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Reviews
The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008)
An awful film about an important issue
Minor spoilers ahead, though I think you'll find they don't ruin much.
I got back from a screening of this at Beloit College and I couldn't have been more disappointed. It is indecent that such an important issue as women's rights was represented by a very poor film. Predictably, the film depicts the events leading up to the stoning of Soraya M., a young Iranian woman living in a small rural village. Told afterwards by her aunt Zahra to a supposedly French journalist, the story is hamstrung by two-dimensional characters, clichéd dialogue and events, and absurd melodrama. Essentially, Soraya's husband Ali is in love with a fourteen year-old girl from the city, and is desperate to get rid of his wife at all costs. After rather lackluster attempts at a divorce fall short, he enlists the help of the shady town holy man, the persuadable mayor, and Hashem, the widower Soraya cleans and cooks for. The plot is painfully, obviously formed. The wooden Ali (who inexplicably drives a valuable early 70s Chevy Camaro around the town) strong arms Hashem into fabricating a Soraya's adultery, thus condemning her to death. Lacking subtly throughout, the film seems to realize its mistake at the end where the audience is bludgeoned by the visceral, drawn out stoning which tries to drive home its message. The death scene is a farce. In slow motion, Soraya walks towards the hole dug for her. Wearing white (of course) she is bloodied over and over in slow motion by her husband and his cronies, all while Zahra throws herself repeatedly on the ground in anguish-also in slow motion. I was left sickened by the death; not because of the heinous yet highly anticipated way in which her sentence was assured, but because she died in a film which ultimately failed to portray the real crime in the justice system.
Compassion is hard to come by for characters who serve few purposes. Ali is always smiling sadistically or yelling. Zahra is always looking mournful or occasionally angry. Resolute determination is one of the few emotions Soraya ever portrays throughout the film, and the stoning is that much more disturbing because it happens to and is perpetrated by characters that were never human to begin with. The film is supposed to show the dehumanization of the people it depicts, but the stagnation of everyone in the film undermines this goal, and without dynamic characters, the movie's ending (which is revealed by the title of the film) fails in achieving the impact it sought. Clichéd elements, like Ali announcing the day after the stoning that he's not going to marry the fourteen-year-old girl after all, or Zahra celebrating the journalist's escape from the town with the record of the story by throwing her arms into the air and looking up to the sky (that camera) yelling "Now the whole world will know!" The attempts were always prodding the audience without deftness or delicacy. Soraya's hallucination during the stoning of walking through a field of grass with her daughters, filmed in sepia, was painfully reminiscent of Russell Crowe's death in Gladiator almost a decade before. Ultimately, any attempts at levity were lost through predictability, stiffness, and a score that maddeningly rose and fell with any emotions the actors were supposed to be portraying, brutally ending any attempted nuance the director tried to include. I wanted to like this film, but it was truly saddening that an issue like this was portrayed by a film of such low quality.
Mission: Impossible III (2006)
It's good...to a point
I got to see a sneak preview of the movie yesterday. Let me start of with the pros. Philip Seymour Hoffman is hands down one of the best villains portrayed to date. He carries with him an aura of brutality, cunning, and a seemingly mind-reading ability to know what's coming and how to outsmart Cruise and his cohorts. The plot is simple yet clever, portraying Hoffman as a dealer of "goods" in the black market. It also contains enough twists, turns, and latex masks to keep the audience interested, while not over-complicating the subject matter as the original Mission Impossible did to a certain extent. Cruise does a decent job as the super spy Ethan Hunt and Laurence Fishburne portrays the hard-ass, doesn't-always-play-by-the-rules head of the IMF very well. The actions scenes are great, though perhaps too sparse.
It wasn't perfect. Cruise came up short numerous times when trying to carry over intensity. Despite the downright sadistic bad guy, a sense of foolishness permeated throughout the movie, due in part to the sappy ending, but also due to Ving Rhames being demoted to the stereotypical black-guy-whose-always-the-comic-relief character. Another problem was the attempt by the producers to make the actions scenes more "realistic". Apparently this means getting insane closeups in the middle of a gun fight along with camera shaking that would rival withdrawal symptoms, often rendering the scenes confusing and disappointing. Even still, the action scenes contain enough suspense, gadgets, and guns to hold the attention of the audience, even if camera work isn't on par. Predictably, the attempts at making Cruise a romantic fell flat, as they seem to be no more than an attempt to appeal to Cruise's waning female fan base. Though the love interest in the film (Keri Russell) was aptly played, the whole romance aspect seemed out of place in a movie whose predecessors seemed dedicated to violence and brutality.
An enjoyable action flick with some pretty good scenes as well as a well-executed (no pun intended) antagonist...if you can deal with the sappy romance and lame attempts at humor interspersed within the film.
From Justin to Kelly (2003)
I loved this movie!
Really, I thought it was great. It was about as much fun as getting both arms amputated at the same time. I can't remember my favorite part. Maybe it was the choreography which actually rivalled decapitated chickens running around while they were high on crack. Or maybe the plot. Oops! There wasn't on. My mistake. I also like the completely random hovercraft competitions that, as we all know, always take place on beaches during spring break. Or the cop. Man, someone was on acid when they cast her as the "beautiful" police officer. And I just loved that anorexic, evil blonde, who spilled her guts (whats little of them) to Kelly at the end. Or maybe it was the acting. I mean, even half-retarded babies with no arms couldn't act better than half of these guys. And that clever blonde. After all, she was pretty smart to manipulate Justin like that. As we all know, if you really like a girl, everybody knows you can't call her. That's lame. No, no, you have to text message her on a number that her suspicious friend gave you. And, man, Justin's friend who kept throwing those parties. Where does he come up with such good ideas, because he throws the most original parties, too. After all, who hasn't heard of a whipped cream bikini contest. Or a pool party. Really, where does he get those ideas? And Carlos. Man, the emotion on your face convinced me, especially when you said you should have quit your job a while ago. Yup, that emotion sure did the trick. To best sum it up, the emotion you possessed was only outmatched by the emotion of a dead seal. Yes, I loved this movie. In fact, I love it so much, I love it more than life itself. I highly recommend this movie.