Life has been quite busy lately, but there’s always time to occasionally squeeze in a movie or a TV series episode or two. Most recently, I’m hooked on Grey’s Anatomy, but more about that a bit later. Also, the third season of Desperate Housewives is about to begin and I’ve heard a lot of good things about Prison Break which I haven’t gotten around to at all yet.
Anyhow, here’s the round-up from the past couple of months. This time around there’s a short review of a TV series, too – one which hasn’t been shown in Finland so far, so a spoiler warning is in order.
She’s the Man-
I went to see She’s the Man with some reservations; despite consciously trying to avoid reading movie reviews these days, I had bumped into many that slammed this one. While experience should tell me that it’s a sign of a good movie, I was hesitant. The basic plot is that Viola is desperate for playing soccer and the girls team is cancelled… so she joins the boy’s team, disguised as her brother Sebastian.
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That hesitation, luckily, proved unnecessary and She’s the Man was very positive surprise. While I’m pretty sure there was a very limited amount of original or otherwise brilliant elements in the movie, but it was a good, fun feel-good romantic comedy. For that, I’ll give it 4 out of 5.
Hell’s Kitchen, season 2
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Hell’s Kitchen was one of the best TV serieses of last year, and I was really looking forward to this summers season. Gordon Ramsey really can turn on the heat for the candidates in the kitchen.. I wish I could apply the show but alas, it’s for americans only. Anyway, during the first few episodes, expected characters were gotten rid of and obviously some favorites surface. In the long run I was amazed that the arrogant Sara managed to hold on as long as she did, but was glad to see her go when she finally did.
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So it was Virginia and Heather for the final two, and in my opiniong Heather totally deserved to win. Virginia I’m sure is a good chef, but she always seems to crack under pressure.. her admiration of Ramsey was apparent from even her final comments after hearing about her “loss”, which was good for her in that case. All in all a thoroughly enjoyable season and luckily, there’s a third season coming up next summer.. 5/5.
Elizabethtown- Life is not that great for Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) – he has just lost his job after making a colossal mistake, costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars and is about to become ridiculed throughout the industry. As if that’s not bad enough, his suicide attempt is interrupted by news of his semi-estranged fathers’ sudden death. Fully intending to soon come back home and finish his interrupted plan, he heads to his fathers small Kentucky hometown, Elizabethtown, to make funeral arrangements.
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On the way there, he meets an eccentric flight attendand Claire (Kirsten Dunst) who gives him thorough instructions on how to find Elizabethtown, among other things. What Drew finds in Elizabethtown is not what he expected – there’s a whole small city mourning his father and welcoming him there with open arms. Later, bewildered about all that’s going on, Drew calls Claire and the two end up talking hours and eventually meeting – but do things really click between them or not? Elizabethtown starts out feeling a somewhat strange movie, but ends up feeling great. Dunst is wonderful in her role as Claire and the rest of the cast is not too bad either. 4½ out of 5.
The Break-Up- The idea had some promise; describing what happens when a couple still lives under the same roof after breaking up. However, The Break-Up is clumsy from the beginning – the initial break-up is dumb and not a real break-up since neither really wants to end the relationship.. Then comes a series of dumb and dumber moves by both parties until there is very little left in the relationship to salvage; it is only at the very end that the two can talk on the level that they should’ve been talking all along.
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While I have no doubt that such non-communicating couples exist, it makes one wonder how they stayed together so long to begin with. Not without a funny moment or two, but generally not so great acting and the movie comes across as just a series of ploys instead of a real movie with developing characters. As such, an average 3 out of 5.
Failure to Launch-
Tripp is 35 and living at home. Home where he’s not wanted anymore and his parents are starting to realize he may need a big kick in his butt to get him to move on. So that’s where Paula comes in, a professional “interventionist”, who Tripp’s parents hire to get Tripp to move out of the house.
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Things’d be boring if everything worked smoothly, so of course they don’t. Tripp and his past turn out to be more complicated than Paula is used to seeing in her clientele – not to mention that she might actually be falling for him. Further complicating things can be found from Tripp’s friends and Paula’s roommate, who all manage to get involved in a messy situation. Failure to Launch was a nice enough comedy, but nothing too special – another average movie at 3 out of 5.
Anja & Viktor-
A Danish movie with a promising idea; high-school sweethearts Anja and Viktor face a crisis when Anja finds a good job and moves downtown; her life is suddenly filled with exciting work and attention from men – including her ex who now works with her, to Viktor’s great disappointment. Viktor decides to solve their problems by becoming a janitor in the house Anja lives in, but somehow that doesn’t ease things.. soon feeling estranged and hurt, Viktor ends up doing all kinds of dumb things. With Anja given a chance to go to New York for some months, can they work things out or is it over?
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Like I said, the idea was promising, but that’s about where the positives end. There’s a confusing and entirely unbelievable sub-plot of Viktor’s younger brother and his friend doings weird stuff and the movie would’ve been better off without them. Also, the characters are left very shallow without much depth. With a few tweaks the movie could’ve been a good one, but now it was a bit of a shallow and disjoined story and as such, I’ll give it 2- out of 5.
Ice Princess- Physics nerd Casey (Michelle Trachtenberg) is just what her feminist mother would want her to be – excellent in science and on her way to Harvard. Only there’s a glitch; in reality, she loves figure skating and decides to pursue that dream. Since her mother is vehemently against skating, she has to do it secretly. Eventually, of course, her mother also finds out about it and is enraged – but does she realize that Harvard may not be Casey’s dream but, in fact, hers?
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Ice Princess is a typical Disney movie – nice, clean & fun although without great surprises. Still, not a bad movie at 3½ out of 5.
La Tigre E La Neve (The Tiger and the Snow)
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Attilio (played by the director Roberto Benigni) is a divorced man who is desperately in love with Vittoria (Nicoletta Braschi) – the problem is that Vittoria doesn’t want to have anything to do with Attilio who is constantly following her and spying on her. When Attilio finds out that Vittoria has been injured in war-ridden Baghdad, he tries to beat all odds to get there and save her.
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La Tigre E La Neve could’ve been a much better movie if Benigni would’ve been able to contain his acting a bit better – his hyperactive and fidgety style of acting goes, IMO, a bit over the top. I think the movie is a mixture of a romantic comedy, satire and drama, but the combination doesn’t always mix that well. Some scenes especially in Iraq are so obviously fake and over-the-top that it detracts from the overall credibility of the movie. It does have its surprises though, and if you tend to like Benigni’s movies, you’ll probably like this one too. In my books, however, an average 3 out of 5.
