Married Life - Film Review
I don’t know what it was like to live in the 40’s, but that period sure looks great in film. It was the decade cinema came of age, after all, so perhaps its an appeal based in a sort of borrowed nostalgia. All the men wear hats, all the women have shoulder pads, and everyone speaks so elegantly to each other. There’s something to be said, too, for the value of the cigarette as a dramatic device. It’s an intimate prop actors can use to convey meaning, and nothing adds more atmosphere to a night scene than a miasma of cigarette smoke. But Married Life uses its 40’s setting as more than just window dressing - its mixture of social sophistication and personal restraint is a key driver in the story’s premise, involving love and passion, betrayal and murder. Read the rest of this entry »
Watching The Darjeeling Limited is a little bit like looking at a fish tank. There’s a lot of colour. Everything is sharply defined and beautifully presented in its place. If you watch the fish for long enough, you start to get a feel for how they act and react to different things. But ultimately, it’s a pretty alien world that you can enjoy from the outside but not fully empathise with. 
The rise to screenwriting superstardom of Charlie Kaufman has really brought post-modernism into the mainstream as far as film scripts go. Zach Helm’s screenplay for Stranger Than Fiction seems to want to belong to the same oeuvre as Kaufman’s work, but lacks the conviction to deliver on the potential of its fascinating premise. 
“Man proposes to sex doll”. You can just see the headline tucked away in the corner of the World section of your local newspaper - the obligatory quirky news item from some rural corner of the USA. Only in America. The amazing thing about Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl is that the love affair it presents between a man and an inanimate object almost starts to make sense. 
“Why would you pay good money to go to a cinema and see what you can get for free at home?” Well, lets face it - there haven’t been many Hollywood comedies released in recent years that would measure up to a single episode of The Simpsons in terms of laughs. So why not do a film version? 
The appeal of the fantasy and sci fi film genres must seem so easy to understand for the clueless Hollywood execs who churn out so many examples of each these days. Whip up some spectacular CGI effects, throw in a monster or two and loads of breakneck action and insert star here. Amongst all that mediocrity, then, it’s surprising to see an effort that displays such thoughtful craft in its writing and execution. 
Think back to Ben Stiller’s position in the Hollywood star system before the Farrelly brothers super-boosted his career with the classic There’s Something About Mary. He wasn’t even really seen as a comic actor, and was best known for his direction and acting in Reality Bites. Cue to 2008 and look over his work since. Is it just me, or has he played exactly the same character as the one in TSAM in every film since? Is his range really so desperately restricted, or has he just done a Robin Williams and chosen the stability of a career doing the studios’ bidding (i.e. “Give the masses what they expect!”) over exploration of and expansion into his craft?