Paris, Je T’aime (2006)

Seeing this movie was an exercise in mental and emotional stamina and ultimately ended in exhaustion of both.

Paris, Je T’aime is a film about love in Paris, to put it as simply as possible. The movie is broken down into 18 short films, each about 10 minutes long, each about different people and events, and none seemingly having any connection to the other. So there really is no plot. And I found that I had to work too hard while watching the movie to process what I had just seen and start fresh with a new set of characters and circumstances every few minutes.

It wasn’t that the movie was confusing. Each section of the movie takes place in a different area, or arrondissement, of Paris. Each section has a title shot with the name of the director before it begins. So it’s very clear that it’s a new story each time.

But it’s like reading a book of short stories. Things happen so quickly in the story, that by the time you think you understand what is going on, who the characters are and what motivates them or they trying to accomplish, the story is over, and a new story begins. You don’t really get a chance to get attached to the characters, to relate to them, to empathize with them, or to really understand all the subtleties of the story or figure out the symbolism.

And it was very emotionally exhausting, because each story is about love (a couple of them didn’t make any sense to me and I don’t see how they were about love at all, but anyway), so the characters are going through many different feelings. And because the segments are so short, you don’t have time to really process and recover from the first set of feelings, before moving onto the next, and the next, and the next.

Some of the themes on love were the death of a spouse, the death of a child, strangers connecting, divorce, putting work before family, satisfying your partner, young love, etc.

There was a huge cast, because each of the 18 arrondissements had a different set of actors. Some notables were Elijah Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Nick Nolte, Bob Hoskins, Natalie Portman, Steve Buscemi and Juliette Binoche, and notable directors Alfonso Cuaron, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Wes Craven and Gerard Depardieu.

What was consistent throughout was the look of the film. The colors of the film were the same, and many of the camera angles were similar. It really did feel like you were watching one movie.

My favorite section was directed by Alfonso Cuaron (of Harry Potter fame) and starred Nick Nolte. It had a twist ending that was quite unexpected and delightful.

Once (2006)

I loved, loved, loved this movie. The story was totally unrealistic and yet somehow completely realistic at the same time. Once, which won the World Cinema Audience Award for a dramatic film at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, is sort of a musical. It chronicles the lives of two poor musicians, who within the course of a week meet, collaborate on an album together and fall in love.

Once stars The Frames’ Glen Hansard and Czech musician Marketa Irglova. I am a huge fan of Lay Me Down, a single by The Frames. All the music from the movie was composed and performed by Hansard and Irglova, and it’s beautiful modern rock music. It’s the kind of music that you feel like you could fall into and swim around in. There are pretty acoustic guitars and lovely piano melodies. The lyrics are honest and chronicle the pain of unhealthy relationships, being hurt, losing love and wanting love. Some of the songs do sound a bit like the Coldplay style of ballad, but it’s so much more passionate and evocative. (You can listen to the whole soundtrack free at www.foxsearchlight.com/once/) And Hansard performs some amazing vocal feats of octave jumps that sound almost operatic. The songs are brimming with emotions. I just can’t say enough good things about the music.

It was really interesting to see a movie where the main actors are not really actors at all, but musicians. The film was made on a teensy, tiny budget of $150,000, and the street scenes in Dublin were shot without permits and with a long camera lens. The film wasn’t overacted, and certainly not over-produced. At times it felt like you were watching someone’s home movies, and it was very refreshing compared to the summer blockbusters. I felt like I was watching something that was really happening; a real week in real people’s lives.

So what I found unrealistic about the film is mostly the way the characters meet. Hansard’s character works for his father fixing vacuum cleaners, and also plays his guitar on the street at a busy Dublin shopping area. Irglova’s character, who is a cleaning lady who also sells flowers on the street to support her young daugher, just approaches him one evening while he is playing and she starts asking him questions about his music and himself. This seems very dangerous to me as a girl who grew up in New York city. You don’t walk up to the street musicians, you don’t make eye contact with them, and you certainly don’t start talking to them. But maybe that’s why I don’t have a cute Irish boyfriend. Maybe not.

What I found very realistic about the movie is that the characters do not get together in a romantic way. They don’t even kiss. They both have just come out of painful relationships, and in the end, even though the characters really and truly connect and obviously love each other, they each go back to their past relationships. Hansard’s character goes to London to get back together with his ex-girlfriend who cheated on him. And Irglova’s character moves back in with her estranged husband. To me, this is reality. There are no fairy tales. People stay in unhealthy relationships, and for so many reasons. They think they can’t do any better, or they stay together for “the sake of the children,” or because it’s familiar, or because they simply don’t want to be alone.

Dreamgirls (2006)

Based loosely on the careers of 1960s and 70s Motown divas Diana Ross and the Supremes, Dreamgirls was entertaining at best, though mostly just long and predictable.

It’s a big-budget musical, so the costumes are really neat, as is the lighting. The movie is more than two hours long, with the first half chronicling the Dreamette’s rise to stardom, and the very, very long second half of the film showing the emotional breakdown of the characters and their lives. It’s a quintessential musical, and while I love musicals, if they’re not done right they can all seem the same. In the first half of the film, the singing is only done while the performers are actually performing to an audience on a stage, or if they’re in a recording studio. I loved that; it seemed organic, even though the songs themselves sounded nothing like what Motown really sounds like. The second half of the movie is when the singing as dialogue begins, and it was unoriginal.

The film had been in the works for more than 20 years, ever since the Broadway musical debuted in 1981. After the success of the movie Chicago, Dreamgirls was finally made, and with an all-star cast of Eddie Murphy, Beyonce Knowles, Jamie Foxx and Danny Glover. Jaleel White, better known as Steve Urkel from the TV show Family Matters, even had a small role in the film.

The one part of the movie that I loved was Jennifer Hudson’s portrayal of Effie White, the overweight girl with the big personality and amazing, soulful voice who is ultimately cut from the group because she doesn’t fit the right image (light-skinned, thin girls with pop-star voices to attract white audiences). Her rendition of “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” was heart wrenching and quite frankly, the only thing that made this film worth watching. I wish I could sing with that much passion and soul. I am very glad she won the Oscar for her performance.

The Italian (2005)

Though the title might suggest otherwise, The Italian is a Russian film, and is filled with all of the characteristic bleakness of Mother Russia. I was enthusiastic about seeing this film after reading a synopsis of it, but was disappointed.

The Italian is set in an orphanage in Russia, where the children are packed in like sardines and bullies rule. We meet 6-year-old Vanya, who is about to be adopted by a couple from Italy. During the two-month waiting period until Vanya is legally adopted, he becomes obsessed with finding his birth mother. Vanya is compelled to do this by the fact that a birth mother arrived at the orphanage to take the son she abandoned several years ago home. She is cruelly turned away after learning that her son was adopted by another couple, and she then commits suicide. Vanya cannot bear the thought of his own birth mother facing the same fate, and decides to find her at any cost.

Though the movie was only 90 minutes long, it felt much, much longer. I attribute this to the horribly depressing state of things at the orphanage, and in Russia in general. I have only seen one other Russian film, “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath,” which is Russia’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and even that movie, which was about the holiday season, was exhaustingly depressing. I am so glad that my ancestors left Russia, and I didn’t have to grow up there. It seems like a miserable place where there is no point of living.

But, I digress. What was remarkable and thought provoking about the film was that even in this bleak world, even though Vanya was abandoned as a baby and has suffered abuse at the orphanage, he has an amazing capacity for love. He so desperately loves the mother who abandoned him, who he never even met, that he must find her at all costs.

There are many characters that all seem like they could be real people, motivated by greed or lust or power, or who are just beyond hope.

Though I usually don’t have any trouble with subtitles, I did find these intrusive and at times difficult to follow. There are sometimes several different conversations going on at the same time, some that are just in the background, and they are all subtitled in together, which made it confusing.

I also really disliked the way the resolution of the film was presented. It happened in the last 10 seconds of the movie, and was only described in a voiceover with subtitles. Had the two loud, annoying ladies in my theater not figured it out loudly during the ending credits, I don’t think I would have caught what happened.

Shrek the Third (2007)

I saw this movie to relax my mind at the end of a hard, long day. And it did just the trick. It was nice to see a movie with a familiar feel, setting and characters, that didn’t require any real thought on the part of the audience. It was pure mind-numbingness.

Shrek the Third (or Donkey’s Revenge, as I like to think of it) followed the usual Shrek plot outline. As always, Shrek has to overcome his problems relating to people in order for everyone to have a happy, fairy tale ending. And everyone does! In this installation, Shrek and Fiona are filling in as king and queen of Far, Far Away. Shrek journeys with Donkey and Puss in Boots to find Arthur, a teenager who, except for Shrek and Fiona, is the only rightful heir of the kingdom. Shrek has already decided that he doesn’t want to be king, and just wants to go back to his swamp, so he goes on this quest to find Arthur. Meanwhile, Fiona finds out that she is pregnant, and Prince Charming gathers all the villains from a myriad of fairy tales to attack the kingdom, so that he can become king of Far, Far Away. Fiona gathers the usually dainty fairy tale damsels in distress (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White) to defend the kingdom in that crazy, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style of hers. Needless to say, everything works out in the end.

It’s always delightful to me when I watch a cartoon, be it a pen and paper cartoon, or a computer animated film, and I forget that it’s a cartoon. Shrek 3 definitely accomplished this. There was a fantastic and really impressive bit of CGI when Prince Charming tosses his hair, and you can see all the little hairs blowing in the wind. It was neat.

The Year of the Dog (2007)

Starring former Saturday Night Live cast member Molly Shannon, The Year of the Dog was a sad and poignant movie. Shannon plays an old maid, a 40-something woman who has given up on dating and getting married. She is a seemingly independent woman; she owns a home and a car, and works as a secretary at a company near her home in California. And when she’s not at work, Shannon’s character, Peggy, spends all of her time with her totally adorable Beagle, Pencil. We barely have time to get attached to Pencil, as he dies about five minutes into the movie.

The rest of the film is about how she copes with her loss, and it is a major downward spiral into emotional instability. Firstly, most of the people in Peggy’s life seem to have toxic personalities and are very unsupportive. She has friends at work, and a relationship with her brother and his wife and children. Her “friends” at work seem self-centered, and instead of relating to Peggy about her loss, or at least giving her time to grieve, they try to distract her by encouraging her to go out and find a man, go see a funny movie, and basically forget all about her poor little dog who died only that morning.

Trying to move on, Peggy goes on a horrific date with her neighbor, played superbly by John C. Reilly. The man’s house is decorated with deer and moose heads mounted on the wall, and as a child he even shot his own dog accidentally during a hunting trip. Peggy then adopts a new dog, a huge German Shepard who was abused and has behavioral problems. She starts falling in love and becoming heavily influenced by the dog’s trainer, who is vegan, and gay (though she heartbreakingly doesn’t find out about the latter until later in the film). Peggy decides to become a vegan, starts volunteering for the ASPCA and learning about non-profit organizations that rescue farm animals from being slaughtered. This is where Peggy starts going crazy. After being romantically rejected by her dog trainer, she realizes that she has always been disappointed by people, and relates to animals much better than people. And it’s sad. Don’t get me wrong; I love animals, especially dogs. I have never had a dog, but I love it when you pass them on the street, and they smile at you, or you can tell that they’re feeling sad. They have feelings just like people, and give so much love.

So Peggy starts stealing money from the company she works for to donate to organizations like PETA. She has a harder and harder time relating to people, her new dog mauls another dog and is euthanized, she is fired from her job for stealing, and she adopts 15 dogs from the pound to rescue them from being killed. Her house becomes a disaster area, and there is Peggy, lost in the chaos, but loving the company and love her house full of rambunctious dogs gives her.

In the end, after attempting to murder her neighbor, who she believes killed Pencil by leaving slug poisoning out, Peggy joins a group that protests animal cruelty, and we see her on a bus, headed towards her future.

Though her character was an extreme example, I think many of us fear becoming “the crazy cat lady,” or being old and alone, and not being able to relate to people.

There was a lovely overdubbed monologue at the end of the film, where Peggy talks about love. How some people love other people, some people love power, or money, or material things. But how she loves animals, and knows it’s her calling to save as many as she can. I didn’t cry at the end of the movie. But I did cry in the car on the way home, thinking about love, and wondering, at the end of a relationship, or when someone you love dies, where does the love go? It’s still inside of you, aching to come out, to be expressed, even if the person, or dog you love is gone. So maybe all of us become a little bit like Peggy. We try to find some other way to express that love, to put it back into the world, where it can do some good.

Spiderman 3 (2007)

Well, it’s Spiderman! It has to be exciting!

The third installment of the Spiderman series opened in theaters today. I woke up this morning and said to myself, “I’m going to see Spiderman!” And I did. The movie was showing at least every half an hour starting at 3 a.m. at the theater near me (in addition to the midnight showing last night). The theater was pretty empty when I saw the movie. After all, it was 10:45 a.m. on a Friday, and most people are at work or at school. So I saw the movie with a bunch of unemployed people (myself included in that group), toddlers, and a baby who screamed through most of the movie. It was quite an experience.

I thought the way the director, Sam Raimi, opened the film was great. As the opening credits ran, we saw scenes from Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. It was a great way to remind the audience of the plots of the previous films.

Geeky Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) gets a bit of a big head in this film. New Yorkers love Spider-Man, and Peter is enjoying all the glory. Unfortunately, it gets in the way of him connecting emotionally and relating to his girlfriend, MJ (Kirsten Dunst). And we’ve all been there. Well, we haven’t all been Spider-Man. But at some point or another, we’ve all been a little too absorbed in our own lives, and wound up hurting the people we love because of it.

And there are three bad guys in the movie! Venom, played by That 70’s Show’s Eric Forman (also known at Topher Grace) was very cool and scary. The Sand Man was played by Thomas Haden Church, who I remember as the dopey custodian on Wings. Plus Peter’s friend Harry Osborn becomes the New Goblin, played by James Franco.

Frankly, the plot is not that interesting. There are a lot of bad guys. They die; they come back, they die again, they come back again. The middle of the movie was even a little dull. And Peter Parker’s physical changes when the black suit symbiotic alien thing takes him over really amount to him having black hair and wearing black eyeliner.

What is really interesting is that despite the fact that it’s a movie based on a comic book, most of the emotions people go through in the film are very easy to relate to: Love, jealousy, anger, grief, competitiveness, vengefulness, loss, pride and shame. The characters deal with real psychological issues.

One scene reminded me of a friend’s description of the book “What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentine Achak Deng” by Dave Eggers. The Sand Man explains himself to Spider-Man. He explains why he needed to steal money. He explains how he accidentally shot Peter’s uncle. And Spider-Man is able to forgive him. “What is the What” discusses the idea that if we were all able to explain ourselves to each other, our personal histories, where we come from, what we have suffered through and what we have overcome, then we as a society would be able to relate to each other in much healthier ways. That we would be able to understand and relate to each other, instead of making assumptions and snap judgments about each other.

And in the end, Spider-Man talks about how we all have a choice. In the comic book world of Spider-Man, it’s all very black and white. There is good, and there is evil. In reality, there are many, many shades of gray. But that choice is still there. We have to make decisions that uphold our personal morals. We have to choose to be better people. Sometimes the need to make a decision is thrust upon us, but we are the ones who must choose which path to follow.

*******
As an added bonus, the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was shown. It looks so good! I can’t wait for July 13!

The Queen (2006)

I finally caught this film on DVD after trying unsuccessfully to see it in the movie theater. And frankly, I wish I had seen it in the theater. What I was really taken away by in this movie wasn't Helen Mirren's Academy Award-winning performance, but by the beautiful cinematography and grand scenic shots of Scotland. It took my breath away to see the rolling green hills and wide skies.

The film is mostly about the way the royal family publicly handled the death of Princess Diana. I had just turned 16 when Diana died, and don't remember most of the media hullabaloo. However, as a former journalist, I now understand how handling a crisis publicly can make or break you. Making the right speeches and sending out the right public relations statements at the right times and in the right places can cast a public official in a very nice light. And as this film delves into, while newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair was very forthcoming with his grief for the death of the “People's Princess,” the royal family was very far away physically and emotionally from the center of where the public came to mourn: Buckingham Palace in London.

I had trouble relating to the emotions displayed in the film. Mirren portrayed Queen Elizabeth as having a uniquely British emotional disposition. She kept her feelings to herself and held everything inside. She does her duty as Queen and she is strict about following the rules of the monarchy. The only time the Queen cries in the film is when she is alone, stranded in the middle of the hillside when her car breaks down.

Watching the movie was like watching a caricaturization of the real public people involved in the tragedy. Tony Blair as the hero, coming to bring the Queen into the modern ages of public relations. His wife as the wicked and mean anti-monarchist. The Queen's husband and the Queen's mother staunchly asserting the need to follow the rules of the monarchy. Prince Charles as a wimp, trying to buddy up to Tony Blair, so that he won't come off in a bad light. And the Queen, trying to maintain her dignity, yet unable to meet the changing desires of her subjects.

As historical fiction, the film did a good job of setting the scene and showing what these characters might have gone through at the time. It was an interesting way to revisit a historical event nearly a decade later.