Change Your Image
becky-dewaters
Reviews
Zelig (1983)
Rate Shifter
I'm so glad I watched this film.
At first I was disappointed that it was a period piece, thinking that it would look like another modern movie attempting to appear like it was set in the 20s, but now I think maybe I've gotten that impression because I've seen a lot of modern movies trying to look like a Woody Allen film set in the 20s.
I laughed and laughed throughout.
(Rate shifters are viewings that make me want to bump all my other scorings down at least one star, except the other rate shifters, given my tendency to overrate films.)
La Ciudad (The City) (1998)
Photographer Bears Witness
Live long enough and we all learn a truth in life, that your grief is not enough to stop all activity from swirling on around you. This film says, "I can see you, even in your grief" in much the same way a great photograph captures the vitality of its subject, and hands it to you like a gift.
The center of the film, fittingly enough, is a photography studio, and we get delicious glimpses of the photographer lovingly photographing his subjects - there is no need to build up mystery as to his identity, because he is all of us, those who find themselves willing to watch as life plays out, sometimes unbearably, before our eyes.
I will definitely be watching this again.
Hope Springs (2012)
Not an 'Easy' Comedy
The reality of our sex lives as we age and begin to feel we're a bit nearer the exit than the entrance makes it clear why this movie got made, and I am glad it was made by such fine actors, but it was still damned uncomfortable to watch most of the time, comedic moments notwithstanding.
The quippy waitress had impeccable timing - probably developed as a waitress - especially the moment when Tommy Lee Jones asks if the restaurant has anything *without* lobster, so she flips his menu over like a mother might her child's. It's also remarkable that in these interactions, most actors would have said 'Oh' to convey his reaction, but Tommy doesn't have to say it out loud. He's very subtle.
Both Tommy and Meryl Streep are to be commended for portraying so well a couple who had had the door of their sexual lives shut behind them without noticing how very shut it was, and for showing us the work that went into getting back into their own sexual skins - the discomfort, the insecurity, the despair that change back is possible.
Steve Carell as the therapist convinced me he was that guy; were I in need of marriage counseling, I would see him. I ought to have been more distracted by the feeling that he would burst into song or gibberish at any moment, but I wasn't and this gave only an extra bit of energy to his performance.
The material had the potential to be The Devil Wears Prada meets In Treatment but unfortunately it never got there, maybe because it is challenging as an audience member to go from bursts of laughter to piggybacking a character's intense psychological pressures and back again too many times, so there was some gloss and some holding back.
One scene which made the movie for me was the couple's second assignment, in which Meryl and Tommy are meant to touch one another, Meryl goes first, and Tommy calls it off. Was he uncomfortable with his own arousal? Had he developed a kind of block against seeing his wife in a sexual way? Had he cheated? Was he experiencing some kind of medical problem? This scene served to make me wonder all these questions with the same panicky kind of anxiousness his wife must have been asking herself for quite some time, and yet, I'm not sure I ever heard a clear answer, other than a call to being more adventuresome, more risk-taking, less full of the kind of pride that keeps you stuck where you are.
I really hope I find this film *more* amusing as I get older, and not less. It could, after all, be my future.