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{sidebar id=32}Guy Ritchie became one of my favorite (and
many others delighted fans`) directors after masterpieces like Lock, Stock
and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. But the higher you climb, the
hardest the fall is, and that exactly happened with his previous work: Swept
Away, a movie to forget, featuring his wife Madonna, which was smashed
without mercy by critic and public.  

So there was a lot of curiosity around his
new film, Revolver, to see if Ritchie would come back to his origins.
And the initial plot certainly reminds his earlier films: gangsters, action,
acid dialogues… He even eliminated the scenes where Madonna appeared trying to
avoid the “kiss of death” that his wife had given to the previous failed work.
But once you get immersed in the story, you can see that there is not much left
from the first successful films mentioned above if not for the repeated
appearance of his “fetish” actor: Jason Statham, perfect in his work as
usual.  Ray Liotta appears as
maybe the best of the whole film, in the role of a tanned and despotic mafia
boss that totally suits him.

Ritchie had warned that this time he wanted
to make a film for intelligent people… and alas that the movie is not easy to
follow! The timeline is broken successively, the thoughts, the real facts and
the imagination of the characters is often mixed, and you really have to pay
attention to catch the subtle angles of the story. This time the sharp
dialogues are not aimed at making you smile, but at making you reflect about
some philosophical questions. The chess game and strategies to win is a great
leitmotiv all over the movie, and looks like Ritchie wanted to create a chess
game also inside our minds. But at the end my feeling is that the product got “over
baked”. Ritchie wanted to play to be a director resembling Christopher
Nolan, David Fincher and himself at the same time, instead of just being
happy of showing his personal style, leading to the viewers and critics to be
still trying to decide if this is a masterpiece, or a piece of shit. Decide
yourselves, but my advice is that maybe watching the film for a second time can
help you understand it more (or maybe not). I still prefer the Guy Ritchie less
philosophical and more into purely entertainment.

{sidebar id=28}Jim Carrey continues struggling with his status of comedy
actor trying twisted roles where he can show that he is able to provoke more
than laughs from the spectators. Sometimes results are huge successes and great
interpretations like in The Truman Show (1998), Man on the Moon
(1999) or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and some other
times we have to resign with a weaker result as happens in this Joel
Schumacher’s The Number 23.

The first half of the film looks promising, with Carrey in the role of
Walter Sparrow, a normal and good citizen that gets hooked step by step and by
some mysterious circumstances to a book that keeps plenty of reminiscences with
is own life. But an initial plot that could have been turned by Schumacher into
an exciting and mysterious exploration of the human mind starts to feel predictable,
boring and dull from the moment when Sparrow’s family takes an active role in
helping with the investigation.

The product smells too much of Carrey needing once more to reaffirm
himself as a “serious” actor, repeating once more registers seen in previous
works. At this level most of the audience already knows about the good skills
of Mr Carrey, so he could try to focus on choosing a bit more solid scripts
that can offer more extra excitement during the last and final twist. Virginia
Madsen and Logar Lerman are just correct in their roles of wife and
son of Sparrow without any special brightness in their work, while Ronda
Mitra and Lynn Collins bring some fresh and needed sensuality to the
storyline.

Not a bad effort by Schumacher, but the film had all the ingredients
needed to be the main course of the menu, and finally lacked of some spices
that turned it into a normal appetizer.

{sidebar id=31}After
watching this film, my first feeling was of annoyance. I was feeling
quite angry at the point that the main core of the events (although
modified for the film) had really happened in real life years ago.
That made me reflect how stupid the human being can be when we see a
tragedy coming on and we do nothing to solve it, thinking that others
will make us the favour to erase the problems.

In any case, the
feeling of annoyance also made me realized that the acting skills of
the young actors had been pretty good, since they had reached the
point of making me hate them during the last scenes. I must say that
I have never been a great fan of Justin Timberlake, but I must
admit that here he is probably the best of the whole film: A
character that can be sweet, naïve, stupid and cruel at the same
time. Alpha Dog features young guys playing to be big fishes into the
crime world surrounded by an environment of luxury, parties, pretty
girls and drugs. Maybe the atmosphere is a bit exaggerated, but it
adds a good touch of decadence to the action.

Ben
Foster as the histrionic older brother of the kidnapped child has
some brilliant moments, although sometimes he suffers of overacting,
like in the scene when answering the telephone call that turns to be
stupidly unmeasured. Saving the distances, during some moments he
could remind you of Edward Norton in American History X.
Bruce Willis is correct in his small role, but Sharon Stone
is not in her most brilliant movie. The part where he appears
interviewed at the end of the film disguised as a fat woman does not
make much sense with the rest of the plot, and does not add anything
to the film. The last minutes could have been perfectly erased, but
Casavettes wants to stretch the storytelling too much, and that
makes the film to lose power after the climax. Not a bad reflection
about the MTV American way of living, where owning in a big villa and
playing to be the hardest gangster seems to be the coolest ultimate
feature to gain respect in a group of friends, but the film in
general turns to be a bit too much artificial.

{sidebar id=29}In the world
where we live nowadays, full of intolerance, racism and hate that seems to grow
up without reason from every corner, films like Freedom Writers
are needed and received as a fresh breeze that brings some hope.
 

Based on the
book The Freedom Writers Diary that compiles the story of Erin Gruwell
and her pupils during her first years as teacher in a problematic and violent
high school in Los Angeles,
the film teaches that the first knowledge that the pupils must learn in the
classrooms is respect for the others. Hilary Swank is convincing as the
naïve but strong idealistic teacher, and Jack Dempsey plays his part as
forgotten husband who spends his lonely hours watching matches on TV.

The story,
which happens mostly inside the classrooms, has some really emotive moments
when the youngsters remember their relatives and friends fallen due to
violence, or when Gruwell make them face the story of Ana Frank and the
Nazi Holocaust.  Sometimes situations
cross the border of melodramatic and turn into ridiculous, with some dialogues
that we hardly expect to happen in a real classroom, but all in all, the film
is well enough balanced and achieves the goal of transmitting a message of
hope, understanding and equality for those viewers who want to listen to it.
For some of you, it can make you take a pencil again after a long time and
forget for some hours the personal computer on exchange of the familiar
notebook, or simply make you reflect for some minutes that the problems of your
neighbour are not so far from your own ones.

{sidebar id=26}I read in an
interview made to Brad Pitt years ago, after having acted in Troy, that
he had to work his ass hard to look as fit as Aquiles since the guy was the
best warrior in all the history. Then imagine the best gang of warriors of all
the history, 300 men whose only purpose was to fight and die in the battlefield
and your mind can go with no difficulty directly to the festival of biceps,
six-packs and flesh shown in 300. Many have complained about the
excessive cult to the perfection of the bodies exhibited all around the film,
but for me the explanation is quite much simple: they look fit because those
warriors had to be fit.

Although the
film is not as bright and revolutionary as Sin City,
director Zack Snyder accomplishes a more than decent job here,
considering the extreme difficulties when facing an adaptation of this kind. At
least the main point of the story is clear; Spartans are a warrior society so
the backbone of the films is the battles. There is a lot of blood spilt and
some artistic slow motion footage that brings fight scenes into a new level of
plasticity. But the bellicosity of the film makes otherwise boring the scenes
when the action slow downs as the political plot inside the walls of Sparta and
the continuous narration in voice over turns to be annoying and excessive. Gerard
Butler plays a convincing role as Leonidas, carrying a look that oscillates
between anger and madness that suits the historical character perfectly, and Lena
Headey as Queen Gorgo, plays effectively her role being sensual and
beautiful but also a firm and strong Spartan woman (nothing to do with the
ridiculous role of Angelina Jolie in Alexander).

It seems
that Iranians are quite busy lately filling complains about western films
(recently it happened also with the adaptation of the comic Persépolis
by Marjane Satrapi) since some sectors do not seem much happy about the
treatment given to their nation. In any case, do not look here for veracity or
historical accuracy because the main goal of 300 is to entertain. And
the mission is accomplished.