Movie Review: Nobel Son

Director: Randall Miller (who?)
How I Watched It: Free Screening at Loews Boston Common theater
Date: Tuesday, December 3rd

I didn't watch the trailer before going to see this movie, so I really had no idea what to expect. Regardless of my lack of expectations, what I got was a convoluted, campy story about a womanizing professor and the consequences of one of his numerous affairs.
Here's a hint: when a movie opens with a scene of professor Alan Rickman in flagrante delicto with a female grad student, the scene played up to full comic effect, you can generally cast aside all expectations for any sort of serious drama. However, the creative team behind this movie try to mash together an impulse toward the comic with a family drama and campy dialogue, along with mediocre acting across the board. The best that the movie ever achieves is being ironically funny in the sense that you are laughing at the movie, not along with the intentions of those who made it.
The screenplay is as much of a trainwreck as I recall myself watching in the recent past. It essentially boils down to a series of increasingly convoluted dramatic plotlines wrapped around contrived witty dialogue to lighten the mood that misfires on every occasion. The cinematography at least made the inspid plot look interesting, but as the movie proceeded further and further it served less and less effectively to distract.
My one positive about the movie was the soundtrack. The music was very good, even if the movie did not quite measure up to the style of the soundtrack. It still made me very intrigued to get my hands on a copy at some point soon.

Blog Relaunch and Movie Review: Australia

I have decided, a year later, to have another go with the keeping of a regular blog, in concert with my attempts to become more knowledgeable in the fields of music and movies. So while this may be a vehicle for other sorts of musings, I intend for it to primarily be a means for discussing those things as I previously mentioned. So here goes...

Movie Review: Australia
Director: Baz Luhrmann
How I Watched It: Free Pre-Release Screening at Regal Fenway Cinema
Date: Thursday, November 20th

Being a big fan of Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet, I was extremely excited to see this new movie Australia. I've loved Hugh Jackman ever since I watched him host the Tony Awards in 2003, a fanhood that The Prestige only cemented. (more Christopher Nolan appreciation coming in the next few weeks hopefully :-p)

Unfortunately, this movie did not at all deliver on the potential that I saw in it. Early in the movie, Luhrmann's inventive direction shines, particularly in the prologue section of the movie which illustrates how Nicole Kidman came to Faraway Downs. The art direction, obviously a strength of all the director's movies, remains relatively solid throughout the whole movie.

However, somewhere in the middle, Mr. Luhrmann seems to have forgotten precisely which genre his movie is. He is clearly under the impression that he is shooting the Lord of the Rings, utilizing a number of ornate shots which this reviewer did not find particularly appropriate to a period piece, culminating in a Peter Jackson-esque slow-motion-shaky camera-battle scene shot in a context that failed to deserve such a methodology.

The movie drags through the last half of the movie, and it would've been much better served by wrapping up at least an hour earlier. It picks up for about 5 minutes during the eventual battle of Darwin, only to lose all that momentum immediately afterward.

Jackman was mediocre, maybe a bit better. The part wasn't particularly well-written. Nicole Kidman was exceptionally annoying from her first appearance on camera. Not Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia annoying, but almost there. Only the young man who plays Nullah, Brandon Walters, is especially distinguished, although David Wenham is somewhat better than the rest as well.

As to the climax, I don't want to give it away, but they so stole that from Crash...