What would you do to protect your child? Now, before you view what the mom in “Dear Frankie” does, keep asking yourself. What would you do to protect your child? What lengths are you willing to go to to see that they’re not emotionally shattered, or ruined by reality? The answer is always the same. While not original, and bound to give you a cavity afterwards, “Dear Frankie” is a simple and dreamy family flick about a single mom named Lizzie who lives with her young deaf son Frankie in their flat.
Tag Archives: Romance
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Director Garth Jennings mimics Ivan Reitman’s style, and sick humor down to every particular inch, and until I read up on this film, I’d convinced myself Reitman directed this. For a film that starts off with a musical number involving fleeing Dolphins singing “So long and thanks for all the fish!”, it’s obvious you’re going to get something new. I thought the dolphins would be CGI and animated, but having the song play while stock footage of Dolphins run on a loop is further proof of that not taking itself too seriously hypotheses. And its hard to hate something that sports a cast like John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, and Alan Rickman, it’s hard to go wrong, and I had fun.
Evelyn: The Cutest Evil Dead Girl (2002)
Imagine if Dr. Seuss combined genius with Edgar Allan Poe, with Tim Burton bouncing ideas off of them, and what do you get? Well, if you’re lucky you’d get Evelyn, the cutest evil dead girl, a demented fairytale with the mood and color you never get in films anymore, the mood and color that’s missing from the horror genre today. Many call this basically a rip from “Lenore the Living Dead Girl” comic book, and perhaps that’s true, but “Evelyn” is such a sick and demented short film I had so much fun watching that I didn’t really care.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Yet another Oscar contender I’ve been aching to see before it was even an Oscar contender, “The Squid and the Whale” presents and upper middle class family of intellectuals and prominent athletes at war with one another. At the beginning of the film, I was rather worried this would become yet another “Ice Storm” rip-off except set in New York, but “The Squid and the Whale” is a simple but engrossing parable of a family set in half, and their children having to choose sides. “The Squid and the Whale” is a basic tale of two parents so at odds with one another that it follows down to their children whom are also at war and don’t even seem to realize it. Noah Baumbach’s writing is very enlightening with this simple slice of life of a family at war, and really doesn’t depict anyone as a villain, though the story does veer to certain directions here and there.
Comparing “Shall We Dansu" and "Shall We Dance?": The Superior and the Inferior
I admit I’ve never seen either films, but I watched both one after the other leaving bias’ aside and judged them as separate entities while comparing them to see which one was better. Contradictory, sure, but shut up. Either way, both films are different in terms of their content. While “Shall we Dansu?” is a risqué film in Japan seeing as how human affection isn’t as casual or normal as anywhere else it, “Shall we Dance?” Is normal to the point of being bland. In the country where we watch people having sex on-screen, watching two people dance is nothing worth scoffing at. But in many films in Japan, characters fall in love without ever really kissing, so “Shall we Dansu?” ended up becoming the more original, and layered film.
Junebug (2005)
There’s that saying that if you marry someone, you’re not only marrying them, but you’re also marrying their family and their friends. The same could be said for Gloria who is in for an utter journey of discovery when she meets George. One day at a city gallery, she and George meet and instantly the sparks fly, and they quickly fall head over heels in love. Only ten minutes into the film does the film start up, and for other films, that would be incredibly rushed, but thankfully, it doesn’t. Because the romance is not the story. It’s really only a catalyst for what we’re about to see.
King Kong (2005)
Peter Jackson takes “King Kong” a timeless classic from 1933 and remakes it bigger, larger, and louder. And he’s very faithful to the original story (98 percent). Jackson goes back to the roots of the story, and what made it so damn good, and brings it to modern audiences. Though nothing can ever top the original film, and all of its novelty, Jackson’s remake is pretty damn good. What always intrigued me about the Kong story, is that Ann Darrow, whether she knew it or not, was the beginning of the end of King Kong. In the climax, as he falls from the Empire State Building, you have to wonder that perhaps he was better off being alone. As with all noir the female is always the end for the male.