4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile (4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days)
Cine (2007)
If the nuns were right about hell, and were right about those who have abortions going there, then apparently Ceauşescu-era Romania had a prepay system in place, which also incorporated the attending best friend.
Devastating, unrelenting naturalism, which manages to give both pro-life and pro-choice people reason to believe it supports their positions. Not because it panders, but because it is honest about the complexity of the issue, and about the horror that even those who see choice as a sacred right must, if honest, acknowledge.
If the Academy is right and there are five foreign films better than this and Persepolis and El Orfanato, I can't wait to see those five nominees. But in fact, I suspect that the Foreign Film committee this year comprises even pinnier pinheads than usual. Cannes, in contrast, gave this the Palme d'or, even if everyone there did refer to it as "the Romanian abortion film."
Definitely, Maybe
NoHa
The newspaper ad features a blurb proclaiming this "The best romantic comedy since Annie Hall, according to The Times--which, as Americans, we're supposed to assume means the New York Times, but of course really refers to the stodgy old barnacle of London, where, yeah, right, they know anything about movies.
In fact, this is no better than the second-best romantic comedy with Rachel Weisz in it; the other one I'm thinking of is one of two romcoms based on Nick Hornby novels that are better than this; Cameron Diaz has been in two better romcoms; and Bill Murray has been in two infinitely better films, one unquestionably a romcom, the other arguably romcommish. I mean, come on.
All that said, this is quite good and much tougher-minded than the average romcom. Casting helps and hinders: it's no surprise that Abigail Breslin is wonderful, and hearing her use the words penis, vagina, and thrust in the same sentence is worth the price of admission, even if it hadn't been a bargain matinee. Weisz and Isla Fisher (my favorite Oman-born thespian) are perfect as two of the three candidates for the Breslin character's mother. But there the casting hits a wall: am I the only one who finds Elizabeth Banks (maternal candidate #3 [well, #1, actually, but the numbers get shuffled a lot]) and Ryan Reynolds (the one and only father, and thus the biggest on-screen presence) slightly more bland than Wonder Bread? This might well have been a great film, but not with those two up front.
2 comments:
very true about Ryan Reynolds.
after it was over, I wondered, "why doesn't this girl know who her mother is?"
Yeah, good point: wouldn't the fact of their having gone to college together have come up in conversation in front of Maya (who obviously is very smart and picks up on everything) at least once? The movie doesn't bear thinking about much, I think, having thought about it the past few days more than it bears thinking about.
Thing I forgot to mention in the initial post that annoyed me most about it was that we're supposed to agree w/ father and daughter that the Weisz character is a bitch for . . . fucking doing her job as a fucking journalist! I wonder whether you have to have worked in journalism to get how fucked up that is. Having Maya call her a bitch is fair, 'cause she has to be protective of her daddy, but that he agrees with her--and that the article made it impossible for him to do more than tolerate her thereafter--really frosted me.
And as long as I'm in potshot mode, when they're taking a cab to Brooklyn & the kid cites statistics about suicide attempts from the Brooklyn Bridge, the next shot reveals them to be on the Manhattan Bridge--a really weird mistake to make for a film that seems constantly to be congratulating itself for not having been shot in Toronto.
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