The Great Gatsby

My review of The Great Gatsby.  It's very much Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby and not in a good way.  It's gaudy, flashy, and lacks substance.  I did enjoy the soundtrack though.  In particular, Florence + the Machine's majestic "Over the Love."  There's also a very amusing, jazzy cover of Beyonce's "Crazy in Love."

Haruki Murakami's1Q84

1Q84 features two seemingly parallel storylines: Aomame, a physical trainer who kills violent, abusive men and Tengo, an aspiring novelist who ghost writes a promising short story he feels particularly drawn to.  The first two books of 1Q84 are magnificent.  They draw you in immediately and introduce you to the strange and sometimes creepy world of 1Q84 in which there are two moons instead of one and policemen carry semi-automatic weapons instead of revolvers.  The pacing is tight and characters are motivated to act.  The third book of 1Q84 feels weak.  Another character's POV is introduced (he doesn't really add all that much to the story) and things that should get resolved sooner drag on.  The antagonists in the story are also surprisingly disappointing, especially when they've been built up as so omniscient and cunning.

I liked Tengo right off the bat and initially looked forward to his part of the story more.  As the story went on, I found myself liking Aomame more.  Her struggles are deeply moving and become more fascinating as the novel progresses while Tengo seems to take a more passive role.  There're many minor characters and I wish more of them had felt more like real characters rather than plot devices.

Of the minor characters, my two favorites were Fuka-Eri and Ayumi.  Fuka-Eri is the mysterious teenager whose story Tengo ghostwrites.  Fuka-Eri is wise beyond her years but deeply damaged and oftentimes unable to communicate her wisdom.  She also had this strange, intimate dynamic with Tengo that I almost wish Murakami had explored more.  I would love to read a whole novel just about her.  Ayumi is a policewoman who befriends Aomame.  Ayumi has had a very damaged background just like Aomame but deals with it in a very different way.

IQ84 is at its best when it builds up to its fantastic climax- it's exhilarating and terrifying.  There are a lot of moving pieces and it's especially satisfying to see the characters behave unexpectedly.  I also really enjoyed the stories both about the characters (the dowager's history, Aomame's friendship with Tamika) and about the books that they read ("The Cat Town" and "Air Chrysalis").  Cat Town and Air Chrysalis are both haunting in their own ways and Air Chrysalis does live up to all the hype the characters in the book put around it.

In many ways, the love story in IQ84 feels like the weakest part.  Despite the relationships they develop in their parallel story lines Aomame and Tengo both still feel terribly alone and only find solace in their idealized love for each other .  In some ways, I wish the author let them develop deeper relationships with others around them because those relationships felt very raw and much more realistic though what the love meant to Aomame is genuinely moving.  

I also still have so many questions about Air Chrysalis and the world of 1Q84 and if any of you have read it I'd love to get into a debate about what the more mysterious things in the book meant.

Mace's Five Favorite Lesser Known Films

I saw this question posed on a movie forum recently and gave it some thought.  I'm sneaking in one extra.    

The Wedding Banquet (dir: Ang Lee) is about a gay Taiwanese man who fakes a wedding to a woman with his partner to please his traditional Taiwanese parents who don't know he's gay.  It's funny, poignant, and heartfelt.  

This might just be my favorite Ang Lee film because he captures the Chinese parent-child relationship so well especially when there's that generation/cultural gap between the parents who live in the home country and the kids who move to the US.  To some extent I think every Asian kid can relate to the relationship- how there are things you don't tell your parents because you don't think they'll get it (but they do or they'll try their very best to). 

   

Another one of Ang Lee's earlier films that I really enjoy is Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, which is is about a former chef and his three daughters. Like the Wedding Banquet, it starts off with a light, comedic tone but reaches quite a different and more serious tone towards the end.  Eat, Drink, Man, Woman is about growing up and moving on.  It also features some really magnificent Chinese cooking.  One of my favorite food sequences on film is below.  

  

The Children's Hour. The Children's Hour is a haunting story about how a little girl ruins the lives of two of her female teachers (Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine) after she spreads a rumor about them. I was impressed by how progressive it was since it was made in the 1960s.  

This one is definitely a downer but I do wish more people knew about this movie since the messages it conveys are so important.  It also has fantastic performances from Hepburn and Maclain.    

  

Marty (1955).  Marty (Ernest Borgnine) is a very well-liked butcher in his town, but he can't seem to get a girlfriend. When he finally finds someone he really likes and gets along with, none of his friends or family approve of her. 

This is another older, black and white movie.  Marty holds a very special place in my heart because this was one of the first older movies that I really enjoyed and connected with.  I remember catching it on Turner Classic Movies and just being really charmed by all of the characters and the lovely plot development.  

The Science of Sleep (dir: Michel Gondry)- a very imaginative movie about an eccentric man (Gael García Bernal) who confuses his dreams with reality.  The Science of Sleep is filled with beautiful, creative imagery- it's really beautiful what they do in this movie without CGI using cardboard, foam, and other basic art supplies  At a deeper level, Science of Sleep draws you in because of how personal the movie feels.  

The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Before it was the Denzel Washington thriller, The Manchurian Candidate was a really haunting and gripping thriller about conspiracies, brainwashing, and assassination   

  

Zero Dark Thirty

     Zero Dark Thirty (directed by Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker) is about the CIA’s manhunt for Osama Bin Laden.  The film centers around the sharp CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) who spearheads the investigation.  Zero Dark Thirty is somber, intense, and well-made but for some reason it left me feeling a bit cold.  It doesn't have the energy or raw intensity of The Hurt Locker and I found it harder to connect to the characters.  We really only get to know Maya.    

     One thing this movie does really well is to keep the narrative grounded firmly in reality.  It does a good job of portraying how difficult and frustrating the search for Bin Laden was.  Though the movie follows a linear narrative, the search for Bin Laden was certainly circuitous.  There was not one eureka moment but a series of small steps forward with many steps backwards.  While many movies shy away from uncertainties to keep to a clear and clean narrative, this one really embraced them and it strengthened the movie because it kept the search realistic.  Even as we get closer and closer to finding Bin Laden in the movie, we never get that it’s a sure thing.     

                There’s been quite a lot of controversy over various aspects of the torture scenes in the movie: that they weren't accurate because the CIA didn't use them to find Bin Laden and that the movie promotes the use of torture to extract information.   The torture scenes in the movie are intense and difficult to watch but it doesn't seem like the movie is promoting the use of torture to get information.  Ultimately, it is unclear how useful and reliable the information the characters get from the interrogations are. 

                There’s a secondary storyline to the manhunt that doesn't come through as well: the changing role of the CIA and how that has affected its priorities.  We get hints of it from Maya’s bosses but it’s mostly pushed to the side when the search starts making progress.

                In terms of performances, this movie really belongs to Jessica Chastain.  As Maya, you watch her find her voice as the movie progresses.  She starts off as the newest CIA agent in the Pakistan office who stands quietly in the interrogation room to the only person in a room full of CIA leaders who has complete conviction that they have found Osama Bin Laden.  While we see Maya find her voice, I wish the movie had spent more time on how she formed her views.  We see her looking conflicted during earlier interrogations but how her views change on interrogations as time progresses is not really shown. 

                Rounding out the rest of the cast, there is Jason Clarke and Jennifer Ehle as CIA agents, Kyle Chandler as Maya’s boss, and Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation) as a Navy SEAL.  I’m a big fan of Parks and Recreation, but it was a bit distracting to see Pratt in the movie.  Pratt provides some levity but doesn't seem to quite fit the tone of the rest of the movie. 

                Zero Dark Thirty is a somber portrayal of a manhunt.  It is intense, draining, and worth seeing but it's missing something that I can't quite put my finger on.    

Young Adult. Last of the Mohicans.

Young Adult

Young Adult is about Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) a young adult ghostwriter who visits her hometown and tries to win back her old high school sweet heart Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson).  Mavis is one of those girls from your high school- the pretty, popular, petty girl who's always powdering her nose or spreading nasty rumors about everyone else.  Theron does a good job playing Mavis who is so petty and hasn't really changed that much from her high school days.  There are sides to everything, there are friends like Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) who are still too uncool to associate with in public, and anything said by anyone needs to be thoroughly analyzed in high school girl speak.  E.g. He said this to me does that totally mean that he's still in love with me?

I know that a lot of people had problems with this movie because of the lack of growth from any of the characters.  While I found Mavis's character extremely frustrating and at times cringe worthy (especially when you see her so deluded and out of touch with reality), I found it more frustrating and unbelievable that there are so many others in her hometown who were just as set in their high school personas.

Last of the Mohicans 

Warning: Video contains spoilers

Last of the Mohicans (it's supposed to be based on the classic book but it's made many liberties ) follows the three last Mohicans: Chingachgook (Russell Means) and his two sons, Uncas (Eric Schweig) and adopted Nathaniel Hawkeye (Daniel Day Lewis), during the French and Indian War as they escort the daughters of British General Webb to a nearby fort.  There's conflict and hints of unrest from the colonists, who are forced by the British to help them fight the French.  There's revenge led by Magua (Wes Studi) and the Hurons against Webb and his daughters.  Hawkeye and Uncas also fall in love with the general's daughters Cora (Madeline Stowe) and Alice (Jodhi May).

It takes a little bit of time to get into this movie, but it picks up nicely once it becomes clear that it's not going to be an easy journey to the fort.  The score is absolutely beautiful and possibly one of my favorites.  The last half of the movie is absolutely breath-taking.  It blows you away.  All of the setup and implications from the first half really come to fruition and it's epic, it's tragic, it's beautiful.

I had trouble finding good clips of this movie that capture it well without spoilers.  While the clip on top does contain spoilers, it happens relatively early in the movie.  The clip below is one of my favorite sequences in the movie and does contain a lot of spoilers so proceed with caution.

The Amazing Spiderman and The Artist

The Amazing Spiderman

After hearing that Spiderman was getting a reboot, I was one of those people who thought a Spiderman reboot wasn't really necessary.  It looked decent from the trailers but it wasn't a movie I was super excited about.

I was pleasantly surprised by The Amazing Spiderman.  The Amazing Spiderman is another origins story for how Peter Parker becomes Spiderman (Andrew Garfield).  It maintains a different voice and tone from the original movies.  It's less corny and while many of the story elements were similar, it's like a really good remix that stands strongly on its own.  I really liked Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spiderman.  His Peter Parker is still smart and witty but maintains more of a sharp, rebellious edge.  Tobey Maguire's Peter was a dork (and that wasn't a bad thing at all since it fit those movies well), while Garfield's Peter is more like that smart, mysterious loner who does his own thing.  I do like how Garfield's Peter doesn't go into being Spiderman with the best of intentions but learns along the way to become a hero.  He and Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) also have great chemistry.  I like that Gwen does get to take more of an active role than Mary Jane has in the past movies.

That being said, there are plot holes and sketchy sketchy biology.  One of my favorite parts of the original Spidermans was Peter's relationship with Aunt May, and while she's still supportive and Peter's only family, isn't she remotely curious or deeply concerned about how often and how badly Peter gets hurt sometimes?

Despite the plot holes, Spiderman is still a fun, superhero movie to watch and I am looking forward to what they do next.

The Artist

The Artist, which won best picture last year at the Academy Awards, is about George Valentin, a famous silent film star (Jean Dujardin)'s fall into obscurity as the silent film industry dies down.  Meanwhile, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) an actress he helped out during his prime rises to fame as speakies, movies with sound and dialogue, rise to their prime.

The Artist is a black and white film with very little dialogue.  Most of the little dialogue that was in the movie is done in silent film style - with quotes and captions shown after the scene.

A lot of The Artist is very predictable.  It's filled with these storylines that you've see over and over again and they all turn out as you expect  but despite all that, it's still very charming and very well done.    
It reminds you of the power of visuals and music and that you don't necessarily need much or any dialogue to tell a good story.  There are so many great movies that are kind of downers (and I do love my downers, I really do).  At the same time, though, it's refreshing once in a while to see a movie that's happy where all the characters genuinely have their best intentions at heart.

 

Lincoln

Lincoln

I was pleasantly surprised that Lincoln, unlike the name suggests isn't a sweeping biopic, but an intimate look at the events leading up to the Thirteenth Amendment.  There's a lot of accolade given to Daniel Day Lewis for his portrayal of Lincoln and he deserves all of it.  He isn't so much as playing Lincoln as being him.  

Lincoln is like that beloved professor who tells the best stories, but not the professor you want to run into at the end of the day when you're just trying to go home because it takes him a while to get to his point (my favorite story that Lincoln tells is the George Washington story).  You really get the sense that Lincoln is so empathetic, really *loves* the people even if he doesn't know them personally, and is just full of so much compassion.  It works well for him as a public figure but in a lot of ways, there's not enough of him for his own family.

There's a really fantastic supporting cast, including Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, JGL as Robert Lincoln, Lee Pace as a staunch Democrat against the amendment, Jared Harris (Lane Pyrce lives!) as Ulysses Grant, and many many others.  Field is memorable as Mary, who really gets your respect when you see how pulled together she is just moments after breaking down.  My personal favorite out of the supporting roles, though, was hands down Tommy Lee Jones as abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens.  Stevens probably has some of the best lines and zingers in the movie.  He's extremely tough and even unsympathetic when you first meet him (even though you agree with his philosophies whole heartedly)         but he really grows on you as the movie goes on especially when he's asked to compromise some of his values for the Amendment.

The House of Representatives in Lincoln is extremely dramatic and extremely entertaining to watch.  Another one of my favorite storylines is Bilbo (James Spader) and company, Lincoln's secret "seedy" vote negotiators who help Lincoln secure the 2/3s vote he needs for the Amendment.  If they ever did a spin off of this movie, I'd love to see one about them.  Or maybe I should just go ahead and see that other Lincoln movie.