Eat Pray Love ***

Director: Ryan Murphy
Cast: Julia Roberts
Javier Bardem, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis
Billy Crudup, Hadi Subiyanto, Tuva Novotny, Mike O'Malley
Luca Argentero, Rushita Singh, David Lyons

How do you sell a movie about a woman who leaves her husband to find herself, while traveling to some of the most exotic locales on the planet? You get Julia Roberts to play her.
It makes no difference that Eat Pray Love is based on the autobiographical novel written by Elizabeth Gilbert, the truth is that perhaps there would've been no way to bring this movie to the screen without making it feel like a "whine fest" if it wasn't because Roberts turns it into a Julia Roberts movie.
Not to pay any disservice to Gilbert, since apparently those who love her book think it gets to be spiritual and transcendental, but the thing is that watching Julia on a movie screen immediately takes you to a place where movie stars still are gods of sorts and mortals can still drool over them.
This helps the movie because it helps make Gilbert approachable, given that we rarely think of her as an actual "normal" person, she's pretty much Julia Roberts' version of Gilbert.
This makes it easy to like Julia because it wouldn't really be easy to like Liz.
When the film begins she decides to leave her husband (Crudup) after figuring out she doesn't love him. She begins an affair with a young actor (Franco) who she doesn't love either and then decides it's time to travel the world and find her balance.
She begins her journey in Italy where she eats, then goes to India where she prays and culminates it in Bali where she loves (Bardem plays Felipe her Brazilian love interest).
Director Murphy (who also wrote the screenplay with Alice Salt) seems to have no real intention to make anything in the movie subtle.
Besides the obvious explanation of the title, he spends trying to digest everything for the audience. Along with director of photography Robert Richardson he tries to make everything seem like what we'd expect it to be.
Therefore the entire movie is bathed in a golden light that makes everything seem nice but doesn't really allow elements to breathe. Richardson who is an extraordinary DP, here seems restricted by the homogeneous look Murphy tries to impose on everything.
The same can be said about the editing, which more often than not seems overcompensating. The scenes where Liz eats are usually cut with such quickness that they make her bites seem car commercials, it's as if Murphy is too worried we would get too envious about the foods and chose not to show them too much and there's a particularly obnoxious scene where a woman's fashion success is celebrated by an entire crowd of football fans.
It's fortunate then that while Murphy digests for us, Julia gets to do the actual savoring. Her performance might not be a reinvention of modern acting but the actress shows glimpses of a maturity that she has experimented with very few times in her career.
Not only does she look more radiant and beautiful than ever but she also manages to infuse Liz with a certain sense of earthiness despite the whole "she's Julia" issue.
Even when the movie succumbs to cliché Julia takes it to a completely different place. For example it doesn't take long to assume Gilbert was a fan of Sex and the City given the way she narrates and tries too hard to deliver Carrie Bradshaw-isms, but Roberts takes these comments with a pinch of salt and instead of turning them into puns or teabag advice she confronts them and even make us wonder if Gilbert wasn't actually consciously creating a marketable product while trying to be spiritual (think Paulo Coelho minus the ominous hocus pocus).
After all this is a woman who literally had to begin from zero after an ugly divorce. It would make sense, and give her some humanity, to think that she was finding ways to make money after her trip was over.
Eat Pray Love rarely gives us a glimpse of the Julia Roberts laughter, you know that big, loud roar that's impossible to ignore, instead we get more of her soulful smile this time around.
Perhaps the screenplay doesn't really try hard to see what's behind Liz, her motivations rarely move past the "find myself" stereotype but Julia detected this and tries to explore it without acquiring methodical tics.
Instead of approaching Liz like a vessel waiting to be invaded, Roberts gets near her and tries to empathize, which is why it's evident that nobody else would've been able to play this woman and not make her seem selfish and to an extent an anti-heroine.
Because for all its soul searching and mumbo jumbo, Eat Pray Love is still very much about an American woman using the world to expiate her sins but without the selfawareness to make it a satire.
Because it has Roberts though it gains a heart, one that is broken on several occassions (mostly by herself) and because of this we leave the movie, not feeling patronized or offended but actually questioning what we just saw.
If people like Gilbert get to travel the world and still come up empty handed, what hope is there for the people who only get to travel from movie to movie looking for answers to their existential questions.
Murphy doesn't seem to know that his glossy travelogue might seem shallow but Julia does and with a comforting smile lets us know that however deep we sink in our own tragedies, almost everyone knows that a spoonful of gelato makes the world seem perfect even for at least a second.

I Love You, Phillip Morris *½

Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor
Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Brennan Brown
Trey Burvant, Antoni Corone

It shouldn't be a surprise that movies about gay lead characters are still pretty much dealt with as strange novelties. It should be refreshing however to find a film with recognizable movie stars taking on these characters. This film does both, yet the only truly risque thing about I Love You, Phillip Morris is how often it pushes its condescension towards outrageous bad taste.
Based on the real life story of gay con man Steven Jay Russell (Carrey), it attempts to be Catch Me If You Can by way of a parody of Monster.
The film begins with an unarguably exciting sense of wonder as we meet Steven and his wife Debbie (a sadly underused Mann) a seemingly traditional couple with a secret: he's gay (the revelation by the way is hilarious and has a sense of comedic timing the film never recaptures).
After a life changing accident Steven decides it's time to come out, so he leaves his family, packs his bags and moves to Florida with a man (Santoro).
Seduced by the promise of a new exciting life he soon realizes that "being gay is expensive" leading him to start a life of crime.
He ends up going to jail for fraud and there meets Phillip Morris (McGregor) an angelic looking Southern boy he falls hard for. They begin a relationship and for the rest of the film we see as they try to maintain their love alive, in and out of jail, as Steven copes with his criminal past.
The entire film is plagued with so many tonal discrepancies that for a second or two you might wonder if this indecision by part of the directors to determine what kind of movie they were making is some sort of commentary on sexual unawareness (is this a bicurious movie?).
But of course it's not, it's actually a patronizing, conflicting work that deals with its themes in a completely lost manner.
For starters we begin to wonder why they try so hard to make this into a comedy when the truth is that Russell's life is actually a series of tragedies anchored by what can only be called mentally disturbed behavior.
He's more Tom Ripley than Frank Abagnale Jr. but the directors seem to overlook this because they seem scared of dealing with the darkness in a homosexual character.
Therefore they turn the entire plot into a condescending gag that reveals to us we can only empathize with this man by making fun of his misery.
Carrey, who under able hands can be a brilliant actor, is back to his wacky days here, turning Steven into Liar, Liar with a lisp: a character so devoid of any depth that you can't even muster the energy to dislike him.
All that Carrey does with his performance is turn hissy fits into sissy fits robbing the character (and presumably the real man) from any opportunity to be something more than caricature.
McGregor on the other hand turns in a beautiful, sensitive performance that goes beyond cliché even if the mvoie tries to turn Phillip into a full on Southern belle trapped inside a man.
That he's able to pull off a line like "enough romance, let's fuck" with just enough honesty to make us see the way angst and hormones battle within him as well as making us laugh out hard, makes for a really surprising element and perhaps the one thing that makes this film worthy.
It's a shame that the movie can not commit to being either a fun genre flick or a complex character study because when it's over we just wonder if the title is even right, given that Steven comes off looking as someone who only loves himself and even saying that feels like a lie.

You've Got Mail.

"A Mr. Brett Favre stopped by and dropped off this picture of a hot dog."


"Finally."

Y'all know I LOVE 30 Rock. After just watching the West coast version of their brilliant live ep, all I've got to say is: best comedy show of the decade.
Did you guys see the live ep? Which version did you prefer?

Crush of the Week.

Style Sunday.

I swear it's not my intention to have Carey Mulligan in every edition of this series but the girl sure can dress. She's the epitome of effortlessness cool in this Vionett tunic with a risky pattern that might've made other women look like a hippie art teacher from New Mexico.
The hair and makeup are flawless.


Keira Knightley is a complete vision in this simple Chanel dress. At first glance nothing seems entirely interesting about this look and some might say the creamy color washes Keira's pale complexion but look closer and you will notice hundreds of little pears holding the whole thing together.
For those who think pearls work better until you're an older lady this look kicks that conception right in the butt. The heavy black shoes to anchor the entire look are a stroke of genius!

What do you guys think about these two?

Piranha 3D ***

Director: Alexandre Aja
Cast: Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Steven R. McQueen
Ving Rhames, Jerry O'Connell, Jessica Szohr, Kelly Brook
Riley Steele, Christopher Lloyd, Cody Longo, Richard Dreyfuss

If you liked Jaws but think it would've been better if it had been directed by Paul Verhoeven, then Piranha 3D will blow your mind.
A hilarious, boob-filled, bloody, monster extravaganza that truly does justice to its B-movieness and above all seems to be worth your money (if you know what you're paying for).
Set in Lake Victoria, Arizona, it kicks off with an inspired spoof that has Richard Dreyfuss fishing while drinking some beer.
As he struggles reeling in a big fish, he drops his bottle which we follow to the bottom of the lake. Just as it hits the floor, an earthquake hits (or is the beer bottle causing the quake?) which opens an underwater cave from which a school of prehistoric piranhas emerge.
They rip Dreyfuss to pieces, doing justice to all the water creatures he has destroyed in the past. Then they move forward trying to find their next victim, lucky for them it's also spring break and hundreds of horny youngsters have come to the lake.
Piranha 3D is pretty straightforward from the beginning and seems to proclaim that there is absolutely no cliché it will not recur to, no gratuitous boob shot it will let pass and absolutely no degree of political correctness it will respect.
But as the piranhas have a feast of silicone and six packs, there's also a main story we're meant to follow, that of Sheriff Julie Forester (Shue) and her kids Jake (McQueen, as in Steven's grandson), Laura (Brooklynn Proulx) and Zane (Sage Ryan) who get involved in the disaster for quite silly reasons.
Needless to say that revealing more about the plot wouldn't exactly interfere with your enjoyment, it's perhaps best to let the film speak for itself and when you have a fantastically crass Jerry O'Connell as a Joe Francis-like amateur porn producer, you can be assured the film will do lots of, quite dirty, talking.
The cast itself is something the movie should be proud of; Shue is phenomenal and grounded, Rhames is his usual big self and Lloyd is all sorts of insane as a wise ichthyologist.
What the movie does best however, is give its audience exactly what it wants. Just when you think the filmmakers won't push any more buttons, they go ahead and cut a woman in half while paying homage to Titanic and Eli Roth.
In fact it might not even need 3D to work, given that other than for a scene or two there's not much use for the technology (there's a creepy underwater tour that's probably a bit too dark for it to work to perfection). Unless that is, you have made it a purpose to watch tri-dimensional vomit and wet breasts that almost poke your eyes out.
And if you've not had enough nudity and boobs, there's an underwater ballet set to Léo Delibes' "Flower Duet" from Lakmé that will haunt, and probably wet, your dreams.
Unlike recent movies that try hard to win B-movie and exploitation cred, Piranha 3D earns it through the use of cinematic traditions that have remained effective for decades.
As it seems to condemn sex and drinking, it's also using them to boost its own success and does this without even trying to make some sort of political comment or say anything witty about society, it's not that the film is dumb, it's just that it know that besides being bliss, ignorance can also be lots of fun.

Bittersweet.

La Dolce Vita marked the midpoint at which Federico Fellini transitioned from neo-realism to more oneiric, almost surrealistic work. The film is populated by strange characters living even stranger situations and was condemned by the Vatican for its immorality.
But what has always remained in my mind about this movie was that it showed me what the power of moving images was all about.
Let me explain; as a child I became enthralled by Fellini in a way I couldn't completely understand. Given that finding his movies wasn't entirely easy for me, I devoured his work in any way I could.
One of these ways was by reading books about him. It was on one of his biographies where I first encountered La Dolce Vita.
In a nutshell the book told the entire movie. When I finally got the chance to watch it I was expecting the structure I had read about to play out in an automatic way.
I was shocked to see that the more I had read about the movie, the less I knew what I was getting into.


Anita Ekberg's Sylvia is "dangerous stuff but very beautiful".

Marcello (Mastroianni) stares in disbelief at this exotic she-wolf.

Very few movies are as flawless as La Dolce Vita, in how every single element is necessary. Which is why you really won't know what makes it so special until you watch it. Despite all the homages, parodies and countless references to it, the film remains an exciting, refreshing experience each and every time.
Which is why when choosing my favorite shot-and trying to be all cool and obscure-I was slightly pissed at myself for succumbing to one of the most famous sequences in film history...


In it we see as famous actress Sylvia (Ekberg) becomes finally liberated as she leaves a stuffy party (and her obnoxious fiancé) and ventures into the night with journalist Marcello (Mastroianni).
He seems baffled by her every move and just hovers around her as she barks, coos and eventually finds a tiny white kitten.
She urges Marcello to find milk for her new friend and despite the hour he decides his mission is to oblige her.
He leaves to find the milk as Sylvia wanders the streets of Rome.


This sequence has a dreamlike quality that might remind you of Jean Cocteau's work (it helps that Nino Rota's score is so magnificent).


After trying to find her way in the urban labyrinth Sylvia finds something that makes her say "oh my goodness".
It's as if she was a goddess being called back to Olympus.


When Marcello arrives with the milk he finds Sylvia has decided to take a bath in the Fontana de Trevi as the kitten waits outside.
"Marcello come here!" she demands and who is he to say no?


Do you remember that this is the exact same scene we watch in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation?
While Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) lie in bed having champagne in Japanese wooden cups, they too are enthralled by Ekberg's larger than life presence.
But there's a reason why Coppola used this precise moment and it's also the reason why I love the following shot so much, like Marcello and Sylvia, Lost in Translation is all about a stolen moment, taking a glimpse of a life you know you will never get to have, it's no coincidence that in both movies we are moved by characters we should envy or simply despise.


Marcello finally approaches Sylvia but finds that he can't even bring himself to touch her.
This is my favorite shot in the film because it encompasses all the themes Fellini discussed, in a simple, miraculously layered way.
It's essentially a moment that talks about separation.
Be it Marcello's and Sylvia's social differences, which are real despite what Roman Holiday had to say seven years before this film was released.
There's also the fact that Marcello can not cheat on his girlfriend anymore and how he should try and remain professional.
But beyond the obvious connotations Fellini is also showing us how afraid Marcello has become of real life, of finding happiness.
This is a theme that pervades throughout the entire film and the director never judges his characters but we constantly see them come close to reaching what they want only to be overwhelmed and surrendering once again to the sweet life.
In fact, this very shot, leads us to wonder, what is the dolce vita Fellini is referring to? Is it the idea of happiness surrounded by excess or is it the actual life that these characters never reach?
Is la dolce vita the idea of Sylvia or Sylvia herself?

I love that Marcello uses his hands in the same way he uses them throughout the movie, he's always making gestures and using his hands to express himself.
And something about Mastroianni's expression makes this innocuous moves funny and heartbreaking.
It's as if life is always slipping through his fingers.


This post is part of the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series, hosted by the dolce Nathaniel of The Film Experience.