Posts tagged woman
“Broken Embraces” More Interesting and Terrific As It Goes Along
Feb 4th
More Interesting and Terrific As It Goes Along
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BROKEN EMBRACES stars Penelope Cruz in her fourth film with writer-director Pedro Almodovar, and it is a very good romantic mystery that will keep you interested and trying to guess its secrets up until the very end.
The time shifts between 2008 and the early 1990s in Madrid, and the story involves the relationships of a beautiful sexy woman, an old wealthy businessman, and a young handsome filmmaker and how their lives became intertwined.
We first meet Harry Caine, who is blind and who writes movie scripts.
A young woman he has just met is reading the newspaper to him in his apartment, and she reads the notice of the recent death of Ernesto Martel, a famous businessman who had spent some time in prison.
After she has finished reading to him, Harry asks her to describe herself for him, uses his hands to confirm her description, and the next thing we know, they are making love on the couch.
When the young woman is in the bathroom, an older woman named Judit Garcia lets herself into the apartment, and after the young woman has left, Judit confronts Harry about his indiscretion.
Harry says, “All that’s left is for me to enjoy life.”
Judit has a son named Diego, who also helps Harry, even to the point of their trying to write a movie script together. Then when Judit goes away from Madrid for two weeks and Diego has an accident that sends him to the hospital, Harry starts telling Diego the story of the love of his life, Lena, which we see as the details unfold.
It was back in 1994 when Harry met Lena and Ernesto. Harry’s name was Mateo Blanco back then, and he was a movie director.
But most important, he wasn’t blind.
Lena was Ernesto’s mistress, she wanted to act in the movies, and she showed up to audition for Mateo’s next movie, GIRLS AND SUITCASES.
However, Ernesto was extremely jealous of Lena, and so he sent his awkward son to follow Lena wherever she went and film her under the pretext of making a documentary.
You can guess what happened next. Lena got the part, she and Mateo fell in love during the making of the movie, but then what happened?
BROKEN EMBRACES gets more interesting and terrific as it goes along.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Sherlock Holmes” Deconstructing Holmes
Dec 30th
Deconstructing Holmes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SHERLOCK HOLMES takes one of the most famous of all fictional characters, the brilliant but eccentric London detective created in the late 1800s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and turns him into a modern-day action hero.
The setting is still London in the late 1800s, but Robert Downey Jr.
plays Holmes as just as much a martial-arts fighter as a brilliant thinker.
And Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Sherlock’s partner, colleague, and writer of Sherlock’s famous cases, as just as much an equal in the martial arts as Holmes is.
To steal a line from somebody else, “This is not your great-grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.”
In fact, Watson himself may be onto something, because a major subplot in this mess of a movie is that Dr. Watson is engaged and preparing to move out of their digs at 221B Baker Street.
The fault, Dear Audience, lies with the writers and the director, Guy Ritchie, known for his rock-’em, sock-’em modern-day British crime-caper comedies, but most famous for being the recently divorced husband of Madonna.
When the movie opens, Holmes is in a foul mood, and Watson says to Mrs.
Hudson, the woman who keeps their rooms as tidy as she is allowed to, “He just needs another case, that’s all.”
The last case that Holmes had and presumably solved was three months ago, but before he acquires a new case, Holmes is invited to dinner in a restaurant with Watson and his fiancee, Mary, who insists that Holmes examine her at the table and tell her what his observations reveal about her.
To say that it doesn’t go well would be the understatement of the 19th century.
Holmes eventually gets a case that involves black magic, a midget, a plot to rule England and to reacquire the United States, and Holmes’s female nemesis, Irene Adler, played by the beautiful Rachel McAdams.
Yes, this movie is more like a James Bond adventure than a story about the Sherlock Holmes we have come to know, love, respect, and admire.
The movie is preposterous, the story is preposterous, the action scenes are preposterous, even the acting is preposterous.
And, unfortunately, the ending has all the earmarks of a sequel in the works.
SHERLOCK HOLMES is a silly deconstruction of the four novels and 56 short stories that we have read and loved.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Blind Side” Watch Your Blind Side
Nov 25th
Watch Your Blind Side
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE BLIND SIDE tells the true-life story of how Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher was a homeless teenager who was taken in by a wealthy Memphis family and helped to get into college.
Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the woman who was the driving force behind this remarkable story, and she gives a performance worthy of an Academy Award nomination and could just as easily win next year for Best Actress.
Tim McGraw plays Sean Tuohy, Leigh Anne’s husband, and one night the family is out driving in the rain when they spot Michael walking along the road. Leigh Anne’s two children know who he is, because he attends the same school they do, and so Leigh Anne makes Sean stop, and she gets out to ask Michael if he has a place to stay that night, adding, “Don’t you lie to me.”
As Sean and his son and daughter watch, Sean says, “I’ve seen that look many times. She’s about to get her way.”
So, the Tuohys take “Big Mike,” as he is called at school, home with them and let him sleep overnight on the couch, which leads to a much longer relationship and the basis for this heartwarming, inspirational, and tearful movie.
Because of Big Mike’s size, he is a natural to try out for the school’s football team, but he is not a natural at playing the game, and some of the humor in the story comes from the scenes of coaching and working with the Tuohy’s son, Sean Jr., who knows the game, but is too small himself to play.
However, it is Leigh Anne who teaches Michael the fundamental reason for playing left offensive tackle, which is the basis for the title of the film. She says that Michael has to protect the quarterback’s blind side from an onrushing defensive player and that he should think of the quarterback as he does his new family: When he is protecting the quarterback, he is protecting them.
Everybody in the family pitches in to help Michael with his grades, too, so that he can remain eligible to play, and Leigh Anne even hires a tutor for him to help him get a scholarship for college.
THE BLIND SIDE is so good that you will need to watch your own emotional blind side.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
