Love Actually

Richard Curtis, 2003

Netflix

2/5

This romantic comedy is a collection of very different lives. Very different lives all searching for the same thing. Love. As the Christmas holiday approaches, the pressure to have someone by their side is felt by everyone involved.

It's a film that carries a light load with a lot of star power. Love is the clear theme shown early on, and it's delivered in various flavors. Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), the aging punk rocker who just recorded a Christmas album and is feeling the loneliness of being a musician. A political aide who catches the attention of a freshman Prime Minister (Hugh Grant). Harry (Alan Rickman), a husband who has a flirtatious secretary that he hides from his wife Karen (Emma Thompson). A writer (Colin Firth) who employs a woman at his country retreat that he grows a fondness for. A pair of nude stunt doubles who spend a lot of uncomfortable time together (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page). A child (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) who has a crush on a classmate who seeks the love advice of his widowed father (Liam Neeson). A woman (Laura Linney) totally in love with a co-worker but doesn't have the courage to confess. A hodgepodge of different lives, intertwined. You get it. Lot's of stories. Almost like Crash without the drama and a lot of mistletoe, Christmas lights and ecstasy pills.

It's an ambitious film that's positively charged, but it's also very frustrating film at times. You would think that with such an ensemble cast that it would be a cakewalk. And they aren't to blame, the acting is actually quite fine. You feel yourself getting pulled into the emotional tone of the moment only to have the rug pulled out on you. You think to yourself, "this won't happen again" and then it does. Again and again. The erratic direction of each story-line never slows down enough for you to savor it. That and there's really just too many ongoing story-lines to begin with. You continue to feel starved for some kind of dilemma, while a lot of the characters get their happiness served to them on a silver platter. Clearly Curtis wasn't looking to settle into any dramatic moments, probably hoping to maintain a more light-hearted overall feel. But that makes it feel evasive. In the end the picture is as clumsy as an elementary school Christmas play.

The Truman Show

Peter Weir, 1998


(REWATCHED)

4/5

Truman (Jim Carrey) is the star of a popular reality television show where everything in his life has been filmed. His birth, his schooling, first kiss, his marriage - is all part of the show. He is unaware he is the star of The Truman Show, for now, but his suspicions grow as unusual occurrences seem to be happening around him.

Carrey steps into one of the better dramatic roles of his career as Truman. The film really makes an immediate jump into the story, and never really loses its momentum. The attention to detail in crafting the artificial world that Truman lives in is both imaginative and impressive. Carrey quickly solicits sympathy as the vanilla insurance salesman protagonist who works the daily grind, picks up the daily newspaper, and goes home to eat dinner with the wife and watch I Love Lucy episodes. The limited selection in television shows could be compared to the gray-scale landscape of Pleasantville in it's very overt oppression of art. Christof (Ed Harris) created the show and has been directing it for the entire duration of Truman's life. His imagination is evident, but so is his inflated ego. His artificial town of Sea Haven that he has created is like a 1950's Utopian Suburbia concept. His desire to be a god-like figure sitting high inside the artificial moon must be intoxicating to him. He may be able to spend millions of dollars on his creating his fictional Sea Haven, but he doesn't realize that you can't inhibit the human desire to branch out and see what's out there. True reality is absolutely priceless and impossible to completely emulate. Truman naturally has curious instincts, and as soon as he starts to test his native boundaries, he begins to notice some flaws in the Truman Show world. It's certainly a brilliant social experiment, played out beautifully. Laura Linney is brilliant as Meryl, Truman's wife, as she plays a Stepford Wife-like figure who tries to keep Truman domesticated and unadventurous. The film is also an obvious satirical piece, examining Americas obsession with the modern reality television show. The film really stands out on its own, more than similarly themed EdTV (1999) because it really pulls you in and turns you into one of the many people watching and rooting for Truman. The film's impact on American culture is quite long ranged. A Bellevue psychiatrist named Joel Gold said that he had several schizophrenic patients who claimed that they were being filmed for a reality show similar to that in the film.

The Squid and the Whale

Noah Baumbach, 2005


4/5

          An autobiographical story, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank Berkman (Owen Kline) are pulled into the middle of their parents divorce. Unfortunately this means disrupting everything in their life that they've become accustomed to, while also trying to cope with the stresses of growing up in New York City.
          The film is fueled by remarkable acting. Jeff Daniels, who plays Bernard Berkman (the Father), brilliantly pulls off the self-absorbed, pedantic & frugal father who is more focused on his own id-impulses than the well-being of his children. Daniel's role was originally intended to be for Bill Murray who decided to pass and take a break after filming Broken Flowers. I am never happy to see Bill Murray turn down a role, but an exception is warranted here. Bernard is conflicted. He needs to feel like the smartest guy in the room. His self-perceived intellect puts him on his own desert island in his mind, and while some may visit temporarily - nobody is perfectly fit to live there but himself. A trait of a true egomaniac. Laura Linney plays Joan (the wife) who is making up for lost time as a divorcee after being stuck in an unhappy marriage with the man she hadn't loved in years. She wrongfully kept an affair secret for years and had to confront the disdain and disappointment of her own son after it was revealed. Jesse Eisenberg gives the best performance I've seen him in, The Social Network included. He seems to fit into this niche where he can effectively play the awkward and introspective guy who can turn agitated and abrasive on a dime. Interestingly enough his characters always end up being similar but he somehow changes the flavor just enough. Credit is also due to Owen Kline in his role as the younger brother. Demonstrating odd behavior at the dawn of puberty, he ultimately comes off as vulnerable and confused. Most of his odd behavior could easily be dismissed as a call for help, but its more than that. Even with his undeveloped emotions there is a noticeable sense of anger. He looks at himself in the mirror and is disappointed to see the similarities between himself and his parents.
          There's such a blend of constantly surging emotional elements that you just sit back and observe. There's plenty of drama but a few occasional laughs provide some levity. I would imagine that this film will hit especially harder for people who had to unfortunately endure their own parents divorcing when they were young.