Mozart's Sister

Mozart's Sister (2010)

Writer: René Féret
Director: René Féret
Starring: Marie Féret

Synopsis
the life of young Maria Anna "nannerl" Mozart....mozart's sister.

The Woman
i don't know that much about the mozarts. but if any of this movie rings true nannerl(wolfgang's sister) had a pretty boring life. yeah, she wanted to compose. yeah she had the musical talent to do it. yeah, there's no option for women back then. yeah, yeah, yeah. she had a vague interaction with the dauphin. ok. nothing ever comes of it. i feel like this movie tried to play that point up. oh, she was sooooo in love with him and he just can't be with her. oh, her heart is smashed into a thousand pieces. so smashed she devotes the rest of her life to her fame hungry father. she's such a martyr for love. whatever.

i wanted something to happen. i kept thinking something was going to happen. i don't know why. but after it was over i thought 2 hours for that? total meh. and now i see that the writer/director is the father of the star. that annoys me.

The Conspirator

The Conspirator (2010)


Writer: James Solomon
Director: Robert Redford
Starring: James McAvoy, Robin Wright

Synopsis
the tale of poor mary suratt, the first woman to be put to death in this wonderful country of ours. she was accused of helping john wilkes booth and the lot of conspiring to kill abraham lincoln, the president made famous by his mistreatment and government sanctioned slaughter of the native americans...i mean winning the civil war single handedly? whatever. back to mary suratt. her son was in on the assasination plot and was the only one to escape for a loooong time, but because she owned the boarding house where the plot was hatched, she was obviously in on it and had a mockery of a trial and was put to death. oh, and this is all told from the point of her attorney/union war hero/eventually disgraced and "traitorous" even though he's totally right attorney.

The Woman
this was really weird. i watched a history channel show on this subject back when the history channel used to play stuff like that and not just pawn stars, american pickers, and hicks with lots of guns, and the crazy thing is that show caught and held my interest and came off more exciting than this dramatization. with well known actors might i add. this was boring and slow. it also came off as weirdly low budget. something was off about it and i can't put my finger on it. like a canadian production for PBS or something. the music was way over bearing and almost laughable at times, and the acting came off like a stage play. then i sit through it all, and it turns out to be a robert redford movie. i thought that guy knew how to make stuff like movies. i guess there's "a river runs through it" which i personally have never made it through i think it's so god awful boring. so i guess there's that. oh. and didn't he make 'the horse whisperer' too?  i've personally never tried that one, but it's famed for being awful and boring, right? maybe he doesn't know after all. huh.

anyway. this is a really interesting subject to me. also kind of timeless issues with the recent ending of war and fear and the government railroading people to make the general public feel safer and vindicated, but little baby jesus in a soft taco shell it just didn't work in this thing.

it also kind of irked me that this was made by the american film blah, blah, blah production company, about a pretty huge event in american history and starred three UK actors in major roles. i guess i'll give you colm meaney because, let's face it, that guy is in EVERYTHING. seriously, turn on any movie you've got, and he's probably in it somewhere.

p.s. that tag line is awful. i don't remember hearing any publicity about this movie. maybe it's because everyone, but me had already recognized that apparently robert redford is not great at making movies....

Submarine

Submarine (2010)

Writer: Richard Ayoade, Joe Dunthorne (novel)
Director: Richard Ayoade
Starring: Craig Roberts

Synopsis
teen angst and romance. set in wales.

The Woman
i enjoyed me some of this. it was quirky and portrayed teen angst well. it wasn't eye roll inducing angst, but the yup,-i-remember-that kind. i wish i was as awesome and off putting as our young protagonist. my young anger was directed at the whole world and with the exception of one rebellious summer of misbehaving, i became a loner shut in, with various bouts of strange dress and fake accents when in public. ah, to reminisce about such things. have i mentioned i liked this movie?

is this a movie review?

have i mentioned my love of the fantasizing about circumstances and outcomes by mr. oliver tate? i totally did. who didn't have those over dramatized fantasies about how things would go? fantastic.

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey 
Written(-ish?) by Phillip Shane, Justin Weinstein
Directed by Constance Marks
Starring Kevin Clash, NOT Whoopi Goldberg

Synopsis
a documentary following the life and career of kevin clash. the guy behind elmo and so many other muppets.

MOster
I embody some percentage of the stereotypical "gay" characteristics, so I was at varying levels of teariness through this whole endeavor.  It was great to see how Kevin came up and how many of his dreams he's been able to fulfill. I can't imagine what it must have been like for him to actually build a friendship with Jim Henson, or to walk into that workshop for the first time.  I really like how he has taken on the role master in this field.  He's kind of like Anakin Skywalker, except for the part about killing millions of people, and I hope he inspires enough people to continue this tradition for generations to come because I fear that it may be coming to an end.  Watching this made me happy. 

It also left me with some questions, and they come from a lack of certitude around the purpose of the picture.  If this is simply about Clash's rise to Elmo, then it's fine, albeit one sided (except for Whoopi, whose presence was distracting if anything).

If it was supposed to be a wider biopic, then it definitely left some holes to fill.  I'd like to know about his divorce and how it came about and how it impacted his career.  I'd like to know more of his relationship with his daughter than just the couple of clips that we saw.  And I want to know those things not simply out of curiosity, but also out of a desire to understand the level of dedication that the craft required of him, and the sacrifices he had to make.  I think there are unexplored undertones to his success.  I don't think it was as simple as taking crap in high school until he was on TV.

What I want least of all, however, is to end this on a down note.  What is on the screen is quite interesting.  It's shot well.  It's engaging, and I'll say it again:  It made me happy.


The Woman
this was really cute, and grossly heart warming. only grossly because i don't like my heart warmed. i like it as the cold block of ice it is. why is it that anything muppet related really gets to everyone. jim henson was some sort of magic, man. despite it seeming like he his largely responsible for the downfall of sesame street (because it IS piece of crap now. even murray, the coolest new muppet, gets the screen time slash and don't even get me started on the hatred i possess for abby cadaby) since he not only puppeteers elmo, but produces and does stuff behind the scene, i didn't care while watching this movie. he came off like a really cool guy. a guy who knew what he wanted to do really early in his life and just worked to make it happen. i think that level of determination is rare and to have it for something like puppeteering is crazy awesome.

it was great to see the behind the scenes of old school sesame street and labyrinth and other old stuff and that muppet engineer guy, kermit was totally awesome too. a good touch was bringing it full circle as kevin takes an aspiring puppeeter kid around and shows him the muppet studio as kermit once did for him.

if you have a soul and enjoy sesame street or the muppets you should probably check this out. it's on netflix instant. i'm just sayin'.

Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids (2011)

Writer: Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne

Synopsis
A well-meaning, down-on-her-luck woman who can't catch a break is confronted by the success of her best friend when asked to be the maid of honor at her wedding.


The Woman
this wasn't bad, but it didn't live up to the hype in my brain. if i hadn't heard how amazingly funny this was, or how it shows women can be funny too (which i find insulting because there are plenty of women in entertainment who are really funny), or how it's "the hangover" woman style (which is totally untrue, in my opinion) i might have come back with a different view of this movie. i felt really bad for poor kristin wiig. that almost overshadowed the "funniness" of it. i did want her to pick herself up by the bootstraps, but i wanted the other characters to realize the depth of depression she felt resulting from her failure to excel in the only thing she was passionate about. what chick (i can only speak for chicks, here) hasn't felt like a total loser in comparison with her friends at times? i wanted maya rudoph's character to defend kristen wiig's character to the rest of the group. i wanted rose byrne's character to get punched in the face several times. i think the melissa mccarthy character had a good idea with the fight club party. she could go all edward norton vs. jared leto on rose byrne.

there were some funny parts to this. we laughed out loud more than a couple times. i don't want to minimize the positive review part, but with all apatow movies there's that big current of seriousness that always throws me off.

MOster
So.

Critically, this is a terrific movie.  There's a plot with some personal development for at least a few of the characters, there is drama, there is humor, there are uncomfortable situations and women having digestive difficulties but only in one scene.  The production value of the film is high, and consistent.  The acting is fine or better.  The direction and camera work are unassuming.  I believe that this film deserved the nominations which it garnered.  My biggest problem from a critical perspective is that the title just doesn't match the story and the marketing campaign bore little resemblance to the actual film.  The movie is about bridesmaids, but it's only pertinent to the acquaintance between two of them.  I spent a minute looking to see if this was written under a different title but I couldn't find anything.  It just seemed to me like we were sold a bill of goods.  What we got wasn't bad, but it wasn't what we were promised.


Personally, it just wasn't all the way there for me.  Some of the antics either didn't go far enough or went too far over the top.  Neither of the rival women has a ton of self respect, and that always bothers me in films about women (when it's there).  There was a lot of growing up, and I appreciated that development and it felt real enough to me.  There's just something untoward about the whole thing, and while that contributes to the comedy it wasn't quite enough for me.

The Informant!

The Informant! (2009)


Written by  Scott Z. Burns, Kurt Eichenwald (book)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Melanie Lynskey, Joel McHale

Synopsis
some dude who is a pathological lier becomes an informant to the FBI for price fixing that was going on in his corn corporation. he is a bad informant because he is a lier and exaggerates. he is a bad informant because he enjoys the intrigue he has created...because he is a lier.

MOster
In order to succeed in watching this movie, the viewer must suspend many things.  These things include, but are not limited to:

1. A sense of time
2. A sense of humor
3. A sense of what Matt Damon looks like

This movie is slow.  It consumes something like three years of the characters' lives and it feels like it's a 1:1 ratio.  The whole thing just drags.  It's not exciting in any way, and you don't get invested in the characters at all.  There is no notion of the stakes for anybody.  Matt Damon starts off as an odd combination of rich and dorky but it's not endearing and you don't really learn how he got there or why it's important to stay that way.  His wife and kid(s? - even this isn't terribly clear) want to fit the stable they just built with horses.  That's nice, but it would also be nice if you ever got the impression that he really gave a shit about them.  If you were to have come away from his meager scenes with them with any sense of love or companionship or even responsibility then you might be able to generate in yourself some conflict about what he does.  Instead you get scene after scene of him being a moron at work, wondering how he got to where he is.  How can one be so successful in business and so utterly naive?

This movie is not funny.  We just watched a really good movie that was quite cerebrally funny without being laugh-a-minute funny, where the punchline was a a large quantity of death.  Here, the only joke is that Matt Damon (whatever the fuck his name is) is an asshole.  He keeps doing the same stupid thing and getting the same results and he pulls along a bunch of FBI people who, while they may have a case somewhere, need to weed through all his bullshit to find it and--is *this* supposed to be funny?--don't take any time to look into his background at all, as if none of these DOJ bigwigs anticipated a scenario in which he would be cross-examined.  Scott Bakula makes a good sad face.  Joel McHale will never be a serious film star.  Neither of those facts contributes to this film's attempts at humor.

The visual aesthetic of this movie is off-putting.  I was alive (fuck, I was almost a grownup) in the 90s, and I don't remember them looking like the settings in the photos of my parents' wedding. Everything is either orange or blue, and while that's a point of view I don't care.  And the makeup was jarring.

Looking at those two photographs it's important to note that he's supposed to be older in the second one.  It's also a good point to make the digression into his acting ability.  The combination of the makeup and the Damon eliminates any path to a good performance.  You just hear him, with his arrogance vibe, as the artificial jowels jiggle.

Ditto his wife (and again, I say that that is not a shirt a rich woman would have worn in 1992).  She looks like she was in a version of Splice starring Winona Rider and Lorraine McFly.

You don't have to suspend your appreciation for how shots are composed, though, so that's something.  And maybe the worst part about this is that we know Soderbergh can do better.  Despite Jennifer Lopez, I really like Out of Sight.  And once you get past the whole notion of completely shitting on the original at least the first Ocean's movie is funny, well-paced, and modern.  What was up here?

That last question is not rhetorical.  I expect that this blog will make it to the executives in charge of the movie and one of them will post their answer in a comment.

The Woman
holy crap, BORING! i slept through the middle 50 minutes of this movie. enough so that when we continued watching this in session 2, after the child had gone to bed. i had wiped all interest of wonder about what was going on. i have not cared less about what the hell was going on in a movie. to make the corn industry exciting by poking fun at how boring it is still doesn't make it interesting. throw the financial end of corporation in there and, yup, there i go. in one ear and out the other. zombie expression aaaaaand sleep.



i would like to point out to moster, publicly, that this movie took place in the midwest, so style is set back about 10 years.

$9.99

$9.99 (2008)

Written by Etgar Keret
Directed by Tatia Rosenthal
Starring Josef Behr, Roy Billing, Tom Budge

Synopsis
In an apartment building in an Australian city, there are a bunch of ambitious people and some odd supernatural occurrences.  You should really just feed the ducks, though.

The Woman
shme to the power of shme. there were some good ideas here, but they just didn't develop any of them. that made me resent sitting through this movie. the animation really bothered me too. it was like a julian schnabel painting come to life and i hate julian schnabel. the only silver lining to this experience was that it was short.

MOster
There's more in this movie to want to like then there is to like.  From the beginning, we were having difficulty keeping the film in the foreground of our attentions, and not because I was getting handsy or anything like that.  The animation was a little strange, but that's nothing new for us and it's not the reason we were outside of our comfort zone. I think it was the low volume of the conversational tone, which didn't change through the entire movie.

The problem here is that the film does nothing to earn the viewer's belief in anything.  It's OK for odd things to just happen, and it's OK for the characters to simply take them as read while we don't.  There were too many odd thing simultaneously, and too many blithely bad characters and too many whingy motherfuckers all at once.  The connecting tissue of the apartment building was much more of a convenience than any kind of actual connection.

It occurs to me that I haven't actually talked about what happens or to whom or why.  It's not because I don't remember--I'll be calling Geoffry Rush's pre-angel character an asshole for a long time, and his post-angel character wasn't any better.  Instead, view these 200 (or whatever) words as an one of those drawn out, "shmeh," kind of squints that you give sometimes.