Posts tagged Best Actress
“Rust and Bone” Is French Murkiness
Jan 29th
“French Murkiness”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Rust and Bone is a French film, and sometimes that is all that needs to be said, but in this case that describes only half of it.
It stars Marion Cotillard, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 2007 La Vie en Rose, in which she portrayed French songstress Edith Piaf.
In this film, she plays an orca trainer at a Marineland in the south of France who has a tragic accident.
When the film opens, we see a man named Ali traveling with his five-year-old son, Sam, on a train to southern France.
Once they arrive, they go to his sister’s house, whom he hasn’t seen in five years, where she is living with another man, Richard.
When Anna gets home from work as a store clerk, Richard says to her, “Some reunion. Not kissing your brother?”
We don’t know the reason that Ali and Sam have moved to stay with Anna and Richard, but it could very well be that Ali has fallen on hard times.
Ali gets a job as a bouncer at a nightclub, and one night he meets Stephanie, rescuing her from a fight and afterwards taking her back to her home, where he treats his bloodied hands by putting them in ice.
Then Stephanie has an accident where she works at Marineland, and she loses both her legs below the knees.
About four months later, she calls Ali, and he comes to visit her. She now gets around by a wheelchair, and Ali takes her out to the beach, where he goes swimming and convinces her to go swimming, too.
So, the rest of the film is about the growing relationship between these two people. She is physically crippled, and he is emotionally crippled.
Ali changes jobs, and eventually he makes extra money by fighting in underground kickboxing fights, which he is successful at and which fascinates Stephanie.
Stephanie gets some artificial legs and is able to get around more easily, but Ali gets into trouble where he is working as a security guard, and he has to leave town.
However, even though Cotillard has received praise for this film, you might ask what the point is, especially with the phony ending.
Rust and Bone might be to your liking, or you might think it is just French murkiness.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Rabbit Hole” Movie as Therapy
Feb 15th
“Movie as Therapy”
RABBIT HOLE stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as Becca and Howie Corbett, whose four-year-old son Danny was killed eight months before the movie starts, and so you know it’s not a comedy.
The adaptation from the play of the same name, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is very good, but unfortunately the movie is not.
In fact, you could sum up the story with a simple “Woman loses son offscreen, woman loses husband on-screen, woman gets husband back, they heal.”
Roll credits.
Of course, both Kidman and Eckhart are good in their roles, and Kidman received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for this movie, but just as you have heard of a “one-trick pony,” this is a one-note movie.
The title comes from the title of a comic book created by one of the characters in the story, which deals with parallel universes, and Becca tells him that she likes that idea, because then the one we are in might be “just the sad version of us” and that “somewhere out there, I’m having a good time.”
See? Definitely not the feel-good movie of the year.
Becca lies to a neighbor who invites her and Howie over for dinner, saying they already have plans, when they don’t.
She and Howie haven’t talked at all about having another child, and they haven’t even had sex since Danny died.
She drops out of the group therapy sessions for couples who have lost a child that she and Howie have been attending when the discussions include too much God talk for her taste, especially when one grieving mother says that she takes comfort in believing that her child died because God wanted another angel.
And she starts lying to Howie when she befriends the teenage boy who was responsible for Danny’s death.
On the other hand, Howie is not entirely blameless, either, when the growing distance between Becca and him causes him to consider other ways to heal his grief, without telling Becca.
Becca’s grief causes her to lash out at her mother, played by Diane Wiest, and even her sister, who is planning to get married, but then the subplots feel more like failed attempts to add a couple extra notes to this one-note movie more than anything else.
RABBIT HOLE is pretty much movie as therapy.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Love & Other Drugs” Life Changed Forever
Dec 2nd
“Life Changed Forever”
LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS is a bittersweet romantic comedy with a twist, and by “twist” I don’t mean a twist of lemon that could be applied, but rather a subplot that provides its “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” jokes.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway star, two excellent actors who are not only easy on the eyes, but also both of whom have already been mentioned as possibilities for Best Actor and Best Actress awards in 2011 for this movie.
The time is 1996, and Jake plays Jamie Randall, an enthusiastic salesman of practically everything, but most of his successful sales seem to be to attractive women, if you catch my drift.
In fact, his sales techniques and satisfied customers tend to get him fired, too, and so at a family dinner with his parents and millionaire brother, when they talk about their professional accomplishments, Jamie has to announce, “I am looking for other opportunities.”
Jamie finds a job, and he goes through six weeks of training to become a pharmaceutical representative for a major drug company. The job requires hard-core sales, and he has a quota he has to meet.
Now, sooner or later everyone likes Jamie, because he will do anything to make them like him.
That includes paying $1,000 to Dr. Stan Knight, played by Hank Azaria, to let Jamie shadow him one day, and if anyone asks, Jamie is an intern.
One of the patients is Maggie Murdock, who has early onset Parkinson’s Disease, and Jamie is instantly smitten.
Maggie finds out about Jamie’s deception, but she agrees to go out with him anyway, because she is just like him, not looking for any long-term relationship, except that in her case she doesn’t want to become an inevitable burden to anyone.
Then Jamie’s company comes out with a little blue pill called Viagra, and that changes everything in Jamie’s life.
Of course, Jamie’s and Maggie’s relationship has its ups and downs–wink, wink, nudge, nudge–and I don’t mean just physical.
If this enjoyable romcom has a moral, it would be “Everybody needs someone to take care of them.”
And, of course, people like Jamie and Maggie don’t believe that originally and fight it as long as they can.
LOVE & OTHER DRUGS also shows how you can meet one person and your life is changed forever.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
