Drama

The Lisbon Girls

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  • Title: The Virgin Suicides
  • IMDb: link

“Everyone dates the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls.  People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped out elms, the harsh sunlight, and the continuing decline of our auto industry.  Even as teenagers we tried to put the pieces together; we still can’t.  Now, whenever we run into each other at business lunches or cocktail parties, we find ourselves in the corner going over the evidence one more time.  All to understand those five girls who, after all these years, we can’t get out of our minds.”

virgin-suicides-poster

The Lisbon girls were beautiful.  The five daughters of Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner) and Mr. Lisbon (James Woods), a high school teacher, captured the minds and hearts of the neighborhood boys in the early 1970’s in the sleepy Michigan suburbs.

The girls, Therese (Leslie Hayman) 17 years-old, Mary (A.J. Cook) 16, Bonnie (Chelse Swain) 15, Lux (Kirsten Dunst) 14, and Cecila (Hanna Hall) 13, would all be gone in the course of a single year.

In the space of two summers the sleepy suburbs would be woken to the deaths of five beautiful young women, all at their own hands.  The haunting suicides would leave behind unfinished dreams and imaginations by the boys they left behind (Anthony DeSimone, Lee Kagan, Robert Schwartzman, Noah Shebib, and Jonathan Tucker).

What caused such events to occur?  The sheltered life of the girls didn’t help matters, nor the strict homelife.  Was that all?  And if so, was there nothing that could be done?  The film’s characters look back with a tearful eye in wonder.

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Elizabethtown disappoints

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Elizabethtown
  • IMDB: link

elizabethtown-posterElizabethtown has everything going for it, good stars, a diverse supporting cast, awesome music, and many of Cameron Crowe’s little trademark touches.  So why did I leave the theater so disappointed? 

The more I thought about the film my disappointment turned to anger.  The only story line that hasn’t been stolen from one of his earlier films, the effect of the death of your father, is constantly interrupted by an overly cute love story and a collection of the oddest and nicest group of hicks you will ever meet.  I guess everyone who grew up in Mayberry moved to Elizabehtown.

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is having a bad week.  First he is fired after some kind of tremendous blunder that has something to do with shoes, his shallow girlfriend (Jessica Biel) leaves him, and his boss (Alec Baldwin) makes him give an interview accepting total responsibility for the failure. 

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Nakey, Nakey

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Shortbus
  • IMDB: link

ShortbusSex is a compelling subject in film, books, and television.  In discussing, and showing, sex you know you’ve got the audiences attention.  Shortbus knows how to grab us early, but soon fails to perform to expectations as it blows it’s wad in the first eight minutes.

The film opens with a voyeuristic journey as the film, seemingly at random, looks through windows into the sexual lives of a select few of the millions in New York City.  The shock and strangeness of the situation immediately will make you take notice and, depending on your moral stance, possibly be appalled.

It’s the perfect choice to bring you into this world.  Sadly though, once here, writer/director John Cameron Mitchell has very little to say.

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Capote, Take Two

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  • Title: Infamous
  • IMDB: link

“Infamous is when you’re more than famous…he’s not just famous, he’s in-famous.”
—Three Amigos

InfamousMuch like Capote, the film begins in New York showcasing Truman Capote (Toby Jones) in his natural habitat.  Here however we are shown a man with a large group of friends, dreams and desires, and a great sense of humor.  Unlike Bennet Miller‘s Capote, this one is a fully realized character rather than simply a manipulator.

Truman and Nell Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) travel to Kansas to research a new book about a grizzly murder.  Of course Capote is completely out of place in the rural Midwest and shunned by the local sheriff (Jeff Daniels) and townspeople until he wins them over with his tales of celebrities.

When the two murderers are apprehended Truman travels to the prison to begin interviewing the men and discovers a connection with the tender yet brutal Perry (Daniel Craig).

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More Like Hell

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  • Title: Haven
  • IMDB: link

haven-posterHaven is like watching a mediocre movie on cable television and switching the channel to a different mediocre movie every 30 minutes and occasionally going back to see if the others have gotten any better.  Well, it’s not quite that good.

The film begins with the story of successful business man Carl Ridley (Bill Paxton) and his teenage daughter Pippa (Agnes Bruckner), who flee the country to the Cayman Islands to avoid prosecution.  Carl has laundered money from some illegal activity (the film never explains what this was, or the limit to Carl’s involvement).

Once in the Islands, Pippa (what an awful name) rebels and hangs out with a local wannabe gangster (Victor Rasuk) who steals a car, takes her to a party, gets her high and then arrested.

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