Shoe shines, Stones cold

Double review by Vives Anunciacion
(unpublished)

Two stories about relationships and broken heels and the unusual ways people deal with challenges called the family.

In Her Shoes
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Written by Susannah Grant
Based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner
Starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Colette, Shirley MacLaine
PG13/ 130 minutes
20th Century Fox/ Scott Free Pictures

It’s Imelda’s favorite movie, she’s seen it 3500 times! Okay, maybe not. At nearly two and a half hours, In Her Shoes manages to be an engaging resolution story between two characteristically differing sisters who simply can’t live without each other.

Rose Feller (Toni Colette) and Maggie Feller (Cameron Diaz) are sisters on the opposite sides of the spectrum. The first is a workaholic lawyer secretly having an affair with here boss, while the latter is the typical blonde party girl who can barely read her letters. The only thing common between the two is their shoe size, but it’s Rose who collects shoes as an emotional blanket. Maggie just borrows the elder Feller’s shoes (without permission) most of the time.

In fact Maggie ruins many things in Rose’s life, forcing Rose to send Maggie away to fend for herself. Maggie transfers to Florida, where she finds their maternal grandmother Ella (Shirley MacLaine) in a retirement community. Rose quits her job and starts over, finding romance where she least expected to see it. Through Ella, Maggie discovers her real strengths and independence, even learning how to read. But the sisters realize that their new lives aren’t complete if they still don’t have each other. Eventually Rose and Maggie patch up.

The Family Stone
Written and Directed by Thomas Bezucha
Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Dermot Mulroney, Claire Danes
PG 13/ 102 minutes
20th Century Fox

An open-minded New England family receives a visit from the eldest son’s uptight fiancée – it’s Sex and the City and Meet the Parents combined. Tempered performances save this lukewarm comedy from freezing over. The Family Stone is an amusing family comedy but becomes forgettable immediately afterwards.

Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) is taking his fiancée Meredith (Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker) over to New England to meet his family for the Christmas holidays. What the uptight, reserved Meredith didn’t expect was to meet a very progressive family that’s not quite ready to let go of eldest son Everett. Everett’s mother Sybil (played by Diane Keaton) thinks Meredith doesn’t deserve the Stone family’s prized diamond ring heirloom.

Everett’s bohemian brother Ben (Luke Wilson) thinks otherwise, believing Everett isn’t really in love with Meredith (for whatever reason, it’s vague. But I digress.) It seems Ben has something for the sophisticated Meredith.

An emotional quadrangle occurs when Everett meets Meredith’s sister Julie, whom Meredith has asked to come over for support. Meredith ends up with Ben, Everett marries Julie, and the rest is happily ever after, in general.

Family Secrets
At certain points in the narrative, both films deal with family secrets which eventually get resolved.

In Her Shoes deals with the loss of the sister’s mother, who suffered from a mental illness that led to her own suicide. It is through Ella’s revelation about this tragedy that brings the sisters closer.

In The Family Stone, Sybil tries to keep her terminal illness from her children. It’s through the family’s acceptance of the fact that emphasizes the great bond they have together.

Hot and Cold
The great thing about Shoes is a sincerity to flesh out characters that makes the audience accept the change in personalities in the end. Both Colette and Diaz benefit from fully-realized characterizations, and though the film starts out clichéd and typical, it eventually transforms into an honest portrayal of intertwined lives absolutely co-dependent with each other.

Keaton is excellent in Stone, but there’s really nothing new with a mixed-up love story. Half of the time it’s slightly funny, the other half was seen before in other movies.

Direction-wise, both films are treated lightly – no scene feels overwrought, forced and rammed into the audiences’ throats. Great performances on either film, but Shoes has the better story. It has the warmth of authentic antiques, good enough to have around even after seeing it, while Stone feels like a McDonald’s Happy Meal teddy bear – mass manufactured and artificial, interesting only until the next toy comes along. For a Christmas tale, it isn’t warm enough.

The beast is beautiful

Review by Vives Anunciacion
December 14, 2005
Inquirer Libre
(English version)

King Kong
Directed by Peter Jackson
Written by Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens
Based on the story by Merian Cooper and Edgar Wallace
Starring Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Andy Serkis
PG 13/ 187minutes
Universal Pictures/ Wingnut Films

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, before I tell you any more, I'm going to show you the greatest thing your eyes have ever beheld.” – Carl Denham

It's said that originals are always the best. But the remake is better this time around. Visceral, visually amazing and surprisingly heartbreaking, King Kong 2005 may very well be the mother of all monster movies.

Based on the 1933 original by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, King Kong tells the story of a gigantic beast forcibly taken from its island kingdom and made into a Broadway attraction in 1933 New York.

Jack Black plays obsessed filmmaker-producer Carl Denham, who tricks his crew to shoot an adventure movie in an unknown island in the South Pacific. Set in 1933 New York at the height of the Great Depression, Denham literally saves vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts, Oscar nominee for 21 Grams) from starvation and hires her to play leading lady to bumbling matinee actor Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler).

On their way to the location, aboard the vessel Venture, romance blooms between Darrow and the movie’s nerdy writer, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody, Oscar winner for The Pianist.) But this love story is short-lived once the crew sets foot on mysterious Skull Island, where hapless Ann is captured by fierce island natives and offered across a wall of fire to the island's de facto ruler, Kong.

Driscoll and the rest of the crew attempt to save Ann from Kong's massive grip at all costs while Denham and film crew continue filming despite the dangers. Meanwhile, Ann begins to understand her captor's beastly behavior, developing a special friendship with the giant. Kong is enamored with his new friend, becoming its protector more than its captor. But in the end, Ann is rescued by Driscoll and Kong is violently captured by the crew, at a great loss from the group. Kong is inhumanely taken to New York where Denham makes him into a show attraction. Like the original, the King meets his tragic doom atop the Empire State building.

Director Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings team recreate the 1933 classic romance in breathtaking full-color grandeur, and also making it longer by 87 minutes. Despite the 3-hour running time, there’s practically no letup in the emotionally-sweeping narrative. Every minute counts as the filmmakers take time to develop characters and relationships, especially those between Ann and Driscoll, and Ann and Kong. By the time Driscoll rescues Ann from Kong’s hands, the love-triangle is believable, even sympathetic.

1933 New York is spectacularly recreated, the detail very impressive. Even the dialogue pays homage to the original, when Denham and his assistant are choosing replacement actresses, Fay Wray is mentioned, referring to the original Ann Darrow in the 1933 RKO movie. The look, the lighting and the sets are reminiscent of old Technicolor movies. This King Kong combines Jurassic Park, Titanic and An Affair to Remember in truly epic proportions.

The biggest achievements of the latest Kong are none other than Ann and Kong, who bring onscreen amazing, heartbreaking intimacy, made more amazing because a real human plays one part (Watts), while the other is computer generated imagery. In the end, when the audience gives a collective sigh, the tragic romance is complete.

King Kong is a gigantic achievement, hands down the best spectacle of the year. Forget seeing this movie in dvds or videos (unless you have a 120-inch screen at home), this is the stuff cinemas are made for.

So this is Christmas

Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre

Joyeux Noël/ Merry Christmas
Written and Directed by Christian Carion
Starring Benno Fürmann, Diane Kruger, Guillaume Canet
PG 13/ 115 minutes
Nord-Ouest / Senator Film/ Artemis/ TF1
English Subtitles

“War is over, if you want it”
- Happy Xmas (War is Over), John Lennon

It was known as the Christmas Truce of 1914, a few months into World War 1, when hundreds of French, Scottish and Belgian soldiers left their posts and peacefully mingled with their German opponents on Christmas Day in the northern borders of Flanders, France. Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas) revisits that miraculous moment 90 years ago when goodwill was shared among the weary souls of men.

Tenor Nikolaus Sprink (German actor Benno Fürmann) leaves the opera behind when he is drafted to serve the German army. His wife and fellow opera singer Anna Sörensen (played by German-born Diane Kruger, from Troy) abuses her aristocratic title in order to save Sprink from being sent to the trenches.

Father Palmer (Gary Lewis, the dad in Billy Elliot) becomes a medic and a morale booster for the Scottish troops on the British side. Lieutenant Audebert, (Guillaume Canet, previously in The Beach) leads the French contingent in that area of Belgian France. Audebert’s wife is about to give birth to their first child, he would rather stay home like any soldier wished.

Finally on the German side, Lieutenant Horstmayer (Daniel Brühl, Goodbye Lenin!) would rather have the war done and over with, even if it means putting up the Christmas trees sent by the Kaiser to the deployed troops.

On the night before Christmas 1914, Sprink bursts into singing while the British respond with bagpipes. Officers of each contingent find themselves outside their trenches discussing ceasefire. Where there should have been war, the soldiers converge in No Man’s Land and begin to shake hands, exchange stories, distribute chocolates, cigarettes and wine amongst themselves. In a strange turn of events, three warring sides attend together an impromptu mass held under the cold December sky. In the morning of Christmas, they play football and bury their dead.

Far from war epics and war dramas (like All Quiet in the Western Front, Saving Private Ryan or even the French A Very Long Engagement), Joyeux Noël poignantly retells the Christmas day truce of 1914 from different sides. Told with simplicity and underhandedness that prefers to preserve the bonds created by the fraternizing soldiers instead of overemphasizing the difficulties of the soldiers in the trenches, Joyeux Noël demonstrates the achievability of the universal desire for peace.

There are no specific bidas, no outright central character buildup in Joyeux Noël. Except for the singing, which could have felt deeper if the actors themselves sang them, acting is elegant and sufficient. Joyeux Noël is not exactly plot driven either – there’s barely a climax to a seemingly loose story. Every so often French filmmakers throw away conventional narrative and present a simple story without any frills, without forgetting historical subtext or contemporary context. No wonder Joyeux Noël is the French entry to next year’s Oscars.

What it does have is a very powerful message against the pointlessness of war but at the same time give testament to the spirit of brotherhood.

Christmas songs usually search for peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Ninety years ago in Europe, hundreds of unnamed soldiers proved it can be done.

Death in the form of a Rose

Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre

The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Written by Paul Harris Boardman, Scott Derrickson
Starring Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Jennifer Carpenter
R13 / 119 minutes
Columbia pictures/ Screen Gems

A rose by any name it’s not – either it’s a supernatural court drama or a trial by horror. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is an intelligently interpreted battle between the realm of the supernatural and the rule of human law.

Based on the story of Annelise Michel (the real Emily Rose) of Germany in the 1970s, The Exorcism of Emily Rose focuses on the trial of Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson) who is accused of negligent homicide after performing exorcism on the young girl Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter). Laura Linney plays Father Moore’s ambitious defense lawyer Erin Bruner who turns the trial upside down when she presents elements of the exorcism itself as evidence supporting the priest.

Director Scott Derrickson fuses horror and court drama in this creepy tale about a priest on trial for the death of a young girl who believed she was possessed by demons. As Father Moore’s trial progresses, Emily’s actual possession is rationally questioned by the prosecution, which convincingly presents Emily as too sick and delusional to know otherwise. Meanwhile, the agnostic Bruner begins to experience inexplicable encounters on her own.

The filmmakers may have derived the name Emily Rose from William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily, about an old spinster’s grotesque secrets revealed in the ruins of her decaying mansion. Emily Rose has similar patterns with the short story, specifically dark secrets, infernal smells and psychosis haunting the female character.

There are two movies in Emily Rose – one is a supernatural thriller that’s decidedly not The Exorcist, and the other is a courtroom drama that takes its questions seriously. The flashbacks on Emily’s possession are effectively creepy and only a few times borders on the cheesy. Emily’s possession is presented with a rational afterthought – to the viewers she may still be experiencing epileptic episodes rather than demonic contortions.

The courtroom proceedings have the same clever approach. As the case is evaluated, questions from the lawyers of either side expand the storyline to sensible conclusions.

What Emily Rose succeeds in doing is traverse the line between supernatural belief and rational skepticism and back. This approach to the story is maintained throughout the movie. Depending on what scene in the movie is playing, one may either believe Emily’s demonic possession (as we Pinoys are familiar with all sorts of sanib) or disbelieve all accounts of the supernatural. Similar to The Exorcist’s Father Merrin, Emily Rose’s Bruner experiences this crisis in integrity – like the movie’s recurring theme, whether to believe or not depends on one’s stability.

But what it fails to do is deliver an emotional journey with certainty. The double-identity in the narrative actually thins out both approaches, and the implied holy sacrifice in the ending makes sure the captive audience accepts Emily’s fate. Which is why in the end, The Exorcism of Emily Rose doesn’t make converts out of skeptics in the audience – believers are well taken care of, no matter what.