Category Archives: Movies

The Vow – Movie Review

Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) are a happily married couple living in Chicago and as with all couples, they are deeply in love. That is until a car accident takes place and Paige goes into a coma from which she wakes up with amnesia, not remembering any of the past five years: her years with Leo.

Struck by the fact that his own wife doesn’t remember him, Leo decides to make her fall in love with him all over again. Simultaneously, Paige’s parents: Bill (Sam Neill) and Rita Thornton (Jessica Lange) try to use this new opportunity that life gave them in trying to mend bridges with their daughter. Leo, however, doesn’t necessarily fit in their plan of getting their daughter back to law school and into the arms of a man they approve of.

What’s refreshing about The Vow is that it is actually based on a true story and as such the events that take place in the movie, albeit sappy and cliche at times, have an element of sincerity to them that other movies of the same genre lack. Apart from annoying voice-overs by Channing Tatum about moments in life and other useless balderdash, the movie doesn’t feel annoyingly sweet like your usual over-sugary romantic comedies.

Channing Tatum, however, is dull throughout. Even the moments where he has to express emotion come off as flat. He’s also in tears almost all the time. It gets grating at times. Rachel McAdams is the movie’s real draw. She’s a great actress who commands every frame she is in like child’s play. You keep rooting for her character even when she gets slightly annoying by falling for her ex-fiance, whom she doesn’t recollect breaking up with. Sam Neill and Jessica Lange, as Paige’s parents, are great in whatever screen time they get.

Simply put, if you are a guy wanting to take out your girl for a movie this Valentine’s day and you know she’s into romantic comedies, The Vow will work wonders with her without getting you to want to rip your hair off. If you’re into a light movie that will entertain you for its duration and the theatre you went to has no other options, then The Vow isn’t necessarily that bad. Although it might feel like been there, done that (imagine a romantic version of Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore’s 5o First Dates), you can’t but give the movie some slack for being a true story as is shown by the last frame before the credits start rolling.

6/10

Cash Flow – Movie Review

Cash Flow is the story of Mazen (Carlos Azar), a young Lebanese man leading a routine life out of his means. His salary of $900 is nowhere near enough for his superflous expenses, his clothes shopping, his outings and dating the girl he fancies: Elsa (Nadine Njeim), the daughter of a very rich man who refuses to follow her mother’s requests of working at her leisure for her father.

One day, on his way back from work, Mazen rescues a man from getting run over by a car, not knowing that this man is a very wealthy businessman. The following day, Mazen is surprised to find the man at his doorstep telling him to check the envelope left for him. It transpires that the man had left Mazen a credit card with a daily spending limit of $1000. It is then that Mazen’s life changes with all the cash flow. But with all the money comes trouble.

The thing about Cash Flow is that, even though it’s a Lebanese movie, there’s nothing Lebanese about it. The story is straight out of an American action-comedy movie. The movie has English subtitles (which at a time mistake how with hoe). The movie even opens with Mazen telling about his routine life: wake up after struggling with the alarm, pour coffee out of a coffee maker (who in Lebanon uses a coffee maker?), go to his doorstep and pick up a newspaper (since when do we get newspapers delivered to our doorsteps?).

Add to the cliche, overdone and “foreign” storyline way too many product placements (try to find a Lebanese clothing store that didn’t get an ad in the movie. Odds are you won’t), way too many “hotshot” actors and actresses with irrelevant roles and this is Cash Flow for you. You don’t need an “all-star” Lebanese cast to pull a movie. Just take hints from Nadine Labaki. The fact that some actors and actresses have a line or two is not enriching to a movie like Cash Flow, it’s actually very sad.

It’s nice to see Lebanese cinema producing movies. But when you have a struggling industry as it is and you find funding for a movie, you don’t go make an American movie with Lebanese actors in Kaslik. You make a movie about the woes and passions of Lebanese society – at least until you’ve established yourself as a filmmaker to produce movies like Cash Flow. So for what it’s worth, this is a self-indulgent, useless movie that shouldn’t have been made in the first place. And to think some people are actually comparing it with Where Do We Go Now. 

4/10

Moneyball – Movie Review

Moneyball, based on the book of the same title, is a movie about a baseball team manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), in his quest to build a formidable team that can go through the year long tournament. To do so, he enlists the help of Yale economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), who has a theory that building a team not based on a player’s reputation but based on his statistical averages is the way to go. The idea proves tantalizing for Beane seeing as his team, the Oakland Athletics, has a very dismal budget to begin with. As he put it, “There are the rich teams, then there are the poor teams, then there’s 50 feet of crap, and then there’s us.”

So instead of splurging on A-list players, Beane hunts down players whose days are apparently behind them. Some have nerve injuries to their elbows, some are too old to play and others have a bad reputation behind them. The critics will rise against Beane and his experiment but he perseveres in an attempt to prove everyone wrong. Moneyball is based on a true story.

To say Brad Pitt delivers a tour de force performance as Billy Beane would be an understatement. I have not watched all the Oscar nominated actors yet but I can safely say that among all the actors who have gotten and are getting award-hype this season, Brad Pitt is without a doubt my favorite so far. He’s being pitted against George Clooney in The Descendants (check my review) as the frontrunners. No offense to George Clooney but Pitt’s performance is lightyears better. It is more engaging, more thrilling, more interesting, more nuanced. It is exquisite. He portrays his character with the exact amount of strength and emotion that it needs. At times, he shows Beane’s fragile side as he faces the looming fear of failure and at other times, as he sits in the changing rooms behind the stadium, he shows undeniable resolve. Sometimes he shows both in one frame. You can actually say that Moneyball is Billy Beane and Billy Beane is Moneyball. The symbiosis between this character and the movie is that strong. Brad Pitt embodies Billy Beane perfectly.

Jonah Hill is very interesting as well as Beane’s assistant. His performance has been rightfully nominated for many awards, including an Oscar. In fact, one of the driving forces for Moneyball is the chemistry exhibited on screen by Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill’s characters. Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the Athletics’ manager, is great as always in a more silent yet comical performance.

Moneyball has a great screenplay as well, as only can be expected from The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin (check my review of The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian, responsible for this year’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (check my review), to accompany the all star cast it enlists. The movie flows smoothly, never feels slow. And for a movie about baseball, a sport that I don’t particularly understand, it rises above the toughness of the game and turns this movie into one that is truly heartfelt, comical at times and entertaining throughout.

At the end of the day, Moneyball isn’t a movie about baseball as it is about changing the game, defying the system and breaking the boundaries imposed by other people on you. It is a movie that defies the baseball genre in which many people categorize it and rises above every single other baseball movie ever made. In fact, Moneyball might even be the best sports-related movie ever made because it doesn’t dwell on the technicalities of the sports it portrays, it rises above it to show a humanitarian aspect that everyone can relate to.

9/10

 

The Descendants – Movie Review

Alexandre Payne’s first movie in seven years is about Matt King (George Clooney), a Hawaii based lawyer and the trustee over his family’s pristine lands, worth in the billions of dollars, as they are about to sell. However, tragedy hits Matt’s family when a boating accident strikes his wife Elizabeth and she becomes comatose. It is then that Matt has to deal with his two daughters Scottie and Alex (Shaileene Woodley in a brilliant role), except that he always thought of himself as the “backup parent.” And after learning that his wife will never wake up, Matt has to set out on the path to say goodbye.

But as Matt’s older daughter Alex reveals, her mother was having an affair with a real-estate agent named Brian Speer, with the intention of asking for divorce. The Descendants then becomes Matt’s obsession with finding Speer, to see the man who was taking his wife away from him and to allow him the chance to bid her farewell.

Telling it like this, The Descendants seem like a true tear-jerker, right? Well, no. The movie is flimsy. This is a movie that wants to confront painful truths about love, loss, family, yet there’s a sense of emotional brittleness present throughout. It attempts to build itself as an emotional tour de force for the viewer but comes crashing down without satisfying neither itself nor the viewer in question. Even the scene, which is supposed to be the movie’s highlight, of Matt talking to his comatose wife, seeking catharsis, ends flat amid all the emotional dryness of the previous acts.

Perhaps The Descendant‘s biggest mistake, of sorts, is the fact that you can’t relate emotionally to the movie’s centerpiece: the wife who’s dying. After learning that she was cheating on him, you get disconnected from her character and, in a movie that is almost two hours, there isn’t enough character development to let you perhaps give her a reprieve, even as she lays in the hospital bed on life-support.

George Clooney’s character is extremely like-able. His performance that drives this character is top notch, nuanced and engaging. And yet, you just can’t bring yourself to care for anything he does, which is more of the shortcomings of the story around which his character is built. The story alludes to his shortcomings as a father, husband, and yet never showcases them. He is the man hurt by his wife’s betrayal as he tries to say goodbye and deal with the responsibilities his new situation has forced on him. But it’s just not convincing enough. The movie is centered around him. You end the movie not knowing anything more than what you did as the movie started.
And it’s just that… The Descendants may be a good movie in absolute value but its heart and your heart regarding its characters are as far apart as it can get. It tries to be sentimental but it turns out to be comical. And when it tries to be comical, it comes off as satirical. I doubt Alexandre Payne wanted his first movie in seven years to be such a mess. It’s a shame, really, especially with all the acclaim it’s been getting.

6/10

 

Carnage – Movie Review

Based on the play “God of Carnage,” Carnage opens up with a scene of a boy who hits a friend with a stick, causing him to lose two teeth.

Subsequently, the parents of the first boy, Alan (Christoph Waltz) and Nancy (Kate Winslet), visit the parents of the victim, Michael (John C. Reilly) and Penelope (Jodie Foster), to talk about the incident. Starting off as diplomatic adults who want the matter behind them, the couples are civilized in dealing with each other. However, as the meeting gets interrupted many times by urgent phone calls  that Alan receives regarding his job as a lawyer, and both couples start to slip up, the tensions start to rise. The polite discussion soon escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents showing their true colors. No one escapes the carnage.

The premise of Carnage is very interesting. The transition from the civilized conversation with which the movie starts to the carnage with which it ends happens very smoothly, in a logical manner. Watching the level of civility plummet in front of your eyes is what Carnage is all about. And it does so brilliantly. The fissures in each couple’s marriage is revealed. Allegiances will shift back and forth many times, never settling. Keep in mind the movie is only 80 minutes and it happens in the same place: Michael and Penelope’s living room and the hallway outside their Manhattan apartment.

The performances by all four actors and actresses are what drive the movie forward. In a way, the premise of the plot is not ground-breaking. It might as well have been taken straight out of a PTA meeting. But the way the acting ensemble interacts with each other and with the material they are given helps propel Carnage forward immensely. Jodie Foster is great as the pinched liberal who wants to get her apology out of the other parents. Kate Winslet is marvelous, as usual, as the woman trying to keep her manners while boiling on the inside. The men, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly, are also brilliant as the total counterpart of their women. What makes thei You’d wonder, at points, how a certain mixture of characters came to be together and actually married.

Carnage is a memorable movie but it’s not one that will leave you dumbfounded after it ends. It will entertain you during its duration. Roman Polanski manages the movie at a fast pace, never letting it get dull or redundant. The fact that all of the events take place in that same room for the whole of the movie’s duration only exemplifies how great Polanski is in directing Carnage and setting up the staging. The ultimate message the movie presents is that good manners are often shallow and that compassion, especially when it comes to one’s children, is very hard to come by. When it comes to one’s children, regardless of how messed up they might be, your children are in the right and the other couple’s children are in the wrong. That’s how it will always be. Carnage exemplifies that.

7.5/10