Valentine’s Day

Tough Love

/ / Movie Reviews, Theme Week
  • Title: Lust, Caution
  • IMDB: link

lust-caution-posterNot 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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While You Were Sleeping

/ / Home Video, Theme Week
  • Title: While You Were Sleeping
  • IMDB: link

while-you-were-sleeping-posterLucy Eleanor Moderatz (Sandra Bullock) lives alone with her cat, carries an empty passport around in her coat pocket, and works long hours as in a subway booth taking tokens from strangers.  One bright spot in her dreary existence is when Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher) walks by every morning even though they’ve never met. 

On Christmas morning he’s mugged and falls onto the tracks.  Lucy jumps on the tracks and saves his life and through a miscommunication at the hospital is believed to be Peter’s fiancé.  When Peter’s large family arrives to find him in a coma they thank Lucy for saving his life and immediately embrace her into the family.  The whole thing happens so fast Lucy doesn’t get a chance to tell them the truth and, after a few days with the family, doesn’t want to.

Aside from funny misunderstandings and odd coincidences the film is basically about relationships.  Lucy’s only confidant is her boss (Jerry Bernard) who Lucy tells the story to and is both amused and annoyed at her situation. 

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Likable, Though Not Loveable, Casanova

/ / Movie Reviews
  • 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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