Two Movie Reviews
Now that I've finally got a minute to breathe, I decided to get an Indoor Games Pass from Rogers Video and start renting movies to catch up on all the stuff I've been meaning to watch for ages. Mini-reviews of my first two rentals are below.
My Life Without Me:
My Life Without Me is a film written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet that premiered to rave reviews at the Toronto Film Festival last year. Ann, a young woman in her early 20s played by Sarah Polley, is living a dead-end life. She's married to Don (Scott Speedman), a chronically unemployed construction worker, has two young children, and lives in a trailer in the backyard of her mother's (Debbie Harry) house. She works as a night janitor in a university she can't afford to attend, and her father is in jail. When she finds out she has cancer and only has two months to live, Ann makes a list of all the things she wants to do before she dies, including making another man fall in love with her and finding a new wife for Don. She doesn't tell her family or anyone else that she is dying, embarks on an affair with Lee (Mark Ruffalo), and proceeds to fulfill all the items on her list while discovering the true joys and sorrows of life for the first time.
While the film does suffer a bit from chronic artsy-ness, and the writing gets somewhat maudlin and self-indulgent in the second half, there are moments of quiet brilliance within. Most of the credit goes to Sarah Polley's stunning performance. The friend I was watching with shook her head about halfway through the movie and muttered out loud, "How can one person be so frickin' talented?!" Sarah lost her own mother when she was nine years old, and I'm sure some of the grief and world-weariness in this performance came from that experience, because not many 25-year-olds could have done it. There is one scene in particular in which she is recording birthday messages to give her daughters each year once she is gone that left me speechless with its poignancy.
The two leading men in the movie were not great, especially when their leading lady was so stellar. Scott Speedman has never been much of an actor, IMHO, and continues to mumble his way through parts. Mark Ruffalo had a few really good moments as The Other Man slowly falling in love with Ann while knowing he had no hope, but overall, I found him a little too blah to really root for. As for Debbie Harry, I really have no idea why she was in the movie at all. Not that she did a bad job - she was fine in the role - but, I dunno, it just seemed a little incongruous.
Final analysis - anyone who tends to love big blockbusters and shun art films would probably consider this movie pretentious, slow, and boring; anyone who can appreciate movies that aren't made with box office numbers first in mind will probably like it and value Polley's performance. I'd definitely recommend it.
On Edge:
On Edge claims to be a biting satire of the figure skating world. I picked it up because I had read about it on various skating message boards and I figured it would be really, really bad. I was absolutely right, except I couldn't have imagined just how bad it really is. People, this movie is really bad. It is so bad that it might well be the worst movie I have ever seen. My brother started watching it and watched it until the end, like a train wreck, and gave it four stars for being "so garbage that it was actually sort of good."
The basic storyline is that Professor Robinson (Chirs Hogan) is making a documentary on figure skating and the quest for Olympic gold. He goes to a rink owned by Russian Yuri Moskvin (John Glover) and begins following several skaters hoping to win a county competition that will take them onwards to Regionals en route to Nationals and, hopefully, the Olympics. The three main contenders are Veda Tilman (Barret Swatek), a bulimic rich girl with a skating mother from hell (Wendie Malick); Wendy Wodinski (Marissa Winokur of Hairspray fame), a plus-size skater discriminated against because of her weight, and J.C. Cain (A.J. Langer, best known as Rayanne from My So-Called Life), the rebel child with dreams of leaving the trailer park behind and becoming an ice show superstar. They are watched over by Zamboni Phil (Jason Alexander) and coach Jimmy Hand (Wallace Langham), while a cast of other wannabe champions (including characters played by Sabrina Lloyd, Kathy Griffin and Chrisha Gossard) trail around the rink hoping against hope that they, too, can earn the coveted spots.
Part of doing a good parody is actually understanding one's subject matter, and it is pretty darned clear that the makers of this movie did little to no research on figure skating. The county competition that earns the skaters spots at Regionals does not exist, and if it did, skaters would certainly not be able to dress up as puppy dogs and do Ice Capades-like programs complete with barking and scratching, or wear Madonna outfits and skate to music with vocals. Four skaters, not one, move on to Sectionals from Regionals, and doing six double jumps would not win you Regionals even if you were an Intermediate level child skater. Scott Hamilton had a role in this movie, playing a former USFSA president, and Kristi Yamaguchi, Steven Cousins, Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, and Peter Carruthers all had cameos as judges. Why the hell didn't they have a look at the script before it was finalized, for God's sake?!
All that aside, I do not for the life of me understand how big-name stars got involved in this project. Jason Alexander, John Glover, Wallace Langham, Kathy Griffin, Sabrina Lloyd, etc. - what in hell were you thinking?! They seriously must have owed someone a favour or something, because damn, you couldn't pay me to be in a movie like this. The performances they turned it were so completely awful and cariactured that I really don't know what to say about them. John Glover's "Russian" accent was like something a 15-year-old kid trying to sound faux-Russian would do, and his constant flailing about and mumbling about the mafia was so pathetic that it was hilarious. A.J. Langer played her character like a bad cartoon version of Tonya Harding, complete with drinking, smoking, and teased blonde ponytail. Gah!
All that aside, the movie was so over-the-top tacky and horribly written that it ended up being really, really funny. I don't know why or how, but it was. Overall, despite being the worst movie ever, I'm kind of glad I rented it.
My Life Without Me:
My Life Without Me is a film written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet that premiered to rave reviews at the Toronto Film Festival last year. Ann, a young woman in her early 20s played by Sarah Polley, is living a dead-end life. She's married to Don (Scott Speedman), a chronically unemployed construction worker, has two young children, and lives in a trailer in the backyard of her mother's (Debbie Harry) house. She works as a night janitor in a university she can't afford to attend, and her father is in jail. When she finds out she has cancer and only has two months to live, Ann makes a list of all the things she wants to do before she dies, including making another man fall in love with her and finding a new wife for Don. She doesn't tell her family or anyone else that she is dying, embarks on an affair with Lee (Mark Ruffalo), and proceeds to fulfill all the items on her list while discovering the true joys and sorrows of life for the first time.
While the film does suffer a bit from chronic artsy-ness, and the writing gets somewhat maudlin and self-indulgent in the second half, there are moments of quiet brilliance within. Most of the credit goes to Sarah Polley's stunning performance. The friend I was watching with shook her head about halfway through the movie and muttered out loud, "How can one person be so frickin' talented?!" Sarah lost her own mother when she was nine years old, and I'm sure some of the grief and world-weariness in this performance came from that experience, because not many 25-year-olds could have done it. There is one scene in particular in which she is recording birthday messages to give her daughters each year once she is gone that left me speechless with its poignancy.
The two leading men in the movie were not great, especially when their leading lady was so stellar. Scott Speedman has never been much of an actor, IMHO, and continues to mumble his way through parts. Mark Ruffalo had a few really good moments as The Other Man slowly falling in love with Ann while knowing he had no hope, but overall, I found him a little too blah to really root for. As for Debbie Harry, I really have no idea why she was in the movie at all. Not that she did a bad job - she was fine in the role - but, I dunno, it just seemed a little incongruous.
Final analysis - anyone who tends to love big blockbusters and shun art films would probably consider this movie pretentious, slow, and boring; anyone who can appreciate movies that aren't made with box office numbers first in mind will probably like it and value Polley's performance. I'd definitely recommend it.
On Edge:
On Edge claims to be a biting satire of the figure skating world. I picked it up because I had read about it on various skating message boards and I figured it would be really, really bad. I was absolutely right, except I couldn't have imagined just how bad it really is. People, this movie is really bad. It is so bad that it might well be the worst movie I have ever seen. My brother started watching it and watched it until the end, like a train wreck, and gave it four stars for being "so garbage that it was actually sort of good."
The basic storyline is that Professor Robinson (Chirs Hogan) is making a documentary on figure skating and the quest for Olympic gold. He goes to a rink owned by Russian Yuri Moskvin (John Glover) and begins following several skaters hoping to win a county competition that will take them onwards to Regionals en route to Nationals and, hopefully, the Olympics. The three main contenders are Veda Tilman (Barret Swatek), a bulimic rich girl with a skating mother from hell (Wendie Malick); Wendy Wodinski (Marissa Winokur of Hairspray fame), a plus-size skater discriminated against because of her weight, and J.C. Cain (A.J. Langer, best known as Rayanne from My So-Called Life), the rebel child with dreams of leaving the trailer park behind and becoming an ice show superstar. They are watched over by Zamboni Phil (Jason Alexander) and coach Jimmy Hand (Wallace Langham), while a cast of other wannabe champions (including characters played by Sabrina Lloyd, Kathy Griffin and Chrisha Gossard) trail around the rink hoping against hope that they, too, can earn the coveted spots.
Part of doing a good parody is actually understanding one's subject matter, and it is pretty darned clear that the makers of this movie did little to no research on figure skating. The county competition that earns the skaters spots at Regionals does not exist, and if it did, skaters would certainly not be able to dress up as puppy dogs and do Ice Capades-like programs complete with barking and scratching, or wear Madonna outfits and skate to music with vocals. Four skaters, not one, move on to Sectionals from Regionals, and doing six double jumps would not win you Regionals even if you were an Intermediate level child skater. Scott Hamilton had a role in this movie, playing a former USFSA president, and Kristi Yamaguchi, Steven Cousins, Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, and Peter Carruthers all had cameos as judges. Why the hell didn't they have a look at the script before it was finalized, for God's sake?!
All that aside, I do not for the life of me understand how big-name stars got involved in this project. Jason Alexander, John Glover, Wallace Langham, Kathy Griffin, Sabrina Lloyd, etc. - what in hell were you thinking?! They seriously must have owed someone a favour or something, because damn, you couldn't pay me to be in a movie like this. The performances they turned it were so completely awful and cariactured that I really don't know what to say about them. John Glover's "Russian" accent was like something a 15-year-old kid trying to sound faux-Russian would do, and his constant flailing about and mumbling about the mafia was so pathetic that it was hilarious. A.J. Langer played her character like a bad cartoon version of Tonya Harding, complete with drinking, smoking, and teased blonde ponytail. Gah!
All that aside, the movie was so over-the-top tacky and horribly written that it ended up being really, really funny. I don't know why or how, but it was. Overall, despite being the worst movie ever, I'm kind of glad I rented it.