Film Review / We get so few dramas about real culture icons, we should rejoice when an eccentric director like David Cronenberg gives us such a fascinating one: the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The film examines the friendship, and then falling out, between the two indisputable titans of psychology and psychoanalytical methods, revolutionary in all sort of implications, even when incomplete or wrongheaded.
Film Review / Four years after 9/11, Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published. Still fresh in the wake of the tragedy, it utilizes harrowing images from the day in an inventive way, enlisting experimental typography and a flip-book of the iconic The Falling Man photo in reverse.
The Doris Duke Theatre offers up a month of luvin’ movies in “Dangerously Romantic: Films to Fall in Love With.” Comedies, dramas, fantasies all make an appearance these next two weeks, one with a complete real-life dinner, in celebration of Cupid’s month. The Weekly, lovers ourselves, checked out a few of them, and comments on the whole batch.
Steven Soderbergh movies are well-made. Always.
Superbly acted, elliptically-plotted and visually candid, Shame, starring the priapic Michael Fassbender and a surprising Carey Mulligan (Drive), is getting all the world’s press because of Fassbender’s sometimes nudity and portrayal of sex-as-Hell. That is to say, it’s about the hellish world of a sex addict, New York division.
Set during the 1937 Japanese siege of Nanking, The Flowers of War pivots around two groups of very different Chinese women who must rely on the stereotypical drunken Western rogue male, played by Christian Bale, to rescue them from a fate worse than death. Given that one group is a band of famous whores, the Ladies of the Qin Huai River’s Jade Paradise, and the second consists of a dozen helpless convent girls, you might think we’re in for some mildly titillating banter, a scary moment or two, sealed by a chaste kiss.
A film named Carnage directed by Roman Polanski–the man who gave us Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and a scandal over his rape of a 13 year old girl–would seem to raise expectations in predictable ways. Oh boy, you might think.
My first, and pretty much only experience riding a horse took place on a cloudy day on a worn-down dirt road outside a tiny French village called Borderune. I rode alongside my girlfriend and a small posse of old French ladies, taking in the beautiful countryside, when our guide began galloping ahead of us, causing all of our horses to do the same.
In The Iron Lady–good, if slightly muddled, slightly too long–Meryl Streep (a Golden Globe winner for this role) gives the best film performance since Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot. And she keeps on giving.
Let’s begin at the end. The screen cuts black.
In Young Adult, Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, one of the most loathsome human beings to ever walk the Earth in couture high heels. She’s a semi-successful young adult novelist renowned for a series of books written for teenage girls about high school society, a franchise that is on its last legs.
Sober up from the cray shenanigans of Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol with the much less hyper, but still thoroughly absorbing, chess game of a thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Adapted from John le Carré’s classic ‘60s Cold War thriller, the film follows secret agents who conduct dry, British espionage/cat-and-mouse games without shiny BMW prototypes or gravity-defying glue gloves.
I have a special spot in my heart for Cameron Crowe. Over the years, he’s taught me how to be one of many messy teens (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), woo someone with a stereo (Say Anything), be a directionless twenty-something (Singles), question your job and its purpose (Jerry Maguire), all while belting every word to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” (Almost Famous).
Until its last quarter hour, you won’t find a better, more beautifully realized, more intricate film than helmer David Fincher’s English-language version of writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo–the runaway best-seller pulp potboiler made into a Swedish film (also excellent) two years ago. The first hour is near-perfection in laying out Larsson’s rather old-fashioned plot in terms of 2lst-century cinematic techniques–which this film buff, anyway, thinks are well-nigh breathtaking.
That I actually enjoyed the trailers while waiting for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was potentially a bad sign. Of course the new “Borat” movie will be simply irresistible, but Battleship?
After what, surprisingly, has been over a decade, it’s become a movie theater comfort to see Tom Cruise determinedly jumping off tall heights and just plain running as quickly as his almost 50-year-old legs will take him. (Can you believe he’s freaking 49?!) Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol is the fourth in the franchise, and, although much has been made about co-star Jeremy Renner taking over the leading action figure man reins, it’s still Cruise’s show all the way.
Film Review / “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” As for films this past year, it was more a whimper in between. Within are those that actually had a voice.
Film Review / The makers of the ensemble cast romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, which revolves around Feb. 14, now bring us New Year’s Eve, an ensemble cast romantic comedy, which revolves around Dec.
Film Review / Based on a duo of memoirs by Colin Clark, My Week with Marilyn is a breezy 99-minute look behind the behind-the-scenes making of 1957 picture The Prince and the Showgirl, in which a young Clark lands a tiny assistant job on the highly anticipated Sir Laurence Olivier comedy and an unexpected glimpse into a Hollywood icon’s psyche. But before seeing, don’t forget that just three seconds ago at the box office you asked for a ticket to My Week with Marilyn, not My Entire Life Spent From Beginning to End Forever and Ever Until Eternity with Marilyn.
Film Review / If you know the name Lars von Trier, and his often determinedly baffling work, then you know what you might be in for, both good (brilliant insights) and bad (deep cynicism) in Melancholia, a pan-Nordic feature in English. If you don’t know von Trier, proceed with caution: This director doesn’t let anyone, audience included, off the hook.
Adapted, but deviating from, the cult novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the newest film–a well-done debut venture into 3-D by movie-lover Martin Scorsese–has given us the most handsome, technically adept “holiday” production of the year. It is both an emotionally satisfying story and a colorful discourse on the invention of movies.
After what seems like eons, The Muppets finally return to the big screen in the aptly titled The Muppets. Even though the feature is our reintroduction to our favorite bunch of furries, the tale actually revolves around a muppet named Walter.
The Descendants is a very funny film that embraces the big themes–love, death–without getting all sentimental on us. It opens at sea in a speedboat, with a close-up of a woman’s laughing face, wind in her short blond hair, sounds of the engine and the hull striking the waves cut off by a black screen.
Film buffs, the internationalist division, always look forward to the newest offering from Spain’s bad-boy writer-director Pedro Almodóvar, whose early career–splashy, pan-sexual, comic and melodramatic–heralded the true end of the Franco era. Almodóvar proved not a flash-in-the-pan but an original filmmaker, mixing genres, celebrating divas, adding violence to slapstick and making sex fun and naughty.
After retiring from public service in 2002, Ben Cayetano seemed to be taking it easy on the political scene–until 2005, that is, when then-Mayor Mufi Hannemann revived the long-lapsed idea of a Honolulu heavy rail project. Needless to say, Cayetano did not concur.
Last Thursday, the House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection had a busy session hearing several controversial bills relating to geothermal energy. Chairman Denny Coffman introduced HB2689, which seeks to exempt slim-hole, or exploratory, geothermal test wells from any sort of environmental review as is currently required under Chapter 343 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes.
On Feb. 1, the Hawaii State House Agriculture Committee heard testimony on HB2703, dubbed the Food Self-Sufficiency Bill.
Mega-developer Castle & Cooke has re-filed an application with the Land Use Commission (LUC) seeking to convert approximately 768 acres of Ag land–currently in cultivation–into a “master-planned community” entitled Koa Ridge. If successful, the project will consist of two parcels–Koa Ridge Makai and Castle & Cooke Waiawa.
Office of Hawaiian Affairs holds a second round of community meetings to discuss the latest updates on the Kakaako land settlement. Stevenson Middle School, 1202 Prospect St., Wed., 2/8, 6:30pm; Waimanalo Community Center, 41-253 Ilauhole St., Thu., 2/9, 6:30pm City Council committees on Zoning and Planningand Transportation will take public testimony on agenda items.
[Feb. 1: “Kinda Kona”] The trade secret argument would fall to the wayside if it would read “10 percent Kona Coffee 90 percent Foreign Coffee,” or something to that effect.
If they are choosing the cheapest coffee from anywhere, then the “trade secret” is that they are adding crap and not a sp
[Feb. 1: “Rail Boss Wanted”] $300,000?
[Jan. 4: “Boss GMO] Dean Okimoto is a sell out and a criminal.
Monsanto is a major component of the NWO drive to reduce the world’s population in a global genocide program that includes the poisoning of the water, air and food. This criminal activity must be stopped.
Lets be real here, Dean Okimoto is not interested in anything other then keeping the status quo of industrial Ag. He is merely a puppet, playing it safe, a small game of following the money and corrupt political trail.
[Jan. 25: “Weaving the Future on Molokai”] Good luck to all those who possess the ability to balance long-term vision with short term opportunity.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] This is, indeed, a “lunatic project,” as pointed out by a professor at the University of Hawaii.
This is such a bad idea for the overall architecture of Oahu. I visit here because my family is here and part of the charm is taking the bus or driving.
I cannot imagine how anyone can think this is a smart idea. I’ve lived in places with rail, but this Honolulu Rail Transit is stupid, plain stupid.
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