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ISBN: 1404935770

Review:

I just finished watching Something’s Gotta Give for the second time, enjoyed it the first time but loved it this time. Diane Keaton is as wonderful in her fifties as she was in her twenties and Jack Nicholson somehow made a transformation into a really convincingly nice guy. I can’t believe how much more depth this movie had for me than it had the first time I watched it but it might have something to do with the fact I am currently battling serious heart problems of my own, with implications for a wonderful age-gap relationship too. The movie belongs to Nicholson and Keaton whose thirty-year careers testify to their mastery. The ease with which their facial and bodily expressions and voice tones fit the script must have junior actors feeling like bufoons. This is not to take away from the performances of Amanda Peet and Keanu Reeves, I’m just awestruck by the craft of the veterans. Reeves (Dr. Julian Mercer) one of the few males on the screen who deserve the accolade ‘impossibly handsome’, plays his role convincingly and with understated power. Harry Sanborn (Nicholson) enters as a AAA alpha male winner who has never bothered with marriage as it is much easier just to sleep with girls in their twenties for a night or two and move on to another. A weekend at a luxurious beach house with the gorgeous Marin (Peet) should ensure his next conquest, but Erica Jane Barry, Marin’s mother, arrives unexpectedly with her sister and Harry undergoes verbal dissection by Erica, a playwright and Zoe (Frances McDormand), a teacher of feminist theory. He survives and is made to feel as if escaping would be gauche, so stays, and he and Marin prepare to continue with their original plan. Nature takes a hand and, as can happen in the beyond-fifties, he has a heart attack instead of foreplay and lands in hospital. Peet’s mother Erica Jane Barry (Keaton) takes control, gives mouth to mouth, and orders her daughter to call an ambulance.Julian, the attending doctor, is fascinated by Erica, a playright and immediately begins to romance her. Harry finds himself more and more fascinated by this strong, intelligent woman of his own generation. Marin moves on.

If something has gotta give what is it? Lots of things have to give in this movie. People build up a structure to their lives over decades and as both Harry and Erica have done, they can be structures that others admire and envy but when the force majeur of love arrives what can withstand it?

Sexuality in the fifties and beyond is a sensitive area and director Nancy Meyers treats it with robust understanding, neither sentimentalising it nor imaging the ‘still a superstud’ bluff. I and many others, I’m sure, were left with a renewed sense of confidence in our ability to love and be loved and that there is still more to be discovered about that amazing aspect of human existence after menopause or the waning of potency. Hooray for director Meyers and hooray for the actors that gave me that feeling. It’s a great gift.

ISBN: 9783822818145

Babel is a grouping of tragedies connected before and after to an incident that occurs in Morroco, when an American woman is shot by a shepherd boy. The best of the four sub-plots is set in Japan and as far as I can gather the tortured soul of the Japanese teenager we follow to the brink of suicide has no bearing on the Morrocan incident. Rinko Kikuchi has been deservedly acclaimed for her performance and the Japanese cast made no mistakes. Brad Pitt is Richard, who has to fight for the survival of his wife Susan (Kate Blanchett) in a country where his expectations of quick rescue just aren’t going to happen. Why? Because of Morrocan backwardness? No. Because the U.S. propaganda machine wants to make use of the situation to increase the world’s fear of terrorism. The Morrocan townspeople are helpful but poor.In the United States and Mexico we follow the tribulations of Adriana, the nanny, who has the choice of taking Richard and Kate’s children, Debbie and Mike, to Mexico or missing her son’s wedding. She does it and this ends in disaster and tension mounts as we see the consequences of U.S. racism towards its neighbours.In Morroco, eager police brutally investigate the incident, bashing the truth out of poor shepherds and their families to finally discover who the culprit is. Richard needn’t have worried. His wife survives much longer than a human could have - and she isn’t even a hero or secret agent! It’s lucky she was in a movie. Pitt doesn’t do a bad job of acting the freaked out husband but the whole drama goes on too long. Kate Blanchett doesn’t have to bother using her immense talent as she just lies there bleeding and instead of wasting away has plenty of energy for an improbably long kiss with Brad Pitt when a rescue team finally arrives. I hope she enjoyed it, but it doesn’t help their part, in my opinion the worst segment of the film, to regain credibility. What a waste of good actors.The title was not a very good choice for this movie. It might allow the movie to draw viewers who would normally never watch a subtitled or foreign film. This grouping of tragedies is not linked by verbal confusions but by people’s failures to even try to understand and by the tenuous influences of butterfly wings. (I had better carefully observe those Chinese butterflies and try to understand how they can do that!)The value of this movie is not in language problems though it certainly has many communication failures in the plot. The plight of the shepherds is caused by the unrestrained power of brutal police who thump first and ask questions later and a culture of loyalty to friends is broken by force. Communication is not the key problem here. Richard and Susan experience no communication problem in the village where they take refuge as there is a very capable English-speaking local to help. The communication problem that influences Susan’s chance of survival is U.S. bloody-mindedness in refusing to send help unless the Morrocan government agrees to say it was a terrorist attack. The situation of Adriana and the children comes down to a communication difficulty between American border guards and the Mexicans; they just yell orders and don’t listen, provoking Adrina’s nephew to a desperate act. Chieko, Kinkuchi’s character, is deaf, a major communication difficulty, and feels like an outcast. She is starving for love and acceptance and her life seems empty. Her father’s generous action in Morroco provided the weapon for the shooting but that is the only connection this vignette of Japanese urban culture has to the rest of the movie.

Well I suppose the title might have got some people to watch this small collection of little foreign films but I am sure if Kate Blanchett and Brad Pitt had been given more work to do most of these people would have gone anyway. The movie got me angry, I think you can guess what at. I loved the foreignness of it and the chance to glimpse other cultures but the happy ending was banal. I liked watching it but when I thought about it I saw all the holes. It is not a particularly well directed movie and was only rescued by the realism of the non-Hollywood actors. No one who spoke English in the film was allowed to do a good job. In the end, though, I have to say it got me in and I didn’t notice the holes until I thought carefully about what I had seen.

ISBN: 0783238810

Review:

Many movies have been made about Peter Pan and in my opinion this is the best. It has been updated and J.M.Barry might well be a little shocked at the way the screenwriters have romanticised the relationship between Peter and Wendy and constructed the movie around their feelings for each other and the question, “Will they kiss?” It is a modern movie and explores the subject in a way suited to this era, drawing out the feelings of the characters without departing too far from a child’s reality and imagination. Peter is made by Wendy to defend his perpetual childhood and challenged to leave Neverland and grow up. All this is set in a beautiful world where all our fantasies of flying and becoming heroes are true. A theme of my own is emerging in my reviews. I love to open my imagination to enter the imaginary kingdoms of children’s movies. In this one I can watch the fairies dance and fly into the air with my lover and waltz in the treetops. What? You think I should grow up and get into horror and gore. Why in earth would I do that? It’s not the world I would rather live in. That’s the world in which kids become murderers. We’ve had enough of that. I’d rather be Peter Pan. If you ask me why don’t I grow up I will take Peter Pan’s side and say why don’t you grow down?