Movie Reviews

Tough Love

  • Title: Lust, Caution
  • IMDb: link

lust-caution-poster

Not totally unlike his last work, Ang Lee‘s Lust, Caution is a love story lead down the wrong path thanks to forlorn circumstances.  And although Lee’s movie about gay cowboy’s may have worked more thoroughly, there’s still a lot to this Mandarin-language film worth checking out.

Taking place in a World War II China when the Japanese were posing a threat, Lust, Caution focuses on a group of theater students who decide to stop putting on patriotic plays and start killing those Chinese sons a bitches who turned coat to the east, using a young woman (Wei Tang) to infiltrate one such traitor household.  They find out their task is much easier said than done after their target, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), disappears across the country suddenly and without notice.  All the hard work and planning of six young nationalists goes down the drain.

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Likable, Though Not Loveable, Casanova

  • Title: Casanova
  • IMDB: link

casanova-posterThe story of Casanova is told through a revolving humorous farce and a typical Hollywood love story.  The farce works much better than than the love story and carries the film through most of its rough patches.  A likeable little film just in time for the holidays.

Lord Jacomo Casanova (Heath Ledger) is a renowned lover who finds love in a different woman’s bed each night.  As his fornications have come to the attention of Rome he is ordered to either marry or leave Venice.  A marriage with the town’s pre-eminent beautiful virgin (Natalie Dormer) is arranged, but Casanova also finds himself enthralled with the outspoken Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller) who is also hiding a heretical secret of writing philosophy under the name Bernardo Grudi and is engaged to the rotund lord of lard Papprizzio (Oliver Platt).  Instigator Pucci (Jeremy Irons) arrives to find both find the heretic Bruni and punish the philanderer Casanova.  Here begins the tale of tiny lies and small deceits, mistaken identities, and sticky situations (hey I had to throw one pun in!).

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On Love and Suicide

  • Title: Wristcutters: A Love Story
  • IMDB: link

“Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.”
—Dylan Thomas

wristcutters-love-story-posterThe film tells the story of Zia (Patrick Fugit) who committed suicide after losing the love of his life, his girlfriend Desiree (Leslie Bibb).  He finds himself in an afterlife filled with others who have died at their own hands.  It’s a depressing existence, at least until Zia learns that Desiree took her own life a few months after his own suicide and is now living somewhere in this new reality.

With the help of a Russian rocker (Shea Whigham), who made his journey here in one of the most unique ways possible, and a hitchhicker (Shannyn Sossamon) searching for the people in charge, Zia sets off on a road trip trough the desolate landscape to find his true love.

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The Stuff Dreams are Made Of

  • Title: The Science of Sleep (Science des reves, La)
  • IMDB: link

science-of-sleep-posterWriter/director Michel Gondry‘s film is a wild ride through a uique and fascinating world.  The film exists in two worlds, reality and the dreams of the main character, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.

Promised a creative job by his mother, Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) moves back home to the apartment house.  Once there he discovers two things.  The first is the job is nothing more than mindless office work.  The second happens when he meets a young woman who lives across the hall and discovers, to his amazement, he loves her.

Now things are going to get complicated, so stay with me.  Stephane meets his neighbor Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her friend Zoe (Emma de Caunes).

For no real reason the relationship begins in lies.  Stephane, more attracted to Zoe than Stephanie, says he lives across town, and the girls both lie about thier jobs.  Slowly he realizes that it is Stephanie who is the real prize.

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The Company Men

  • Title: The Company Men
  • IMDB: link

the-company-men-posterWritten and directed by John Wells, former West Wing showrunner and once president of the Writers Guild of America, The Company Men takes a look at three men each effected when the company which has employed them for years begins massive downsizing that eventually leaves each of them without a job.

Ben Affleck stars as the hot-shot salesman, with a wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) and family, who can’t accept his new situation and becomes increasingly frustrated when no new opportunities for employment present themselves. Chris Cooper is the longtime company man who worked his way from the factory floor to the boardroom. And Tommy Lee Jones is the best friend of company owner (Craig T. Nelson) who dislikes his life, the compromises being made in the company he helped start, and a wife whose only cares seem to be opportunities to shop – which explains why he prefers the spending time with the company’s hatchet woman (Maria Bello) instead.

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