Big Fish

It was not with much enthusiasm that I sat down to watch auteur Tim Burton's Big Fish despite its all-star cast. I like magical realism in literature, but Edward Scissorhands just bugged me. I couldn't get past the fantastic to care about the story. Not so with Big Fish. Will Bloom's (Billy Crudup) father, Edward Bloom (Albert Finney), is dying of cancer, and Will's mother (Jessica Lange) wants them to reconcile before it's too late. The son thinks he doesn't know his dad well enough because his dad always told big fish stories, weaving together the improbable with the fantastic. The son wants to know the true versions. When he confronts his dad, Edward replies, "I tell stories." "You tell amusing lies," Will rebukes. The movie toggles between the present and flashbacks from when Edward was young (Ewan McGregor), and Will begins to see that there is more truth in his dad's stories than he knew. But there's a truth and the truth, and rarely do the two meet. The ending is a bit treacle, but that's more the result of the fantastical ending than the storytelling. Also featuring Helena Bonham-Carter, Steve Buscemi and Danny DeVito.

Terminal

Tom Hanks plays Victor Navorski in Terminal, the story of a man who falls through the cracks when he arrives in the International terminal of an unnamed NYC airport and his visa is denied because a coup overtook his country while he was airborne, making his current passport and visa invalid. Authorities can't allow him to leave the airport and enter NY, but they can't let him to return to his homeland either because his country has ceased to exist. As airport head honcho Dixon (Stanley Tucci) says, "You are a citizen of nowhere." Interesting concept, right? That's what I thought initially. I was even more intrigued when a friend whispered that Spielberg "borrowed" this idea from an actual person in Paris, Merhan Karimi Nasseri, who has been living at the Charles De Gaulle Airport for seventeen years under similar circumstances. How can society allow this to happen to human beings, one might wonder. However, Spielberg doesn't want you to think about that for too long. Somewhere amid the large Burger King and Starbucks signs that make up the shopping area where Navorski spends his days, Spielberg decides to steer away from the inherent social commentary and feeds the plot into a grinder in order to collect as much sentimental goo as possible. All in all, Nasseri is far more interesting than Navorski, probably because his story doesn't have the two-hour happy ending resolution that Spielberg provides. Also, have you ever noticed that Spielberg is somewhat obsessed with father-son stories? Think "Minority Report," "Indiana Jones," "Catch Me If You Can," "A.I.," -- you get the idea. Despite that this isn't Spielberg's best, Hanks is terrific. What amazes me about him is that no matter how ubiquitous his face is (in large part due to Spielberg films), he never ceases to truly become whatever character he is playing.

Wit

Wit, starring co-writer Emma Thompson, is a painful movie to watch, but as she says at the beginning of the film, “if this is painful for you to watch, think of what it must be like for me,” or something to that effect. Wit tells the story of Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of 17th century poetry, who finds out at age 48 she has advanced ovarian cancer. The film starts with her diagnosis, and her consent to undergo a trial for an 8 month cycle of chemo at full dose. The hospital she is at is affiliated with the university, and she agrees to be a lab rat, but she is surprised when she is treated like one, too. This isn't just another story about the lack of compassion and empathy from researchers in the health profession, though the issue is addressed. Vivian has dedicated her life to the sonnets of John Donne, and now speaking to the viewer directly from her hospital bed, she finds her intellect counts for nothing anymore. She always prided herself on being a scholar, a researcher, and never accepting compromise, but she realizes a little late in the game that kindness and companionship were perhaps worthy of study as well. Thompson is at her best in this film, which deals with death and poetry, and while it is enlightening, one goes to bed with an uneasy feeling, pondering the meaning of life.

Napoleon Dynamite

Ok. I admit it. I'm horrible at keeping up with review writing. I'll try to do better. We are watching so many lately, though, that my mind is swimming. Last night we finally watched Napoleon Dynamite. We loved it. I'm hard-pressed to give you a plot description for it defies the conventional plot structure. I can say, however, that we laughed continuously at our unexpected (and unsuspecting) hero, Napoleon, through his trials and tribulations in high school. It was like watching a Wes Anderson movie, but maybe better. Rating this was easy.

I Heart Huckabees, Motorcycle Diaries, and She Hate Me

I have three movies to review because Netflix keeps sending them faster than I can write about them. I Heart Huckabees, Motorcycle Diaries,and She Hate Me.

First, I Heart Huckabees came in the mail the other day. I saw it months ago in the theatre because I see anything with Lily Tomlin in it. That's jut a given. We ordered it, though, because it was good and R hadn't seen it yet. I liked it the second time round twice as much. Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman play two existential detectives hired independently by Mark Wahlberg, Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), Jude Law, and Naomi Watts. It's quirky, but not just quirky for quirky's sakes, like Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, and Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. It's smart, it's funny, and hey - it's got Lily Tomlin.


Secondly, Motorcycle Diaries, the new Walter Salles film, divided us a little bit, but since I'm doing th posting, I'm assigning the stars. I will say that R's big complaint with this film is in the title. "It's false advertising," she claims, and rightly so, for Che Guevara and friend Albert only make the first portion of their continent-long trip on the 1939 Norton motorcycle before it breaks down. Their travels after that are on foot, in cattle trucks, on boats, floats, rafts, and finally an airplane. That aside, I found the movie to be an interesting history into what made Ernesto Guevara "Che." While the movie could have gone into more depth concerning the formation of his ideology, the long, wordless shots showing trucks full of day laborers going to the mines or the Peruvian leper colonies show anyone that all is not right in the world. There are many blanks the movie does not fill-in concerning the makings of Che Guevara, but the movie doesn't really attempt to do that anyway; it more or less shows one pivotal experience in one of the more important folk heroes of our times.


Lastly, She Hate Me. When I watch a Spike Lee movie, I am aware that this is a filmmaker who has things to say. He's angry. He's pissed off at the world. He's a hopeful soul. And he's going to show us why. In this movie, he covers much ground: African-American male stereotypes, Enron and the corporate culture, same-sex parenting ( a how-to course, of sorts), and the fate of the Whistleblower from Watergate through today. The movie is powerful in that it accurately dishes up a plate of 2004 and shoves it down the viewer's throat. If you're into that sort of thing, which we most definitely are, you might want to check this one out.