Bright Star

Director: Jane Campion
Writer: Jane Campion
Starring: Abbie Cornish, Ben Wishaw
Release Date: September 18, 2009
Length: 1 hour 59 minutes

In 1818 London, a man who would eventually become one of the greatest poets of all time slowly fell in love with a beautiful young woman named Fanny Braune. This relationship continued for three years before John Keat’s untimely death at the age of 25. This exquisite true story is about the beautiful, but short romance shared between an artist in his youth and his muse. The title of the film is the name of one of Keats’s poems written about their love affair. Written and directed by Jane Campion (The Piano), Bright Star is a more realistic version of what the rare romance was in a time when love was not a luxury many people had.  The film stars the beautiful Australian actress, Abbie Cornish (Stop-Loss) and the notable British actor, Ben Wishaw as the two star-crossed lovers. Abbie Cornish is slowly working her way up the A-list of actors with her outstanding performances in previous films. It seems as though she is able to capture any accent, somewhat like Meryl Streep. A noteworthy performance to mention was from American actor, Paul Schneider as John’s close friend Mr. Brown, who was a struggling poet. I have only ever seen Schneider in American comedies, so it was quite refreshing to see him in this fairly dramatic role, with a pretty thick Scottish accent. The character this film surrounds, Mr. John Keats himself, was done with an incredible performance from Ben Wishaw, whom you could clearly tell put in a thorough effort in studying Keats’s character. Aside from the remarkable cast, the true star of the film was the set director. I usually don’t mention technical details like this, but every scene could have been framed in a portrait. The use of colours and materials looked absolutely gorgeous. It was if an artist had painted each scene. There is a certain commonly used word that fits perfectly for this film. The word is beautiful. When film can capture love in such a way, in which the audience feels deeply for these characters and when we feel sadness when these characters are apart, and happiness when they’re together, that is a type of convincing love that is beautiful. When members of an audience can feel what these characters are feeling, that is when a film is most convincing. I will admit, I have a soft spot for these kinds of movies and I seem to enjoy them almost 100% of the time. The reason I enjoy films like Bright Star and Becoming Jane (2007 film about Jane Austen’s romance) so much more then regular romance movies is because the love is shown to be incredibly stronger in this particular time period. I believe this because these people who were so incredibly in love with each other, didn’t have any diversions or distractions and rarely interacted with other people. When something as rare as falling in love with someone occurs, these people grabbed on to it with all their strength because at that time, there wasn’t anything as exciting as love. Abbie Cornish and Ben Wishaw share a remarkable chemistry that only heightens the strength of the already heart-wrenching script. This is a timeless story that is made with a modern touch from the incredible team, behind this project. Jane Campion has put together a simply lovely film, which anyone in the world can feel for.

The Informant

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writers: Scott Z. Burns, Kurt Eichenwald
Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula
Release Date: September 18, 2009
Length: 1 hour 17 minutes

You can believe it’s Matt Damon, but you can’t believe its only 1 hour and 45 minutes, when it feels like 2 and a half. Matt Damon is Mark Witacre, an executive at the company, Archer Daniels Midland in Decatur, Illinois in the early 1990’s. Mark is married to Ginger played by Melanie Lynskey and has 3 kids. With his wife’s persuasion, Mark decides to confess to FBI agent, Brian Sheppard about secret price-fixing going on at the company, with one of their products. The FBI advises Mark to do some investigating within the company and soon enough Mark has recorded thousands of video and audiotapes to give to the FBI. He travels to different cities around the world to look into the company’s activity in these meetings. Eventually, he has enough to establish an invasion within the company. As much as it’s hard to believe, Matt Damon with the extra 30 pounds can’t be the reason this film got such hype. It also can’t be the reason people liked it because you forget that it’s Matt Damon within the first 5 minutes, or even less if you have seen the trailers and are already used to this character. For the first 40 minutes (or what seemed to be at least), while the film was establishing the storyline and characters, I was very bored and the introduction was much too long. Once the plot started to pick up the pace, my attention was drawn back to the film. I was happily surprised in some scenes when Matt Damon’s voice would cut in to the scene, giving random fun facts about whatever’s on his mind. I found them oddly funny at first, but they started to get repetitive after a while and the humor from them faded. I have to admit there were some funny scenes, but there were also some scenes that dragged. The informant has its odd quirks but it’s not a comedy. As much as this film was hyped up because of Matt Damon not looking like…well, Matt Damon, I do not believe it is worth your 12 bucks. If you really want to see this film (like I did), it’s still a solid movie, but you will be slightly disappointed. The Informant wasn’t as great as I thought it would be, but still a likable film.

Fame

Director: Kevin Tancharoen
Writer: Allison Burnett
Starring: Naturi Naughton, Asher Book, Kay Panabaker, Megan Mulally
Release Date: September 25, 2009
Length: 1 hour 47 minutes














It’s dance, it’s drama, it’s singing, it’s way too pre-epic, and after almost 30 years, the students of New York Performing Arts School are back for the remake of Fame.Newcomers like Asher Book, Naturi Naughton and Kay Panabaker are part of the new cast and some of these teenagers are not actually half-bad. Kelsey Grammar and Megan Mullaly play some of the teachers. Also, Debbie Allen is back again, but this time as principal of the school. There’s no point even comparing this film to the one that came out 29 years ago, but let’s just pretend this film is half as good. Anyone who hasn’t even seen the trailer for the film will know that this movie wasn’t nearly as incredible as the original film that came out in 1980.  Not only is the writing and acting on a lower level, but the new film also lacks a certain raw and edgy personality that the original had. The 1980 version seemed more authentic, with the tougher language being used and the consistent background, of the gritty streets of New York City. Now, I’m not saying the R rating makes the film better, but as soon as it becomes PG, the film loses a level of believability and realism. When the film started, I was extremely excited that it was keeping so close to the original. But about halfway into the movie, it was pretty obvious they wanted to keep almost too faithful to the original movie and it’s characters. Almost every character, every scene, every conflict was taken from the 1980’s version. That was most likely the writer and director’s point, but it would have been nice to have some originality for the people who saw the original movie. With every single scene, I whispered to my friend, “this is exactly like the first”. In some scenes, I even knew what was going to happen. Many people that are fans of shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance? will be a bit upset to know that Fame is mostly character driven and there are only 1 or 2 dance sequences. I will be honest and say I can be more entertained with a dancing scene then a scene with two people speaking cheesy dialogue…But do dance sequences make a better film? Unfortunately, no they do not. I am happy this movie doesn’t try and distract us with amazing dance performances to overcompensate for what could have been a weaker script. One more thing about the dancing is that it is great when you watch it but then these characters open their mouths and you think ‘please don’t talk because you don’t know how to act’. I am specifically referring to Kherington Payne, who thankfully only had about 2 lines. I can think of multiple annoyances I had throughout this film – and trust me, there were a lot -, but none of them ruined the film for me luckily, and I didn’t spend the whole two hours thinking about the irritations. Personally, I loved this film. But many people – including the baby-boomers who will pan this movie – will disagree. The technical style of filming for this film was very well done, and the lighting and special effects definitely paid off in the final performance. So is the idea of these kids chasing their dreams really cheesy? Yes. Are many of these dancers pretty bad actors? Yes. Does it have as much integrity and originality as the original movie? Hell, no. But is it pretty enjoyable and fun to watch? Absolutely. If you have an open mind, and you like these kind of movies, go see it. This movie wont “live forever”, but 2 hours invested in this movie are worth it.

Jennifer's Body

Director: Karyn Kusama
Writer: Diablo Cody
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried
Release Date: September 18, 2009
Length: 1 hour 42 minutes     

Take a young, gorgeous, Hollywood starlet, an academy award winning anticipated screenwriter, a musical actress, and a relatively unknown director, and you are left with indefinable crap. When you see the trailer for this movie, you probably say this looks like a humorous horror movie (and if you’re a guy, you can include the part that Megan Fox is in it), then you see the movie and you are only left with the words…What. The. Hell.  Megan Fox is a cheerleading, possessed cannibal, Jennifer, and Amanda Seyfried is her dorky best friend Needy trying to stop her from eating boys. Now let’ get things straight. This isn’t – thank the heavens – a vampire movie. If it was, I think I would have reached my limit. Jennifer is a demon who had a brutal “ritual” performed on her by creepy indie band, Left Shoulder, including the funny lead singer played by Adam Brody. So Jennifer was once normal, but now unfortunately needs to feed off human flesh – preferably boys - in order to survive. A lot of scenes and plot changes in this movie would be completely – for lack of a better word – random. I think I repeated to my friend about a dozen times “What The Hell?” because I sat there stumped of how the scenes were written. This film does star the gorgeous Megan Fox, so obviously the teenage boys will be racing to the theatres but sometimes I felt there was too much put into the movie for that specific audience. For example, there was a scene where Ms. Fox was in the nude, by herself, wet, coming out of the water in slow motion. Yeah, it was that obvious. We get it. She’s sexy. Although my jealousy pissed me off, the largest pet peeve I developed with watching Jennifer’s Body was that there would be crazy scenes where Needy (Jennifer’s best friend) would witness Jennifer do something that’s probably one should call the police or ambulance for. But Needy would just think it’s weird. And as soon as she received a stupid explanation or excuse from Jennifer, the excessive cannibal activity would be forgotten by the next scene. I found Jennifer’s Body extremely hard to take seriously at first, but then I realized I don’t think I was ever supposed to take it seriously. Eventually I came to the conclusion about halfway into the movie that this whole thing was a joke. To me it didn’t seem like one because I felt I was cringing more often than laughing. It was funny in parts, and there were many humorous one-liners from Megan Fox herself, but I didn’t find it to be a comedy. But again, I also couldn’t take it seriously, so it wasn’t a real thriller or horror film. It is hard to express how I actually came to liking this film, but I can tell you with this movie as my one exception, my enjoyment of the film didn’t matter because I don’t think anybody is going to like it except for 14-year-old boys. Be prepared for no laughs and no screams. This comedic horror flick is truly not what it’s made out to be.