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Reviews
21 Grams (2003)
A Force To Be Reckoned With
21 Grams is a 125-minute exposure to rawness that is rarely seen on the big screen, both in frequency and effectiveness. Amores Porres director Alejandro González Iñárritu introduces the lives of three people, connected by a tragic car accident, with the unapologetic fierceness of an open flesh wound. Through a gritty lens and a stark exposition of the circumstances surrounding the accident, Iñárritu has achieved an unrefined, intelligent, and powerful exploration of loss, consequence, spirituality, and death.
The film connects the lives of three central characters through the death of a man and his two young daughters: an unfaithful math professor (Sean Penn) with a critical heart condition whose marriage is falling apart; a bereaved upper-middle class wife and mother (Naomi Watts) widowed by the accident, who slips into her past drug habit to cope; and a born-again ex-con (Benicio Del Toro) with a family who tries to redeem his past through God and religious fanaticism. The story unfolds in a fragmented, non-chronological disarray, paralleling the shattered lives of the central characters.
So rarely does a film portray emotional rawness without slipping into a quicksand of melodramatic drivel, but this one achieves it stunningly. Watts, Del Toro, and Penn deliver unprecedented performances, perhaps the most honest and extraordinary among all of their previous work. Each actor takes their characters to their thresholds and breaks through them, exposing the core of their feelings so deep and personal that one wonders what part of themselves they are bringing to the table.
21 Grams can't help but be provocative. If it's not the subversive tension stringing along the disorderly progression, it will be the overwhelming sense of desperation of the events and characters that makes this film uneasily dismissible and disturbingly haunting. Titled after the notion that a body loses 21 grams of mass (supposedly of the soul) at the moment of death, the film remains true to the promise of invoking a strong response, regardless of the form it takes.
The Good Girl (2002)
good girl makes for a bad movie
i was initially curious about this movie since this was the first role in which jennifer aniston plays a realistic role. but reality does not suit her. her performance was less than mediocre, her portrayal of her dilemma totally unconvincing, and she did nothing to improve a terrible script. after a fantastic job with 'chuck and buck', i was expecting a little more creativity and originality from mike white than what we actually got. if you absolutely feel the need to see it, wait until it comes out on dvd/video because it wasn't worth my $10.
Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002)
An Intimate Thread
I saw this film tonight at the First Annual Tribeca Film Festival and understood its success at Sundance. In short, this film is about the awakening of three different women in very different lives and circle around a news report of a shooting in Manhattan and an ensuing car accident. With the telling of each woman's tale, Miller uses a brilliant 'degree of relation' to the accident in order to develop an engaging and powerful film.
Delia casually watches the news report of the accident while waiting for the cook to bring up her next order in a small-town diner in upstate New York. Though the audience does not see a particularly unusual response that she has to it, we can imagine that her difficult circumstances allow her to relate to it on a level of shared human suffering.
Greta, who's story is told in a series of flashbacks, watches it on the morning news minutes before she has her epiphany about her failing marriage and the new turn that her life is taking as a prominent editor for a large Manhattan publishing house. Because it is the only scene in her story that takes place in the present time, the audience is left to wonder what sort of pivotal role the news report has played in her epiphany.
Finally, Paula's story brings the accident close to home as she is a witness to it. Her epiphany was a direct result of the accident since it was a near-death experience for her. She's not only shocked from the impact of it, but her struggle to explain it with cosmic signs allows her to transcend the accident and the events following it.
The performances were real, the direction was brilliant, and the common thread that ran through the intimate details of the women's awakenings flowed easily, despite the segmented telling of their tales. Miller's work in this film has inspired me to seek out her feature debut, _Angela_ as well.