Reviews

While failing to reach the heights of earlier adaptations of Jane Austen novels, Love & Friendship, based on an early epistolary Austen novella, Lady Susan, does have a few laughs and charms to compensate for its incessant chattiness and some directorial missteps.

Written when she was nineteen, and at only fifty-nine pages in the edition I have, Lady Susan, while recognizably the work of Austen, lacks the deep wisdom and lived-in quality of novels like Emma (written when she was about forty) and does not rise much above the level of satire.

Love & Friendship has a sketchy, episodic feel that belies its epistolary roots. I had slight difficulty following the abrupt changes of scene at times (only explained in dialogue after the fact), a choppiness I'd attribute to either questionable editing or lack of coverage (the movie was shot quickly in February in Ireland on a small budget). Furthermore, I felt the rapid pace of the editing ill-suited a story that takes place entirely through written communications hand-delivered by carriage over what were then large distances.

Stillman stays reasonably faithful to Austen's characters, plot, and wording, but is not content with simple adaptation, and adds some of his own parody. I found this funny in parts (most of which were in the trailer), but more often was put off by the facile humor and characterization. Stillman's verbal footnoting of not very obscure references also took me out of the story; the same applies to self-deprecating jokes about Americans and Manhattan in-jokes. It seems that, in attempting to pander to what he perceived to be a skeptical audience, he lost at least this part of his captive audience (every Austen adaptation I've seen has left me wanting more, until now), while failing to win over the skeptics (the friend I saw it with struggled to stay awake).

But I don't wish to exaggerate: while I found most of the movie artificial, rushed, and uninvolving, there are stretches, especially in the latter half, where the actors are allowed more than a minute or two to act as an ensemble, without abrupt scene changes, ironic subtitles, or Manhattan in-jokes, and I started to develop some real empathy with the characters. But it was largely too little, too late.

The movie does have a good deal in its favor.

The costume design is stunning, and the locations and/or set design make the movie look like it had a far higher budget than it apparently did. The cinematography shows off all of this to great advantage, with lighting simultaneously convincingly realistic, on point, and luscious.

Beckinsale is well cast, especially given her performance twenty years ago as Emma Woodhouse, a character who bears a passing resemblance to Lady Susan - not to mention that Beckinsale was, like Lady Susan, the mother of a sixteen-year-old daughter at the time of filming. And her acting skill has improved noticeably in the last two decades.

Tom Bennett and Xavier Samuel acquit themselves admirably. While I am not in principle against American actors in English period pieces (my favorite Austen adaptation is the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma), I found Chloe Sevigny's presence jarring here. I can only conjecture that either someone felt Americans needed a proxy character in order to relate to the story, or else that Stillman couldn't resist inventing an excuse to slip in America jokes.

In summary, if you appreciate Whit Stillman's sense of humor, and are either a fan of Lady Susan or else appreciate Austen from a historical or post-feminist perspective, you will probably love this movie. If you're not into Austen or Stillman, this may put you to sleep. If, like me, you're a Stillman skeptic (I'm ambivalent on Metropolitan as well) and your love of Austen is conditional and based largely on her writing skill, it can be a mixed bag.

Without referring to the original novella, I'm left with a feeling vaguely similar to what I felt after watching Coppola's Marie Antoinette - some amusing moments, some pretty pictures, and not enough story or storytelling to tie them together.

The characters of "Thirst" revolve around a feisty teenage dowser who (with the help of her well-digger father) unearths a trickle of suppressed desires in a poor family in rural, drought-stricken Bulgaria.

But don't let the word "feisty" fool you: while this film generally resembles a typical American indie film, it is somewhat un-Hollywood in its slow pace, fatalism, and lack of sentimentality or Puritanical attitude. "Thirst" is driven more by character and situation than plot or theme. Compared to typical American films, there's less drama and it's less cute, more raw. Well, on a scale of "Hello, My Name Is Doris" to "The Witch", let's say medium rare.

There are missteps. Too often oblique shots with seemingly artistic intentions don't work right - the editing or tone is off and the authorial intrusion is felt without any benefit to storytelling. More importantly, what little there is in the way of drama I often saw coming a mile away - the slow pacing didn't help - and it still arrived as a deus ex machina.

What Tsotsorkova does get right are the interactions with and reactions to the girl. My favorite parts are when they get slap happy. I felt the shock of broken convention, quickly replaced by the conviction that it was all perfectly in character, and more genuine than the conventional thing to do in that situation. You can tell this is the work of an actor.

Overall, then, a fairly well-made, but not groundbreaking, film that is worth watching for those into indie movies. Not as entertaining as, say, "Hello, My Name Is Doris", but also not as redolent of half-century-old cheese.

I've lived in Oakland for over a decade - since a few months before the story of Moneyball starts. In a town where local elections are swayed by candidates' stances on building a new A's ballpark, I had never heard the story Moneyball is based on. Which is to say, I'm not a baseball fan.

Sure I've seen a few A's games, but they were either free or less than the cost of a movie ticket. We got the cheapest seats, since you can basically sit anywhere you want once the game starts. I live in Oakland, but AT&T Park (where the Giants play) is actually closer and a much nicer place to spend an afternoon anyway. So you see, I'm one of the 99% that put the A's franchise in its current lowly state.

Add to this that I am one of the vocal minority that absolutely hates writer Sorkin's previous effort, The Social Network, plus the fact that I never much liked Jonah Hill, and that leaves only the fact that it's set in Oakland as the reason I watched.

But I liked it.

A great deal of that admiration is for the screenplay. Not the story, which, although timely, is thin. And, just like with The Social Network, the characters don't involve me at all. So it can only be the script and acting that puts it over the top. A style of dialogue that seemed stilted and implausible coming from the mouths of teenagers in The Social Network, fits the hardball business culture of this movie perfectly. Plus, Beane's daughter's singing is brilliant, equivalent in role and effect to the song and dance in Blue Valentine.

I don't love Moneyball, but for a little over two hours Pitt & Co. kept me interested in the sport of baseball, and that's about two hours longer than the real-life A's can manage.

While the concept had potential - brought out in the superior Hollywood remake - the unfocused storyline and stoic acting made me doze off briefly while watching this film. This does not happen to me often, and when it does it's a sure sign that my mind has wandered.

Nolan's remake is more suspenseful, features more effective performances (especially by Robin Williams), and a better sense of the relentlessness of the midnight sun. The original's jump-cut-as-lacuna editing may have been fresh for 1997, but movies like Fight Club and Memento have since greatly refined the screen representation of lapses of consciousness, and this review is being written in 2012.

When I picked up No Reservations at the local library, the librarian gave me a typical recommendation: if you like that, you might want to consider Mostly Martha, of which No Reservations is an inferior remake. I liked No Reservations well enough – it's a well-crafted, if straight-up, Rom Com – so I picked up Mostly Martha next.

I like No Reservations better.

Not that there's much difference between the two. All but one of the major plot points are retained, and some scenes are copied nearly verbatim (barring language differences). So it might just come down to which movie you saw first.

But there are specific aspects of No Reservations I prefer: a more fleshed-out script and editing job, as well as superior Hollywood production values (the better presentation of the food, for instance, or note the poor dubbing of Mostly Martha's Sergio Castellitto - on the German track - although maybe this is just an audio sync problem with the Paramount DVD).

Mostly, though, I prefer No Reservatons for its stars. Abigail Breslin is one of the all-time great child actors, and shows it here, whereas Mostly Martha's Maxime Foerste is just a kid who tries not to look into the camera and fails. While Castellitto puts in a fine performance, Aaron Eckhart's thousand-watt charm keeps him in the running for me. And while Martina Gedeck's performance as Martha is more technically impressive and even more appealing than Kate's Kate, I find her slightly-framed, vulnerable Martha less believable as a famous chef than Catherine "Very Vigorous" Zeta-Jones - even if that's only because it's hard to shake the image of Zeta-Jones as fiery Latin.