Julie and Julia. Nora Ephron. 2009.The praise heaped upon Meryl Streep for her astonishing portrayal of Julia Child in this film is well-deserved. I am in awe of her ability to thoroughly inhabit this character both inwardly and outwardly. What a joy to see this! And to see her play off that wonderful stalwart Stanley Tucci, portraying Paul Child. Unfortunately, as every reviewer has noted and as I will also, the rest of the film just doesn't amount to much. Amy Adams is Julie Powell, a woman who, in an effort to shake off a premature (from my view) middle-aged funk, decides to cook and blog about, over the course of a year, every one of Child's dishes featured in her seminal cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The film pops between Powell's personal struggles and victories and Child's, but in the end you can't help but see Powell's side of the film as a sketchy framework for presenting Child's--for otherwise the two simply have no reason, other than the blog (an interesting challenge, but in the end a stunt), to be brought together. Frankly, I think the filmmakers lost their nerve. The real story here is something along the lines of Amadeus: the identity crisis that ensues when the mediocre encounter the monumental. ***** (for Streep and Tucci) otherwise, **
Sherlock Holmes. Guy Ritchie. 2009.
Oh Lord. When I first saw this advertized I cringed--and with good reason, apparently. I was 
afraid Guy Ritchie would do what he could only do--he'd make Holmes into a Guy Ritchie character. And he did. He's taken the crackling eccentricities of the character (presented, tolerably, in the person of Robert Downey, Jr.), thrown in a bit of Brad Pitt (from Snatch) and Jason Statham (from nearly all his movies) and concocted a Holmes who feels like one part Batman, one part Heathcliffe, and one part Rain Man. But not only that, he's placed him in a CGI Victorian London (all Brunelian oversized chains and smoggy city-scapes) and entangled him in a cabalistic conspiracy plot reminiscent of Dan Brown. Look, I appreciate iconoclasm and revisionism to an extent--but don't fuck with Sherlock Holmes! He isn't a Guy Ritchie character transported back in time. He's enough as he is: Conan Doyle's creation wasn't a 21st century bundle of nerves with martial arts training. Watson is capably played by Jude Law (nice to see him supporting for once), but that's about the only bright spot I found in this grey, bloated film. **
afraid Guy Ritchie would do what he could only do--he'd make Holmes into a Guy Ritchie character. And he did. He's taken the crackling eccentricities of the character (presented, tolerably, in the person of Robert Downey, Jr.), thrown in a bit of Brad Pitt (from Snatch) and Jason Statham (from nearly all his movies) and concocted a Holmes who feels like one part Batman, one part Heathcliffe, and one part Rain Man. But not only that, he's placed him in a CGI Victorian London (all Brunelian oversized chains and smoggy city-scapes) and entangled him in a cabalistic conspiracy plot reminiscent of Dan Brown. Look, I appreciate iconoclasm and revisionism to an extent--but don't fuck with Sherlock Holmes! He isn't a Guy Ritchie character transported back in time. He's enough as he is: Conan Doyle's creation wasn't a 21st century bundle of nerves with martial arts training. Watson is capably played by Jude Law (nice to see him supporting for once), but that's about the only bright spot I found in this grey, bloated film. **Il grido (The Outcry). Michelangelo Antonioni. 1957.
Here's an Antonioni film I had only seen half of, and it's taken me several years to get back around to seeing it again. This is often viewed as the transitional film between MA's early more 
melodramatic stories (though steeped in Italian neo-realism) and his middle period alienation films. Having seen most of the former and all of the latter, I'd put it closer to the latter--I might go so far as to say it's clearly one with them. We could draw a line right from Il grido to Red Desert quite easily, I think, and call it all MA's alienation quintilogy (quintet?). But does the prevalence of a theme really make a coherent, 5 part whole? (meh...) The film features rugged American cowboy/gangster star Steve Cochran (way out of type--but excellent) as Aldo, a hapless refinery worker who breaks up with his cheating girlfriend, Alida Valli (who's already born his child, now a 7 year-old), and leaves town to become an itinerant worker. For part of the journey, the girl, Rosina, is with him, and his episodic misadventures in employment, romance, and parenting make up the bulk of the film. Very reminiscent of de Sica's The Bicycle Thieves and Fellini's La Strada, Il grido focuses on the alienation of a dispossessed and marginalized man, but refuses to fully sympathize with him as he is clearly responsible for a fair amount of the misery he lives in. He's a victim of a one-two punch: on one hand, he's guided by outmoded philosophies and brutal machismo, but on the other he's ill-prepared (by a kind of self-sabotage) for the hard realities of Italy's post-war economic reconstruction. All in all it's a devastating portrayal of the ways people aid the powers that be in bringing about their own defeat. ***1/2
melodramatic stories (though steeped in Italian neo-realism) and his middle period alienation films. Having seen most of the former and all of the latter, I'd put it closer to the latter--I might go so far as to say it's clearly one with them. We could draw a line right from Il grido to Red Desert quite easily, I think, and call it all MA's alienation quintilogy (quintet?). But does the prevalence of a theme really make a coherent, 5 part whole? (meh...) The film features rugged American cowboy/gangster star Steve Cochran (way out of type--but excellent) as Aldo, a hapless refinery worker who breaks up with his cheating girlfriend, Alida Valli (who's already born his child, now a 7 year-old), and leaves town to become an itinerant worker. For part of the journey, the girl, Rosina, is with him, and his episodic misadventures in employment, romance, and parenting make up the bulk of the film. Very reminiscent of de Sica's The Bicycle Thieves and Fellini's La Strada, Il grido focuses on the alienation of a dispossessed and marginalized man, but refuses to fully sympathize with him as he is clearly responsible for a fair amount of the misery he lives in. He's a victim of a one-two punch: on one hand, he's guided by outmoded philosophies and brutal machismo, but on the other he's ill-prepared (by a kind of self-sabotage) for the hard realities of Italy's post-war economic reconstruction. All in all it's a devastating portrayal of the ways people aid the powers that be in bringing about their own defeat. ***1/2Ciao,
~CD
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