The fall is always a little quieter on the movie-front when other things start taking too much time. Nevertheless, a movie can be slipped in as relaxation every here and there, so below is the latest review round.
Kissing Jessica Stein: Jessica is a somewhat tight-assed single, straight and marginally sucessful journalist who decides due to various reasons that she is, in fact, attracted to women. This leads to a date with a woman who ends up being perfect for her – except that Jessica is quite heavily loaded with inhibitions as to what it is that she’s doing. Tearing down those and eventually “coming out of the closet” is a Big Thing for her and patience is asked from all other parties involved. One could’ve made a pretty good movie with the plot, but it didn’t quite reach the level it could’ve. It does have interesting scenes and produced a few laughs, but was lacking something. Maybe it was the overly neurotic role & acting by Jennifer Westfeldt as Jessica or something else, but all in all I’d give this one 2½ out of 5.
Our Italian Husband also had a promising plot: a man is discovered to being married to two different women and they suddenly learn about each other. I mean cases like this pop up every now and then in real life too, so there was potential.
But instead of fulfilling any of that potential, the movie was really quite bad. Shot and acted in a very restless fashion, the plot never really reaches any depth and the characters all really seem very simple in their unique ways. With acting and the plot sub-par, nothing exciting came out of the movie. 2- out 5.
Hauru no ugoku shiro aka Howl’s Moving Castle or Liikkuva Linna in Finnish was a pleasant change of genre compared to the above and I hadn’t seen any Japanese animation for a while. I got some tickets to the Finnish premiere a week ago so I obviously had to go see this one, despite the fact that it had, of all things, Finnish voiceovers! Not that it makes that big a difference for me as I can’t understand more than two words of Japanese, but still.. Anyway, the movie was introduced by the director of the dubbing effort and I was pleasantly surprised by the results.
Anyhow, the movie itself was very good. It’s a story about a magician, Hauru, who lives in a moving castle which is powered by a quite funny fire-demon and a young girl, Sophie, who ends up living in Hauru’s castle. At the core a love story / drama, the movie is guaranteed good work from Miyazaki. The sceneries are beautiful and the story-telling exquisite. The plot itself is quite easy to follow and at it’s core, nothing to write home about. But the end result is still great and the moral of the story, if you can call it that, quite appropriate. Definately recommended & I’ll give it 4 out of 5.
(Amazingly, Finnkino again manages to completely screw up the plot description..)
Heavenly Creatures is a strange story based on real events that took place in the 1950′s New Zealand. Two girls become friends and soon their friendship causes both to slip dangerously deep into the world of fantasy.. Not much more can be told of the plot without revealing too much, but it’s clear that neither the girls’ parents or the girls themselves are, well, playing with a full deck in all situations. Reality and fantasy eventually collide in more than one way. An interesting story that could’ve used a somewhat happier ending. 3 out of 5.
