4 non-summer blockbuster movies
Summer movies are all exciting and fun, but my August, I dunno about you, I am all tired of all the big actions and special effects. I was craving for dramas and indie flicks, so the last few weeks either in the theater or at home, I watched a few “smaller” foreign movies. (I wasn’t sure which studios are behind these movies, but all the locations and at least most of the talents in front of the screens are foreign.)
First up is a dramatic period piece called Brideshead Revisited. Based on a novel and set in Britain countryside in the 1930s, this is the perfect type to be an anti-summer movie. It is a rather depressing film but I enjoyed it rather much because it was a beautifully shot, well-made, well-edited movie with fantastic leads. I recalled the lead Matthew Goode from the movie Matchpoint. He has one of the prettiest green eyes I ever seen. He plays the character Charles Ryder from an innocent wide-eyes youngster to a more cynical mature type. Ben Whishaw plays the fun-loving gay son of a noble Catholic family. With Hayley Atwell as the seductive sister and the great Emma Thompson as the devoted Catholic mother. The story is about how an atheist youngster gets involved with the siblings of this noble Catholic family, witnessed how rigid religion rules of the family ruined them all. The Brideshead mansion was extraordinary, it’s stunning beautiful, no wonder Charles was drawn to it. Ben Whishaw’s Sebastian suffered the most but was the only one that lived in peace in the end. The film really was depressing but you can’t help but get drawn to it.
Next up is Transsiberian, a thriller on a train from Beijing to Moscow. I still don’t know how to describe how I feel about the movie. The movie is realistic depiction of lives on the trans-siberian train route and on the train. Modern day rural Russia seems dangerous and strange. The scariest thing in the movie is the isolation and loneliness and the sense that there is no help from anywhere. It sounded like I am describing your typical slasher movies, but no, it’s not that type. It’s more psychological I suppose. If the location and the setting is what drawn you in in Bridgeshead Revisited, then it’s the location and the setting that scares you in Transsiberian. Maybe because I am too much of a metropolitan urban kind of person, this kind of in the middle of nowhere, rural places on the route of the train that seems to be going nowhere is ridiculously scary to me, definitely more so than the drug lords and brutal cops in the movie.
After watching Brideshead Revisited, I can’t help but to seek more movies from the two lead, Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw, so I finally watched Perfume: the Story of a Murderer, a movie that the original reason I wanted to see was because of the great Alan Rickman. Now the other reason to watch it is because of Ben Whishaw. Here Ben shined through the movie as the seldomly speaking, a mad genius on scents Jean-Baptiste that has no moral standards. There’s actually no sense of right or wrong here. The movie didn’t judge the action of Jean-Baptiste, and as an audience, I can’t judge either. You certainly can’t judge a one year old that picked up a gun and killed someone! Not that Jean-Baptiste is a one year old, but that the only drive in his life is to make the perfect perfume, not for profit or fame or achievement. It seems like that what he’s born for in that life, it’s his only purpose. His drive is so pure that regardless what method or source he used, you just treated his as an insane person who doesn’t know what his action causes. But to justify his countless murderous act is also intolerable for anyone’s moral standard. In the end all you can do is to just watch and be amazed by this powerful film, and not carry any judgment with you.
If a magnificent location and setting is attractive, you will be surprise how this movie showed the filthy dirty urban scenes equally with taste like nothing else. How can it be beautiful when the majority scenes of this film are in a filthy gray world? It somehow achieved that! It’s an amazing piece of cinema that I am sadden it was deem not marketable in the US due to the subject matter. More people should have seen this movie.
The final movie in this long review post is a romantic comedy called Imagine Me & You. I watched it because of Matthew Goode, but in here he’s only a supporting character. To my surprise there’s some familiar faces in this movie: first up is Giles!!! Well, Anthony Head plays the a little bit off father-in-law, a really fun role that is very different than in Buffy. Then we have the queen from 300 or the mom from the show Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles – Lena Headey, whom in this movie looks a hell lot like a mature version of Keira Knightley! Seriously her character can be played by Keira Knightley and you won’t know the difference! Anyway, the story is about a couple got married, and in the wedding the bride saw her soul mate for the very first time, only that the person is not her newlywed husband, but a woman. Matthew plays a sympathetic character that is totally loveable, a perfect good guy. His action in the end and where he broke down and cry was just so touching. He’s now totally my latest cutie obsession, I can’t wait for his next role in the Superheroes comic book adaptation of the Watchmen!
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