(500) Days of Summer (four stars total) What both of the movies I'm reviewing here share in common is star power. And Los Angeles. And sitting outside and enjoying its architecture. And becoming disconnected from each other and the audience. I watched this first one just for Zooey Deschanel (her big, blue eyes have never been bigger or bluer than they are here) and I can't wait to see how Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Cobra Commander on the new G.I. Joe movie. It's a testament to each actors' charm that I can still appreciate them after despising the characters they played. For me, the movie was about all the things guys find infuriating about girls and vice versa. If you don't agree with that, try this one: it was about a dating role reversal which I have never personally witnessed in real life. Maybe you have. Maybe you've been that guy. Maybe you've been that girl. I just don't know that guy or that girl and if I did, I wouldn't let them carry on like that for 500 days. I wish I could've been a character in this movie so I could go watch another movie called Vagiant. I loved the style of but not so much the story. I loved the referential editing, the classic foreign films montage and the split-screen sequence. Like everyone else, I loved the soundtrack, the karaoke and the musical scene with the animated bird. I can't believe they went from Morrissey to Hall and Oates. Another thing I can't believe is the scene where the guy has a meltdown at work. It wasn't natural. It was too metaphorical. His office was already unbelievable. He went from addressing the audience through voice-over narration to addressing fellow characters as if they were watching a movie. That's when I realized I was watching a Hollywood movie for people that hate Hollywood movies. They should have written his character another musical number, this one the opposite of the happy-go-lucky one from before. Maybe they felt they'd already done that on his first rebound date. Speaking of which, I don't feel his second rebound date, introduced right before the end credits, is going to work out any better. That final scene was pitiful but not as bad as the one before it. I was totally creeped out by the new bride meeting her ex in the park, even if it was for closure. I'll save you the trouble and give you the moral to the story in one sentence: it's hard to compete with a memory because people only want to remember the good times.
The Soloist (two stars total) I should have gone with my gut on this one. My gut instinct has never done me wrong, but I have tried to go against it a few times and I've been burned each time. When I first saw the trailer for this movie in the theater, I thought it looked a little heavy-handed, and now I know I was right. It seemed to be too much of an open narrative, and I was right about that too. I figured it would only be worth watching for Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, and unfortunately, I was right a third time. On top of all that, I have a bad history with movies about musicians. Almost Famous (2000) lost me. The Doors (1991) lost a lot of people. Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) bothered me. And not that I have anything against sad movies, but Amadeus (1984), La Bamba (1987), Shine (1996) and Sid and Nancy (1986) were all downright depressing. I liked Jamie Foxx's other musicals, Ray (2004) and Dreamgirls (2006), but music biopics this year started off on the wrong foot with Notorious (2009), so I should've known. It's not all bad though. One of my favorite things in the world is listening to music playing in the distance, a band playing in the garage across the street or the radio in a passing car. It's almost better than being submersed in big headphones completely covering your ears. There's a lot of incomplete music in The Soloist. The main character only plays one part from concertos and he does so over the noise of traffic, pigeons and aircraft. Sometimes the movie drowns that out and brings in the rest of the orchestra and that's where it lost me. The main character loves L.A. but the movie doesn't always share his passion. I have a new idea for a rating system. Each time I push the fast forward on my DVD or wish that I could fast forward in the theater, the movie gets one point. The more points a movie scores, the worse that movie is, and there could as many points as there are total minutes in a movie. Whaddya think? I fast forwarded a lot through The Soloist, through the flashbacks, through the wannabe-Fantasia (1940), avant-garde, flashing colors scene, from the scene where Jamie attacks Robert through to the final hug of forgiveness. I would have preferred to watch a documentary on the real people this book adaptation was based on.
Friday, August 7, 2009
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Music from afar --> I agree. Was it in Silver that there was that Bluegrass Festival?
oddly enough, in my memory, I'm picturing myself having a drink and enjoying the music playing from across the street, but that wasn't the case at all. We walked up and mingled a bit, but I was 17 and with you, Shalina, and Darrell. There's no way I would have been drinking.
Weird.
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