Brazil tells the story of Sam Lowry, a public officer who is dissatisfied with his personal and professional life. He has recurrent dreams about a woman with whom he finds happiness. When Sam meets Jill Layton, he realises she is the woman in his dreams. Sam is wrongly accused of sabotaging the government, and he will have to hide, escape and fight for his life, prove his innocence, win his girl over, before reaching his dreamed dreamland - Brazil.
Brazil is a very irreverent and humorous movie that deals with serious themes and philosophical queries. Brazil is an analysis and critique of some of the sins and obsessions of our society (still valid more than 30 years later): incompetent and self-absorbed
bureaucracy, the obsession with youth and plastic surgery, government censorship,
terrorism, social and media manipulation, order and chaos dynamics, the place of the individual in Society, and the validity of day-dreaming to create you real world amongst many others. The moral of the story lies beneath, clearly visible, but masked as a surreal dreamy science-fiction satire. There are many elements that reminded me of Orwell's "1984", but Brazil is funnier and focuses more in the power of the individual again the System than in the powerlessness of the individual in front of an oppressive System.
The movie has an unique and original visual style, especially brilliant if we take into account that the especial effects are all mechanical and not digital, and that some of them were really difficult to create when the movie was filmed. All the day-dreaming and dreams segments are brilliantly shot, as well as the impacting images related to the interrogation at the end of the movie, which were shot inside an abandoned thermonuclear plant.
Brazil's atmosphere is also excellent with a predominance of grey and beige hues and a fashion style that mixes elements from the 1950s and the 1980s to create an undated near future. This mix of contemporary and retro was extremely original and innovative at the time, and it is so still nowadays. In fact, the retro-future style has fed the aesthetics of contemporary movies considered visually innovative, like Jean-Pierre Jeunet's City of Lost children, Delicatessen, and Micmacs, and Proyas' Dark City amongst others.
The performances of most leading and supporting actors are great. Jonathan Pryce's physique and acting talent are a perfect combination to create the character of Sam, a very normal man who is also very vulnerable, naughty, adventurous and dreamy. Katherine Helmond is brilliant and very funny as Sam's eccentric mother Ida. Robert de Niro is fun in his small cameo as subversive independent heating technician, as well as Bob Hoskins as the legal heating technician, Ian Holm as the incompetent Mr. Kurtzmann, and Michel Palin as the butcher at the Information Central Office. I did not like the performance of Kim Greist as Jill Layton; she looks great on camera but her acting was a bit unsubstantial. The Original Sound Track is mostly the song Brazil (an adaptation of a Brazilian song of the 1930s) played over and over but with different arrangements and tempos that go from playful to melodramatic. The music works perfectly, and it constantly reminds the viewer that Brazil is a real place, a better place where to live the dream life one wants, a perfect destination in your mind to escape the greyness of our daily discontent and the oppressive world that ignores and enslaves the individual.
The European poster of the movie is just an awesome piece of art, and it conveys what the core of the story is perfectly. Brazil is an unforgettable classic - original, thought-provoking and extremely entertaining. Still, a bit too long for me.
The Iron Giant tells the story of the fall into Earth of an alien giant robot, and his relation with a naughty child who lives with his single mother in a small town in the States.
The movie is set in the 1950s, during the Cold War period and the space race, when aliens and robot populated TV shows, comics and the imagination of everybody. The movie is able to reproduce the mood and style of the era, even the animation style, but with all the improvements that technology has brought to animation.
The characters are well drawn psychologically, which is not a surprise the movie being a Warner Bros'. Moreover, the cartoons have a superb body movement and facial expression.
The script is engaging and very entertaining, very funny and lovable. At the same time, the film address serious social and political issues in a simple approachable way, without lecturing: You are who you decide to be, if you respond to violence is your option., it is in your hands to make your own destiny no matter what your past is, your heart is always a great power to connect with others no matter how different they are. Great messages to pass on to children. All the voice actors are terrific, and the movie is never dull, but cheerful and full of life thanks to them. Eli Marienthal is terrific as the little hero Hogarth Hughes. Jennifer Aniston is extremely lovable as his mother Annie (perhaps Aniston's best performance ever...), Harry Connick Jr is very likeable as the quirky Dean McCoppin, Vin Diesel very sweet as the "brute" Iron Giant, and Christopher McDonald terrific as the annoying paranoid Government Agent Kent Mansley.
The Iron Giant did not have success at the box office when first released, due to poor marketing, but it has proven to be one of the most charming, entertaining and lovable animation movies of all times, matching Miyazaki's and other classics of 2D animation because of both the quality of its animation and script. The Iron Giant is a a movie with a great script, characters and old-style animation suitable for both adults and children. Forget the hollow modern movies for children, and show them one that has some substance.
In a world inhabited by locomotive machines and cars, the little abandoned town of Radiator Spring is languishing. The visit of a posh race car, Lightning McQueen, will revitalise the live of the locals and will teach him invaluable lessons on life. The whole film is a long visual feast and you feel like clapping to those big digital artists working for Pixar in this movie. The mate drawing of the landscape and town settings is magnificent. The cinematography and shot angles are truly artistic. The design of the cars is equally impressive regarding animation, colours, texturing and lighting. The night scenes in the open field are among my favourites because of their beauty and artistry.
The voicing of the characters, done by A-list actors (Paul Newman among them, in his last acting role before passing away), is extremely good, very charming and effective, as the viewer really feels that the voices match the cars' personality and give a big cosy feeling to the movie.
However, all of this is not enough to save the movie, which suffers from an absurd point of departure, stereotypical script and characters/role models, and a childish storyline. This will delight small children, guaranteed, but will not engage most adults. I thought that Pixar had lowered their storyline standards and made a movie that would suit more Disney's requirements. No wonder, Disney bought Pixar little after Cars was released.
Cars is an enjoyable movie for kids, with spectacular animation and eye candy colours.
All About Our House, also known as Everyone's House, is a Japanese contemporary comedy that tells the trouble into which a posh young couple puts themselves into after they decide to build a western-style house and, and instead of entrusting the construction to the wife's father -a traditional builder and carpenter- they do to a Westernised interior designer and unlicensed architect.
This is a subtle comedy that shows with charm and insight the social and personal dysfunctions that modern Japanese families find due to generational gaps and cultural clash due to the struggle to combine a Western lifestyle in a society that has deep traditional roots in their culture. The food scenes and food play an important role in the film, and appear as a bridge of communication between generations, and something that serves to amalgamate their differences.
The main roles are played by Naoki Tanaka (as Naosuke, the husband), Akiko Yagi (as Tamiko, the wife), Toshiaki Karasawa (Mr. Yanagisawa, the interior designer) and Kunie Tanaka (Tamiko's father). All of them are terrific in their respective roles, but Naoki Takana and Kunie Tanaka shine as the funny husband and the strict sbut good-hearted father, respectively.
The movie, however, has an uneven tone as the first part of it is mostly a light comedy, while the second one is much more serious and philosophical. I missed a little bit of equilibrium and fusion of both genres to get a rounder film. H
This is a delightful film that shows with humour and sensitivity the issues affecting inter-generational relations in modern Japan, very far from Manga, Geishas and other stereotypes of the Japanese culture we are used to focus in the West.
Caramel is a Lebanon-France co-production with a charming story of female love, friendship and ageing. The story focus on the love lives of a group of young and middle-age Beiruti women who are regulars at a hair & beauty salon.
The movie mixes romance, humour and sadness with simplicity, warmth, and heart under the fresh direction of young director Nadine Labaki, who also plays the leading character.
The movie shoes a multifaceted image of Beirut and its dwellers, a city that is complex, diverse and rich in culture. Far from the stereotypes about the Midle East that we find in Western movies, Labaki is a local who knows her city, and brings to the screen the rawness and charm of everyday Beirut and of its dwellers. The movie has an honest and respectful approach to the interaction between Christians and Muslims, and how different social groups and genders relate in Lebanon.
The movie was shot in warm caramel tones, which is the colour of the home-made sugar wax traditionally used in Lebanon for waxing.
The music is a warm and sentimental mix of French and Arabic songs. Truly fantastic, but also very melancholic. All the actors are
terrific in their performances: Yasmine Elmasri as the modern Muslim girl Nisrine, who is going to get married; Joanna
Moukarzel as the boyish Lesbian Rima; Gisèle Aouad as the aging divorced
actress Jamale; Nadine Labaki as
Layale, a good-hearted girl in love with a bad man;
Adel Karam as the sweet policeman Youssef enamoured of Layale; Sihame
Haddad as the patient and shy single tailor Rose, and Aziza Semaan as an
impressive demented Lili.
Caramel is a heart-warming enjoyable chick flick, soapy at times, that offers a real portrait of life in Beirut and of Lebanese women. The story is narrated in an universal simple language, but breaks many stereotypes about religious confrontation in Lebanon and on how Middle Eastern Women think, feel or live.
Conspirators of Pleasure is a surreal comedy and Czech-Swiss-British co-production.
The story focus on the idiosyncratic sensual compulsions and obsessions (aka fetishes) of six different characters: a couple of neighbours, a couple formed by a policeman and a newsreader, a newsagent, and a postmistress. The film mixes surreal
scenes, deadpan humour, hallucinogen and gory images, and human-sized
puppets.The film has no dialogues, the terrific music and street/ambient noise being the only sound. However, the characters express themselves by non-verbal language. Svankmajer's surrealism is both social and individual, not psychological. The exploration of the subconscious world of the characters is not the point of the story; in fact, we see two of the characters hiding in a closet (a metaphor of their personal subconscious), where they find a world of deep secrets that generate their fetishes, but the camera does not go inside and we do not know why, exactly, they develop their specific compulsions. In fact, the fetish
objects in the story are objectively quirky, ridiculous, and comic, made of normal things, but they become something pleasurable and erotic because of the personal wishes of each person. In a way, the personal pleasurable compulsions of the characters appear as a clumsy imitation of the human physical contact that the characters do not have but crave. There is no real
human interaction between them, and invisible walls of lack of communication prevent them from relating to each other, so at least they have their little pleasures.
Despite the story being highly erotic at times, there is not even one sex scene
in the movie, and there is limited nudity. The supposedly raunchy
scenes have nothing explicitly raunchy; all it is hinted, never
explicitly shown. The most brutal scenes in the movie use human-sized
straw articulated puppets with facial movement, so there is a detachment and softening of them.
Despite
its surreal oddity, the story has inner logic and organicity, and the
circular interconnection of the story and of the characters makes
perfect sense; in fact, the ending of the movie is the beginning of another turnaround - The beginning of of a new round of borrowed fetishes.
All the characters are wonderfully played by all the Czech actors: Petr Meissel (as Mr. Pivoine), Gabriela Wilhelmová (as Mrs. Loubalova), Barbora Hrzánová (as the postmistress), Anna Wetlinská (as Mrs. Beltinska), Jirà Lábus (as the newsagent), and Pavel Nový (as Mr. Beltinski).
The movie will unsettle and puzzle you, confront you, visually slap you, and put a smile on your face if you have a wacky sense of humour or you are in one of those days in which you fancy anything weird. The result is a thought-provoking film that is still daring and surprising despite its age. However, I would dare to say that you will not find it that erotic, in the traditional sense of the word.
Little Ottik is a bizarre horror comedy that adapts and reinterprets the folk story of Otesánek (aka Greedy Guts) for the big screen.
This is the story of the struggle of Bozena and Karel to hide and control heir piece-of-wood son Otesánek, a freak of nature with an insatiable hunger, from their neighbours.
The film re-examines the myth of the primeval creation, in which the natural order is subverted and disrespected. The couple succumbs to an act of greedy love that produces, as a result, a greedy gluttonous carnivore woody creature. Svankmajer depicts with great insight the sins of parenthood in our modern world, in which children are spoiled rotten, and anything they do is excused or justified. The movie also depicts with great humour and realism the social dynamics of small groups in blocks of apartments and neighbourhoods, paced not only by a net of support, but also by gossip, the power of appearances, and enmities and tensions.
The role of food in this movie is also very interesting, as most human characters in the movie eat disgusting porridge-like meals, despite them longing for meat, while Otesánek, a wooden creature, is eating meat all the time!
The Actors are all great and charming in their respective roles. Veronika Zilková plays with great conviction barren wife Bozena, while Jan Hartl plays with sweetness her doubtful and confused husband Karel. Also terrific are the actors playing the good-hearted neighbours: Kristina Adamcová as the incisive rebel child Alzbetka -who is also the catalyst of the story-, Jaroslava Kretschmerová as Alzbetka's sensible Mother, Pavel Nový as Alzbetka's working-class male Father, and Dagmar StrÃbrná as the building caretaker.
The stop-motion animation of Otesánek is delightfully odd, and the drawn illustrations (by Svankmajer's wife) shown in the book that Alzbetka is reading are colourful and artistic. Also delightful are the episodes involving the interaction between old spectacled neighbour and Alzbetka, which are really really naughty.
On the negative side, the film was shot using ugly-looking 1970-like colours and lighting, which are a bit weird for a 2000 movie; still they somewhat go well with such an odd story. Moreover, the movie is too long and its pace too slow at times, and that is not excusable in this case.
Little Otik is a grotesque mesmerising adult tale with a great story, terrific performances, and very interesting themes. Nothing you've watched before!
Cold Souls is a comedy of the absurd with some surrealist and existentialist touches, and a philosophical query on the nature of the soul.
The film departs from a quote from Descartes that says that the soul is located in a little place in the brain, a premise that leaves out one of the most interesting aspects of the nature of the soul. The script is more interested in asking and answering the following questions: What exactly is the soul? How affects the soul to the building of the self and defines who we are? What would it be not having a soul and being just a corporeal being? What would it be living with the soul of another person? Why would anybody want to empty out his/her body from his/her soul?
Paul Giametti plays himself, better said, a version of himself - an actor in crisis, burdened by the weight of role he's playing on his mood and spirit -even though this is just created by his job-, who goes to a clinic where the soul can be extracted and stored, restored and exchanged, whatever you like. What happens Giametti in his quest to be soul-lighted without his soul is the core of the story.
Giametti shows once again what a great actor he is. Russian actress Dina Kurzun, who plays a "mule" of souls between Russia and the US is OK in her role. The other actors are all mediocre in their respective roles.
The tone of the film is somewhat depressing and grey, which goes well with Giametti's character. In fact, all the characters in the movie are very serious and grey, as if all souls in the world had that same defect. I think that it is the best part of the movie, i. e. the depiction of a world of grey souls always unsatisfied about being human, always wanting to be perfect. Humans avoiding everything that makes us humans. The unwillingness of humans to see within, to deal with our emotions, feelings and problems, our past and present. The soul as a product of trade, like our society, in which everything is for sale, and bogus people are everywhere. These elements are openly and clearly presented in a successful way through Giametti's dialogues and part of the storyline.
On the other hand, I see a contradiction, a deep one, between what the director wants to portray and what actually the characters in the script portray. If the soul is undeniable linked to our emotions and feelings, and their weight makes us what we are, how is possible that a person without soul, empty, can be aware and suffer from not having a soul? If your soul is not yours but that of another person, how do you know (from an emotional point of view) that the soul is not yours? If the soul is located in a part of the brain, how can the brain work normally after the soul has been extracted? The movie does not success at offering response to these questions, and in fact mixes things up a little bit.
Despite the serious tone of the film, the main concepts that the movie deals with are examined superficially. Perhaps, a lighter story an characters and a deeper analysis of the philosophical elements of the script would have produced a more engaging film. I am thinking, for example, in The Truman Show, which did just that without losing any depth, and being an entertaining movie at the same time.
There is a problem with the music too, at least to me. A couple of songs in French appear from nowhere halfway the movie. They are beautiful and very much of my liking, but they do not fit with the rest of the music and the general music ambience of the film. In fact they were a shock and a distraction from the scene that they were paired with.
The film has an excellent starting point and some very original ideas, but the tone of the film is too serious on one hand, and too descriptive in the other. It is not a drama or a comedy either, an ambiguous mix instead.
I think that, still, that this is a daring and original film.
'I love the movie poster. It's great and pretty much sums up the main concept of the film in just one shot.
Little Miss Sunshine is a road movie about a dysfunctional family trying to take their seven-year-old Olive to an interstate beauty pageant from Alburquerque NM to Redondo Beach CA in their yellow Volkswagen Van.
Little Miss Sunshine is an fresh, witty and enthralling movie with freak and quirky characters, brilliant dialogues, great performances, and an original story. It is an entertaining funny crazy film that makes you think about
subjects that are never confrontationally presented. What makes a family dysfunctional? At the beginning of the film our family seem to be dysfunctional and freak, although they are depicted in an empathetic way and epitomise, in a way, the dysfunctions that most so-called-normal families have. The thing is, the family
does not push Olive into the pageant, does not force her to dress or
behave in a certain way, does not dress her as little prostitute, does
not expect anything from her, just supports her the whole way, even
when everybody turns against her. The other parents, the "normal" ones,
appear as real freaks after all, projecting their frustrated dreams and personal failure into their little kids. All
of the sudden, the dysfunctional family is quite sound, warm and caring,
the others just the opposite.
There is a subtle but clear criticism of the ideal of the American dream and of the self-help books and coaching focusing on becoming rich. The character of Richard epitomises the bullshit that these sub-culture has, pushing people to fight for money success following recipes that frequently lead to failure for which they do not prepare anybody. Sheryl the mother is instead the voice of common sense and more successful in her approach to life and its problems.
There is also a very cleaver non non-confrontational criticism of child beauty pageants. The script poses a rhetorical question to the viewer: what is it freakier, a
beautiful child sexually dressed wearing sluty make up who poses and
moves as a sexy adult, or an innocent child who sings and dances to a
raunchy song that she does not understand? What happens to Olive at the pageant is the answer that the script gives to that rhetorical question, and surely the one you would identify the most.
The movie provides the viewer with many iconic movie images, which will imprint your retinas and stand the pass of time: The pushing of the van and the music, the girl singing "super freak", the escape from the hospital, among many others.
If this was not enough, all the actors give unforgettable performances in their respective roles: Toni Collette as the family's warm-hearted sound mother Sheryl, Greg Kinnear is her unsuccessful husband Richard, Alan Arkin as Richard's dirty father Edwin, Steve Carell as Shery'ls gay suicidal scholar brother, Abigail Breslin as the sweet innocent Olive, and Paul Dano as Olive's half brother silent rebel Dwayne.
A Franco-Belgian-Canadian animated movie, The Triplets of Belleville tells the story of a French cyclist Champion, his Portuguese grandma, and their unwanted adventures in America, where they meet three American sisters. There is a lot to praise in this movie, but the main praise to any film is that time flies when watching it, so entertaining and enchanting is.
The animation looks like old style hand-made Miyazaki's, both in detail of de drawing, style, fluidity of the images, quirkiness of the characters, and action. Still has a very special feeling, which is both very European and very American.
It is remarkable that an animation movie without princes and princesses, fairytale love stories, or young
characters can be so appealing to people of all
ages. In fact, the characters are a group of old women, an overweight dog, and some nasty Mafiosi. If this was not enough, the characters rarely speak, just mumble a few words, make guttural noses, and sing some songs. The story is entertaining, quirky and original enough to keep the viewer interested and entertained, and the characters are very expressive, like the old silent movies, despite their lack of language. That is a lot to say.
The movie has an awesome soundtrack by Benoît Charest inspired by golden-era Jazz and Motown classics, plus some classic music pieces that perfectly convey the atmosphere of New York in the 1920s-1950s. In fact, the recreation of New York as Belleville has a lot of art-deco with a twist of European Disney (the skyline of Belleville resembles a European castle), plus a contemporary projection of the image of Americans in European mentality (the inhabitants of Belleville are morbidly obese) creating something that is oddly beautiful and original.
Especially brilliant are the scenes of the crossing of the Atlantic, the watching of human programs in TV by the cartoons, the diet of the triplets, and, above all, the surreal black and white dreams of Bruno the dog.
The only thing I did not like was the car persecution at the end, which I found childish and hurriedly resolved, and the end of the movie.
This is a brilliant movie with a delightful script for people of all ages with lots of winks to adult viewers.
A Spanish-American co-production shot in London and directed by Woody Allen, You will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger follows the lives of three couples from the same family struggling in their relationships: Helena (played by Gemma Jones) and her ex-husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin), and Alfie's new wife Charmaine (Lucy Punch).
Despite being a coral movie, most of the cast members shine in their individual performances. Gemma Jones offers a believable charming portrait of an English housewife who sees her life turned upside down after her separation, and tries to find love and resettle emotionally with the help of a fortune-teller. Anthony Hopkins is also great as a 60-something man trying to cope with his age crisis, his high sex drive, his physical limitations and his emotional need to settle; his performance is very honest and down to earth, toning down and giving believability to his character. Lucy Punch is terrific and very funny as the low class "actress" Charmaine who marries Alfie for his money; she is a stupendous addition to the cast, even though she replaced Nicole Kidman at the last moment. Truly, I cannot image Kidman playing this role at all, and certainly not as fresh and cheeky-vulgar as Punch is.
Josh Brolin shines in his depiction of a wannabe writer who cannot find inspiration to finish his last book, and who tries to escape his personal mediocrity and failure as a husband by focusing on the younger front-door girl Dia. Naomi Watts is wasted in a role that does not showcase her great talent, but she is still good in her performance of a talented housewife who puts her life on hold to support her worthless husband. Freida Pinto is very sweet and sexy as Dia; this is a daring role for an Indian actress, as Bollywood has great limitations about showing physical affection, and the Indian public slashes actress who deviate from the norm.
I found Antonio Banderas bland in his role of Sally's boss Greg. One wonders why he keeps accepting stupid roles in English, which don't make him any favour as an actor and highlight his difficulties in expressing himself as an actor in English; he is more selective with his Spanish-speaking roles, where he always offers much better performances. There is a little cameo by Pauline Collins as fortune-teller and Helena's best friend Cristal.
Highly amusing and entertaining, the movie has some very good points, an acceptable but soapy script, excellent performances and a nice European atmosphere. One of those movies that, without being brilliant or memorable, will stay with you longer than you expected!
Scott Pilgrim versus the World is a Canadian romantic comedy and musical based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's comic book.
Scott Pilgrim is a 22y.o teenage-looking insecure guy and guitarist who plays in a rock band called "Sex Bom-omb" going out with a high-school Chinese girl called Knives. He seems content with his life until he dreams about a girl, and she appears in his real world: Ramona, a funky American girl just moved to Toronto. Scott is over the moon, but he has to face his own personal demons, break up with sweet Knives and fight for Ramona's love against her seven exes.
Scott Pilgrim is one of the most refreshing teen-college movies produced in the last years, and one the best movies of 2010. The movie is cute, funny, entertaining, has great characters, a terrific soundtrack and stunning visuals. The story is presented as it was a video-game in which the main characters are the players, and their lives part of the game.
The movie focus on how difficult is to make a relationship work when you fall in love whit a girl with lots of emotional baggage and you are not an over-confident guy, while your dream girl is über-cool, and her exes were brilliant guys. Scott's fights against Ramona's exes are just a metaphoric way of putting it. The issues regarding
relationships are masqueraded by the video-game approach, but they have
depth. Unlike many other movies focusing on the emotional challenges of
very young people, sex is not the focus, although it is not avoided
either.The fights with the
exes are extremely funny and witty. I especially liked the fight with
the Vegan ex-boyfriend, which is hilarious. Also visually stunning is
the musical competition between Scott's rock band and the techno Asian
twins’ band. All the actors are great in their roles: Michael Cera as Scott, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona, Ellen Wong as Knives; Kieran Culkin as Scott's confident gay Wallace, Anna Kendrick as the know-it-all Scott's sister Stacey, Jason Schwartzman as the revolting Gideon Graves, and Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons and Alison Pill as Scott's band members. However, Cera shines in this movie, in part because his physique really suits the personality of the character he plays.
The movie is lots of
fun and does not take itself seriously, has a terrific music, and stunning visuals; the camera's movement and video-game-ish use of the screen add to the freshness and originality of the film. The movie has freshness, soul and a special something that stays with you longer after you've seen it. That is entertainment!
Constable Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a hard-core cop in London, whose job is pretty much his life, but he founds that he has been "promoted-demoted" to serve in the small village of Sandford, populated by sweet and too-relaxed people. His partner Danny Butterman, a local, is his antithesis - an obese cop who dreams of the action he watches in American movies. The job is killer-boring until a series of apparently accidental deaths start to happen.
Think "Midsummer Murders" mixed with "Die Hard", add lots of spoof-like moments, parody acting, crazy twists and turns (although the mystery is not as predictable as you might think), and, more importantly, lots of English wittiness.
It is the settings, the dialogues, the script (by director Wright and actor-writer Pegg), the humour, how well (un)matched the characters are, and the great performances of the all-star English cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Steve Coogan, and Martin Freeman among others.
One of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time. Unpretentious. Fresh. Entertaining - A comedy that actually makes you laugh. Bingo!
A lonely tax officer, Harold Crick, starts hearing a female voice that tells in a literary way what he is thinking and going to do. Trying to give himself a rational explanation, he visits a psychiatrist and then a professor in Literature What is happening to him and who is writing, literally, his life?
Stranger than fiction is a modern fable about predestination and free will, about life as our personal creation, and a reflection on the process of artistic creation. It is a retake a la reverse on Pirandello's "Six characters in search of an author", but using just one character. The film is directed by Swiss golden boy Marc Foster and written by the screenwriter and film director Zach Helm.
The movie has a terrific script and dialogues, characters very well drawn, and great acting. Will Ferrell will surprise you as Harold; we are used to his crazy over-the-top performances, but here he offers a very controlled and sensitive performance and completely transforms himself into Harold. The always believable Maggie Gyllenhaal is perfect as the lawyer turned into anarchist baker Ana Pascal. Emma Thompson is great as the neurotic insecure and perfectionist writer Karen Eiffel. Dustin Hoffman is also terrific as Professor of Literature Jules Hilber, who intrigued by Harold turns into a Literary detective and Harold's counsellor. Queen Latifah is correct as Eiffel's PA Penny Escher; I found her character a bit unnecessary, but she does plays well what she is asked for.
The movie is not only entertaining, but it is embedded with multiple ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions, that turn the mystery and the romance into something else. Some of the questions that came to my mind were: If your life was written like in a novel, and therefore you knew that you were predestined, would you still try to fight this? And if you did, would that make your life better and more meaningful? If it was in your hand, what would you prefer, dying young but having a memorable death or dying old but nobody knowing that you ever existed? Would knowing that your death is poetic, give more meaning to it? Would you rather know when you are going die or how?
The look of the movie, is very clean, minimalist and stylish. The superimposing graphics and vectorial images help to make clear to the viewer what is happening in Harold's head and the sort of analytical and mathematical mind and approach to reality he has. They are terrific, very stylish, explicative and not invasive at all, just at the service of the story.
Don't be fooled, this is not the sort of gag comedy you watch to have a big laugh. Is a witty comedy, not a LOL one.
A terrific film, entertaining and thought-provoking.
