Review: To Rome with Love (2012)

* *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Woody Allen

The problem with the current phase of Woody Allen’s career is that when you sit down to watch his latest, you never know if you’re going to get a Midnight in Paris or a Whatever Works. While To Rome with Love is nowhere near as aggressively terrible as the latter of those, it has a frustratingly half-baked feeling to it that seriously detracts from whatever genuine pleasures the film can be said to contain. Basically: great cast and great scenery, but both utterly wasted.

Review: The Imposter (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: Bart Layton

A story too crazy to believe. It’s amazing how many good documentaries can be described that way, as telling stories that could never work as a fiction feature because you would just never be able to suspend your disbelief like that. Truth, certainly, is stranger than fiction and rarely has it been stranger than in Bart Layton’s The Imposter. Detailing an improbable con that, against all reason, actually worked (albeit briefly), the film is alternately fascinating and bewildering.

Library Project: January 19 - 25

It was a pretty delightful week in terms of DVD watching. Here's what I watched from my library:

January 19: To Have and Have Not (1944) - Bogie and Bacall's first movie together. It's a little bit like Casablanca-lite, but it's so charming and well-made that you hardly even notice. Plus, the two leads have chemistry to die for.

January 22: Trigger (2010) - At just 78 minutes, this one is a bit slight, but it's a real gem nevertheless. Canadian cinema mainstays Molly Parker and Tracy Wright star as former bandmates uneasily reunited for one night after spending a decade not on speaking terms.

January 24: Two for the Road (1967) - One of my favourite Audrey Hepburn movies. Hepburn and Albert Finney star as a couple whose relationship is examined at various stages and on various road trips over the course of 12 years. It's a beautiful and highly entertaining movie.

January 25: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) - ... And speaking of beautiful, this adaptation of the novel by Milan Kundera stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, and Lena Olin, all at impossible heights of beauty. A great film set (mostly) in Czechoslovakia right before and right after the Soviet invasion.

Friday's Top 5... The 2013 Sundance Movies I Most Want To See

#5: Austenland
A romantic comedy about a woman who decides to pull up stakes and move to a Jane Austen-themed resort. It sounds way more commercial than most Sundance fare from the past few years, but just quirky enough to be an indie. Plus, it co-stars one half of Flight of the Concords.

Review: The Impossible (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: J.A. Bayona
Starring: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland

It’s the great equalizer: a wall of water ruthlessly rushing forward, knocking out everything in its path and rendering all the eye can see to ruins. The only thing that can help you in a situation like that is luck, and even then it might only help you get your head above water and no further. The aptly named The Impossible is the true (as far as that goes, in a fiction narrative) story of a family of five (Spanish in real life, British here) that somehow manages to survive the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami intact. Directed by J.A. Bayona, this is an intense experience that leaves one shaken at the sheer power of nature and the human spirit.