Closer (2004)
The Cast
Natalie Portman .... Alice
Jude Law .... Dan
Julia Roberts .... Anna
Clive Owen .... Larry
Directed by Mike Nichols, Closer is about four beautiful people being evil fucks to one another. In a ricockulously large nutshell, that's what it's about. Okay, & about what a small little world we live in. Like the girl you're dating now? Yeah, her boyfriend is a guy that faked being a girl in an Internet sex chat room with you a couple months back. Why? Nobody really knows for sure. Perhaps he's a jolly ol' prankster!
Anyways, if you watch movies to escape the harsh realities & atrocities that we, as humans, tend to commit & live with, don't watch Closer. Seriously, you'll be confronted with too much realness & how evil relationships can be. It could turn you off of the whole romance thing altogether.
If you have no problems with that, you'll be lucky enough to enjoy one of the best written movies in awhile. The dialogue is sharp & cutting, almost completely tactless. Which, while gorgeous to listen to, can also hamper a movie that feels so real. These are all the things you wish you said to your girlfriend / wife / boyfriend / husband when you found out they were cheating on you. Ten minutes after you left them, you smack yourself on the forehead "Fuck, I should've said that!" It's too perfect to feel completely real.
However, there are some simply stellar performances on the screen, most notably Owen & Portman's. Portman is far better in Closer than she was in Garden State (which, incidentally I found to be very overrated), & if Owen isn't name the next James Bond, there's something seriously wrong with the world. Well, more serious than we could've ever imagined.
Even though everyone in the movie is pure evil to one another, you still want to see how it all turns out. Well, at least I did. With Owen being the most likable of the quartet, & just wanting to maim Law, I was kinda happy with the way the whole thing turned out, minus the kinda silly twist at the end that was a bit unneccessary. It's not a happy movie, it's not a date movie, it's just a pretty too real movie. 3.5 outta 5.
Brodie 808's review
Mighty God King's review
Roger Ebert's review