"Are You Watching Closely?" [Prestige, Love Actually Etc.]

Originally Posted 4/1/08:

The Prestige
First Viewing: Movies like this are all about the payoff in the ending. Satisfaction is almost entirely dependent on that “Oh, my God” moment when everything is revealed, so it’s hard to talk about The Prestige without talking about the ending, but I won’t reveal anything except, when it’s over, you still have no fucking clue what’s going on. The cover of the DVD boasts a quote from Peter Travers that says “You want to watch it again the second it’s over!” Well, strictly speaking, this is true. But it’s not in a Sixth Sense, “I swear Bruce Willis talked to other people” kind of way but in a, “What the fuck just happened?” kind of way. You’re supposed to be confused the whole movie, and then in the end be blown away when everything is revealed. I was blown away by one part of the ending, but there’s another part that I literally don’t understand at all.

The frustrating part is that I think The Prestige has a lot more potential than its counterpart, The Illusionist* (which I really liked, mostly because it had a great ending), because the milieu is more complete and appropriate, Nikola Tesla and the “real” magic is extremely interesting, The Prestige (the final part of a magic trick) is a way cooler name than The Illusionist, and Christopher Nolan obviously has enormous talent as a director. I’ll watch it again and tell you what I think then, but I’m afraid it has been undone by its ending. B-/C+ (Incomplete)

*Why is it that movies with disturbingly similar subjects always come out at the same time? Volcano and Dante’s Peak, Deep Impact and Armageddon, these two, and I’m sure there are more I can’t remember right now. I mean, these people have to be ripping each other off, right? It can’t just be coincidence, can it?

Second Viewing: Well, I guess this is the kind of movie you just really have to see twice, or at least I did. The second time you really gain an appreciation for the way Nolan is basically playing his own magic trick on you.

The movie begins with a voiceover by Michael Caine that basically boils down to this: “A magic trick has three parts: The pledge, where you show the audience an ordinary object, like a bird or a man. The turn, where you do something extraordinary to that object. But you wouldn’t clap yet because it’s not enough to make it disappear. You have to bring it back. That’s the third part, the prestige.”

As you’re watching the movie for the second time, you realize he’s pulling this trick with both main characters (well, it’s an adaptation, so a combination of him and the author), and yet, somehow, unlike a magic trick, you’re only satisfied by the prestige here when you understand how it happened. Basically, what I realized the second time is that this is a damn well-directed film, which you would expect from the director of perhaps the best constructed movie I’ve ever seen in Memento. So basically, I had to watch it twice, but, in the end I really liked it. And Nikola Tesla/David Bowie is awesome. A-/B+

Love Actually
There are certain movies that transcend their somewhat limited genres: The Matrix in action; The Royal Tennenbaums in comedy; V for Vendetta in superhero movies; Adaptation in, umm, flower movies. Then there are those that are merely near-perfect examples of their genre: Terminator 2, Spiderman or Austin Powers.

Love Actually is of the second kind. It stays stuck in its genre distinction of romantic comedy, often sacrificing realism and honesty for sweet, funny storytelling. I am 100% fine with this. It knows what it is and doesn’t stray from that. A movie like this will never make my top tier, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it.

This movie is just so sweet and, actually, absolutely hilarious. I laughed out loud ten or fifteen times at least. You don’t often find that in conjunction with a movie that makes you feel so good.

There are way too many different stories to get into any kind of plot summary, but my favorites include Liam Neeson as the father to an in-love ten-year-old, the aging rock star covering his hit “Love Is All Around Me” with “Christmas Is All Around Me,” and the awkward couple that falls for each other while doing stand-ins for sex scenes in movies. There were a couple stories, like some dude on an American sex romp, that didn’t really fit and were a little beyond the realm of reality to be enjoyable, and I wasn’t close to believing that Hugh Grant was the Prime Minister of Britain (though I do love him), but most of the stories more than worked for me. I also like how a number of them didn’t end wrapped up into neat little packages.

So all in all, this is about as good as you can make a romantic comedy without leaving the genre all together. A-/B+

A Simple Twist of Fate
A Simple Twist of Fate is one of the sweetest, most charming movies I’ve ever seen. It’s written and directed and starred-in by Steve Martin, but it’s actually a straight realistic drama. The story is essentially this: Martin, with his wife 6 months-ish pregnant, finds out the baby isn’t his. He leaves, and we rejoin him two years later, miserable and alone. A drug addict mother basically dies on his front poor, and he takes in her three year old daughter. Unfortunately, she turns out to be the illegitimate daughter of the local congressman, and there’s a drawn out legal battle many years down the line, but that stuff is all really secondary. It’s just a very moving portrayal of a man and his daughter, and the way they change each other’s life. (Ugh, generic, I know, but you get the point. It’s not “gritty” or anything like that, and the scope is small, but it’s so loving and sweet.)
A-/B+

The Hours
The Hours’ three viewpoints, one woman writing Mrs. Dalloway, one reading it and one reliving it in different times, is an interesting way to tell a story, but it is its acting that makes it very good even more than the writing. Each of the stories is only 30 or 40 minutes long, so we have to learn everything about our characters is only a few moments. The writing does a good job with this, but it takes special acting performances to get the depth of character in that amount of time that is achieved by all three main women—Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. That being said, I think the Ed Harris provides the best performance as a depressed AIDS-infected poet. He’s really unbelievable. Plus, Clare Danes plays a small role, and for whatever reason, I have a huge crush* on her. My mom had said she didn’t think I would like The Hours because it wasn’t emotional enough, and I know where she’s coming from. The difference though is that, while the emotion is only rarely on the surface, the actors make it real beneath it the whole time. A-/B+

*My top five movie-star crushes:
1. Ingrid Bergman. “Ingrid Bergman you’re so purty, you’d make any mountain quiver / you’d make fire fly from the crater.” Let’s just say Woody Guthrie and I have similar views on this subject.

2. Natalie Portman. God, I am so in love with Sam from Garden State (I guess that’s the ultimate proof of my narcissm, right? I’m in love with Sam). I don’t even think that movie’s particularly great, but I love it, mostly because of her. She’s not too shabby in other things either.

3. Clare Danes. This mostly stems from The Family Stone, I think, a movie I really like and the closest thing I could think of to a movie that transcended the romantic comedy genre.

4. Laura Linney. This is kind of a weird one, I guess, because she’s relatively old by now, but when she’s on screen, my eyes are always on her. My favorite is her in Kinsey.

5. ? This one’s up for grabs. I definitely think Jessica Alba is unbelievably gorgeous, and Scarlett Johansson’s not too far behind, but I don’t think they cut it. Ellen Page? The combination of her character in Juno and how she looks when not wearing clothes that compress her breasts to nothing and make her look like a genuine 16-year-old could do it.

Under the Same Moon
This is another movie I loved and is just profoundly sweet. I’m kind of running out of steam, so I won’t go into too much detail, but it’s about a 9 year old Mexican kid whose mother has crossed illegally* into the US and left him behind, hoping to make enough money so they can both have a better life. She keeps insisting they will be together soon, but when the boy’s grandmother, who is now taking care of him, dies, he decides to cross the border himself and find her. The acting is all solid, the characters are often slightly flat and predictable but never uninteresting and the story is wonderful in a lot of ways. Also, the ending is perfect—abrupt but perfect. A-/B+

*It does make you think about immigration laws when you see how hard it is for these people. And I do kind of think we should just let any non-criminals into the US that want to come as long as they’re documented and go through customs and everything (thoguh I know a lot of rational people disagree with me profoundly with me on this, and I’m not informed at all), but if the West Wing taught me anything it’s that when you’re running a country, you can’t be affected by individuals cases. It’s impossible to do what’s best for everyone, and you do what helps the country as a whole (like, say, for instance, cutting off corn subsidies, maybe?). I’m not sure strictly limiting immigration accomplishes that, but it might.

Once
Eh, basically. I like some of the music a lot, particularly the song that won the Oscar (the sinking boat one), but such a high percentage of the movie is just music, and not in a musical way that advances the story, that it would be really hard for Once to be great as a movie. As a combination music video/simple pseudo-love story, it worked for me, and it really is done in an ultra, almost too realistic a way, but I wouldn’t particularly recommend it. B-

Oh and Jules, I only have Brokeback left to watch, so I’ll send them all back beginning of next week. Dorm or home address? Thanks again.