Le Cinéma
The year's end is quickly approaching, and soon I'll be creating my "Best Of" lists. Before that can happen, however, I feel like writing up a few last-minute quickie reviews of the movies I've seen since Saturday. A whopping three movies in three days!!!
After a failed attempt at seeing a movie on Christmas Day, thanks to the throngs of hundreds of people at the local theaters, we tried again on Saturday. I drove us behind the Orange Curtain for one of the few local screenings of Almodóvar's latest film, Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces). In the movie, the now-blind screenwriter Harry Caine has almost completed his next script when the death of a former film producer fleetingly sparks past memories to resurface. Soon afterward, a young man named Ray X on his doorstep, wanting him to write a screenplay. But not just any screenplay -- one that revolves around getting revenge on a father who despised his son's homosexuality and exposing the father's involvement in the death of a young actress. Despite being blind, Harry knows immediately who it is, and those memories he's tried to erase -- about his affair with the producer's lover Magdalena, about her death in a car accident, about what caused his blindness -- force themselves out in a confession to his screenwriting assistant, Diego. With a wonderful script and fine direction from Almodóvar, the story of Broken Embraces slowly unfolds like a good Hitchcockian thriller. Penelope Cruz gives a wonderful performance as Magdalena, the center of a tumultuous love triangle between Harry Caine (Lluis Homar, also a fine performance) and Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis gomez). Though I think the ending left a bit to be desired, I still consider this one of the best films of 2009.
Sunday I headed for Disneyland to get another use out of my Annual Pass before it expires in January and caught a showing of The Princess and the Frog. Take the classic tale of a cursed prince being turned into a frog with the only way to change him back being a kiss from a princess and set it in New Orleans around the Jazz Age with a little bit of voodoo, and you have a new classic film from Disney. (And that it's hand-drawn animation rather than CGI makes it all the more wonderful!) Prince Naveen, lazy and interested in nothing but music and having a good time, finds himself in New Orleans, cut off from his family fortune but hoping to come into his own by marrying into the wealthy La Bouff family. He gets sidetracked from Dr. Facilier, a dark voodoo man, who changes Naveen into a frog and imprisoning him in a jar in order to take La Bouff's fortune for himself. Naveen manages to escape and hops into Tiana, a waitress borrowing a gown and tiara from her childhood friend, and Naveen mistakes her for a real princess, coaxing her into kissing him to break the spell like in the fairytale. But things don't turn out as either of them plan, and Tiara discovers that she's turned into a frog as well. The hunt is on, and Dr. Facilier will do whatever evil deeds necessary to capture Naveen before he can reach the voodoo priestess Mama Odie in the Bayou. I loved this movie, from the voices of Anika Noni Rose and Bruno Campos as Tiana and Naveen and Michael-Leon Wooley as the jazz-trumpet playing alligator Louis, to the jazzy music of Randy Newman, to the marvelous detailed images on the screen. Some of the Dr. Facilier scenes I thought might be a bit too scary for younger kids, much like the Pink elephants from Dumbo, but this is still a fantastic film with a good story and lots of charm.
This morning, we headed to Hollywood to catch a screening of Avatar at the Cinerama Dome. Neither of us had ever seen a movie there -- and at $18.50 a pop, you can understand why. But we shelled out the money for the movie, the 3D glasses and the assigned seating, and the experience was so totally worth it. Corporal Jake Sully takes his brother's place on a mission to the planet Pandora to help negotiate a trade with the natives, the Na'vi. It turns out that Pandora is a rich source of a mineral known as unobtainium that sells for nearly $20M per ounce back on Earth. To negotiate such a trade agreement, the Earthmen use avatars -- genetic replicas of Na'vi -- that are powered by a mind link between human and avatar. Long story short (possible spoilers): Sully, once confined to a wheelchair, thrives in his avatar, being taken into the Na'vi family while spilling location and other fundamentals to the mean Colonel Miles Quatrich and the slimey Parker Selfridge (who doesn't give a damn about the natives who are blocking the path to the unobtainium). Sully has a change of heart and fights against the Earth military saving the planet. I do this because it's a story that has been told and re-told over and over again. What makes Avatar so good, though, is the visuals. Director James Cameron crafts an amazing world filled with wondrous creatures, illogical landscapes that work and a whole new language -- something truly amazing to see on the screen. And I even found myself caught up in the story, almost verging on tears when certain characters died, cheering for the Na'vi as they fought back against the Earthmen. I walked into the theater thinking "Dances with Smurfs" and walked out truly enjoying the film.
But unobtainium? Really?
Really?
Broken Embraces image from Yahoo! Movies. The Princes and the Frog image from . Image of Avatar from Bleeding Cool.
Labels: movies
