vintage

In case you missed it, here’s the first post about this. I’ve only got two more left — I sliced two off the list because they were Australia-only releases, and let’s face it, even I am not going to go through that much trouble for this! Anyway, here’s the next batch:

Kate & Leopold (James Mangold, 2001)

I wrote this really long review about how irritated this movie made me, and then I realised I was saying the same thing over and over. So here’s the short version: this film is a giant cliché. Meg Ryan plays the same character she plays in at least half her movies (think Kathleen Kelly), Hugh Jackman plays the gorgeous charming man, blah, blah, blah.

Breckin Meyer is really, really funny as Meg Ryan’s little brother, though, and is one of the film’s redeeming qualities. I mean, Jackman being charming and making breakfast and coordinating romantic dinners is nice — nevermind that he just dropped in from 1876 and can’t even work a toaster, let alone hire a violinist! — but there’s nothing that sets this movie apart from any other. It’s another chick flick, with more of the same plodding “conflict” (guy & girl who just can’t be together fall in love; career woman looks forward to promotion which is threatened by bumbling brother and aforementioned guy), and more predictable storyline.

Scoop (Woody Allen, 2006)

Refreshingly hilarious. Woody Allen’s style of comedy is crisp and offbeat, and I was laughing out loud many a time throughout Scoop’s 96 minutes. Scarlett Johansson plays an awkward and eager young journalism student, and Woody Allen her unlikely sidekick — an elderly and half-crazy stage magician nicknamed “The Great Splendini” — and together they race around London on a wild goose chase trying to bag the rich Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), suspected killer. This leads, as expected, to chaos. Woody Allen has about a million quotable lines and Johansson’s performance is so genuine it’s hard to believe they didn’t just pull some unsuspecting college student to stand in her place.

I could have used some more nastiness from Jackman when the time came, but he’s already overshadowed by the excellent performances from his investigators, since his character isn’t in the forefront as often. I highly recommend this one for a lot of laughs: its humour is totally different from the prevailing Hollywood funnies these days, and that is one of the many things that makes it stand out so much. Loved it.

The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006)

This film is exceptionally ambitious, but falls flat on its face, especially in the final third. It’s only an hour and a half long, which is a pretty short period of time to tell three different stories and establish how they are related, apart from the obvious fact that Jackman plays multiple characters. It deals with some pretty serious subject matter, too — death, the human desire to conquer it, and the legend of the Tree of Life — and has some admittedly breathtaking special effects, but by the time the tree grew out of the conquistador I was rolling my eyes.

Special mention has to be made, though, for Hugh Jackman’s gut-wrenching performance. He plays three characters: a present-day doctor, whose wife is dying of a brain tumour; a Spanish conquistador from the 1500s who is charged with the task of finding the Tree of Life by Queen Isabel; and a weird looking bald guy whose role is never fully explained. The latter is pretty cheesy and a little too mystical to make any sense, and the conquistador is hit or miss, but Jackman’s performance as Dr. Creo, devoted to his wife and obsessed with the idea of conquering death in order to save her from a brain tumour, is just heartbreaking. He wears Creo’s heart on his sleeve every second of the way, and you, the viewer, unravel slowly with him until the bitter end. His inner conflict is visible with every action: it’s painful to watch, but amazing.

Unfortunately, the film itself tries way too hard. It needs something to hold it together and provide you with an idea of what’s happening, but doesn’t give you anything to hold onto. The relationship between all the stories is fragile at best; it’s hard to know what’s going on unless you’ve been informed beforehand, and that’s a major storytelling failure. On top of that, Rachel Weisz’s performance doesn’t even come close to Jackman’s, and she ends up sounding cliché. I really wanted this movie to be great, but it just didn’t make it.

Upcoming: reviews of the final two. Woooo! Sorry this blog has been all about movies lately — I’ve got a few musical and literary things on the way, though, so stick around.

Tags: breckin meyer, darren aronofsky, hugh jackman, jackman-a-thon, james mangold, meg ryan, rachel weisz, scarlett johansson, woody allen