Movie Review: A Million Ways To Die In The West (2014)

A western comedy, A Million Ways To Die In The West contains plenty of rude and crude laughs, but remains confined to a few repetitive themes.

It's 1882 in the small town of Old Stump, Arizona. Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane) is a peaceful and meek sheep farmer, constantly worried about the many ways people can die in the west. When he walks away from a gunfight, his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) dumps him and immediately starts a relationship with moustache grooming business owner Foy (Neil Patrick Harris). Albert's only friend is Edward (Giovanni Ribisi), who is deeply in love with the town whore Ruth (Sarah Silverman).

Heartbroken after the breakup with Louise, Albert find solace with the newly arrived and mysterious Anna (Charlize Theron), who teaches him to shoot but forgets to tell him that she is married to Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), the meanest outlaw and gunfighter in the territory. Despite his peaceful nature Albert finds himself bracing for showdowns with both Foy and Clinch.

There is undoubted fun to be had in A Million Ways To Die In The West. The humour is sharp, dark sometimes brutal and always vulgar, and more often than not generates the required laughter. MacFarlane co-wrote and directed the film, and does not try to move it too far away from a modern piece of satire that happens to be set in the west. The film plonks self-aware personalities into a western context, and derives most of its charm from the characters commenting on a ridiculous way of life.

But MacFarlane also traps himself into a limited number of themes, and tumble dries the jokes to a stiff standstill. Yes, there are many ways to die in the west, yes Albert is sheep farmer, yes women married young, and yes Foy is insufferably full of himself. The humour don't stray far from these topics, and MacFarlane cannot climb down from a juvenile rate of one bodily fluid joke per minute. The romance elements never come close to clicking, and the many gunfight showdown set pieces don't try even try to generate tension.

The actors go through the film with various shades of smiles. None take their roles seriously, and given a prevailing tone that stops just short of openly winking at the audience, that's just fine.

At almost two hours the film is about 20 minutes too long. There may be A Million Way To Die In The West, but the point is made well before the end credits.

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Movie Review: That Thing You Do! (1996)

A musical dramatic comedy about a fictional one-hit wonder band, That Thing You Do! captures the vibe of an era but remains as shallow as its one hit song.

It's 1964 in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) works at his father's appliance store while practicing his drums as a hobby. He agrees to perform on a one-off basis with the band of his friend Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech) when the regular drummer breaks his arm. Jimmy has written a new ballad, but Guy doubles the tempo and turns That Thing You Do! into a peppy pop love song.

Guy sticks with the band, now named The Oneders, and they land a regular show at the local bar. On the strength of the catchy song they develop a following, attracting the attention of a local music producer who helps them cut a record and start touring locally. At an unfortunately bad show in Pittsburgh, Guy connects with promoter Mr. White (Tom Hanks), who signs them to Play-Tone Records. Renamed The Wonders, the band hit the road and seem to be on their way to the big time as the song races up the chart. But Jimmy is frustrated that neither his fellow band members nor White seem interested in writing and recording more material.

Tom Hanks' directorial debut, That Thing You Do! is good natured fun. Much like the band, the film rides its one ridiculously catchy song all the way from garage band territory to the top of the charts. But the story is also remarkably linear in recounting the rapid rise and quicker fall of a ragged band, and at the end of the film little of substance is revealed about any of the main characters.

The movie recreates a more innocent America discovering the sounds of The Beatles and not yet tainted by Vietnam and Watergate, the young boomer bonhomie of the times providing plenty of energy. Hanks constructs a breathtaking highlight when the young band members hear their song played on the radio for the first time, their sense of unbridled joy and exuberance jumping off the screen.

The title song is inspired by I Want To Hold Your Hand-era Beatles, and the film benefits from an everything-is-possible attitude, where with the help of the right promoter and radio play new stars can indeed be born.

While the rise of The Wonders is spectacular, their fall from grace is abrupt, and the film begins to feel rushed when the fun stops. A clunky romance is tacked on to conjure up a sappy ending, but by then the magic is well and truly gone.

Tom Everett Scott is lively as the cocky drummer Guy Patterson, not taking anything too seriously as he rides the wave as far away as possible from his father's cold appliance story. Hanks exudes detached and steely eyed professionalism as Mr. White, engineering the band's rise and prioritizing the commercial power of their one hit.

Johnathon Schaech as the serious Mattingly is short changed, Hanks' script confining the band leader to one dour mode, while his smarts and drive deserved more exposition. Other cast members include Liv Tyler as Jimmy's girlfriend Faye and Charlize Theron as Guy's high maintenance and soon to be ex-girlfriend Tina. The band members are rounded out by Steve Zahn, Ethan Embry and Giovanni Ribisi.

That Thing You Do! offers light-hearted toe-tapping enjoyment, like a summer hit that's everywhere at once before blowing away when it's time to get serious.

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Movie Review: The Virgin Suicides (1999)

A tender story of how girlhood can go terribly wrong, The Virgin Suicides is a wispy tragedy, softly unfolding with a sentient style.

It's 1975, in the suburbs of Detroit. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon (James Woods and Kathleen Turner) have five daughters ranging in age from 13 to 17. Mr. Lisbon is a schoolteacher, his wife a homemaker, and they are deeply religious, keeping their daughters sheltered and away from social activities. Therese (Leslie Hayman), Mary (A. J. Cook), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), and Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall) become the subject of fascination bordering on obsession for the boys in their neighbourhood. The level of curiosity is amplified when the youngest girl Cecilia attempts suicide by slashing her wrists, but she is saved.

Dr. Horniker (Danny DeVito) advises the Lisbons that they need to allow their daughters to mingle more with their classmates. The first party hosted by the girls ends tragically when Cecilia does indeed succeed in killing herself. The surviving sisters tentatively start to socialize more, but when the free-spirited Lux falls under the spell of Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the coolest boy in the school, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon clamp down harder, triggering grim consequences.

Sofia Coppola's directorial debut, adapting the Jeffrey Eugenides novel, is a hypnotizing journey into the perilous world of growing up. The Virgin Suicides is a bleak story delivered with a delicate touch, capturing the suburban melancholia that emerges with the loss of innocence. Coppola bathes the film in happy colours, soft light, and an airy, remarkably open atmosphere, contrasting the image of flourishing suburbia with the suffocation within families behind closed doors. Death is hovering nearby, the disease-infested neighbourhood elm trees the subject of much agony: should they be left to die naturally or chopped to avoid infecting others.

Seen through the eyes of teenaged boys, The Virgin Suicides treats girls in adolescence as a fragile mystery fraught with peril. They are easily knocked off course by good intentions tarnished with religious dogma, misguided parental rules metastasizing into a horror show of desperation fuelled by confinement. And the film stands outside the girls and observes them as objects of fascination, young women emerging as enigmas to their parents, and most acutely to the boys who would, under normal circumstances, become the men in their lives.

Despite the raging drama of girls fighting to breathe the oxygen of adulthood, Coppola constructs The Virgin Suicides with remarkable calm, and the film avoids guilt trips, finger pointing and recriminations. Below the seemingly staid surface, the tension may boil, but in the day to day lives of the girls, their school and their neighbourhood, the emotions are in check. Smatterings of gossip and interludes of uneasy silences hint at the turmoil; most of what is wrong is left unsaid. The soundtrack by French duo Air perfectly captures the dolefulness of the film, Playground Love a devastatingly evocative theme song.

In addition to Woods, Turner and DeVito, the supporting cast is sprinkled with interesting faces. As Trip Fontaine, Josh Hartnett delivers a refreshingly assured and animated performance. Michael Paré plays the adult Trip, Scott Glenn has a small role as a priest, and Giovanni Ribisi provides low-key narration. A young Hayden Christensen appears as one of the neighbourhood boys.

But this is a story of five sisters, and as the most adventurous of the Lisbon daughters, Kirsten Dunst shines in a role that lives in the twilight zone between individualism and calamity. Never outwardly rebellious, Dunst allows Lux to smile through life's limits as her young mind assesses ever dwindling options, from breaking a strict curfew to exploring what the roof has to offer when the outdoors are off limits. And when the conditions of growing up become even more stifling, she invites the curious boys indoors, to discover for themselves the images of truncated hope.

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Movie Review: Selma (2014)

A biographical drama focusing on a specific chapter in Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, Selma looks for the man behind the image, and finds a leader struggling against self-doubt as he charts a course to change history.

It's 1964, and in the southern United States, blacks have the theoretical right to vote. Practically, they are denied that right by a maze of paperwork and ridiculous civic tests administered by bigots at small-town city halls. In the shadow of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls, black civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) raises the issue with President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), who is sympathetic but distracted by other agendas. Although King and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) are living under the constant shadow of death threats, King decides to push the issue by organizing peaceful marches deep in the south, and chooses the small town of Selma, Alabama as the rallying point.

Not all blacks are supportive of King's tactics, but he connects with members of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and they start to organize. Alabama's Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) does his best to inflame local opinions against King, and local sheriffs are quick to resort to brutality when the marches start. Johnson conspires with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker) to try and intimidate King into stopping the marches by creating a wedge in his relationship with Coretta. But King pushes ahead, the national media pick up the story, the marchers grow in strength, but the number of victims also mounts.

Selma does not spend much time on the marches themselves. Most of the 127 minutes are spent on the backroom politics that shaped public events, and on King's personal struggle to balance duties to his family, with his vision for his people and the trauma of placing individuals in harm's way. King was all of 35 years old when the events of the film took place, and director Ava DuVernay places the focus on the young man carrying an enormous burden, stripped from the legend.

For the first time the subject of a feature film, King in Selma is not just an imposing figure behind a microphone rousing a crowd (although there are several such scenes). Rather, DuVernay is more interested in how one man showed the courage to lead, move thousands, and change a country, despite opposition from the President, apprehension and dissent from on-the-ground black activists, and a marriage being rocked by threats and infidelity. The film is at its best when King is in small groups holding intense conversations, allowing waves of doubt to emerge, talking through the issues, deciding on the next action by assessing the trade offs, and then persuading others to join in.

Much like the marches, Selma moves slowly and deliberately. DuVernay contrasts dark rooms and prison cells with the harsh outside light, and unfurls the narrative at a gradual pace, allowing the enormity of the challenge to sink in. This does mean that the film drags on occasion, waiting for something to actually happen in amongst all the planning. When the climactic marches do finally start, DuVernay effectively marshals armies of extras, uncorks the tension that exists whenever history reaches a turning point, and finds impressive contrasts between those who define the future and those left behind on the sidelines, their raised middle finger a pathetic confirmation of their own extinction.

David Oyelowo steps in the shoes of King with confidence. While the speeches are delivered with the expected powerful cadence, it's in the many smaller, more intimate scenes, either with Coretta or with King's advisors, that Oyelowo shines. He creates the private King, passionate, determined, and yet often uncertain about his actions and the impact of his activism on his family. In a relatively few but pivotal scenes, Carmen Ejogo makes a strong impression, representing the home front where pride and fear reside side by side. Tom Wilkinson never quite gets the right angle on Lyndon Johnson. Martin Sheen and Cuba Gooding, Jr. have small roles in the court battle that helps determine the legality of the marches, while Gionanni Ribisi plays Johnson's main advisor.

Selma does not attempt to be the definitive statement about King, but it does provide a satisfying behind-the-scenes taste of his history-changing impact.

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Movie Review: Gangster Squad (2013)

A vivid and violent crime drama, Gangster Squad is gratifying on its own terms as a graphic romp, the strong cast enjoying the freedom to live larger than life, the action a never ending hail of bullets.

It's the late 1940's, and former boxer Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is a crime boss ruling Los Angeles with an iron fist, paying off the law and scaring off competing cartels with vicious tactics. Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) finally decides to act, and empowers Sergeant John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) to create an off-the-books task force to dismantle Cohen's businesses with force. With help from his wife Connie (Mireille Enos), O'Mara selects veteran sharp-shooter Officer Kennard (Robert Patrick), electronics expert Officer Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), and knife-expert Officer Harris (Anthony Mackie) to join his squad. Officer Ramirez (Michael Pena) tags along as Kennard's side-kick, while O'Mara's colleague and pragmatist Sergeant Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) is a rather reluctant addition to the team.

Wooters makes an advance on Cohen's girlfriend and etiquette coach Grace Faraday (Emma Stone), seducing her and gaining an ally within Cohen's inner circle. Keeler bugs Cohen's living room, giving O'Mara the ability to listen in on Cohen's operations. O'Mara then achieves varying degrees of success leading the squad in frontal assaults on Cohen's fake business fronts, disrupting the flow of money and shipments of drugs and weapons. When Cohen finally learns the identity of the squad members, he plans an ambush and a counter attack, triggering an all out war for control of Los Angeles.

Mickey Cohen: It's like they say, "All good things must one day be burnt to the ground for the insurance money."

With the freedom of only being loosely inspired by real events, Ruben Fleischer directs Gangster Squad with unabashed exuberance. The film is infused with an over the top comic book quality, a willingness to break through all limits, and an excitement to enjoy the expansive view afforded from loosening the shackles and climbing higher. The violence is extreme, the bravado is turbo-charged machismo, while the sardonic hurtling towards bloody showdowns is unstoppable.

Gangster Squad has no dull moments, as the action picks up from the first scene and never flags. With plenty of sharp dialogue, the film feeds on its own spiral of momentum, all the main characters getting ever more desperate, and therefore so much more brutal with each other. There is little room for nuance or reflection, but within the non-stop turmoil Fleischer does manage to provide O'Mara with a family and a war veteran's inability to adapt to a world without war. With beautiful sets and costumes, bathed in nostalgic golds and reds, the film recreates an era as it is best imagined.

Amidst all the beauty, there are a few blank bullets. The relationship between Jerry and Grace never rings true or catches fire, the two brought together and jumping into bed in a hurry seemingly to continue the better romance ignited by Gosling and Stone in Crazy, Stupid, Love. In Gangster Squad the attraction between them is forced, and settles into an excuse to insert Grace as the only woman playing in a world of violent men. It doesn't help that Gosling delivers one of his less engaged performances, and Stone aims for mysterious but seems plainly bored.

Grace: What's your racket, handsome?
Jerry: I'm a bible salesman.
Grace: Want to take me away from all this and make an honest woman out of me?
Wooters: No ma'am, I was just hoping to take you to bed.

Better is the tug of war for the soul of the city between O'Mara and Cohen. Both men are single-minded, ultra violent, and direct in their head-on quest to achieve their objectives. That they happen to work on opposite sides of the law becomes less important as O'Mara and his squad adopt Cohen's own tactics to target the criminal's businesses and men. The line between right and wrong blurs as O'Mara stops at nothing to shake the foundations of a corrupt empire, and in doing so risks corrupting himself.

Mitch (one of Cohen's men): Mr. Cohen, I swear to God...
Mickey Cohen: You're talkin' to God, Mitch, so you might as well swear to me.

Josh Brolin and Sean Penn take turns chewing the scenery, shouting, shooting and delivering large doses of pain. Brolin is the bull unleashed to tackle Penn's rotten syndicate, and the two deserve each other. Penn strips any humanity out of Cohen, giving him the sole purpose of amplifying his own power at any cost. The Will Beall screenplay misses an opportunity to provide Cohen with a bit of a meatier back story. Other than his history as an uncompromising boxer, there is no crusty context to his unconstrained lust for power and control. O'Mara is also coldly brutal, but does get a pregnant and supportive wife who fears for her man, and the emotional scars of combat experience in a world war.

O'Mara: You lose everything and you win the war - you're a hero. You lose everything and you lose the war - you're just a fool.

Gangster Squad may lack some qualitative weight, but makes up for it with a rainstorm of lead.

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Movie Review: Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Steven Spielberg delivers the definitive World War Two film. Through the simple story of the search for a lowly private in the immediate aftermath of the D-Day Normandy invasion, Saving Private Ryan encapsulates the scope of a global conflict, and defines the destiny of the post-war years.

On D-Day, battle veteran Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) leads his group of Army Rangers as part of the first wave landing on Omaha Beach. Miller's troops include Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore), Private Rieben (Edward Burns), Private Caparzo (Vin Diesel), sharpshooter Private Jackson (Barry Pepper), the proudly Jewish Private Mellish (Adam Goldberg) and the medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi). After a long, brutal, and gory battle on the dunes of Omaha beach in which many Allied troops are slaughtered, Miller and his men overcome stiff German defences and help to establish a secure beachhead. The many battles and many lost men start to take their toll on Miller: his right hand develops an intermittent, uncontrollable tremor.

In the following days, the American military command learns that three brothers from the Ryan family have been killed in recent combat action. General George Marshall orders that the fourth brother, Private James Francis Ryan of the 101st Airborne, be found, extracted from the war and flown back home to safety. Miller and his unit are tasked with finding Private Ryan, although the 101st is scattered all over the French countryside behind German lines, and no one knows where Ryan is. Miller adds the multilingual but barely trained cartographer Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies) to his unit, and the eight men head out on a dangerous mission to find one man among thousands of soldiers.

The search takes Miller through an active war zone, as the disorganized but determined most forward Allied units try to hold on and fortify inland gains before German reinforcements arrive. Miller encounters Sergeant Hill (Paul Giamatti) and his men embroiled in a close-quarters pitched battle in the middle of destroyed town, then gets assistance from Captain Hamill (Ted Danson). A countryside detour to destroy a German radar installation causes extreme tension within Miller's small group, as losses mount and the surviving men, particularly Rieben, openly question the purpose of the mission and Miller's leadership.Finally, Ryan (Matt Damon) is located, having joined a ragtag collection of paratroopers, digging in to protect a strategically vital bridge in the town of Ramelle. With German tank units moving in, Miller informs Ryan that his involvement in the war is over, but Ryan has other ideas.

The opening 27 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, featuring the landings and battle at Omaha beach, are legendary. Possibly the most realistic and painful depiction of warfare ever filmed, Spielberg recreates a literal bloodbath, as Allied soldiers are slaughtered by German heavy machine gun fire on the open beaches, and yet the sheer numbers of the invaders and their determination eventually turn the tide of battle. Spielberg's cameras take a ground-level, soldier's eye view, dodging bullets and explosions, moving within the chaos, the smoke, the death and the dismemberment as confusion reigns, bodies pile up, the water turns red and the future of the war hangs in the balance. The depiction of the battle is full of gore, misery, cowardice, heroism and the atrocities of war, a soul-shaking experience rarely equalled in the history of film.

Even within the chaos of the opening battle, Spielberg demonstrates genius in introducing several of the major characters and their key attributes. Miller, with his shaky hand and vulnerability for shell-shock, is nevertheless an effective leader, keeping calm, rallying his men and formulating the plan necessary to punch through the German lines. Horvath is his loyal second in command, and Jackson is the deeply religious sharpshooter, whose skills are frequently essential. By the time the beach battle ends, Miller is an established presence, gathering Normandy sand in a small canister to add to too many other canisters holding earth from too many other recent battles.

It's a lot to ask for any film to maintain the momentum of that opening, but Spielberg pulls it off by zooming in. The rest of the movie is about the actions of individual men, not the movements of a massive army, and Saving Private Ryan transitions from the domain of liberating a continent to the story of saving one man. And with Spielberg having demonstrated no fear of portraying shocking and sudden death on the beaches, the threat of sudden demise lurks around every corner of the French countryside as Miller and his men make their way cautiously inland. And consistent with the realism established early in the movie, death proves to be a constant companion. Saving Private Ryan forces heroism and sacrifice to walk hand in hand in a prolonged, agonizing courtship.

Doubts about why eight men should risk their lives to save one private eat away at Miller's soldiers. When thousands of men are dying daily, what is the life of one private worth? Through the course of the 170 minute running length, Spielberg and writer Robert Rodat reveal their answer in subtle hints, as personal actions gain prominence, seemingly small choices have compounded outcomes, and a single soldier's decision carries far-reaching implications. The mission may have been about saving one man, but within that inordinately high valuation of the individual lies the purpose of the war, and the destiny of the post-war years.

Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński used relatively washed-out, almost sepia-toned colours to give Saving Private Ryan a more historic feel, and the film is widely admired for the attention to detail and historical authenticity in portraying the uniforms, equipment, weapons and armaments of the day. And from within the realms of unfolding history, Tom Hanks gives the war its human face. Captain Miller is a civilian pressed into service, his pre-war career a closely held secret from his men. He does the best that he can, but this is not a blood-thirsty soldier living for war. Rather, the war has interrupted his living, and he longs to finish each successive mission as a another stepping stone on the long journey to return to his wife.

Both deeply melancholy and fabulously inspirational, Saving Private Ryan questions the cost of war by celebrating the courage of the men forced to fight, and die, in battles large and small.

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The Movies Of Giovanni Ribisi

All movies starring Giovanni Ribisi and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

That Thing You Do! (1996)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The Virgin Suicides (1999, narrator)

Boiler Room (2000)

The Gift (2000)

Basic (2003)

Cold Mountain (2003)

Lost In Translation (2003)

Perfect Stranger (2007)

Public Enemies (2009)

Avatar (2009)

Contraband (2012)

Ted (2012)

Gangster Squad (2013)

A Million Ways To Die In The West (2014)

Selma (2014)

Strange Darling (2023, voice only)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Lost In Translation (2003)

An unexpected encounter that verges on a possible romance in a foreign land, Lost In Translation is a delightful and melancholy story of a potential love that could have blossomed under different circumstances, or that may have never happened except in the most unusual of surroundings. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are unforgettable as the travellers who cross paths, and pause to jointly explore a certain dead-end.

Bob Harris (Murray) is a once-famous action movie star whose career has been reduced to endorsing alcoholic beverages for the Japanese market, where he remains unjustifiably popular, in return for large cheques. Arriving in Tokyo for a few days of filming commercials and utterly over-run by jet-lag, Harris goes through the motions, mostly hanging out at his hotel bar in between shoots where he struggles, in as far as he cares, to understand what the Japanese director wants him to do. Bob's domestic life appears to also be falling apart, his long distance communication with his wife reduced to trite and tired emotionless exchanges.

Also in Tokyo and staying at the same hotel is a young American couple, Charlotte (Johansson) and John (Giovanni Ribisi). He's a photographer on assignment shooting local music bands; she's suffering through all the warning signs of a wife emotionally and physically abandoned. When John bumps into an airhead starlet (Anna Faris) at the hotel, he never even bothers to introduce Charlotte.

Bob and Charlotte both find themselves unable to sleep and with many hours to kill, and they start to bump into each other in and around a hotel. Charlotte invites Bob to join her on outings to explore the Tokyo nightlife, and they develop a companionship that evolves into a caring friendship, and finally a deep albeit platonic intertwining of forlorn souls.

The two main characters of Lost In Translation are rudderless ships floating in a strange ocean, passing very close to each other, but coming from different directions and heading to unknown destinations. Sofia Coppola writes and directs a most poignant and beautifully photographed film, a heartache encounter between two deeply dissatisfied souls who find fleeting happiness in the unlikeliest of surroundings. Both Bob and Charlotte know that their their lives are in utterly different trajectories, and their relationship has nowhere to go; yet they offer each other an irresistible glimpse of nutritious light in an otherwise gloomy, sleep-derived reality.

Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson deliver deeply affecting performances, both playing against their typical personas. Except for some flickers of wit, Murray leaves his comic days far behind, and creates in Bob Harris a man deeply troubled by his superficial success, watching his decision to chase the cheesiest dollar sink any remaining potential for continued artistic satisfaction. An aura of deep sadness surrounds his every motion, Murray able to project his dark mood on the flashiest of Tokyo surroundings.

Johansson is stunningly deglamourized, her Charlotte a woman staring at the sudden realization that her marriage offers nothing to fill her soul, her self-obsessed husband far from understanding even the basics of what the relationship requires.

Coppola keeps Lost In Translation away from melodrama by injecting doses of life's quirky reality and humour, and while her jokes are mostly at the expense of Japanese society, she paints the world as seen through jaded, confused and bleary eyes, where cultural differences are understandably exaggerated.

Lost In Translation ends with a memorably brave piece of film making, Bob's final words to Charlotte audible only as far as it matters, her reaction a devastatingly beautiful moment of realization that while her future is uncertain, she will always have Tokyo, and life does offer up searing happiness under the most improbable of circumstances.

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Movie Review: Cold Mountain (2003)

A sprawling epic of the Civil War, Cold Mountain is an old-fashioned grand romance set against the backdrop of a brutal war, with classic themes of hope, survival, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit against barbarous adversity.

Reverend Monroe (Donald Sutherland) and his daughter Ada (Nicole Kidman) relocate from the deep South to the small town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina, where the crisp air is healthier for the Reverend's ailing health. Ada is immediately attracted to the quiet and awkward but resourceful outdoorsman W.P. Inman (Jude Law), and although few words pass between them, there is an undeniably mutual attraction. The Civil War breaks out; Inman joins the Confederate Army, along with most of Cold Mountain's men. For the next several years, Ada's life becomes one long patient wait for Inman to come back to her. She writes a stream of  letters, hears little in return, and lives on nothing but hope and the memory fragments from the few moments they shared prior to the war.

Inman's journey home rivals the Odyssey. He is blown up by Union troops outside Petersburg before surviving a meat grinder of a close-quarters battle, only to be shot in the neck in a subsequent skirmish. Nursed back to health, he defects the Confederate Army before encountering the lascivious Reverend Veasey (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Inman is eventually captured as a defector, but another skirmish with Union soldiers leaves him wounded, abandoned and chained to a gang of dead men. He is rescued again and healed by a recluse living deep in the woods. Inman next encounters the young widow Sara (Natalie Portman) and her young infant, and helps her to fend off marauding and starving Union troops before continuing his long walk home.

Meanwhile, Ada is holding on to the forlorn hope that Inman will one day return to her, and struggling to survive on her own after her father dies. Knowing nothing about running a farm, least of all how to stay alive in the harsh Cold Mountain winters, Ada is near starvation when the spirited and resourceful Ruby (Rene Zellweger) arrives at her doorstep, and the two gradually become a formidable team, surviving and thriving against the elements. The biggest threat to their well-being emerges in the form of the self-appointed Confederate home guard, under the leadership of the power-drunk Teague (Ray Winstone), who sees the Civil War as his opportunity to reclaim his family's long-lost land holdings in Cold Mountain.

Nicole Kidman manages to glow like a Hollywood star even when close to starvation, her performance adequate without being memorable. Kidman is more comfortable in the scenes when she is taking charge or falling in love, and a lot less believable as a struggling woman depending on the charity of others to survive. Jude Law, having just survived another blood-flows-in-the-streets battle in Enemy At The Gates finds himself back up to his knees in gore, and his performance is all about the determination to survive in the name of love, fending off the grim reamer countless times in his quest to fulfil his destiny with Ada.

More interesting than the two leads are two supporting actresses. Renee Zellweger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her feisty Ruby, a bundle of positive energy that still makes plenty of room for seething anger at her father's neglect. Even more engaging is Natalie Portman, her brief 15 minutes on the screen as Sara leaving a lasting impression. Her pleading with Inman for platonic comfort in her bed is the most searing metaphorical scream of horror that the movie offers against the devastation caused by war.

The supporting cast is deep in talent, and in addition to the sage Donald Sutherland and lustful Philip Seymour Hoffman, the likes of Kathy Baker and Giovanni Ribisi provide continued texture.

Director Anthony Minghella and cinematographer John Seale mix lavish shots of surreal natural beauty in all seasons with horrific scenes of war, and Minghella keeps the drama surprisingly nimble despite the complete lack of any humour or relief from the overwhelming sense of doom surrounding both Ada and Inman.

Cold Mountain never shies away from portraying the harsh natural and man-made challenges that stand in the way of happiness, but it also never veers from the journey to ultimately find the warmth that emanates from the well-meaning human spirit.

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