Heartburn

Bad movies come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it is the acting, sometimes it is the direction and then editing and music even that ruins films. However, nothing ruins a film like a bad script and most bad movies are actually bad because they are just bad stories or bad scripts.

Heartburn (1986) stars two of the most promising Hollywood actors: Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. It is written by a celebrated Hollywood writer: Nora Ephron, and directed by a celebrated Hollywood director, Mark Nichols (Graduate, Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Working Girl and so on) and yet Heartburn is one of the most boring, lifeless, trite films you will ever see. There is really just nothing in the story. Loosely based on a real-life affair and marriage between Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein, this film just has nothing going for it. The story is just not interesting or appealing in any sense.

Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson and both good as they generally are but there is nothing for them to do that would be of interest to anyone proving that even beautiful people are a chore
when they are not interesting.

The Valet (La Doublure)

We generally like French films a lot. They seem to be very intimate and warm. Francis Veber's films (The Closet, Dinner Game, even the American film - Three Fugitives) are specially enjoyable. They are generally over-the-top, comic versions of very selfish people desperately trying to get by.

The Valet, unlike most French films, had a decent opening in the US and was generally well received. It is an amazing little nugget. The film is full of unforgettable characters and is so light-hearted retelling of the age-old 'beauty and the loser' tale but with a genuine affection. Daniel Auteuil (who has lately been in every French film we've seen) is a billionaire two-timing his even richer wife with a supermodel (and what a supermodel) and somewhat a valet must save his marriage, his fortune and his affair.

The highlight of the film is of course this amazing French beauty Alice Taglioni. I've never seen someone who is such a supermodel. She is more supermodel than any real supermodel. She is certainly the heart and the very long legs on which the film stands, and well.

Wintuk (Cirque Du Soleil)

It was with cautious optimism that we headed to the WAMU theater at the Madison Square Garden to see our third Cirque Du Soleil show, Wintuk. It was ultimately a disappointed. We've been big fans of Cirque Du Soleil and were blown away by their last show (Corteo.) It seemed as if they had cobbled together a quick show to make a quick buck enticing unsuspecting tourists into an alternative for theater which has had a bit of a bump due to strikes. It may also be that when you see it the third time the charm begins to end as you know the tricks and you want more than what you got the last time. However, that was certainly not true the last time. Corteo was so much better than Allegria and Wintuk was so much worse than either for them.

Conversations with Other Women

Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter star in this conversational piece the stuff that film festivals are made of. This poignant film seems basically like an unofficial sequel to the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset films. Maybe an 'After Sunset', the Sunset of youth that is. However, the actors are fantastic playing pathetic characters. The dialog is smart and the gimmick of splitting the screen to show two different viewpoints generally works OK -- though the differences are not very pronounced oftentimes making the argument that maybe the split screen is nothing but a gimmick after all.

At World's End

I am quit a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Or maybe what I really a fan of the concept of these films with Johnny Depp as the swashbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow. This is one of those fairly rare trilogies (Star Wars comes to mind) that are actually not based on a book and were created solely for the purpose of film entertainment. While this has something admirable about it, it does make the films suffer from some sort of a plot really being the sub-plot theme to it.

The third and final, 'At World's End' is not a good film. However, it must be watched to complete the trilogy. It has little plot and a little flair and it actually leaves the 2nd film way behind in craziness and boredom. At over three hours the film is actually very hard to watch. However, it is also hard to get away from. You do want to watch the whole damn thing. Also, I guess the only saving grace -- Captain Jack Sparrow -- remains strong -- whenever he does show up. One only wishes that Keira Knightly and Arlando Blood took their roles a little less seriously.

Knocked Up

This is essentially a very depressing film. Hailed by critics as the greatest gift to modern comedy and modern manners, Knocked Up is the story of a slacker that gets a smart, catty woman pregnant and who in return decides to go through with the pregnancy and more strangely with the moron. While Judd Apatow is hailed as being the man who knows the moment and how to milk it, to me he is just another hustler who has realized that you can be juvenile and crass but as long as you show eventual redemption you have a winner.

Watching this film makes me wonder about the James Deans and the Gary Coopers. It makes me wonder about days when men stood for something and women weren't always portrayed as these cunning, opinionated opportunists that are basically trying to push their way through woolly men who are pathetic at best and pitiable at worst. What the world needs is not easy-going, goofy losers but those that make a difference and stand for something.

There is of course no harm in making any movie even one that extols the virtue of aimless sloth, my issue is with critics that praise these movies as ones that define the moment for us. I for one would want to opt our from such a moment.

Waitress

Waitress is a delicately made chick-flick that is able to rise above the cliches of its genre. It is an amazingly good film that can make your evening after a hectic day. It is light, fluffy and sweet as one of those delectable pies that Keri Russel's character, the Waitress, makes with such love. The story about a small-town girl who marries bad and doesn't really no how to get out of it and then finds herself pregnant without a plan. Then of course there is a charming doctor who restores her faith in humanity and makes her complete again.

The film is actually much more entertaining than it sounds mostly because of an excellent treatment by director Adrienne Shelly who wrote and directed the film with an unusual flare. She also plays a little role in the film.

Unfortunately, she was murdered in her apartment in New York City in a freak robbery- gone-wrong, just before the film was released.