Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colors Blue)

April 9.

Trois Couleurs is one of those trilogies that has been recommended to me over and over and has been in my Netflix queue for years. I wanted to see it, three great French movies that everyone loves, but I never found the motivation. So when my friend mentioned he had ordered the trilogy last year and finally got it, I guess Amazon didn’t have the motivation to send it, I said OK, let me borrow it. I’m sure he wasn’t going to charge me late fees, but I didn’t feel it was right to hold onto it for months, so finally this weekend I watched part one: Bleu.

So after all this time it’s nice to be able to say Bleu, starring Juliette Binoche as the widow of a famous composer, really lived up to the hype. It was amazing and beautiful and disturbing and sad.

Bleu starts with the car accident that kills Binoche’s husband and daughter and follows her as she tries to live after the tragedy. Bleu is a bit mysterious with unanswered questions and a linear storyline but it seems to be more about the emotion.

I’ve already returned Bleu and have parts two and three. I am excited to see where this trilogy, which is general in theme, (trilogy of films dealing with contemporary French society concerns), goes.

Rating: Love

Source Code

April 9.

Source Code is Groundhog Day meets Inception meets Avatar ... kind of.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a disoriented soldier who gets to take over the body of a man who is on a train outside of Chicago that is about to blow up. He has eight minutes until the bomb explodes and everyone on board dies. Eight minutes. Over and over again until he can figure out where the bomb is and who planted it. He’s not supposed to be trying to save the people, only learn about the bomber to stop a future attack. This isn’t, as they say, time travel.

There’s a lot of to figure out in the movie – like where is Jake once he’s off the train and in his own body, who are the people who are instructing him in his mission, who’s the bomber, etc., etc.

Source Code is well made and acted and pulled me in from the start. There’s a question I have about Jake and then end, but I don’t want to ruin it for you. So let me know when you’ve seen it and we discuss the ending.

Rating: Like

Hop

April 5.

Hop is cute. It does a great job of creating Easter folklore for the Easter Bunny like so many Christmas movies have done for Santa. But some of the charm of the great Christmas movies was just missing. I’m not exactly sure why.

Easter Island is as detailed as the North Pole. The chicks working in the candy shop are maybe even cuter than elves, and everything is fun and colorful. Maybe an Easter movie can never be like a Christmas movie because Christmas has a special feeling or because I heard stories about Santa my whole life and those movies just brought it to life rather than trying to create something new. Or maybe Hop just wasn’t a great movie.

The movie starts out good as it introduces the Easter Bunny and his son, E.B., who is supposed to become the Easter Bunny on his next birthday. E.B. isn’t interested in dedicating his life to hiding eggs and wants to become a famous drummer. So he sets off for Hollywood and the home of the Bunny’s – the Playboy Mansion. After getting turned away by Hef he hooks up with freeloader, Fred. There’s the whole part about Fred thinking he’s crazy and E.B. discovering how much fun it is and then how dangerous it is to be among the humans, etc.

The end is where Hop really falls apart though. It crams what should have taken half the movie into about 10 minutes and doesn’t really put an end to everything. And without ruining the ending, some humans seem to accept things a little too easily.

Rating: Ehh

Certified Copy

March 26.

I had really high expectations for Certified Copy. The French movie set in Tuscany starring Juliette Binoche got rave reviews everywhere I looked. So as the main characters - Binoche, an apparent single mother running an antique shop in small town Italy and William Shimell an art historian and author - have an uncomfortable meeting, full of strange bickering, I wasn't sure what I thought of it.

And then, when the pair started acted as a married couple, but not in a cute, fun way - in a strange sad way, I was actually less uncomfortable but still confused. This couple seemed to truly be married ... I think.

So in the end I wasn't sure what I thought. The conversation was interesting, the scenery and camera angles were gorgeous and interesting. But the story. What had happened? Were they married? Were they strangers? I don't know.

A few days later, I was talking to a coworker about the film and we had similar reactions. But as we talked about it, we both began to appreciate what we saw more and more. There are so many questions. About what happened, sure, but also about the way people speak to each other and why. And there's no denying that the storytelling was like nothing I've ever seen before. So, now I feel like I need to watch this movie again, and that it could be a movie I love, but for now ...

Rating: Like

Limitless

March 19.

Limitless is stylish and sexy with sweeping, gorgeous views of New York City and Bradley Cooper. Sure the story of a disheveled man with a serious case of writer's block who takes a miracle pill that lets him unlock his full potential has a few holes, but it's fun to watch anyway.

The actors, Cooper, Abbie Cornish, and Robert DeNiro were all really good, even if DeNiro wasn't used enough. There's never a slow or dull moment in Limitless, but this is not the Inception of 2011. The story tries to throw in some twists, but I wasn't shocked and could kind of guess what was coming up.

Still, sometimes fun is all a movie needs to be.

Although, Limitless did make me think a little. If given the power of no limitations would I, or would any of us, do more than Cooper's character Eddie did, which was pretty much impress people with his intelligence like a parlor trick, get girls, and make money? Is Limitless trying to point out the sad state of our society? Or maybe this is just a movie trying to tell an amusing story and not a lesson in morals.

While watching the movie it seemed that the writer, Alan Glynn, of the book, The Dark Fields, which the film was based, was trying to make a statement about illegal drugs. You take them to get you through, feel invincible, can't live with out them, then can't live with them. But I can't find anything to back that up. So I should probably stop trying to read so much into this and focus on what really matters: Bradley Cooper's hot.

Rating: Like

The Illusionist (L'illusionniste)

March 12.

L'illusionniste is sad. That’s the way I felt the whole movie. Sure there’s a flash of the fun times the magician had when he had a successful act in Paris, but really it’s about his decline. I spent the whole movie waiting for the change, for something good to happen. It didn’t. On his way down, the illusionist spends some time in Scotland where he befriends a young girl, Alice. I thought this was where some happiness would come in. But Alice just seems selfish and unappreciative of his generosity.

Sometimes I enjoy movies like this, a story that is linear seems more honest and life doesn’t always have a happy ending. So maybe it was my mood or maybe I was waiting for some of the silliness that was in The Triplets of Belleville, but it just felt a little empty.

Rating: Ehh

Cedar Rapids

March 5.

Ed Helms should never stop singing. I love all his nerdy songs. And in Cedar Rapids he belted out the perfect Christmas tune about insurance.

There were other really funny moments in this movie about a sheltered insurance salesman who goes to a conference in the big city - Cedar Rapids. He makes new friends including the bad boy of insurance, John C. Reilly, and a hooker played by Maybe from Arrested Development, which was weird.

Even though I did really like this movie, I laughed a lot, cared about the characters, and was interested the whole way through, I kind of expected more. It got such good reviews and won film fest awards. So I thought I was in for more than a solid comedy.

Rating: Like