JohnDeSando
A rejoint le oct. 2001
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Note de JohnDeSando
"Nameless, unremembered, acts/Of kindness and of love." Wordsworth
Around Regency England Jane Austen began to rule romantic literature with her witty deconstruction of upper-class pretentions and wise advice about how to find love and/or fortune. With the 250th anniversary of her birth, the film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a low-key Austen modernization that depicts a young book seller, Agathe (Camille Rutherford), who can't break her writer's block or find love. Yet, she has a disposition given to "acts of kindness and love."
While she has a womanizing co-worker, Felix (Pablo Pauly), who apparently loves her, she won't give herself to him out of diffidence, good sense, and plain cluelessness. He signs her up for a Jane Austen Residency at a posh estate in Britain (all shot in France), where it looks like she will fail again to be inspired to write. It's not unknown that meeting new people, including seasoned writers, helps to mitigate the block and renew a zest for life; for Agathe, it will be a slow burn, her very name suggesting "a gate."
This lyrical French rom-com, with alternating subtitles, is a treat for a cool summer evening when you are ready to be seduced by French joie de vivre and an art film that uses no CGI, relies on insights about love and writing fitting to Austen herself, and sometimes dips into old-fashioned screwball comedy or plain old-fashioned pratfalls. A bit of vaudeville, I'd say, such as when she, naked, stumbles into the room of Oliver (Charlie Anson), a distant relative of Austen and for whom romance with Agathe has potential.
There's even a formal ball, in the Austen spirit, and Agathe shines like the actress Anne Hathaway, slender and charming. Emerging into a woman less like Austen's Emma and more like Elizabeth Bennet.
All in all, not much happens in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life but a tardy romance, just right for light, summer cinema and fitting for the immortal Jane Austen on her anniversary.
Around Regency England Jane Austen began to rule romantic literature with her witty deconstruction of upper-class pretentions and wise advice about how to find love and/or fortune. With the 250th anniversary of her birth, the film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a low-key Austen modernization that depicts a young book seller, Agathe (Camille Rutherford), who can't break her writer's block or find love. Yet, she has a disposition given to "acts of kindness and love."
While she has a womanizing co-worker, Felix (Pablo Pauly), who apparently loves her, she won't give herself to him out of diffidence, good sense, and plain cluelessness. He signs her up for a Jane Austen Residency at a posh estate in Britain (all shot in France), where it looks like she will fail again to be inspired to write. It's not unknown that meeting new people, including seasoned writers, helps to mitigate the block and renew a zest for life; for Agathe, it will be a slow burn, her very name suggesting "a gate."
This lyrical French rom-com, with alternating subtitles, is a treat for a cool summer evening when you are ready to be seduced by French joie de vivre and an art film that uses no CGI, relies on insights about love and writing fitting to Austen herself, and sometimes dips into old-fashioned screwball comedy or plain old-fashioned pratfalls. A bit of vaudeville, I'd say, such as when she, naked, stumbles into the room of Oliver (Charlie Anson), a distant relative of Austen and for whom romance with Agathe has potential.
There's even a formal ball, in the Austen spirit, and Agathe shines like the actress Anne Hathaway, slender and charming. Emerging into a woman less like Austen's Emma and more like Elizabeth Bennet.
All in all, not much happens in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life but a tardy romance, just right for light, summer cinema and fitting for the immortal Jane Austen on her anniversary.
"I need you one more time to trust me." Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)
Trust we have given over 30 years to a Mission Impossible franchise that has given us a durable hero in the form of Ethan Hunt: played by Tom Cruise, now 62 years old and more vigorous and brighter than most beings half his age. The new Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning is as long on Cruise's stunts as it is on The Entity, an AI cyber villain for our times. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen deftly steer us to salvation.
Probably this modern hero, Ethan Hunt, fulfills our desire for a romantic and indestructible savior the way Douglas Fairbanks did in the early days of 20th-Century cinema. The difference is that Hunt is technically savvy and less sexy than Fairbanks, but no less in the dreams of men and women looking for love and deliverance from ruthless dictators.
Today's Hunt goes places Fairbanks's characters never went, in this case the bottom of the Baltic Sea to recover source code that will help neutralize The Entity before it controls the world. Our hero, Ethan, and the actor, Cruise, go there while also jousting mid sky with biplanes that allow us once again to see Cruise latch on to an airborne plane, action the actor claims took his breath away, literally.
At almost three hours, this epic adventure lets us breathe while the world contemplates the destruction that ensues if our hero doesn't gain the code and can't stop arch villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) from controlling Entity. What does save the world is the old super-hero trope of family, a group of eccentric characters hanging together as a team, albeit Ethan the major operative.
More than anything, cooperation and demanding timing save the day, showing whatever disaster awaits mankind, shared values and precise maneuvers will save the world. It all sounds so meta, but the idea of human love saving the day gives hope to our tangled world. Nobody better than Cruise to help us survive Armageddon and Three-hour movie adventures. Great summer escape with thoughts on surviving contemporary political disasters.
"It is written." Paris (Pom Klementieff)
Trust we have given over 30 years to a Mission Impossible franchise that has given us a durable hero in the form of Ethan Hunt: played by Tom Cruise, now 62 years old and more vigorous and brighter than most beings half his age. The new Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning is as long on Cruise's stunts as it is on The Entity, an AI cyber villain for our times. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen deftly steer us to salvation.
Probably this modern hero, Ethan Hunt, fulfills our desire for a romantic and indestructible savior the way Douglas Fairbanks did in the early days of 20th-Century cinema. The difference is that Hunt is technically savvy and less sexy than Fairbanks, but no less in the dreams of men and women looking for love and deliverance from ruthless dictators.
Today's Hunt goes places Fairbanks's characters never went, in this case the bottom of the Baltic Sea to recover source code that will help neutralize The Entity before it controls the world. Our hero, Ethan, and the actor, Cruise, go there while also jousting mid sky with biplanes that allow us once again to see Cruise latch on to an airborne plane, action the actor claims took his breath away, literally.
At almost three hours, this epic adventure lets us breathe while the world contemplates the destruction that ensues if our hero doesn't gain the code and can't stop arch villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) from controlling Entity. What does save the world is the old super-hero trope of family, a group of eccentric characters hanging together as a team, albeit Ethan the major operative.
More than anything, cooperation and demanding timing save the day, showing whatever disaster awaits mankind, shared values and precise maneuvers will save the world. It all sounds so meta, but the idea of human love saving the day gives hope to our tangled world. Nobody better than Cruise to help us survive Armageddon and Three-hour movie adventures. Great summer escape with thoughts on surviving contemporary political disasters.
"It is written." Paris (Pom Klementieff)
"Don't live here, don't surf here." Scally (Julian McMahon)
When the hero of the film has a name in the credits: "The Surfer," the film is probably going to pursue allegory sooner rather than later. The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage is an everyman tale about buying a modern Australian home overlooking a surfer beach and formerly his growing-up home.
Almost immediately he and his son (Finn Little) are confronted by local surfers wanting no one from the outside to use the beach, albeit public.
The audience can identify with the dilemma: how does Surfer defend himself in front of his son when he is out-manned by the surfers. He puts up a verbal fight, but even then, it's clear his better judgement should have him vacate as soon as possible. It's what most of us would do to save our lives rather than die. We are never given the father and son names, supporting the allegory's universal application.
For as long as Surfer holds on arguing to get his stolen surfboard, small indignities like bartering his father's watch to get coffee accumulate to support the suspicion that he may already be selling his soul for that home. As he descends toward looking like a homeless person, he also becomes more mentally in disarray. Shades of Walkabout, A Picnic at Hanging Rock, and many Australian New Wave films that link dreams and being an outsider.
The crazy cinematography and over-the-top characters are a pleasure if you don't require realism. There is no reason to discount the possibility that the story is a product of the hero's imagination or his crushing obsession with buying the house. Yet, losing his car, cell, and dad's watch seem all too real to everyday stiffs like me.
As he did in Pig, Cage rises above his characters' absurdities to point the audiences to his losing grip on worldly possessions and our own sanity while we age out of youth. An enjoyable, small art piece to begin a summer of varied watching.
When the hero of the film has a name in the credits: "The Surfer," the film is probably going to pursue allegory sooner rather than later. The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage is an everyman tale about buying a modern Australian home overlooking a surfer beach and formerly his growing-up home.
Almost immediately he and his son (Finn Little) are confronted by local surfers wanting no one from the outside to use the beach, albeit public.
The audience can identify with the dilemma: how does Surfer defend himself in front of his son when he is out-manned by the surfers. He puts up a verbal fight, but even then, it's clear his better judgement should have him vacate as soon as possible. It's what most of us would do to save our lives rather than die. We are never given the father and son names, supporting the allegory's universal application.
For as long as Surfer holds on arguing to get his stolen surfboard, small indignities like bartering his father's watch to get coffee accumulate to support the suspicion that he may already be selling his soul for that home. As he descends toward looking like a homeless person, he also becomes more mentally in disarray. Shades of Walkabout, A Picnic at Hanging Rock, and many Australian New Wave films that link dreams and being an outsider.
The crazy cinematography and over-the-top characters are a pleasure if you don't require realism. There is no reason to discount the possibility that the story is a product of the hero's imagination or his crushing obsession with buying the house. Yet, losing his car, cell, and dad's watch seem all too real to everyday stiffs like me.
As he did in Pig, Cage rises above his characters' absurdities to point the audiences to his losing grip on worldly possessions and our own sanity while we age out of youth. An enjoyable, small art piece to begin a summer of varied watching.