Moulin Rouge!

This film is simply genious and one of the best I've ever seen. Filled with originality and esthetic, it manages to do what many films can't: It's at the same time funny and sad and it's an artistic creation but it's also a very comercial and entretaining musical.

It's visually magnificent, a real feast for the eyes: the colorful and stunning costumes and scenery, the eye-catching make-up and hairstyles and the emphasized color red, make this film's esthetic one of the best in cinema history, at least in my opinion.

Another great and original fact, is that the songs are already known by the spectator, yes, the rythm is changed and sometimes they make a kind of popurri, but we all know the lyrics of Like A Virgin or Your Song, don't we? So, that's a great appealing too. What I found extremely original about this is that they made an extravagant love story out of already written songs, I believe that's never been done, not that I recall (oh well, except for Mamma Mia!, but that's based on a stage play).

The performances are outstanding. Ewan McGregor is absolutely delightful and I seriously can't believe he didn't get an Oscar nomination. He manages to portray a character who's in love with love and don't be cheesy or cloying but instead, completely adorable, and that's extremely hard. He also sings very well and, I know it's disrespectful, but he's absolutely gorgeous.

Nicole Kidman is amazing as well. Her voice is one of the bests of Hollywood and she uses it extremely well. Satine is not necessarily a loveable character and yet she makes us not only symphatize with her but also love her. She should've won that Oscar.

Moulin Rouge! it's already a classic, one of contemporary cinema's masterpieces.

Dan In Real Life

Dan In Real Life is good, but nothing special. It's an entretaining costumbrist flick that has some highlights but at moments it's quite poor, meaning predictable and with disagreeable typicall American humour. I think it tries to find originality and to escape from that awful type of American comedies, and sometimes it reachs that level but sometimes it falls down again and fails. No matter how hard it tries, the plot screams American comedy, it's barely saved by a quite good screenplay and excellent performances.

Steve Carell is sweetly normal and geeky. I really think it overcomes his performance in The Fourty Year Old Virgin and it reaches the level of the one in Little Miss Sunshine. You sympathize enourmously with him and, despite his mistakes, he kind of grows in you. In one word: loveable geek.

No less can be expected from Juliette Binoche. She's one of my favourite actresses and I think her performance in this movie is great. She manages to portray a simple yet captivating woman who you kind of fall in love with at the beginning of the film and no matter how many mistakes she makes you never fall out of love with her.

The good (or bad...) thing about this movie is that it's simple. As simple as its characters, its storyline and its humour. The bad (or good...) thing is that it often tries to be avant garde or clever and it fails. I enjoyed it, but for my taste I think it needs to polish up a little more.

I Could Never Be Your Woman

A bit cliched and naive but for an American romantic comedy, very nice indeed. It had some original features and the performances were very good.

Paul Rudd is amazing, better than I remembered him from Friends, and his chemistry with Michelle Pfeiffer is very cute. She's stunning, as always. The mother and daughter relationship is also very well portrayed, Saoirse Ronan prooves she's a very promising young actress, playing the smart, just precocious and innocent enough without being too artificially sweet which is very hard to achieve.

The film is very well written, it has some very clever and witty lines convined with the perfect ammount of lightness and self parody of Clueless.

If you don't expect a masterpiece and just don't take it to seriously, only for what it is and what it can offer: no more, no less, it is a very ejoyable film that can be watched with the whole family.

The Hours

Suicide, lesbianism, feminism, mental issues, AIDS, family abandonment. Pretty tough themes for such a tastefully done movie.

The originality of this film layed on the continuity of the three stories, the connections, both in what happened to them and what they did as well as how it was cinematographically achieved by camera work, screenplay and storyline.

The performances are almost all excellent. My dearest Meryl Streep cannot be bad, never ever, absolutely never. She's stunning, in a role I wouldn't have imagined for her, I really admire the way she mutates from character to character and just how versatile she is. I had never pictured her as a lesbian (or rather bisexual) for instance, and though she's such a lady, in this movie she plays a very vulgar woman with a very vulgar life. Nicole Kidman, though, is the real revelation in this film. Her Virginia Woolf is very, very well achieved, not trying to imitate her, but portraying her own version of the acclaimed writer. And the best part is, I forgot I was watching Nicole Kidman, I was actually thinking of her as Virginia Woolf, and that's a consequence of her stunning performance and that hideous nose prosthesis. It was with Julianne Moore's performance I had trouble. I don't think it was believable enough, I think she's a mannered, vain camera searcher. She's thinking about how she looks on camera and what will they say about her rather than concentrating on the portrayal of the character. The rest of the cast works perfectly as an ensemble.

I have not read Michael Cunningham's novel, but I have read Mrs Dalloway, and I found the making so amazing, how the integrated the story to three different time periods. I'm also familiar with Woolf's life, so I found this film very touching.

Out Of Africa

Magnificent in every aspect of the word.

From the breathtaking photography of the African landscape to the outstanding performances and the stunning score, this film is a ten.

I think the most emotional thing of the film and what probably made me broke into tears (of course, being already collapsed by the touching story) was seeing so much beauty together. It is so well made and absolutely beautiful to watch, the colors, the camera work, the landscapes, the cinematogrphy, the art direction, the costume design. All perfect.

And of course, the beauty doesn't end there. A young and gorgeous Meryl Streep is the perfect ingredient to convine with such landscapes. She is absolutely stunning, I was blown away, not only because of her unequalled beauty, but by her flawless performance. And her on-screen chemistry with the handsome Robert Redford couldn't get any hotter. He made me melt.

The final touch is the sweeping soundtrack, probably the best of the decade, filled with the greatest musician of all times: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Tears were pouring of my eyes, the whole convination is a delightful, emotional, breathtaking banquet.

PS: I love you Meryl (L)

The Jane Austen Book Club

Bravo!

What I liked the most about The Jane Austen Book Club was that even though each character represented one Jane Austen's book characters (Bernadette represents Mrs. Gardiner from Pride And Prejudice, Sylvia represents Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, Jocelyn is Emma from the so called novel, Prudie is Anne Elliot from Persuassion, Allegra is like Marianne from Sense And Sensibility and Grigg represents all Jane Austen's misunderstood male characters), and the resemblance is quite obvious given that each one leads the meeting of the book from which they represent a character, they could actually relate to all Austen's stories and characters, they did not follow the archetype completely and lineally. And what I found exceptional was that they expierenced similar things of the books they were reading at the very moment, like they learned from Austen's stories and they felt related and deeply touched, scarely mirrord in 18th century situations, three hundred years later.

It might seem like a chick fick, but it actually has got a complex plot and complex characters. If you haven't read any of Jane Austen's novels, then you'll find it cliched and boring, because you won't be able to see the "hiden" content, the little pearl that makes this movie special: the intertextualities.

But it's not a modernized collection of Jane Austen's stories, the resemblance between the characters is more like symbolism because they don't completely live their character's story, each member of the club expierences similar situations from all the books, not only the one they represent, and they all have personality features from many other Austen's characters.

I really loved the cast as an ensemble, they had great chemistry. But it was Emily Blunt's performance which stunned me the most. She really convinced me of her emotional contrasts and of her believe of being beyond the ordinary. Hugh Dancy is gorgeous and very promising, and he does great in this film. Maria Bello, Maggie Grace and Kathy Baker were in my favourites too.

Wonderful, underated movie.

FYI: The director/writer, Robin Swicord, is the writer of the upcoming film: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, which looks very promising and I'm dying to see. She also wrote the screenplays for Matilda, Memoirs Of A Geisha, The Perez Family and Little Women.

Just reporting

Hey!
I'm about to see The Jane Austen Book Club! I'm very excited, I've been wanting to see it for a loooong time now, and it's never shown in theatres here in Argentina and I can't find it on dvd, so I did something veeeery bad: I downloaded it. And now I'm burning it into a dvd, which will take at least an hour or two, so I don't know if I'll be able to see it today because I have to get up early tomorrow, but I really hope I can. I'll be frustrated otherwise, such hard job to find it, download it and burn it for nothing! haha yeah, I'm impatient.
I also downloaded several movies that I haven't been able to find anywhere else, which are: My Summer Of Love, I Could Never Be Your Woman and I don't remember what else, but, obviously I'll keep you posted.
I'm really looking foward to the release of the Mamma Mia! dvd, that's one to have in the collection! I could watch it over and over again, everyday. Pleaaaaaaaaaaaase hurry up! The shitty thing is that here it's still showing in theatres, so it will take at least four or five months! Since the very moment I got out of the cinema after watching it, I've been completely obsessed with it, and I mean COMPLETELY obsessed. I don't do anything not related to Mamma Mia! when I'm on the internet: I navegate in its Imdb site (I know its boards, reviews, quotes, goofs, trivias, photos by memory!), in the official site (which is AWESOME haha), I watch its YouTube related videos, every single one of it. I've watched all Amanda Seyfried and Meryl Streep interviews, all the red carpet and press conference events, etc.
I absolutely ADORE Meryl Streep. She's always been my role model (I want to be an actress, and given that she's the best actress alive, how could she not?), she's so adorable and clever and charming and funny. Lovely person, absolutely stunning actress. And her maternal instinct is soooo cute! She and Amanda could really be mother and daughter: they are very alike and they've got that special bond, you can see it from a distance. The way Meryl looks at her, talks about her, fixes her hair, kisses her forehead, hugs her... They are so cute.
You can see I'm trying to make time until the dvd is done, but it's still got like an hour and a half left, so I'll go sleep a little, watch tv or something.
Bye!