Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Well, they say that this movie is for idiots, but I liked it! It is not just a movie – it is good clean slapstick comedy. One should not try to over-analyze it; that would be contraindicated. This film is a prescription to relax. This is how the movie goes down: they took a Korean (looks like a Korean) and a Hindu who are both potheads and true connoisseurs of the American hamburger (isn’t that a joke?). But each of them has a head on his shoulders. They aren’t punks who can’t even string two words together.
They are a new generation of punk. They are advanced punks. One is a super-mega brainiac in medicine (I busted a rib!), and the other one constantly fusses with his notebook doing his super-mega confusing job. Yet, they don’t forget to think about grass, girls and hamburgers (that only happens in movies, not!). Hamburgers are their ultimate destination. Generally, in combining things that don’t go together, this movie is innovative and even has good taste… but not without the help of the super-mega imaginations of the script writers.
Awake
Awake The Movie
Every year more than 21 million people go through a surgery under general anesthesia. Thirty thousand of them do not fall asleep and remain awake, or speaking scientifically, in the state of internarcosis. They cannot say anything or move any body part. However, they can hear, feel and understand everything.
It seems that the protagonist - Clayton Beresford - has all one may wish for. A beautiful fiance, whose real self he does not really know, a family business. He has “a weak heart, yet a strong mind.” And he does not feel bad about himself (thanks to Hayden Christensen). He would live calmly as if he had no heart problems disturbing him at the most inappropriate moments. He just started making plans to marry as they inform him that a suitable heart had been found for him.
The name of the film in the Russian language speaks for itself (although it puzzles me as how they managed to translate the word “awake” as “anesthesia”). Ignoring his mother’s requests to have the best doctor “replace” his heart, he gives himself to the mercy of the scalpel taken by his “friend.” And here the most interesting part starts.
He feels everything, he recognizes everything, and he feels each touch of the edge or something else. He also hears everything … Things he hears are most interesting. It is now left for him not only to awake (the original title of the film) but to awake from that illusion that had been around him, to realise all the lies and to pay attention to the smallest details. A friend will turn out to be a betrayer, and love will turn out to be an empty sound, a sound which he will never hear surrounded by the walls of “a small house at the beach.”
What should a person do in order to pay off his dues? How many people can be betrayed, flinging from one angle to the other in pursuit of their interests? And how does it make you feel, lying on an operating table, to know that you are doomed to death, and that you spent a year of your life with a person who, through a sham marriage, tried to receive a hundred millions from you?
How can you think all of this through, extracting every little detail from the memory and remaining somewhere between life and death? How is it - to die and come back to life? He was lost at 6:32 six o’clock and rescued two and a half hours later.
It is impossible to describe the feelings after watching the film: There aren’t any of them except for chaotic thoughts. You are simply thinking. You are thinking a lot. You feel you want to tell something to someone, but you do not know what. Everybody left the cinema in full silence, and then, looking at someone’s thoughtful face queried, you could guess: This person just saw “Anesthesia.” And no confirmation was required because it was all clear.
Names on the poster were quite famous - Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba, and Terrence Howard. Director Joby Harold is not very well known, but the film was fantastic. I feel like giving a credit to absolutely everyone and would give an overall “A” to all. The only one I would distinguish though, is Jessica Alba, as I don’t remember any film where she would not play a 100% positive character. Of course, a little bit unbalanced and sometimes shouting Jessica looked rather exotic and not so plausible. But if we forget what we know about her, we can say that she remarkably coped with the new role.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
The inimitable Tim Burton is good at any expression. However, I enjoy him as a “puppet-maker” especially. As it seemed to me, Mr. Burton turned “Sweeney Todd” into a certain theatrical performance from Fleet Street, and it cannot but gratify.
Sweeney Todd ~ Barber and his Wife (No Place Like London)
Perhaps, in his Golden Globe Award movie, Burton began slightly resembling a B movie, though in a very special way. He is not banal, trivial or freaky - even in ketchup-like blood there is a peculiar beauty. Well, this is the first time in my life with a smile I heard about human meat pies. And what about the scene in a striped tricot under the tree? So? Well, indeed, Adam and Eve succeeded! Really, a caricature and phantasmagorical production does not look inadequate or foolish.
In “Sweeney Todd” Tim Burton tested a little more than usual: more tears, more songs, more cruelty, more concentration and more irony. In my opinion, Burton, Carter and Depp have never allowed themselves such a straightforward causticity towards the outworld. «We’ve all deserved death!’ What does it mean?! Sure, the phrase has a gross irony at our universe and our vain life we so cherish and care. However, as well as in other Tim Burton’s films, there is a subtle and pearly wisdom that is very evident, but, yet, it is invisible with a common view. In order to distort the truth and at the same time to serve it up so frankly and honestly, a tremendous skill is required that is peculiar only to the great and “awesome” Burton.
Eventually, “Sweeney Todd” finished a “pie fitting” out of pulverized viewers that had been begun in the previous works of this world genius of Tim Burton. It turned out a full human meat pie, which would be thoroughly baked up and packed (but Tim would do it all after releasing «Frankenweenie» and «Alice in Wonderland»). I am certain, whatever happens in the future after the consolidated creative product of Burton, Carter and Depp, no one will remain indifferent. Everyone was convinced again of the masterly force of this alliance and its head - the man with a funny hairstyle, creatively working in the company of his best friend and darling wife. Their each other’s understanding finds its definitive expression on the screen. The actions, movements, looks and intonations fully agree with the light, camera, environment, performance, music and sound recording. Something is achieved only when the teacher understands his student, and the director - his actor. In this case something amazing was achieved. After all, “Sweeney Todd” could be interpreted in a totally different way - as a drama, thriller or something trite and worn out. But no way! Burton would not have been a master of a “funny” horror if he had not told Benjamin Barker’s story in his way, namely, making the viewer сhuckle while in front of him a liter of orange blood is spewed forth. But the most suspicious and unnatural in such reaction is that there is nothing terrible in it. This is Burton. Tim Burton. And the viewer’s reaction from its works can be the most unexpected.
«Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is a completely director’s film. A unique and unconvantional director’s nature can be seen much bolder than anything else despite an unequalled acting of ephemeral Johnny Depp, beautiful Helena Bonham Carter, and venerable Alan Rickman. Each actor is worthy of the same admired response and even more, in which their acting, musical and creative talents would be highly extolled. But I feel that Benjamin Barker’s story 2008 is a director’s benefit performance. Burton is great and magnificent in it! It is his, completely his film, in which he has tested a little bit more.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Chronicles of a Ninny
Battle-scenes are cool and make the movie worth seeing, however, Peter Jackson’s style trees take us back to “The Lords of the Rings”. Should the trees have been included in the scenes at all? Would it be possible to make the movie without them, otherwise, it looks like a lack of imaginativeness, really…
The plot – a detailed copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – is also second-rate.
Actors seem not to fill their parts with great success as well: their acting is artificial and false. Meanwhile, freaks standing out through the whole movie look far better against them. However, we face plagiarism here again as the freaks resemble most of famous monsters; even the mouse reminds of the cat from “Shreik”.
It’s hard to understand why the movies like that are made. Bearing nothing new, bogged down in clich?s and platitude, they only make us think of the fool who could concoct it all. Were “golden compasses” not enough for us that they released another mediocrity?
A smart dude Clive Lewis didn’t want to film his novel, which, by the way, is a 7-volume one, and the author himself didn’t consider it his best work. But the bad fairy of the director Andrew Adamson had shot bolt, and here you go – one more “masterpiece” of non-science fiction.
Have a nice viewing!