I’m trying to catch up with movies that I haven’t seen because I was too young (or not even born yet) when they came out. Since Woody Allen has been making movies since the 60’s, a lot of his films fall under that category. Here are two of his films that I have seen over the past couple of weeks.

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1992)

True to it’s title, this film is actually about crimes and misdemeanors. It is also about what is morally right or wrong.  What can be called a crime. If no one finds out that you have committed a crime, can it still be called one? Or is there a God watching you at all times and therefore you will always be guilty? There are quite a few story-lines going on at the same time that all end up being connected at the end. It is a brilliantly told story with very funny and intelligent dialogue (is it actually necessary to point this out in a Woody Allen movie?).  It reminded me a lot of Woody’s recent Match Point, which I now feel like re-watching for the 200th time.

Love and Death (1975)

I hadn’t heard anything about Love and Death before watching it and was quite surprised that the setting of this movie is in the early 19th Century Russia. The language as well as the acting are a mix of old, probably reminiscent of Dostoyevski and the likes, and Woody’s typical modern “babbling”. Also very funny dialogue although I didn’t think the slapstick comedy was necessary in this film.

I can’t wait until his new movie You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger comes out in a few weeks.

I missed Grand Torino when it was out at the cinema and finally managed to watch it. Due to the reviews and ratings, I had pretty high expectations and thought for the first hour or so that they would be let down. But Clint Eastwood pulled it together for a grand finale.

Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is an old Korean war vet who is very set in his own ways. He just lost his wife, is generally unhappy and unfriendly and hates his Hmong neighbors. Over the course of the movie they change his mind about them and greatly influence his life. Of course.

I thought that the beginning of this movie was rather weak. It was slow, full of clichés and just not that interesting to watch. But as the movie went on, I got more into the story. The characters stayed somewhat on the surface but they did their job to tell this story. I was very impressed with the ending though. The film suddenly completely sucked me in. I didn’t expect it and it was slightly over dramatic but I thought it was a great end to this movie. I only wish the entire film could have been on that level.

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I’ve been wanting to see this movie for a while now. As you probably know, I love Emma Thompson. I think she is a fantastic actress and the scene in Love Actually, where she just found out that her husband is cheating on her, makes me want to cry every time I see it. That’s how great she is. I’m also a big fan of Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s work. But then, who isn’t?! Will Ferrell is one of the few actors who I really can’t stand. He seriously irritates me. But I was going to overlook that fact and enjoy watching Stranger Than Fiction anyway.

That was before I saw the first few minutes of the film. I didn’t like the opening sequence and it only got worse from there. The plot: A writer is writing a book about a man who is going to die. The twist: The man actually exists and the writer is now going to kill the actual person. Sounds somewhat intriguing, doesn’t it? But it’s not. Stranger Than Fiction turned out to be one of the most boring films I have ever seen in my life. Not only was it dull, it was also over acted (who would have thought!) and cheesy.

I’m not even sure why I watched it to the end because I kept wanting to turn it of. It didn’t manage to capture my attention at all but I don’t turn movies off. Ever. So, I watched it. I would give it a zero star rating but that seems kind of harsh, so the one star is for the effort of coming up with an unusual plot.

My advice to you: Don’t watch it. You will never get those two hours of your life back!

I’ve said it before but I just needed to say again just how breathtakingly beautiful this movie is. Ever since I saw A Single Man at the cinema I have been waiting for the DVD to come out so I could watch it again.

In my last review about this film I wrote mostly about the beauty of the film and the fashion. What I didn’t really touch on at all is the “moral of the story”. The main character George (Colin Firth, who should have won the Oscar for his performance in this film) is planning to kill himself on this particular day that we are witnessing. He has been suffering for eight months, since his lover Jim (Matthew Goode) died in a car accident and doesn’t feel like he wants to go on living any longer.

Now that he is sure that he will only live for one more day, he suddenly opens up and starts living again after all this time. It is really a film about “what would you do if you only had one day more to live?”. George does all kinds of things that he wouldn’t usually do and starts enjoying himself again.

I don’t know if you guys know this feeling but I often think that living in New York City robs me of real emotion. There is so much going on that I rarely have a moment to think about anything and weeks can go by without me feeling any real joy or sadness. I get sad and happy, of course, but I never have enough time to truly let any emotion in. I blame it on the city but I guess its just my life style. What I am trying to say is, that in a way I am jealous of George. He has this absolutely amazing day where he re-discovers himself, the world and his lust for life. I would love to experience a truly special day that stands out completely.

If you haven’t seen it already, rent A Single Man! I stand by my former rating:

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This was the first trailer in a while that made me want to go to the cinema. And the trailer didn’t promise too much, I really enjoyed watching The Kids Are All Right. But then you can’t really go wrong with a movie that has Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo as the lead characters.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a gay couple with two kids. When their daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska) turns 18 her brother (Josh Hutcherson) urges her to contact their biological father (Mark Ruffalo) who then turns the whole family upside down.

You can definitely see that this movie was made by a woman (Lisa Cholodenko), it’s incredibly sweet and sensitive. A bit too much crying for my taste but otherwise really well told. The relationship between mothers and kids is very cute and funny. I guess it goes without saying that the acting was incredible. Especially Julianne Moore created a very real and amusing character. I have to say, I did love all the locations used, they really made me want to move to California.

Overall a great summery movie that will charm your day!

My housemate organized tickets for us to go and see the new Sex and the City movie at what turned out to be the New York Cinema featured in the film, the Ziegfield (I swear, I didn’t know!). They were giving out virgin Cosmos and popcorn and the audience was definitely excited to watch this movie.

It might have been the best location to watch this movie because I’m not sure the movie itself was very good but I enjoyed myself immensely. Everyone, except for us, was really dolled up Carrie style which was kind of fun and people were screaming and gasping and applauding and it was just fun to be there.

Carrie and Mr. Big have been married for two years now and Carrie is scared that they are becoming a boring couple who only watch TV and order take-out so she tries to get him to go out more. Everyone else is pretty much where we left off the in the last movie. But to make things interesting, Samantha gets an invitation to take her girls to Abu-Dhabi to “test” a hotel that she is supposed to be promoting. Most of the film takes place there.

The film was quite different to the original series. The series the is mostly about the characters and the stories and the fashion is just sort of happens but it’s not the focus. The movie is all about the fashion and the characters and stories are a bit in the background. I don’t know how many times they changed clothes but personally i thought it was too many. Who gets changed every two hours? It felt like the entire movie was simply about glamour and sparkle and labels. I was really missing the conversations and discussions the girls always had which made them so relatable. Every girl can see something of themselves in at least one of the characters which is kind of the appeal of the show. But the four girls (who are actually very mature women by now) are so rich and fabulous now that they couldn’t have less in common with the average SATC fan. And on top of their own incredible wealth they get invited to a first class everything included vacation where they are staying at a palace and each of them has their own butler. It’s really too much!

Having said all that I did like the movie, probably even more then the first one, and would recommend it to fans of the show. And even though I said I didn’t like that they change outfits every two seconds (and I will stand by my word) but the dresses were pretty amazing. What did you think?

Wow, so Lost is really over. How long until they are going to make a movie?

It does feel a bit like the end of an era. I started following Lost pretty much when it first came out and got hooked on it quickly. I lost interest after about two seasons and then recently re-watched and then watched all of the episodes.

The ending was quite disappointing though. It seemed like the easy way out. I’m not gonna stay up to watch the alternative endings (mainly cause the online stream stopped right after the episode finished) but I’m sure they are gonna be available on youtube in the next few days. I thought the writers would come up with some amazing ending that would totally blow all of us away but I guess they couldn’t think of anything.

What did you think of the final episode?

I was looking forward to seeing Iron Man 2 since I quite enjoyed the first one. In the sequel, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is openly admitting to being Iron Man, the government is considering the suit to be a weapon and therefore a threat to the country. Tony is saying that nobody else in the world has the technology to build a similar suit, at least not in the next ten years. When the Russian Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) shows up with a weapon that has the same technology as the Iron Man suit, Tony has to act fast…

Iron Man 2 is, unfortunately, nowhere as good as the first one. It is less funny and feels more like a bridge to a possible third film then a movie that stands by itself. If you hadn’t seen the first film, you probably wouldn’t know what was going on in the second one.

There is really not that much to say about it: the movie didn’t affect me in any way. It was entertaining but it was a bit caught up in the look of it rather then the story. I wouldn’t say that I was bored watching it but I didn’t get anything out of watching Iron Man 2 other then a good looking film with good looking stars. What a pity, I had much higher hopes for this one!

I put this movie on my Netflix list a few months ago after watching Scarlett Johansson in one of her newer films. I don’t think I’ve seen The Horse Whisperer since it came out. I must have been more or less the same age that Scarlett was back then. Watching it now, the movie took me straight back to feeling thirteen years old. I’m not saying that I was a miserable teenager (well, pretty much all teenagers are miserable so I guess that’s not entirely true) but back then and still now I can relate to this young girl, Grace, who has suffered a trauma and is now trying to make sense of herself and her life.

Objectively seen The Horse Whisperer is not a great film. It is overly cheesy and it’s too long but for me the film works on several levels. I don’t like the love story between Grace’s mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), and the “horse whisperer” Tom Booker (Robert Redford) but I completely get the struggle Annie is going through: city vs country life. I’ve pretty much always lived in cities and would consider myself a city girl but whenever I go to the country (which is not very often) I think I could easily stay there and live a quiet life. Annie’s New York City life where she has a great career and goes to the theater and the museums all the time is so exciting and at the beginning of the film she couldn’t imagine her life without all that but the more time she spends out in the country with the horses and with the Booker family who have lived on that farm for so long, the more she sees how happy she could be out there. I’m not even sure whether she falls in love with the man Tom Booker or with the idea of this life. If she had met him in the city, she would’ve never even noticed him.

As I said, I can very much relate to Grace’s story. Partly because Scarlett Johansson did a good job playing the girl. Her looks haven’t changed much although her acting has gotten a bit more sophisticated since then. She is so wonderfully young and bitchy, or wounding towards her mother, the perfect teenager.

The countryside is filmed absolutely beautifully but what is going on with the lighting on Robert Redford? He is always lit to make his hair glow as if he has a halo. Overall I think it would be a much better film if it was less “tacky” or “kitschy”. The countryside is beautiful but why do they always have to show sunset or sunrise? And it could use some cutting. But I did really enjoy watching The Horse Whisperer again after so many years.