia Thirlby does a good job at portraying the mother trapped inside her character's body. She really convinced me, she gave one of the most excellent performances I've ever seen. I can see her becoming a successful actress in the future. David Duchovny fits this movie and he fit the part because Fox Mulder, the character from The X-Files, shares some of the same characters Benjamin does. He wants to believe like Mulder does and it even has David Duchovny's character doing research in a small scene that reminded me of Mulder. It was funny though when I saw that scene because I thought to myself, "Mulder would know all this already." Overall, it was a very good movie and it wasn't what I expected. The only problem is I felt that the movie should have been a little longer for the other characters to fully develop themselves but I think at the same time, it's really David Duchovny's and Olivia Thirlby's film. But overlooking that small gripe, the film was excellent and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to try out a different movie.
My overall grade: A-
The Invasion (2007)
The Invasion Review
Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in the fourth remake of a well-paced thriller and mystery that kept my attention from beginning to end. What makes this movie work in my opinion is the acting, it was really convincing, especially from Nicole Kidman and Jackson Bond. One scene that fits the perfect example of good acting is the scene in the store where Nicole Kidman and Jackson Bond are at and Nicole Kidman falls asleep and Jackson Bond comes running looking for his mother and he starts crying when he finds out that his mother has fallen asleep because he's afraid that she might become one of the intruders that poisoned her body earlier on in the film. Anyways, I'll get to that later on after I explain a little bit of what the movie is about.
The movie starts out with a space shuttle crash and apparently the salvaged parts from the wreckage contained an extra-terrestrial virus (what I call the intruder) and Carol Bennell's (played by Nicole Kidman)ex is the first one to get infected with this virus which throughout the movie, it spreads from person to person. Carol Bennell is a psychiatrist who comes upon the virus through a patient who believes her "husband is not really her husband." As the movie plays out, Carol Bennell tells her friend Ben Driscoll of what's been happening and he shares the same feelings she does. From then on, they embark on a dangerous quest that leads Nicole Kidman to suspect her ex might be one of the intruders and it leads her to get infected by her ex. How this virus affects you is if you fall asleep, you will become one of "them" so Carol Bennell makes sure she doesn't fall asleep until they develop a vaccine for it and throughout the movie, there was many times where she was dangerously close to falling asleep. While many suspect that the movie had too much of a happy ending, I won't reveal anything but to me, it really wasn't a happy ending.
What I liked about this movie is the paranoia that surrounds everybody once the movie gets going, the people who aren't infected have this aura of uneasiness from the people around them and it really makes this movie work to its full potential. It reminded me of how the government brain-washes everybody through the corporate media and the lies they continue to spit out each day and people go on believing it. sooner or later, more people will believe it and we'll have a New World Order on our hands and everybody will be emotionless zombies like the book "1984". Like I stated earlier, another thing that makes this movie work is the acting from Nicole Kidman and the kid that plays her son, I've always respected Nicole Kidman as an actress and she's one of many actresses in my opinion that fit the mold of a "good actress". There were times in the movie where I really felt for her because in the movie, her ex takes off with her son and she has a little bit of an emotional scene and that really made me feel for her. Another scene that I thought was excellent was how Daniel Craig became infected and he turned into an intruder and he tried to take Nicole Kidman's son away but Nicole Kidman reacted and she has a big emotional scene that put me in the place of her, she was a mother who deeply cared for her son and Nicole Kidman did a great job of conveying those emotions.
Some people will say that the mother trying to protect her son plot device is a little overdone because so many movies have done it like "The Ring" but I feel that it really works well here. I also like the political allegory in this movie, even though the writers should have gone into more detail with it, I still enjoy it and I believe they're right about if humans not showing any emotion, then there won't be any wars or death or mayhem that consumes the world today. To put my review to a rest, I think this movie is a good mystery thriller that works well in all areas.
My rating of The Invasion: 9 out of 10
The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
X-Files: I Want to Believe Review
I'm going to be fair in talking about the new movie and not be bias but look at it from both sides of the spectrum, unlike most of the critics who said that the movie was complete garbage or the people who thought this movie was a masterpiece, I don't think it's complete garbage nor do I think it's a masterpiece. The movie starts out with a woman (who's an FBI agent) who gets kidnapped by men who later on turn out to be Russians and the FBI calls in a psychic and Mulder and Scully because they haven't been turning up any leads and they need Mulder to prove that he's a legitimate psychic. Basically, the first part reintroduces Mulder and Scully to the audience and we find out a little bit of what they have been doing the past six years and whether or not Mulder will be acquitted of the death charge that plagued him in the series finale. Mulder has become a hermit and isolates himself from society, in the first part we see him cutting up newspaper articles and pictures relating to various subjects of the paranormal and supernatural. Scully has become a neuro-surgeon at a Catholic hospital and is trying to make a choice of whether to help a boy who's suffering from cancer or to let him be transferred somewhere else so he can die peacefully. The main plot has to do with Russians who are kidnapping women and using various body parts to reconstruct the main villain's lover because he's dying of cancer (later on in the movie, they make mention of him being a homosexual).
When I first heard David Duchovny making statements five years ago about a new X-Files movie in the works, I was so excited and I couldn't wait. Almost a week ago, I found out that they were having press junkets and when I first heard of the bad review of the movie, I literally felt depressed and then as time went by, more reviews started to come in and I felt like there was no hope. Well, a couple of days after the press junkets, I felt a sigh of relief when I read some posts on the message boards from a member on here and that person was basically saying have hope in this movie and be positive. Today, I went in and viewed the movie with an open mind, I wanted to see it for myself and make my own opinion of it. I'll start with the positive aspects of the movie and then move onto the negative aspects. First positive comment was that I liked how Chris Carter and Frank Sponitiz made this into a stand-alone feature instead of an alien mythology feature, that was a smart move on their part. I also liked how David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson got back into character, that's not an easy thing to do. I felt that the Russian accent on the main villain was well done and sounded authentic. Xzibit and Amanda Peet were not a bother to me, they both worked well with the parts they were given. But I think what makes this movie stand out is the focus of Mulder and Scully's relationship, to me, that was well written and the best part of the movie. One thing I would like to comment on is I like how they managed to make this low budget, X-Files was never meant to be a CGI pie fest. The last thing that I really liked is the atmosphere of the movie, the return to Canada was a wise decision and it really looks beautiful on screen.
Onto the negative aspects, I felt that the movie was too short and I know Fox gave Chris Carter a certain time length to go by, but the last part of the movie really feels rushed. The main plot with the Russians is clichéd because the idea of someone recreating life feels tired and overused, had they went down a different route with the idea, it might have worked but with what we were given, it was basically paper thin and had nothing original about it. I think the basic and most upfront problem about this movie is the lack of the supernatural, sure Father Joe was a psychic but couldn't they have added more to the story? One small gripe I have is the pointless scene with the main villain being in the swimming pool with the woman he intends to kidnap, what was the point of that scene? That's basically about it. I wouldn't call this film dull or bland in general, it was just the main plot was bland. Everything else was fine to me, I didn't have a problem with the subplots involving Mulder and Scully's relationship or the plot with Scully and the boy, it was just the main plot needed more to it or something more of an original idea. I don't blame the faults of the movie on Chris Carter or Frank Sponitiz, I blame it on Fox Studio because it seems like to me, they had most of the creative control. I believe in Chris Carter and Frank Sponitiz, they were two of the best writers on the show and I know they can make something better. I'm not trying to turn you away from seeing this movie, I'm just trying to tell people to go in with an open mind and see the good things about the movie and the bad. I think every fan and non-fan should see this movie, it's interesting and I think of it more as a character study than a plot driven film. While it's not the best or the worst movie I've ever seen, I think people need to add this to their collection when it comes out on DVD because it's a flawed movie but entertaining. Overall, I give this movie a B.