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Letters to Juliet

Fellow Movie Lovers




LETTERS TO JULIET



Oh, I can hear the groans of disbelief; why bother with this romantic drivel? Is the city bereft of more worthy fare? Yes it is trivial romantic fluff. Even the story revolving around distraught, devastated young women searching for solutions to their disastrous love affairs, doomed or abandoned relationships from Juliet Capulet, the Juliet starring in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, the late sixteenth century tragedy. Who in their right mind (no matter how lovesick) seeks advice from a thirteen year old girl who kills herself on her husband’s tomb? Defies logic, but love and logic can be mismatched bedfellows.



That being said I loved every syrupy preordained second! Constant sinking to the lachrymose, every tear partnered with a smile. Italy glimmers, especially Verona; the sun spawning warmth and glory on every animate and inanimate object. You smell the olive oil, cheese, wine, fresh from the oven- baked bread, and savor the indescribable flavors of Italy; permeating every taste bud, salivating with memories of past Italian feasts, lusting for future gastronomic repasts.





Amanda Seyfried (Chloe) is Sophie, the exquisite, idealistic “fact finder” for The New Yorker, who embarks on a trial honeymoon with her intended, Victor, (Gael Garcia Benal), a chef, totally miscast but competent. Amanda visits the shrine to Juliet, where forlorn young ladies leave their sanctimonious, pleading notes, stuffed between bricks, the wailing wall of Verona; and discovers a letter written fifty years ago and answers it; hence the birth of a beautiful, nostalgic journey, blossoming in a pilgrimage throughout the dazzling Italian landscape. Vanessa Redgrave (Claire), the Midas of actors, gives a twenty- four caret gold performance as the older woman seeking the magic of a lost love, vanished but remembered youth; she imbues the role with grace, passion and dignity; Camelot will always be hers, even in the hereafter.



While exiting, peacefully satiated, walking home positive that everlasting togetherness in the genre of Doris Day & Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn & Gary Cooper, Kathryn Hepburn & Spencer Tracy, will be eternally theirs. “The End” at the conclusion of “Letters to Juliet” finalized that a match made in Verona is sacred.



What better feeling than realizing that all your expectations were validated, the smugness legitimized, and acknowledging how much we have missed the happy endings in film and in dreams.



THREE STARS!!!



For Now……………Peneflix

Fellow Movie Lovers

Fellow Movie Lovers




THE SQUARE



“Ah, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”, Sir Walter Scott.



These words galloped through my mind for the entirety of this tightly wrought and brilliantly conceived Australian film. This is entanglement at its summit; breathtaking, frightening and shocking to the core.



I have not seen that many Australian films but in 2005 “ Wolf Creek” won my award for the most terrifying movie ever made, because unlike “Halloween” and “ Nightmare on Elm Street” it could have happened; the reality of it made it more horrifying, (Jason and Freddie never die). Even after five years it is permanently tattooed on my memory.



“The Square”, an upscale resort hotel in the development processes, commences with a scene that rendered the audience, after a unifying scream glued to their seats and cringing behind their popcorn.



The premise universal: Ray (David Roberts) the married project developer, his brain roaming from below the neck to above the knee, is in an illicit relationship with Carla (Claire Van Der Boom) the not so innocent beauty married to a low level mobster Greg (Anthony Hayes); his meanness slithers behind his rough exterior. .



The plot is woven tighter than an Indian braid; every centimeter of one’s concentrative powers is demanded to keep up with the tapestry that Nash Edgerton (directorial debut) has woven into this masterpiece of suspense.



There were times during the viewing that I realized that “The Square’s” bewitching intensity grew out of the simplicity of the characters; they were recognizable, average people weaving an inescapable web, a maze, a trap, that resulted in their doom or the despairing annihilation of self.



FOUR STARS !!!! (OUT OF FIVE)



For Now…………Peneflix

Fellow Movie Lovers

Fellow Movie Lovers




ROBIN HOOD



If you worship at the alter of The Spectacle your prayers have been heard and answered in spades.



For those who relish the spectacular, sensational epic: “ The Ten Commandments”, “Spartacus” , “ Ben Hur”, “ Cleopatra”, whose thirst for blood and gore is insatiable, Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” delivers on all levels: gorgeously filmed, marvelously acted, and a thousand arrows for as many bodies. For the spectacle disciple, heavenly bliss is rained upon you.



That being said it is flawed by historic inaccuracies, a meandering plot lost in the forest and twenty minutes too long. Russell Crowe as the myth in the making creates a tough, sensitive, dynamic Robin and fills the screen with enough testosterone to satisfy the taste of any viewer. He surpasses his Robin predecessors: Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Richard Todd, Sean Connery; but Crowe, as adroit as he is, cannot steal the crown, firmly attached to the head of Kevin Costner, the undisputed King of Sherwood Forest.



Cate Blanchett dazzles as Maid Marion; the perfect blend of Joan of Arc and Annie Oakley; she is in command of her life, body and lands. There have been some lovely Maid Marion’s: Enid Bennett, Joan Rice, Audrey Hepburn, Uma Thurman but Blanchett is Robin’s match in mettle and true grit. The screen pulsates with her fire and energy. Their courtship is the melding of two strong wills destined for a marriage greater than the sum of its parts.



Who is Robin Hood? In actuality he is a potpourri of fictional to real life outlaws, first surfacing between 1194-1400 AD: (Robert Hod, a fugitive, Robert of Wetherby, Robyn Hood, porter to King Edward II, 1324). The first literary reference can be found in B-Text of Piers Plowman (1377). He is heralded in various ballads commencing in 1450; the legend magnified and embellished with each telling.



Taking from the rich to enrich the poor has lost some of its romantic vigilantism; achieving legitimate status in many cultures. Robin Hood continues to titillate, excite and woo audiences into a fantasy world where yeoman or princes can triumph and save the day!



TWO & ½ STARS



For Now………..Peneflix

Fellow Movie Lovers

Fellow Movie Lovers




CITY ISLAND



I like Andy Garcia, I have always liked him; whether a good or bad guy; whether a good or bad movie I am always on his side. It is not just his staggering physiognomy or the timber of his voice but the depth of his characterizations; he climbs into the minds of his protagonists, inhabits their foibles and charms, and sheds, like a chrysalis his own predilections and becomes, as in this case Vince Rizzo.



We recognize Vince Rizzo, a man who loves his family and the historical City Island where the inhabitants are divided between the Clam Diggers, who are born and raised there and the Mussel Suckers, the interlopers from the outside. Vince works hard and secretly harbors a dream, a fantasy to be something other than the man reality and circumstances has molded. Jung said “the brighter the light, the darker the shadow”, Vince is the reverse, his shadow is illuminating and ebullient.



This is a movie about secrets. Vince’s wife Joyce (played convincingly by Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife”) is a frustrated, shrewish, bored receptionist, projecting her lost ambitions on her daughter Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido, the real life daughter of Andy Garcia), using subterfuge to rectify her self made secret. Vince, Jr. hilariously acted by Ezra Miller, has a fetish, so mouth watering gluttonous viewers had to be restrained from poll vaulting to the concession stand.



But secrets need catalysts to unveil and reveal themselves. The two catalysts, in male and female form are brilliantly played by Steven Strait as Tony, a convicted felon that Vince, a prison guard brings home to City Island to build a bathroom in an unused shed on his property; and Emily Mortimer (“Shutter Island”, “Lars and the Real Girl”) as the muse who ignites and instigates Vince’s eventual metamorphosis. Casting at its pinnacle!



This film, teetering on the precipice of greatness is so commandingly real, well-written, exhilaratingly acted that the viewer is unaware of the genius behind its production. But the laughter, joy and warmth it cloaks and leaves with the audience will sustain us through many a chilling film disappointments.



FOUR STARS





For Now………….Peneflix

Fellow Movie Lovers

A “BRIEF ENCOUNTER”, WITH “WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE”




The English poet William Wordsworth wrote “the world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; little we see in Nature that is ours.”



Having just returned from an excursion to Zambia, Botswana, and South Africa where Wordsworth’s powerful poetry written in 1807 plummeted me with its contemporary viability; Africa robbed this urban dweller of all preconceived concepts of what was expected in the African wild. Africa laid waste to any illusions harbored before this miraculous epiphany, baptism in nature and the animal kingdom.



The single engine airplane, flew low over the dense jungle; the airstrip vivisects, slashes, like a Lucia Fontana canvas the untamed wilderness. Only constant landings and takeoffs prohibit the vegetation from consuming what is rightfully theirs, violated, raped by invaders from a technological world.



In Botswana my friend and I were taken by Land Rover, through the bush to a lush camp where we were isolated from a world perpetually peppered with communication. The isolation sang poignantly and shockingly as Mozart, Puccini, Presley, Montana, stripping one’s psyche of petty illusions, desires, energy depriving quests; each laceration gave birth to the purist insight, crystallizing, prioritizing the importance of one’s life and loves. It was so refreshingly beautiful and simple; complete happiness was mine.



African day and nighttime skies defy description; a poet is yet to be born who can portray the frightening, intoxicating, luminous beauty, the magnitude they shower on the universe. One cannot doubt the breath of a supreme being, a celestial alchemist, a Merlin, who with a shake of a wand produces a kaleidoscope of colors, never again to be replicated.



I am abashed and chagrined to admit my ignorance of the animal planet; my limited exposure confined to the Zoo. It was shocking and stunning to be exposed to the unexpected sightings of a myriad of beasts, some I had never heard of, surfacing at will. The animal hierarchy, so eminently sensible and pragmatic, they kill to thrive and survive. Watching the feeding frenzy of lions, hyenas and vultures as they devoured a kudu rendered me slacked jawed and speechless, an unknown phenomena that my friend as a reliable witness can testify to.

I loved the exotic and plentiful Impalas, the ballerinas of the plain. The monumental size of the elephants and hippopotamuses; the swiftness of the leopards and cheetahs; the aggressiveness and meanness of the hyenas and jackals; the delicious taste of the wildebeest and springbok; the wretched ugliness of the warthog, which I declined to ingest: the illusive white rhinoceros (which is black). But my heart embraced the enchanting black and white zebras and the long necked giraffes, there was a kindness, grace and elegance in their every gesture.



Africa, still in its gestation phase opened a window whose existence I was unaware of and shook me with such ferocity that it will remain unhinged and open for eternity. Genesis says “in the beginning was the word”, that word, has to be Africa!

As I left the Dark Continent, which brought illumination to my spirit and with a torn heart, again William Wordsworth’s poetry provided clarity and solace to my psyche:



Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,

We will grieve not, rather find,

Strength in what remains behind.



Africa, like India years ago, gleaned the detritus and superfluous from my life and paved the way for a deeper strength and profound love of life and mankind.







Peneflix





Next Review…….City Island

Fellow Movie Lovers

Fellow Movie Lovers




IRON MAN 2



Sequels or seconds rarely surpass or measure up to the original; not just in movies but in life. We have all revisited a place where the memories are so vibrant and sacred, chiseled, like granite, in the temple of our consciousness that revisiting those sites rarely ignites the same passion. Thomas Wolfe says we can not go home again; this same holds true for sequels.



Robert Downey, Jr. plays the quixotic, brilliant, innovative Tony Stark, aka the Iron Man. He is good but somehow lacks the flame of creativity , stunningly prevalent in the 2008 version; his performance is so staged and effortless that I had the feeling he was not really there; he was making his “to do list” while prancing around in his costume.



Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper) and Scarlett Johansson (Natalie) two super beauties in two supercilious roles; their dialogue so trite and vacuous that I was embarrassed for them.



Whenever I reach the looking at my watch or clandestinely checking my Blackberry stage I either have to leave or focus on other aspects of the film. There were two roles that I found riveting and saved me from the mindless purgatory I was quickly being subjected to.

Mickey Rouke (“Diner”, “The Wrestler”) was perfectly cast as the Russian, Whiplash; the evil scientific equivalent to “ the messiah”, Tony Stark. He plays the deleterious genius with such alacrity that the screen dulled with his absence.

And Sam Rockwell as the obsequious politician, Justin Hammer, imbues his character with a slippery, sinuous, deliciously evil charm that is intoxicating to watch; he is amoral to the core and try as we may, would not have him any other way.



“Iron Man 2”, is no exception to the second malaise; in film history the only sequels that outdid the original were “The Godfather” series, so rent those and wait for “Iron Man 2” to appear in DVD form; the wait will not be long!



TWO STARS!



For Now………..Peneflix

Fellow Movie Lovers

Fellow Movie Lovers




PLEASE GIVE



A vastly anticipated film by the talented Nicole Holofcener fell far short of expectations for this film devotee; even the title lacked credibility.



There are solid but predictable performances by Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Amanda Peet. But two characters played by Rebecca Hall (“Vicky Christina Barcelona”) and Sarah Steele were worth focusing on and salvaged the film from total tedium.



The title implies a plea for a charitable contribution; living in a major metropolis, where it is easy to develop a relationship with some of the indigents; they “rent” their corners or steps, become part of our visual landscape, and are religious in protecting their turf. There is a guilt that some of the fortunate feel for the less endowed or financially deprived and those soliciting capitalize on that guilt. This is fair; it is a tough way to survive and one of my favorites is a man who is “blind” but is an actor of sorts because his blindness is a ruse and my guilt lies in the fact that I know he sees me and would be hurt if I did not give; so I have helped support him over the years and it is a relationship that has been mutually beneficial to both.



In “Please Give” Kate (Catherine Keener) and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) sell used furniture purchased from “dead peoples children”. They live next door to Andra, a cantankerous woman (delightfully depicted by Ann Morgan Giulbert) approaching her ninety- first birthday and have made it obvious that her demise would be gleefully welcomed, precipitating their planned expansion of their home, which they share with their caustic, attractively disadvantaged teenaged daughter Abby (Sarah Steele, a gifted talent in the embryonic stages).

Kate and Alex are at a stalemate in their marriage, or maybe the partnership, devoid of passion, is just stale. She tries to purchase from those less endowed her salvation and he, bereft of literary curiosity, seeks stimulation from television personalities or the obvious, mundane male diversion.





An unlikely friendship develops between Andra’s caring granddaughter Rebecca (sensitively played by Rebecca Hall) and Abby; they are analytic, intelligent and insightful young adults and rescue the film from the banality which surrounds them.



Leaving the theatre I was approached by two young women who asked me what the message or moral of the film was; after a twenty- four hour marination process I have concluded two things. Primarily Kate, looking to the homeless, physically or mentally challenged to fill the vacant canyon in her soul would be better served by several sessions on a psychologist’s couch.

Secondly, if you are a fifteen year old with bad skin feel free to verbally attack the parent who gifted you the affliction.



I can barely “give” “Please Give”,







TWO STARS!



For Now…………Peneflix



Caveat. Your movie appetite would be satisfying satiated by seeing “The Secret in Their Eyes”; winner of the Academy Award for best Foreign Film.