Posts tagged Hotshots
“Amour” Is Difficult, but Thought-Provoking
Feb 10th
“Difficult, but Thought-Provoking”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Amour means “love,” “affection,” or “passion” in French, and although the film has dialogue in French with English subtitles and it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Feature, it was not submitted by France, but rather by Austria.
The reason is that the director, Michael Haneke, is Austrian, not French, and so one could say that not everything is at it seems with this film, which goes for the simple story itself.
The film was also nominated for four other Academy Awards, Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and Actress, and in 2012 it won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, which suggests that this is a well-respected, classy film.
But not everything is as it seems.
For example, you might believe you already know how it ends from reading about it and especially from seeing the opening scene.
But there is much more to it than that an old woman dies.
The woman is Anne, she has a stroke at the beginning of the film, and when she returns home, she says to her husband, Georges, “Promise me one thing. Never take me back to the hospital.”
She is partially paralyzed on the right side of her body, and as Georges begins to care for her at home and as Anne’s condition becomes worse, keeping that promise becomes more and more difficult.
The action occurs almost entirely inside their apartment in Paris, and although other characters come and go, the events consist mostly of Georges’s problems taking care of Anne as her physical condition gets worse.
It sounds boring, doesn’t it, especially since you believe you already know how it is going to end.
But not everything is as it seems.
For example, there are a couple of scenes that end with a planned shock to the audience, and one you might not have seen coming. There are also a couple of scenes that have to have been either fantasizing by one of the characters or the result of the director and screenwriter playing with the audience.
However, after the film is over, you realize that thinking about these scenes adds depth and meaning to the film.
In other words, keep remembering that not everything is as it seems with this award-winning film.
Amour is difficult to watch, but also very thought-provoking.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Silver Linings Playbook” Contrived and Over the Top
Feb 6th
“Contrived and Over the Top”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Silver Linings Playbook has already won some awards and will likely win more, but some of you might be disappointed in this so-called “dramedy” about two troubled souls.
Bradley Cooper stars as Pat, he is in a psychiatric facility in Baltimore, where he has been ordered to stay by a judge after Pat went home, found his wife Nikki in the shower with another man, and went berserk, which is now referred to as “the incident.”
While there, Pat has been diagnosed as being bipolar with mood swings, but we see him on the phone talking to someone, and he says, “I’m better now, and I hope you are, too.”
After being in the facility eight months, Pat’s mother takes him out and drives him back home to Philadelphia, where Pat will now live with her and his father, played by Robert De Niro.
You see, Nikki has left Pat, sold their home, and now has a restraining order against him, but Pat plans to get in shape, get his old job back as a substitute history teacher, and get Nikki back, too.
Pat’s mother tells him that she didn’t tell his father that she was bringing Pat home and to take things easy, because his father lost his job and is now a small-time bookie, who is also a fanatic obsessed with the Philadelphia Eagles professional football team.
In fact, Pat’s father is such a fanatic that he had his own “incident” in the past and is now banned from ever attending another Eagles home game.
Meanwhile, Pat is invited to Sunday dinner by his friend Ron, who is married to Nikki’s friend, Veronica, they just had a baby, and Ron is feeling crushed.
Veronica’s sister, Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is also at the dinner, and she has problems of her own, having recently lost both her husband and her job. Her husband was a policeman who was killed on duty, and she lost her job for reasons I won’t go into here.
Well, you can guess that Pat and Tiffany will have a troubled relationship, that they will have many obstacles to overcome, but not that the climax is a big dance contest, which substitutes for the Big Game at the end of many movies.
Silver Linings Playbook is too contrived and over the top.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“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.”
