The Writer's Poke

The movie jumps starts with a Philip Seymour Hoffman fantasy and a Marisa Tomei nightmare. Actually, that's meant to be a joke, but I can imagine them meeting the first day, and then they have to shoot that opening scene. I can imagine the screenplay is pretty vague, saying something about a love scene in Rio for "Andy and Gina," and then director Sidney Lumet lays out his more specific vision for the two actors... not that the love scene is all that graphic, but it's an abrupt way into the movie, and it definitely does tell you something about Andy (Hoffman). Man, I don't like that big sweaty bastard from the beginning. Neither Andy nor Hank (Ethan Hawke) are all that easy to like. One does drugs, the other doesn't pay his child support. Neither have got lives together and neither have the economic resources to dig themselves out of whatever physical or psychological holes they find themselves in. And there are no lines the dudes won't cross. Hank has Thu...

Maybe Peter Pan (1953) doesn't age well, I don't know. For me, the concern isn't that Peter Pan is racist or that Captain Hook is misogynist... It's more that Wendy is. She's the storyteller, and as an adult viewer, I tend to see her as the "storyteller." Peter Pan and Hook are simply characters in her stories. Or even if we buy into the idea that Peter Pan and the Lost Boys are real, they're all kids. None of them are mature, and obviously even the pirates shouldn't be seen as beacons of maturity and good morals. So does it really matter how the movie depicts Indians or how it thinks about women? None of that is really considered in my rating of the movie. As I watch the entire canon of Disney movies again this year, I find myself wanting to use 4/5 stars as the baseline. Most Disney movies have their flaws or weaknesses, but generally speaking, they are usually good movies, fun to watch. I think I had fun watching Peter Pan, but in terms of stand...

Dumbo has a real name, it's Jumbo, Jr. That's the name Mrs. Jumbo (she doesn't have her own name) gives him, but it's only used once in the movie. Thereon out, he's Dumbo. We only see moms, no dads. When the storks come to deliver babies -- and all are delivered at the same exact time (weird) -- they drop off the bundles to the moms, and the moms are alone. Where are all the dads? It made me wonder if Circuses only wanted female animals, and if so, what do they do with all the male offspring when they start to get a little too old and a little too male? Dumbo's "villains" in this movie are funny, because they aren't the other animals who make fun of him. They are the older female elephants -- the sewing circle. They are the ones that cannot stand Dumbo's ears, as if his ears are somehow a slight on all elephants. What happens to this group of elephants? At the end of the movie, they are totally gone, as if the circus has discarded them. The DVD...

Sometimes you watch a movie and you're pleasantly surprised, and sometimes not. Based on the reviews for this one, I realized I was probably going to be disappointed watching this one. Yes, it has Ethan Hawke, Angelina Jolie, and Kiefer Sutherland, but that doesn't mean that it is guaranteed to be a good movie. But you watch the opening 5 minutes, and you think, "Well, I guess anything can happen in this one," So you're ready for anything to happen. What ends up happening is FBI agent Illeana (Jolie) falls for Costa (Hawke). He's not necessarily a suspect, and the case seems closed when she does let herself drop her guard, but even so. Her lack of judgement is disappointing, and she ends up losing her job because of it. I found it hard to believe that a woman like Jolie would fall for a guy like Hawke, but maybe that's just me. And yet, was Illeana playing to long game? Was this all part of her plan? Did she seduce him in order to capture him? No. I think ...

Lisa Loeb's "Stay" was a very cool song to me when this movie originally came out, and I graduated college in 1994. Even so, I never saw this movie.  I'm sure the fact that this is a "romance" film, and that the romance genre has never been at the top of my favorites, is one main reason... It would take 32 years and an interest in Ethan Hawke films for me to finally see this one.  The movie does play the romance angle hard. In a normal romance, the two characters meant for each other can't just easily find their way to one another, but in this movie, the separation is teased a few times, and you start to wonder, Will they ever get together, or will "reality bite"? It's cute that the "Reality Bites" title is captured in the film, as part of the "In Your Face" program made out of Lelaina's (Wyonda Ryder) home movie camera documentary. In the end, almost everyone in the film actually "gets" something. Maybe it...

I like the camera work. The camera will just sit there and capture the smokestacks, the powerlines, or children walking to school. Even in the home, if the mother is cleaning, the camera will just sit on the floor and watch her through a door or from down a hallway. At first I thought it was odd that the camera just sat on the ground, but that's also the way Japanese people sit -- on the floor -- so in a sense, it's the same view that a person would have if observing. The parents -- Shukichi (Chishû Ryû) and Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) -- make the train trip to see their children. They're both in their 60s and it's been maybe years since they've seen their Tokyo kids, maybe meeting their grandchildren for the first time. A high level of politeness and ceremony when they arrive, but that doesn't extend to the grandchildren. They don't know their grandparents and one complains about having his desk moved for their visit. Where will he do his homework? It's o...