More Movies
Continuing with the onslaught of movies from the library.
The Secret in their Eyes (2009) A Spanish-language film that won the Oscar for best foreign film. I liked it; my husband G. Grod loved it. A retired legal guy is writing a novel based on a case from early in his career. The story is told back and forth in the past and present, but is still clear in the tales it tells. Warning, this movie starts off with images of sexual violence and the plot moves around that, so if that’s not your thing, avoid this. But it has good performances and a compelling plot, as well as an amazingly suspenseful elevator ride scene. Very good.
500 Days of Summer (2010) The relationship of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, the Summer of the title, is tracked over 500 days, going back and forth, sometimes overlapping. Rather than funny and clever, I found it cloying and unsurprising. I like both the leads, but the flat characters killed any charm the gimmick of back and forth in time might have brought me. A few funny bits, but overall, eminently skippable.
The Town (2010) Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, this Boston heist movie is solid. It’s anchored by good performances from Affleck, Jeremy Renner and Jon Hamm, the plot is fine, and though it covers ground many have been over before (one last heist, the good guy trying to get out while his sidekick gets more embroiled, the guy falling in love with the only witness, etc.) it does so in a way that was enjoyable, even if not surprising. Definitely worth renting.
Added later: My husband G. noted that The Town is essentially the same story as Good Will Hunting: smart local struggles to get out of stifling situation, meets higher class girl, feels dragged down by old local friends.
June 9th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Completely agree about The Town. I kind of don’t know why my husband and I rented it because it seemed like one of those movies where the trailer gave the whole story away when it first came out. But rent it we did and despite some rather perilous suspensions of disbelief that were required every so often, it was pretty riveting and much better than I expected.
Also, I liked 500 Days of Summer more than my husband did, but I did not love it. I like quirky narrative devices, which I felt this had, but you’re right that all of the elements that it had working for it perhaps didn’t quite add up. I quite liked JGL, but I don’t really get the Zooey Deschanel appeal. She’s pretty, and yet her complete lack of affect and prosody make her vaguely femmebottish to me.