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The Time Traveler's Wife loses its deeper, universal meaning when told from the convition-less point-of-view of its aimless time traveler rather than that of his impassioned, anguished wife.
The Time Traveler’s Wife would have done well to take a cue from its title and actually tell the story from the point of view of the titular character. It is, after all, her story – devoted Claire is the one who sacrifices her entire life for the sake of a man that can never give her the consistent love she so desperately craves, devoted Claire is the one who clings to the idea of her one true love even as her life collapses into a heap of lonely disillusionment, devoted Claire is the one forced to deal with the reality of life half-lived as her husband roams haphazardly through time as a result of an unexplained genetic abnormality…
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Caché undermines near-perfect filmmaking with paper-thin political allegory.
Caché comes out of the gate as a near-perfect psychological thriller and then takes a huge misstep with an oversimplified political allegory that not only has nothing to do with the larger dramatic set-up but further robs the movie of basic story logic. It all begins when unhappy couple Georges (Daniel Aueteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) receives a series of mysterious, menacing surveillance videos on its doorstep - though Georges initially feigns complete ignorance as to what the tapes might mean, we quickly discover his deeper suspicion that the stalking is somehow related to an unnamed unforgivable act he committed as a child…
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Away We Go: All Style, No Substance
There’s an awkward, protracted exchange in the middle of Away We Go that exemplifies the movie’s overall inability to answer any one of the endless questions posed throughout its running time. It features a monologue delivered by the seemingly happy college friend of a 30-something, self-described “fuck-up” couple that has set out on a road trip in the hopes of finding the perfect place to plant roots for their impending newborn…
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Wolf: A Smart Satire that Never Answers Its Own Moral Questions
Wolf is an old-fashioned horror movie with a sly sense of humor. Director Mike Nichols draws a metaphor here between primal wolf savagery and primal corporate savagery – the more that book editor Will Randall (Jack Nicholson) descends into his new wolf powers, the better he is able to survive the new cutthroat demands of Big Business Takeover. All well and good –that is until Will eventually realizes that his emerging wolf persona takes over at night and has him patrolling the New York City streets for fresh human prey…
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Moon: The Little Engine That Could
Moon is a smart little movie that works because it really commits to an emotional point-of-view – writer/director Duncan Jones uses what could have been a hackneyed, “clones in space,” sci-fi premise to explore astronaut hero Sam Bell’s poignant disconnection from the life he longs to reclaim back on Earth. We first meet Bell (Sam Rockwell) at the tail-end of a three-year job maintaining energy-harvesting equipment on the moon; this formerly stubborn, prideful man has been driven nearly delirious by his solitary post and he now looks to the impending reunion with his beloved wife and daughter as a means of barely soldiering through each torturous day...
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Leatherheads: Good Intentions Go Awry When This Promising
Screwball Comedy Splits Into Two Movies
There’s a climactic point in Leatherheads where football maverick Dodge Connelly (George Clooney) learns that he will have to play a “clean” game from this point forward, meaning no more low-brow moves like “putting the pig in the poke” or “the crusty bob."If you’re wondering just what “pig in the poke” or “crusty bob” actually means, don’t expect the screenplay to provide any answers: it never actually bothers to explore the mechanics of “dirty” football with any depth or specificity but then asks us to care when the game as Dodge knows it is jeopardized...
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