My Blueberry Nights - Review

The world of My Blueberry Nights is a beautiful one full of color, emotion, and pathos. It’s also utterly unrealistic, like trying to understand the human condition through the diary of a terribly romantic 12-year-old girl. Writer/director Won Kar-Wai’s script may exist in strange parallel universe contained wholly in the all-night diners and dives of a fantasy America, but it’s forgivable. His film is so beautiful and the performances he gets from his actors are so brimming with quiet power and life that it doesn’t matter if we’re in the real world or on the set of a badly paced soap opera. It works.

It stars Norah Jones. That’s right, Norah Jones, the singer. She plays Elizabeth, a New York girl recently dumped by her boyfriend and finding solace hanging out in a corner café run by British immigrant Jeremy (Jude Law). Her evenings are spent self-pitying in his café, talking, and eating blueberry pie while Jeremy slowly falls in love with her. Lost in her own problems she doesn’t see it, and decides to escape her mental quagmire by leaving the city. She travels cross country , working her way to the next town off tips she earns waitressing in an assortment of random establishments.

That’s how we see her and everyone in the movie; through the windows of the places Lizzy works… literally. Wong Kar Wai shoots everything through obstructed views: outside a window with colored writing on it, around a corner, through a string of hanging lights. In the wrong hands it could have been an annoying gimmick, but in My Blueberry Nights it adds to the sense of actually being there in, wherever this is, as if we’re all voyeurs peeping in on these forlorn lives. It doesn’t hurt that visually, it ends up making the whole thing look gorgeous in a dreamy, moody haze of grainy, carefully splashed colors.

There’s plenty to see. Along the way Elizabeth encounters others, all damaged by love in one way or another. Whether it’s an alcoholic cop (David Strathairn) abandoned by his wife (Rachel Weisz) or a poker-playing daughter estranged from her father (Natalie Portman), Wong Kar-Wai seems to know how to get the best out of his actors. Most of all though it’s Norah Jones who runs away with the film. Even when the script might seem contrived she doesn’t. She’s as authentic as it gets. It doesn’t hurt that unlike the usual suspects, she looks nothing like an actress. She’s simply a person, one who it’s easy to identify with on a very basic level.

Still, no matter how great the people are in this movie it’s hard not to find fault with Wong Kar-Wai’s bland script. It’s a standard, pretentious, indie-film story rooted in New York and told with more genuine feeling than it probably deserves. The result is an uneven movie with amazing moments, and then all the excessive slow motion in between. My Blueberry Nights has a cast that makes it better than it ought to be, and Wong Kar-Wai’s direction is interesting. Now just imagine how great it could have been if he’d had a decent story to go along with it.

The Bourne Ultimatum - Review

The Bourne movies have been a surprise at every turn. The first one showed up in theaters out of nowhere packed with balls to the wall action, courtesy of an actor once thought of as momma’s boy Oscar winner convincingly playing the biggest super-spy badass since James Bond. By the second film audiences came prepared, assuming they knew what they were in for; but new director Paul Greengrass took Bourne’s story to an entirely new level and left just about everyone picking themselves up off the floor. Now Bourne is back for a third and final adventure in The Bourne Ultimatum, and nothing has changed even though nothing is the same. Get ready to have your ass blown out of the theater because once again Greengrass and Damon deliver on a movie packed with more “holy shit did that just happen” moments than you can shake a sub-machine gun at.

Greengrass hasn’t just topped the previous Bourne movies in every way, he’s raised the bar for the spy and action genres for years to come, and he’s done it in a movie without very little dialogue. This is Matt Damon’s Cast Away except without a volley ball sidekick and with minute after minute of pulse pounding peril and violence instead of slow starvation. Damon plows through The Bourne Ultimatum like a force of nature; a silent, a living weapon on a mission of determined, unstoppable discovery. That’s right, discovery. In The Bourne Supremacy Bourne made the bad guys pay. This time he’s had enough and wants to know who he is. Bourne simply wants to be done with everything and he’s not the kind of guy that takes no for an answer.

The action is absolutely unbelievable, eye-popping stuff. I’m not just talking about one or two big action sequences here. Every second, every moment of The Bourne Ultimatum is jammed with danger, pounding and pounding against the screen in unstoppable waves of energy and intensity. Greengrass never lets up, not even for a second. His cameras keep rolling and Matt Damon keeps moving, putting plans together on the fly and eliminating obstacles one by one as he moves in a steady, straight line towards his final goal in a complicated, rhythmic dance of controlled destruction. We’re swept right along with him, and if you’re like me your nails will be firmly buried in the arm of your chair the film’s entire 111 minutes.

What is perhaps even more amazing than the movie’s ability to do things that’ll make your jaw drop, is the way it manages to do character development in the middle of all those car crashes and explosions, and does it without words. So much of the credit for that has to go to Damon, who even though he’s not talking says volumes with what’s going on behind that stoic, no-nonsense expression Bourne keeps wearing. Without saying a word, Damon puts together a complete picture of what his now familiar character is going through, not just externally but internally as well. Bourne is a living weapon, but a suffering, breathing, feeling weapon who, more than ever you’ll find yourself rooting for.

If there’s anything to be disappointed in here it’s that The Bourne Ultimatum is almost certainly the last one. Every movie has improved on the last, culminating in a third film which is easily the best movie of the summer and probably the best action movie of the year. Imagine where they might have taken it for a fourth movie. Jason Bourne is going out on top, don’t forget to duck the shrapnel that comes flying out of the screen.

Fracture - Review

Can a movie where Anthony Hopkins plays a clever murderer go wrong? The answer is no, no it can’t - thank goodness! Though he trades “Clarice” for “Willy Boy,” and cannibalism for a more calculated sort of murder, Hopkins evokes his Silence of the Lambs heyday in what is definitely one of the best thrillers of 2007.

You’d think after countless movies where jealous husbands kill their wives women might take a few extra steps to ensure that their spouses aren’t complete psychos before embarking on scandalous affairs. And if you’re married to Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), a super-intellectual obsessed with building strange marble structures, you probably should have seen the warning signs. Still Jennifer Crawford (Embeth Davidtz) obliviously continues her dangerous liaison with a man whose true identity she refuses to learn, while Ted patiently waits for the perfect moment to strike.

When Jennifer returns home after a hard day’s cheating, Ted innocently requests a hug before shooting her in the face. When the police arrive, Ted only permits hostage negotiator Rob Nunally (Billy Burke) into the house, knowing full well that Rob is the man his wife has been cavorting with. Ted confesses his crime as Rob frantically searches for signs of life from his lover and then desperately attacks her shooter. Doctors manage to stabilize Jennifer in a coma while Ted is sent to court where, he elects to represent himself. Hot shot Assistant District Attorney Will Beachum (Ryan Gosling), agrees to take on the open and shut case to add one more to win to his seamless record before beginning a new lucrative position in corporate law. With Willy distracted by his overblown confidence and his sexy new boss Nikki (Rosamund Pike), Ted begins to manipulate the system so that Willy’s slam-dunk case quickly turns into an air ball.

Thanks to the endless slew of recent disappointing thrillers, I was on the edge of my seat waiting for Fracture to well, fracture. During a rather haunting interrogation scene, Ted tells Willy “Look closely enough and you’ll find everything has a weak spot…” I found Fracture’s in the unnecessary romance between Nikki and Willy. Not that anyone would mind a job where you get to screw your sexy boss before you even unpack your stapler, but an invite to Thanksgiving dinner is where I draw the line. Director Gregory Hoblit could have at least left us the steamy sex scene for good measure, but half of a shoulder doesn’t justify the untimely affair. However, unlike what happens with Willy’s case against Ted, one little crack doesn’t lead to a break. As the film progressed, I continued to anticipate melodrama, cliché, and unintentional comedy, but when the credits rolled, I realized that Fracture is actually a GREAT movie.

It’s a testament to just how bad the film industry can be that anyone would even doubt a movie pitting Anthony Hopkins against Ryan Gosling …but then again, Harrison Ford versus Paul Bettany led to the disaster known as Firewall. Fortunately, Hoblit lays fresh and compelling visuals over a script rife with witty banter, creating a film that entertains while it intrigues. As expected, the title actors give incredible performances, with Gosling shining as a haughty go-getter who has to be put in his place before he can put Ted in his. The real standout though is the plot itself, which doesn’t try to reinvent the genre with some ridiculously shocking ending (ahem, M. Night Shyamalan) but instead oozes cleverness, while allowing its actors to subtly carry the triumphant conclusion.

Even if you manage to guess its surprising ending, the movie will shock you with how well it’s put together, from the seamless acting to constricting camera angles. If you’re a fan of psychological thrillers, or if you are just eager to hear Anthony Hopkins call someone “Old Sport” in his chillingly playful voice, you surely won’t be disappointed by Fracture.